The Great Maybe – Jon/Sansa in Game of Thrones



I’ve been asked if Jon/Sansa will happen in Season Seven or Eight of Game of Thrones. Because I don’t sell snake oil and promise you it will cure your hair loss, my answer is pretty dull and straightforward. It’s “Maybe.”

This is not necessarily the fault of Jon/Sansa. I would offer a similar answer for a lot of other questions. In my opinion, anyone who expresses absolute certainty that some things will happen or won’t happen on Game of Thrones beyond the most generic and obvious of plot developments (like Cersei dying or Dany landing somewhere in Westeros) is simply not operating in good faith.

That’s not just because the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. It is because for all its eliminations of book plots and characters, the show remains far more unpredictable than it would be if it was reliably well written and executed.

Game of Thrones often enough delivers inconsistent characterisation and actions that are not properly motivated by the situation at hand. It also likes to reduce the IQ of characters out of the blue just so they make the correct stupid choices that are needed to further the plot. GRRM loves doing the latter as well but he usually hides it behind his favourite trick: the obtuse POV character, who doesn’t see the true situation and thus gets blindsided by it. And because we have only have that one POV, so does the reader. The show can’t do that, so when they hand their characters that particular idiot ball, it usually looks terrible.

The problem with inconsistent characterisation, unmotivated actions and dumbing down characters into making stupid choices is that it allows the show to take the plot into unexpected and unpredictable directions. Since we can assume that the show will give at least one storyline that sort of storytelling cheat, the show in whole becomes utterly unpredictable.

The other thing that the books have and the show hasn’t is access to key characters’ POVs. This allows the show greater ambiguity in their characterisations. Show Sansa is unfortunately heavily affected by that. As she is currently written (traumatised and maturing in some direction) it takes very little effort to write her into a wide variations of storylines and yet keep her “in character”. If she becomes a terrible person, then her trauma was just too great. If she stays good, then her trauma was a trial by fire and she emerged with a moral backbone made of steel.

Jon is less ambiguously written but even there the writers threatened that he might surprise us characterisation-wise. He died after all. That was supposed to affect him.

But in that undelivered threat, you see already another problem with the writing of the show: they sometimes want to portray certain things and utterly miss the mark.



If you watched Game of Thrones solely through interviews, you would walk away with the impression that Sansa did some sort of Ph.D. thesis-level of diplomacy in Season Six. What she actually did was a lot less impressive. The only person she convinced to join her side was Jon. Littlefinger was prepared to take the North from the Boltons the second he arranged the marriage to Ramsay. The Wildlings were convinced by Jon; Lyanna Mormont by Davos and the rest of the North by their victory. So Sansa’s actual diplomatic accomplishment is obviously far from what it’s supposed to be.

But if we cannot even be sure if we are getting in the actual on-screen action what we are supposed to get, merely analysing the show becomes difficult. Predicting future events is pretty near impossible. And because you can neither reliably analyse the show nor predict it, people can present you a multiple of convincing, contradictory scenarios. That doesn’t mean you should be convicted by any of them.



For example, take the idea that the rift threatened in interviews between Jon and Sansa is going to be serious.

If that happens and gets maliciously and seriously in the way of Jon’s destiny then that will mean the end of Sansa’s story. The only remaining question would be if her flaming out is going to be used to prop up Littlefinger as a greater villain or if she took him along with her to her doom.

But how seriously should we take this? After last year’s “Jon’s really dead” debacle, interviews mean less than nothing. And Sansa falling for Littlefinger’s machinations two seconds after saying “only a fool would trust Littlefinger” is tremendously stupid writing.

But as we established, the show does do that sort of stupid writing and it is statistically extremely probable that at least one storyline will suffer from it. So in all its stupidity, it remains an option. The show also failed to portray Sansa as properly jealous as Sophie Turner claims she was supposed to be. That could point towards a failure in translating the idea from script to screen. It could also be a misleading lie.

