End of Season 5 and Book-Informed Season 6 Predictions: the Jon Bit

How can it be book informed if the show has caught up to the books?

Well see, it's not QUITE caught up (Sam has story, Arya has story, the Ironborn haven't had ANYTHING yet), but more than that, I am using some prophecy and vision stuff. Also, there are interviews, casting news, and such, plus I've read the Winds of Winter Chapters that have been released, though I think only Arya's chapter will affect what I have to say about her season 6. Sansa and Theon are in too different a place from their book plots and Barristan is dead on the show and Arianne never existed...

 I am going to go by MC/Area rather than season 5 then 6 because I think it's more coherent that way... I will break this into a couple parts that go together because otherwise it may get way too long. I will begin with the one everyone is talking about because its prominence in the media means it is a timely topic.

JON SNOW (and Bran, Melissandre, and the white walkers) 

Jon's story has been the most interesting all season. The politics at the wall, the hints at Jon's parentage, all of it, but these last three episodes were really amazing. Hard Home, in particular, episode 8, only managing to get a fraction of the wildlings onto the ships, battling the wights and then the white walkers, Jon managing to kill one of the white walkers with his valyrian steel sword... just amazing.

Then there was all the shade thrown at Jon when he showed up at the wall with all of them and let them through, leading right up to the final episode in which his brothers killed him as a traitor.

The News Part: There has been a great deal of effort by show creators and Kit Harington to say Jon is DEAD. He will not be on the show next year. All carefully worded like he's been fed lines... like maybe he is legally required to say them... Yet there is a rumor Kit has been seen in Belfast and he certainly hasn't cut his hair, which only in December he was complaining about. Now I can see why he had to keep it through Sunday, but if I were him and wanted to squash rumors and get all that extra fluff off my neck for summer, I would have made my appointment for Monday morning...

The final authority on the matter though, is George RR Martin, who in 2011 said:

“If there’s one thing we know in A Song of Ice and Fire is that death is not necessarily permanent.”
 and
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So why did you kill Jon Snow?

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: Oh, you think he’s dead, do you?

Now listen... I have been on discussion boards for about two years now. I've reread the books, and listened to them two more times. I am going to take George's word here because I think there are plenty of hints.

I believe Jon is DEAD, and that this is a good thing. 

 Say WHAT!?

Only by dying will Jon be released from his Night's Watch vows. Only by dying can he do what he needs to to find out who he really is and meet his destiny.

But he isn't going to stay dead. Here is WHY:

Jon Snow has an enormous mystery built up around his parentage that has had too much build for the character to just go away. It was established in the first book/season.

Sean Bean even let it slip at one point, "I've definitely got some unfinished business that needs to be resolved there," he argued. "I'm obviously not Jon Snow's dad. And you need that to be revealed at some point, don't you?"  

And if the ANSWER to this question is what everybody suspects—that Jon is a LEGITIMATE son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, then Jon IS the song of Ice and Fire—the name of the whole series—the only person to embody BOTH ice and fire. The only two magical family lines (well maybe excepting the Reeds) in the realm.

 Need proof... here are the vows... right there near the top...

It shall not end until my death

But ALSO (and this begins to approach the HOW of what happens next, there is a vision from Melisandre in the books:

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half- seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him. 

 So Jon will be a man. And then a wolf. And then a man again. In the books the last word Jon says before he dies isn't his “eh tu, Brute,” statement of “Ollie”. The last thing he says is “Ghost.” And he doesn't feel the fourth blade goes in. Jon Snow has vacated his body...

It seems he is going to put his soul into that direwolf of his for safe keeping until somebody, like say, the conveniently timed Melisandre, can resurrect him. That said, I think there will be some obstacle—maybe they hide his body in the cold cells so she doesn't know where he is, or maybe she has to sneak away with him to somewhere safe before she can do it. Maybe she has to run from Davos who will surely be intent on destroying her when he learns what happened to Stannis and Shireen.

Jon and Bran?

I think Jon Snow will embody Ghost much of the season. And I think Ghost has some stuff to explore... like maybe a brother north of the wall... whose person is getting very good at seeing the past and great distance through the eyes of the heart trees. I think Bran will have a clue for where Jon can find the answer about his parents which will set Jon on a sort of quest. (you know... in addition to saving the world and all)

I think the ACTUAL resurrection of Jon Snow won't come until maybe the last episode.

 And did you see that last line of Mel's prophecy? Skulls all around him? In ANOTHER prophecy, one about Hard Home, it is very clear “skulls” are the way the wights (or others as they are known in the books) appear to her. So either he will be resurrected north of the wall or the army of the dead will have gotten through. It seems only logical, since the murder of Jon will have to lead to civil war among the watch, perhaps an attack by the wildlings, and nobody left who really understands what needs to be done to guard that wall.