Beric: You don't look like your father

[Styl7]

Really? Catelyn hated the idea of her children look less Stark than Jon. Arya was the only one who looked like Jon, and was also said to look like Lyanna.. I mean wtf..

[Samwell_Tarly]

Again yet more unsubtle hints of his forthcoming reveal on his parentage.......

[falcotron]

"I guess you take after your mother" was pretty funny.

Because really, Jon does probably look a lot like Lyanna, and not much like Rhaegar, so Beric was right, accidentally, even though he has a terrible eye for family resemblance.

[Mikkel]

Jon was always described as having "the Stark look", which presumably means he looked enough like Ned to reinforce the deceit. Of course we know that he actually takes after Lyanna, but it seems a particularly weird thing for Beric to say (who by all accounts only knew Ned fleetingly, and never as a young man).

[Anarres]

4 hours ago, Styl7 said:

Really? Catelyn hated the idea of her children look less Stark than Jon. Arya was the only one who looked like Jon, and was also said to look like Lyanna.. I mean wtf..

I'm told that in the books, Bran for example has reddish hair like his mother's family? It's possible some of their kids look less "Starky" due to the stronger influence of Catelyn herself - while at the same time Jon doesn't look like Ned. That's a more specific comparison than just Stark, after all.

Jon still being half-Stark, this doesn't seem like much of an issue.

 

[falcotron]

1 minute ago, Anarres said:

I'm told that in the books, Bran for example has reddish hair like his mother's family? It's possible some of their kids look less "Starky" due to the stronger influence of Catelyn herself - while at the same time Jon doesn't look like Ned. That's a more specific comparison than just Stark, after all.

Jon still being half-Stark, this doesn't seem like much of an issue.

From the books, Arya is said to look more like Jon than the other Stark kids, and there are multiple references to how much Arya looks like her aunt Lyanna did as a child, so it's pretty clear that Jon looks a lot like his mother.

It's not entirely clear what this means, but Lyanna and Arya are both called "horse face", and described as being lithe and wiry, so my guess is that it mainly means that Lyanna, Arya, and Jon are skinnier in both body and features than Ned, Robb, and Rickon.

Of course on the show, the Jon and Arya aren't all that similar, and Arya's grown much older than in the books and looks nothing like what Ned predicts she's going to look like, so… who knows what they're trying to do here.

Well, actually, we know what they're trying to do: The "take after your mother" is a winking inside joke to the audience, now that we know his mother is Lyanna and his father isn't Ned. Whether it makes story-internal sense isn't as important as whether it makes sense to the audience and makes that joke work.

[UFT]

it would have been very awkward if ned came home with rhaegar jr rocking the silver hair. 

 

 

[falcotron]

1 minute ago, UFT said:

it would have been very awkward if ned came home with rhaegar jr rocking the silver hair.

Just dye his hair blue for the rest of his life. Worked for JonConn.

[The Bastard of Summer]

Just more hints for the folks who still my not believe or understand  that Jon is not Neds....or maybe just poor writing. Becuase it's  been made clear that Arya has the stark look. Arya looks like Lyanna. Jon and Arya look alike.  Therefore Jon looks like Lyanna. Jon has the Stark look.So Lyanna and Ned  must look alike. 

[Jordan La Cabra]

We all know what the writers were 'trying' to do with it, but it didn't really seem necessary, to me. It went against all the suggestions in aGoT that Jon had the 'Stark look', and along with Arya, resembled the Starks more than the rest of Ned Stark's children. As Ned Stark is a Stark, surely Jon looks like him. If Jon had the Stark look, if he also looks more like his mother Lyanna than his father Rhaegar, it makes little sense for Jon not to look like Ned.

But, at the same time, Kit Harrington and Sean Bean look no more alike than Varys and Littlefinger do, so it kind of made sense in completely the wrong way.

[RhaenysBee]

He would if Sean Bean looked like a Stark, actually. 

But yeah, oh Kit Harrington, you don't look like your father, and hahaha it totally works because I meant Ned but you don't look like Rhaegar either. So smart. 

[falcotron]

17 minutes ago, JordanJH1993 said:

But, at the same time, Kit Harrington and Sean Bean look no more alike than Varys and Littlefinger do, so it kind of made sense in completely the wrong way.

Is it really the wrong way?

If the show had made a big deal out of Jon's similarity to Ned and used it as a clue (the way they did with Joffrey and Jaime or Gendry and Robert, for example), then you could argue that we should ignore our eyes and go with what we were told. But they haven't done that.