But what makes me pause and seriously consider the idea though is an unrelated meta-narrative reason. Season Seven is likely to fade out the mundane political storylines and their characters to focus on the supernatural storyline and its characters. Unfortunately, Show Sansa has no foothold at all in the supernatural aspect of the show, so it isn’t unreasonable to expect her character to be written out.

So as stupid as Sansa siding with Littlefinger is, the greater goal of reducing the story to its supernatural protagonists is not.

But it’s not the only potential storyline that is somewhat convincing. In fact, “Jon and Sansa not getting together” is such a big umbrella for a myriad of storylines that there are plenty of other scenarios that should feel convincing. Not only is death always a good option in ASOIAF but so are a lot of other scenarios.

And not all of them require stupid writing. Not all of them have no foreshadowing. It might be easy and tempting to dismiss the crackpot scenarios, but that still leaves enough other ways of Jon/Sansa not happening. I cannot dismiss them. I will not dismiss them because then I would not be operating in good faith. But going through them all, examining them for their individual merit is way beyond the scope of this post. So I am not going do it.



Funnily enough though, the very thing I thought was most likely to happen if Jon/Sansa was to happen is completely impossible in the show right now. A politically motivated marriage between Jon and Sansa is out because currently Sansa brings nothing to the table that Jon needs.

Of course, that can change. Unfortunately, predicting a timing on that change is just not possible. The two might need that political marriage in the series finale. They also might need it in 7x02 when the entire North has learned of Jon’s real parentage. It might never be needed.

What makes a purely cold, rational marriage additionally unlikely to happen on the show is that the show’s take on romantic or pseudo-romantic relationships is usually more romantic than that of their book counterparts. Robb marries Talisa solely out of affection, no honor needed, Shae ends up as a woman scorned by a beloved rather than a woman getting cheated out of her wages, Cersei in the show loves Jaime as something more than just a mirror and thus accepts his imperfections more readily than her book version… well, I could actually go on for a while with this. Pretty much every time the show has the option of romanticising and/or softening a spousal or romantic sort of relationship between two somewhat sympathetic characters, it takes it.

So I am really uncertain whether this political marriage option would ever be used on the show even if it exists in the books. And even if it did, it’s pretty likely that it would be softened and romanticised pretty much immediately or even romanticised beforehand.

The show just doesn’t have the right track record on that front. But if you soften the idea of a political marriage into something cute and lovey-dovey then you are ultimately doing a version of another storyline:

The one where Jon and Sansa reenact the original outline from the 1993 letter in some way.

In that outline Arya goes to the Wall, reunites with Jon, the two fall in love, angst about being siblings and then gladly learn that they are only cousins. And this is all the detail we know about it. We can assume that Outline Arya has as much to do with Actual Arya as Outline Tyrion with Actual Tyrion. (Judging by the rest of her plot in the outline it’s very little.)



(Incidentally, thanks to Sansa reuniting and bonding with Jon at the Wall, they already have reenacted an altered version of the outline, no matter what will happen in the future.)



The outline is truly vague. What makes Outline Arya fall for Jon? No explanation is given, only her “torment” at realizing it. Jon is equally unmotivated. But with his character you could at least fall back on “Targaryens love their sisters that way.” But that doesn’t really work for the Starks.

If Show Sansa takes Outline Arya’s role for all of the outline, not just the reunion, then at least she has the “trauma made her do it" excuse to fall back on. The show doesn’t even have to hand her the idiot ball and rely on “stupid writing”. Just blaming it all on her trauma works. After all, Jon is the first male character since Ned got arrested who Sansa can trust.

Sansa herself is obviously less trustworthy. But her “wounded doe with a spine of steel” act should actually be quite appealing to Jon. This lady goes to parlays, to battle planning sessions, rides across the snowy and cold North to secure allies, jumps off towers to rescue herself and is so close to the Battle of Winterfell that she literally gets there five seconds after the castle is taken. Oh, and she killed someone.

