Only death can pay for life (Spoilers)

[Ibbison from Ibben]

4 hours ago, Mr Smith said:

Excellent post; thanks for your thoughts!

With that in mind, what do you think of the possibility that Jon's own blood (being king's blood) might have played a role in the resurrection?

A few thoughts to answer this and other posts -

Khal Drogo. The sacrifice victim was supposedly Rhaego. We don't know if Drogo actually died before the ceremony was performed, since Dany was unconscious for a week. If MMD allowed him to die, then Rhaego paid for his life. His mind didn't survive. Warging out and back may have resulted in a successful resurrection. Sabotage might have been a factor as well. One key point - mindless Drogo would eat.

Odd/remote deaths - When performing magic, the sacrifice generally must be part of the specific rite. Random deaths anywhere in the world usually don't count.

King's blood - "There is power in king's blood." Most assume the sacrifice victim must have king's blood. I doubt king's blood in the dead guy would matter. It is possible, however, that the king's blood must be in the practitioner.

Book vs Show - The books provide a decent amount of data to work with. In the show, we really can't speculate at all, since D&D have shown an alarming tendency to change rules at will. (Like having a 300 year old Earth Singer throw fireballs like a nine year old girl.) For all we know, in the show it was indeed the haircut that did the trick.

[jbent87]

16 hours ago, Ran said:

The price of Beric's returns from death was the death of self, in other words. No surprise he was moved to die the final death to give Catelyn life -- it was an unbearable existence.

I gather it remains to be seen what cost there is to Jon's return. There ought to be something along the lines of Beric, some part or parts of Jon missing or obscured, if they want to follow what they've laid out on the show.

Maybe Jon crosses paths with Arya, his favorite sibling somewhere down the line, but won't share the same love for her that he once did. In turn, Arya can then carry out her assignment in assassinating him, fulfilling her prophecy of becoming the Valonqar. 

/crackpot

[RUSSELL BELL]

17 hours ago, Mr Smith said:

We've been hit over the head with this rule time and time again by both the show and the books, so why was it so blatantly ignored for the most important resurrection of the series? I always assumed Ghost would be sacrificed to resurrect Jon/return Jon's consciousness to his body. I don't know what to think now.

I suppose the other explanation is that Jon's king's blood was the key to his resurrection, but they didn't even mention it. The entire scene, while atmospheric and climactic in its direction, just seemed incredibly lazy in terms of the way it was thought out.

The question is ? Is it really life ? Is Jon going to be complete like he was ? Death must pay for life, but like Thoros he's certainly going to be changed.  

[Blade of Sunlight]

It's probably too soon to assume anything about price paid since we still don't know Jon's state. 

In any case, the close-up of Ghost waking up along with Jon is likely not just to remind us dogs can hear people gasp, so we can speculate he was involved.

I do believe in "only death can pay for life" but not literally, as we see with Beric, that being said I fond it highly unlikely that random deaths during the episode constitute payment. As for Balon and Mel's spell, since I still hope the show is kinda based in the book's lore, I don't think that spell would have powered the resurrection. 

GRRM himself said death and resurrection had a clear cost, so I don't expect Jon to be the same, however whether it's a physical cost due to his death (e.g. Beric, Coldhands etc.) or more of a psychological thing (i.e. I was betrayed and could die again at any minute) remains to be seen. 

[episodenone]

I'd add this --

The Night King snaps his fingers and reanimates how many wights???

The Lord of Light via Thoros or Mel [apparently and Bloodraven and Brandon???] has a heck of a time reanimating a single person?

I'd say the battle for Middle Earth ;P is pretty much decided!

[CrypticWeirwood]

It's really hard to raise somebody whose mind isn't available for rehousing but is off hiding in a wolf.

[Masha]

55 minutes ago, episodenone said:

I'd add this --

The Night King snaps his fingers and reanimates how many wights???

The Lord of Light via Thoros or Mel [apparently and Bloodraven and Brandon???] has a heck of a time reanimating a single person?

I'd say the battle for Middle Earth ;P is pretty much decided!

