What's going on with Game of Thrones' Jon Snow? Kit Harington finally comes clean

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Remember how Snow was violently murdered in the show’s season 5 finale? Well, death isn’t a permanent state in the fantasy world of Thrones, so the betrayed Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch is back. Cue the cheers. But wait, doesn’t that go against everything Harington told fans when he insisted that he wasn’t in the show anymore?

It turns out that Harington wasn’t exactly being honest — in fact, he flat-out lied. He admits as much to EW in this week’s cover story and offers fans an apology. “I’d like to say sorry for lying to everyone,” he tells the magazine. “I’m glad that people were upset that he died. I think my biggest fear was that people were not going to care. Or it would just be, ‘Fine, Jon Snow’s dead.'”

Yes, we cared. Even though it initially seemed highly possible Snow would come back, Harington’s words did a pretty good job of shutting down hope of a return, at least for the immediate future. Now Snow is not only back already, courtesy of Melisandre’s sorcery, we’ll actually be seeing a lot of him this season. “It’s a massive season for Jon,” says Harington. ‘It’s his biggest season … so far.”

Apparently, Harington even spent more days on set this season than any of his co-stars, so hats off to HBO and the Game of Thrones cast and crew for doing such a good job keeping the secret.