She is as close to a fierce warrior woman as she could get while having no fighting skills. She is certainly no longer the type of lady who sits over her needlework, waiting to be rescued from her tower of villainous captivity. In fact, from Jon’s point of view Sansa might even come across as a self-rescuing, fierce, contrarian redhead with a killer instinct and an inability to trust his commitment to her cause. Who occasionally likes to question the depth of his knowledge.

This development is show-only by the way. But it plays directly into the audience’s general perception that Jon likes his ladies to be active, to be fighting. If the show wanted Sansa to become more like Ygritte it brought Sansa as close to that as it could without breaking the suspension of disbelief. It is kind of interesting that they would do that.

And the show did more than that. First of all, it brought Jon and Sansa together way ahead of schedule. And since they got together there hasn’t been an episode, involving the two, where they didn’t have a one-on-one scene. And in these scenes, they promise each other loyalty, protection, ask each other for trust, swear on common goals and compliment each other as “True Starks”. There have been long looks, smiles on otherwise perpetually sad kitten faces; there has been a hug, hand-holding, matching outfits that amount to Ned/Cat cosplay, a long forehead kiss, a gender-flipped wedding ritual (Sansa giving Jon a cloak to make him a Stark) and imagery that positions them side by side as if they were an actual couple while they get bathed in soft light.

Now this might all be bad direction (by no less than four different directors), intentions not making it on screen as they should, actors having chemistry even though they shouldn’t and/or deliberate ship teasing/a red herring that will go nowhere. But there is this one thing that I cannot quite get out of my mind:

The original storyline has three phases: the reunion, incestuously falling in love and the cousin reveal. Obviously, the reunion and cousin reveal itself do not ask much of the audience and wouldn’t be that hard to write.

But the part that is incredibly challenging to sell to the audience is that two people, who think they are siblings, fall in love and the audience is supposed to be okay with that.

If this was the challenge and the show chose to accept it, then Season Six’s Jon/Sansa looks less like “let’s make Jon King in the North via Sansa’s motivational speeches” and more like “let’s slow-cook the audience into liking Jon and Sansa’s slightly off-key relationship.” We would not look at bad direction and inappropriate chemistry; we would look at a sales strategy for making incest agreeable, engaging and appealing.

And even if this sales strategy is unintentional – it’s working. Mainstream publications like USA Today, MTV and Entertainment Weekly are discussing the possibility of Jon/Sansa. Actors are asked about it. People who never considered it before are having feelings about it. Even among the book readers, it is no longer discussed as if it is an outside bet.

But to get back to the point: there is something the original letter never spells out which could make a huge difference in the execution and could ease the sale of such a storyline.

See, the timing and some of the emotional aspects of the original outline are very much undefined. The same aspects of a reenactment are equally uncertain. You could begin the sibling incest angst phase early and then draw it for the rest of the show, making the “tormented passion” (to use George R. R. Martin’s words of choice) a continuous dramatic feature, only to resolve it late in the series.

Or you could draw out the reunion phase for just as long, ending it with the cousin reveal and then have the two fall into a romantic relationship with each other pretty much immediately. This would mean that we would have seen the “siblings falling for each other” phase already, hidden in plain sight and unacknowledged by the characters.

And that would be actually the easiest way of selling the sibling incest angle, since you never need to sell it as something that happens contemporarily, only as something that happened in hindsight. And if you actually want to disguise and hide the sibling incest angle, you would just delay the getting together or visibly falling for each other for a bit after the cousin reveal. Then the “they liked each other already when they shouldn’t” bit becomes more of an unavoidable implication rather than a stark-naked reality.

The advantages of doing this are pretty clear. If the show doesn’t openly feature the incest phase as it happens, it wouldn’t need to spend effort and focus on writing a tortured romantic relationship.