There is a difference reanimating mindless bodies and actually doing a full-blown resurrection with (most of) soul intact.

[Free Northman Reborn]

If the trailer for Episode 3 truly shows Jon with no scars, then clearly the supernatural process that raised him from the dead differed significantly from that of Beric Dondarrion.

In any case, I firmly believe in the "only death can pay for life" quotes. It resonates through the books with far too much significance to be irrelevant. So how has the Show butchered that aspect of the story?

Well, I suspect that they used elements of Jon's resurrection from the books, some explicitly, some more indirectly, to create a kind of watered down version of what transpires in the books.

For example, I think that they did not want Theon sacrificed to raise Jon, so instead they showed another man with Ironborn kingsblood die directly before Jon's ressurection. That of course is Balon. In the books his death has nothing to do with Jon's rebirth, but Theon's might well. In the Show, they left Balon's death very late, while they clearly want to give Theon a bit more of a hopeful ending than the books are likely to.

So they swapped Theon and Balon's deaths, in terms of their timing with Jon's rebirth. Similarly, they probably balked from linking Shireen's burning with Jon's resurrection, for fear of alienating audiences too much, who were all rooting for the hero's return.

So what happened, I think, is that Mellisandre succeeded in healing Jon Snow's body, but was unable to bring his spirit back, because it was inside Ghost. Then, when the body was receptive for a living spirit again, Bran or Bloodraven helped it to jump back into the now healthy body again, thus avoiding the mental damage that Beric Dondarrion suffered each time that he died.

What I find strange is that they skipped the whole Night's Watch burial ceremony, where Jon's "Watch is Ended", which surely was one of the ancilliary purposes of his death. Anyway, judging from the previews, this will not stop him from donning Stark colours in the near future.

What is also interesting, is that it does not appear as if his rebirth coincided with the revelation of his Targaryen identity. Which means that this announcement to the world is scheduled for a later, more opportune moment. Allowing him to play the role of Lord Stark for an intermediate period of time, before stepping up to become Lord Targaryen when the time comes.

This works better, as a premature revelation of his true identity would undermine a lot of his needed actions on behalf of House Stark, which need to happen first.

[The Fattest Leech]

15 hours ago, The Arthur Smith said:

Really hoping for this. I would seriously stretch the chalkboard if i see Jon in the next episode, smiling and happy and all that like before just...Gah!

But tv Jon resurrected now, just once, should not be anywhere near how Beric was when we saw after being resurrected 6 times at that point.

Ghost was pretty chill in that episode and even appeared to be sleeping just before his eyes popped open and Jon's eyes popped open. I tend to think Jon is finally going to warg. If Bloodraven had anything to do with it, I would have expected to see something related to that, but we did not.

Also, Weiss made a comment about Jon warging in S6 in this video. I cannot remember the exact minute, but I think it was at the 13:45 mark???

 

[The Arthur Smith]

13 hours ago, jbob said:

Did you see Beric? He was hardly that bad off. A bit of memory problems and that's about it. And that's partly due to how many times he got revived. Cat doesn't count because she went insane before she died.

I'm not expecting Jon to become like UnCat, but something like what you mention about Beric. He lost pieces of his identity every times he get resurrected. So i expected few missing fragments from what makes Jon who he is. But especially when you consider that he was betrayed by the NW, which would stain his character to be more grayer.

According to GRMM, he believed that when a character get resurrected, there will be some character transformation due to the character's experience as that person won't be the same as he or she was before.

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

But tv Jon resurrected now, just once, should not be anywhere near how Beric was when we saw after being resurrected 6 times at that point.

Ghost was pretty chill in that episode and even appeared to be sleeping just before his eyes popped open and Jon's eyes popped open. I tend to think Jon is finally going to warg. If Bloodraven had anything to do with it, I would have expected to see something related to that, but we did not.

Also, Weiss made a comment about Jon warging in S6 in this video. I cannot remember the exact minute, but I think it was at the 13:45 mark???

 

Does being betrayed by his brothers help? Again as i mentioned this with the other poster, not expecting Jon to become evil, but at least a character change.

