<em>Game of Thrones</em> and Television’s Long History of Cheating Death
The “surprise” return of a major character in the HBO show’s sixth season<em> </em>won’t hurt the future of small-screen storytelling.
The end of’s first season did something truly audacious in the world of television: It killed the show’s main character, Ned Stark (Sean Bean), and it did so in a way that made it clear he wasn’t coming back. Book readers might have known it was coming, but in its first year still had the real capacity to surprise the majority of its viewers. When Ned in the closing seconds of the episode “Baelor,” there was no argument that he could be put back together again. But when Jon Snow was stabbed to death in the most recent season finale, the opposite was true: wasn’t subverting
