This is the kind of revisionist history that has the power to change the future; Jon is Jon, however, and so, taking in the complicating truth, he focuses on the complicated lie. “My father was the most honorable man I ever met,” he tells Sam, glowering, his warm breath billowing against the chill of the crypt. “You’re saying he lied to me all my life?”

In one way, it’s a strange reaction to the news that Jon is, you know, king of the Andals and the First Men, sixth of his name, the nephew of his brand-new girlfriend, etc. For Jon, though, it’s entirely fitting. In a show that has found most of its primary players following sweeping arcs and undergoing major transformations, Jon’s circumstances have changed while his character, comparatively, has not: Jon was then, and is now, a Good Guy. He tells the truth, even when the truth in question is inconvenient, and this has been not only a reliable fact within an otherwise unsteady universe, but also an extension of his relationship to Ned. (Tyrion to Jon last season, when the latter’s blunt honesty nearly compromises the new allies’ ability to build a coalition to fight the encroaching White Walkers: “Have you ever considered learning how to lie, every now and then? Just a bit?” It’s a callback to the brand of honesty that ended up costing Ned, several seasons ago, his life.)

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Sam’s news, in that sense, is a plot point that doubles as a crushing irony. Here is a character who has understood himself to be a teller of truths, learning that his whole existence has been, in some sense, a lie. And, coming as it does—within an episode that is mostly a series of scene-settings for future battles—the destabilizing discovery offers its own kind of resolution. Game of Thrones, after all, has long been interested in lies: as architectural facts, as ruptures that are capable of upending the social order. Lies, here, alter history. Joffrey, cruel and petty, lied about the attack on Mycah, and changed, with his selfishness, the path of everything that would follow. Cersei lied about joining the alliance to fight the Night King, and about so much else. Tyrion lied. Littlefinger lied. Arya lied.

The full consequences of those untruths—the macrocosmic results of the microcosmic manipulations—remain, as yet, unclear. But now, as the story’s end draws closer, here is another lie to add to the mix: Ned’s lie about Jon. Ned told this lie as a matter of honor—to fulfill his promise to his sister, and to protect a baby whose claim to the Iron Throne would put his life in mortal danger—but, as all lies will, it irreparably changed the course of things. The lie Ned told allowed for a different mistruth to take root among the weirwood trees: the myth that Rhaegar Targaryen had kidnapped Lyanna Stark. It was a misunderstanding that instigated an Iliad-esque cascade of rivalries, which escalated into wars and resolved into the great war that is soon to be fought. The tragedy lurking at the heart of the struggle that has steadily spread across the Known World isn’t merely the way lies can shift reality—that has been clear from the outset—but also the idea that simple confusion, solidified as myth, can do the same. The history books were wrong. The truths themselves had lied. And here is Jon Snow, the living embodiment of the mistake.