Interesting. But what are the reasons for Jon to warg in this season. What will his warging contribute to? A lot of people including me assumed that Jon warged into Ghost for the time being before he returned back to his body as assumingly dead. But now that he came back quick and smooth, what are the odds Jon's going to do during his warg. At least with Arya, she may warg Nymeria to get revenge on the Freys.

[Ruhail]

I think its clear that they've changed or cut something out because this was way too sanatised and clean (lol just give me a haicut thats totally enough to bring me back). I think it reaffirms to me that Shireen's death is supposed to be involved but they didnt want that hanging over boring boy's head.

[kill alot26]

I thought it was interesting when both Thoros and Mel lost their faith they were able to revive someone, like a dual awaking of the person and their reborn faith. 

 

[Mr Smith]

10 hours ago, StarksNTargs said:

That's this site's number one issue.  The TV show is not the books.  Things in the books do not matter in the least to the show unless the show covered it.  If you guys could separate the two, then you could enjoy both without constantly trying to pick everything apart based off something that happened in the book.   

For the record, I wasn't actually suggesting that what occurred in the show wasn't good enough because it didn't occur in the book. The point I was making was the I would have understood it better if it had been established in the book, because the book generally gives more complete explanations for just about everything, and the show simply drawing a parallel between Thoros and Mel being at their lowest and subsequently having the ability to bring someone back to life when they didn't before is insufficient as an explanation. I'm quite happy for the show to give an explanation entirely different to the book (indeed, I suspect that Jon's King's Blood may be playing a part), but as it currently stands, we haven't been given enough information for either to be satisfactory.

[Miley the Monstrous]

Roose died so Jon could live. 

[The Black Adder of Dorne]

On 02/05/2016 at 0:55 PM, Ran said:

The price of Beric's returns from death was the death of self, in other words. No surprise he was moved to die the final death to give Catelyn life -- it was an unbearable existence.

I gather it remains to be seen what cost there is to Jon's return. There ought to be something along the lines of Beric, some part or parts of Jon missing or obscured, if they want to follow what they've laid out on the show.

If we take the "death of self" as being an exponential thing that grows far larger with successive resurrection, it's quite possible the first would have very limited effects.

19 hours ago, StarksNTargs said:

That's this site's number one issue.  The TV show is not the books.  Things in the books do not matter in the least to the show unless the show covered it.  If you guys could separate the two, then you could enjoy both without constantly trying to pick everything apart based off something that happened in the book.   

Truer words have never been spoken on this forum.

[grufolo]

On 2/5/2016 at 5:07 AM, CrypticWeirwood said:

Beric died because Bloodraven could only maintain so many Animate Dead spells at once.  Jon gets a bye because he’s Bran’s first.

mmmhh. Care to elaborate on that?

[grufolo]

If the showrunners ever run out of crooked ideas they should come here to get some fresh ones

 

[Ser Donkey of House Kong]

16 hours ago, Blade of Sunlight said:

In any case, the close-up of Ghost waking up along with Jon is likely not just to remind us dogs can hear people gasp, so we can speculate he was involved.

You can also see the parallel to the first Bran chapter in GoT, when everybody left the dead direwolf an Jon came back for ghost, being the only one that heard him.

So may it is a little hint to nature an the Old Gods and therefore Bran/Bloodraven

 

It may not be important, but I like similarity...

[Noneofyourbusiness]

The cost with Thoros and Beric was that it drained the former somewhat and the latter came back with a slight loss of self, which got worse each successive time he was brought back. However, since Jon has only been brought back once so far and probably won't be again, we can expect the aftereffects won't be nearly as depressing.

[W1NT3RF3LL]

I think we all are reading too much into this.  Do we even know that the same process was used on Jon that was used on Beric?  Thoros resurrected Beric immediately after the fight with the Hound and it was nothing like what Mel did with Jon.  Could it be a different type of magic and or ceremony?  Yes, there are many things that are unanswered in all of this and I'm sure they will be answered in the books.  Unless, they point it out in next weeks episode.