So, whatever book!Jon and book!Ned look like, show!Jon looks like Kit, and show!Ned looks like Sean, and they don't look that similar.

[WeKnowNothing]

1 hour ago, The Bastard of Summer said:

Just more hints for the folks who still my not believe or understand  that Jon is not Neds....or maybe just poor writing. Becuase it's  been made clear that Arya has the stark look. Arya looks like Lyanna. Jon and Arya look alike.  Therefore Jon looks like Lyanna. Jon has the Stark look.So Lyanna and Ned  must look alike. 

Well actually that's not quite true. The only family member who Lyanna is described as looking like is Arya. Not Ned. Lyanna is described as being an 'ugly duckling' in her childhood years like Arya is - but as soon as she hits her teens, she becomes more and more beautiful, like Arya is now. Same with Jon, he seems to be described as more and more handsome, or 'pretty' to be exact in each book. Whereas Ned isn't described like this - Ned is just 'homely,' which is decent looks but not near handsome or attractive. By comparison, Ned's brother Brandon was the handsome one. 

[Jordan La Cabra]

I think it all comes with the problems of casting. In TV shows or films where there are fathers and sons or mothers and daughters and siblings, it is highly unlikely the actors are actually going to look alike unless they have casted based on having a look to fit the role rather than ability.

If Beric had said the opposite, and told Jon that he was a dead ringer for Ned Stark, we'd all be raising our brows slightly because Kit Harrington and Ned Stark don't look alike at all. It's difficult for the show to pull this problem off, because so much of the ambiguity around Jon's parentage and theories regarding who his mother and father are were based around moments in the books where Jon's Stark looks were brought up, including his resemblance to Arya, who is meant to resemble Lyanna. Kit Harrington doesn't look anything like the young girl who played Lyanna in season 6, but we will have to believe that they do look a lot like as he doesn't have Rhaegar's look.

Having actors who actually do look alike has caused a bit of a stir, too. Kit Harrington looks similar to the actress that plays Meera, which heightened the theory that she is Jon's sister, when it may well be - as I believe and hope it to be - just a case of two people having a similar look rather than them actually being related.

[Euron's Mom]

We're thinking of it from a book perspective.  Jon looks a lot like Ned because Lyanna looked a lot like Ned.  There's a great part in the first book where Tyrion is thinking that Jon looks totally like his father and has nothing from his mother.  I always thought that was a little bit of dramatic irony.  Jon looks totally like his mother.

In the show Jon does not look like Ned.  Lyanna does not look like Ned.  Jon looks more like Lyanna.  At least it's not as bad as Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt 2 where Lily has brown eyes and Harry has blue.

[Euron's Mom]

21 minutes ago, WeKnowNothing said:

Well actually that's not quite true. The only family member who Lyanna is described as looking like is Arya. Not Ned. Lyanna is described as being an 'ugly duckling' in her childhood years like Arya is - but as soon as she hits her teens, she becomes more and more beautiful, like Arya is now. Same with Jon, he seems to be described as more and more handsome, or 'pretty' to be exact in each book. Whereas Ned isn't described like this - Ned is just 'homely,' which is decent looks but not near handsome or attractive. By comparison, Ned's brother Brandon was the handsome one. 

It's sort of a similarity by association.  Tyrion says Jon looks like Ned.  Someone says Jon looks like Arya.  Someone says Arya looks like Lyanna.  Based on that, we can assume that Ned looks like Lyanna.

[AryaNymeriaVisenya]

11 hours ago, Styl7 said:

Really? Catelyn hated the idea of her children look less Stark than Jon. Arya was the only one who looked like Jon, and was also said to look like Lyanna.. I mean wtf..

Show Jon does look more like Benjen. He most certainly does not look like a Targ.

[Zzzzzzz]

Kit Harington doesn't look like Sean Bean, but Sean Bean doesn't look like book Ned.   The Starks' casting wasn't consistent with their descriptions in the book.  The writers are just taking advantage of that anomaly to drop another blunt hint about Jon's parentage. 

[SerJeremiahLouistark]

The writers are mailing it in at this point and only focusing on drama and characters meeting their end.  

[Knight of Ashes]

6 hours ago, RhaenysB said:

He would if Sean Bean looked like a Stark, actually. 

But yeah, oh Kit Harrington, you don't look like your father, and hahaha it totally works because I meant Ned but you don't look like Rhaegar either. So smart. 

Maybe if Kit Harrington has more than one facial expression in his repertoire, he would look more , um, Starky.

You know, as well as looking like he really needs to pee soon, he could look morally disapproving of you at the same time.