And the whole thing becomes a straightforward plot twist that way. It’s the classic “Bruce was dead all along” reveal that appears to be plain in hindsight but is difficult to catch if you don’t expect a plot twist to be part of a particular narrative. Invisible jealousy aside, Jon and Sansa’s emotional relationship is certainly not a narrative that looks like it would ever contain a suprising plot twist.



Fandom loves to look for secret meaning and backstory behind every character, prophecy, political and supernatural occurence. Because sooner or later Euron Greyjoy will turn out to be simultaneously Daario, Howland Reed and the Prince Who Was Promised due to some mystical book-only hint on page Whatever of the World book. How funny would it be for a major plot twist to exist in absolute plain sight, requiring no obscure knowledge, no mystic prophecy, no secret identity, no nefarious conspiracy or scheme, nothing but an alternative character interpretation? Even if that never happens, the mere idea of the show pulling off that particular “plain in hindsight” plot twist is hilarious.

By the way, GRRM loves doing those hindsight reveals in ASOIAF and so does the show by extension. He wouldn’t be able to do this one from an involved POV but here is an interesting point about original outline: he never says that the characters know that their “passion” is mutual. They might actually undergo the torment of inappropriate sibling feelings individually instead of sharing it with each other before the cousin reveal. The outline doesn’t actually clarify that point. So if you told that love story solely from the outside of their POVs, it would be a plot twist. (As it would be on the show if neither character openly communicated their feelings to the audience.)



Keeping those feelings bottled up instead of living them might also mark a pointed difference in self-control between the morally grey and evil Lannister Twins and the more heroic Starks. In ASOIAF the loss of self-control is usually harshly punished by the narrative. And even in GOT’s show-only excesses it doesn’t fare better. Jon’s major loss of self-control in Season Six was beating up Ramsay. But there he reigned himself in and got back in control after seeing Sansa. It’s probably really meaningless but sometimes themes that look unrelated (in this case Jon’s self-control and Sansa) aren’t.



Anyway. So why is this issue, this possibility of this “hidden in plain sight” plot twist so remarkable?



Well, imagine the following, hypothetical scenario: What if the show did the cousin reveal in the first five minutes of 7x01 and had Jon and Sansa looking happy and relieved at the reveal and then dewy-eyed at each other? And then it would be all “wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more”?



Would you believe that Season Six – the very season that just finished – featured already the “falling in love with your sibling” phase? Would you be able to make that leap along with the show?

And if you don’t, how much more of the same thing would it take? How much more Ned/Cat cosplay and hand holding, how many gifts, how many kisses, how much of that continued “we against them” mentality, how many more late night planning sessions, discussions of sleeping arrangements and long and lingering looks and smiles would it take you before you could make that leap more comfortably?

And the show could even believably increase the intensity of the relationship without making it visibly romantic. For all I know, they could be swearing each other loyalty in front of a heart tree with Jon giving Sansa his cloak because she is getting cold and yet it still would not make Jon/Sansa inevitable. Despite the obvious imagery, something so outrageous could both exist and be utterly meaningless.

The show could pull off a lot of stuff in relation to the two that would not look like a romance necessarily and yet all of that would make it easier for the audience to accept it as proto-romantic the second the relationship turned romantic.

And, unlike me and my hypothetical question, the show doesn’t have to ask nicely about making that leap. If it makes that leap, it will be unapologetic about it. It will not take it back, it won’t re-write it. And I truly think that there is actually enough proto-romance already in the show to make that leap without getting anywhere near “stupid writing”.



And don’t let the “proto-” prefix distract you from what it actually means: If the show is doing Jon/Sansa, we are not necessarily looking at a a platonic pre-romantic relationship right now. We might be already in the middle of the actual romantic narrative.



But unfortunately, that’s the “If”. What actually exists, is a proto-romance that vaguely echoes a 23-year old letter and might go absolutely nowhere. And that simply does not rate more than a “maybe.”



But that “maybe” is more than Jon/Sansa ever previously had. And frankly, that’s actually great.