Lots of stories have big twists. The thing is, there are good twists and bad twists.
There are degrees of goodness to big twists, and degrees of badness. The worst are the ones that don't make sense and don't affect the story in any meaningful way - or alternatively completely invalidate the entire story you've been watching.
The best, I think, are the ones that you can predict if you're paying a lot of attention. Aw jeez, we're really going to have to go to a spoiler cut. So, meet me behind the cut.
Two of my favorite movies have huge twists. And in both cases, the biggest twist is something that is staring you in the face for most of the runtime.
Fight Club is the earlier of these movies. Fight Club's huge twist is that Tyler Durden, the manic pixie dream boy who breaks Edward Norton's nameless narrator out of his funk (and also turns him into an anarchist terrorist leader) is actually a figment of the narrator's imagination. All of this was within him all along, and while at first the descent into violence and rejection of the system was liberating, losing all control has turned him into something terrifying and fascistic.
I actually managed to figure out this twist ahead of time, but I was not at all disappointed in it. While it felt like a mere hunch when I first saw it, watching it a second time I realized that the movie was beating me over the head with the truth the whole time, and it's a testament to the filmmaking that this twist was hidden in plain sight.
But another thing that's great about this twist is that it's not at the very end of the movie. It's the second plot point (roughly 3/4 of the way through.) Once this truth is revealed, the narrator has a half-hour left to try to stop Tyler's plans.
The other twisty movie I love is The Prestige. This one works like a magic trick - drawing your attention to the more conventional and more easily predicted twist that Alfred Borden, in great contrast with Tyler Durden, is actually two twin brothers. Yet as big of a surprise as that might come - or perhaps it won't, if you see through the prosthetics that Falon is wearing - it makes you think that you've figured the movie out, only for you to discover that all this time, the movie has actually been a work of science fiction, and that Angier has been essentially killing himself over and over, creating duplicates through the magic of Nikola Tesla's invention.
But once again, this is a twist that is set up ahead of time. The very first shot we see in the movie is a pile of top hats - something that we understand far later in the movie as part of a duplication machine that Tesla has designed. The pieces are all provided to us, but perhaps because we are not willing to believe the horror that all of this implies, the twist still feels like a twist when Angier shows up alive and well at the prison.
So what does this have to do with Game of Thrones?
Being a series rather than a standalone movie, there isn't really such a thing as a pure watch-through or read-through. There are such gaps between books and seasons that naturally, in our internet-connected age, you're naturally going to come across people who have really scrutinized the series and looked for all these clues.
It's the sort of story that rewards a lot of contemplation and scrutiny.
For about five years, since, in Dance with Dragons, we read as Jon Snow was betrayed by his men and stabbed to death. But we all knew that Melisandre was well-positioned nearby and that there was precedence for a Red Priest or Priestess resurrecting the dead. We knew these things, but I don't know that it was obvious, per se, what would happen. Nevertheless, this past weekend the fate that we all suspected might come to pass did indeed.
Jon Snow has been resurrected.
Some will complain that the twist is too obvious. But the thing is, this isn't really a twist. It might be a reversal, and it's certainly not a plot development that would work without a lot of groundwork, but the thing is, this was a plot development that was given a ton of groundwork, and it was earned.
And I'm overjoyed that this happened at the beginning of the season. See, as huge as it is that Jon is back from the dead (and not in a creepy White Walkers-sort of way,) what I'm really excited to find out is what Jon we have here. What will happen? This is a miraculous event, and far more public than Beric Dondarrion. Next week it's likely we're going to get confirmation on a major fan theory that people have speculated on since the first book, the famed R+L=J theory. And of course, because of how important that might be in terms of the Iron Throne and the fate of Westeros, Jon's got to be alive.
Melisandre's faith is likely to make a comeback after seeing Jon alive. Granted, I suspect that she's not long for this world - her purpose is fulfilled, and as we discovered in the season premiere, she is actually a very old woman. But given that Jon was already something of a savior to the Wildlings and respected by the Night's Watch (minus the few traitors,) the fact that he has now come back from the dead could mean quite a bit for the religious side of the story.
I've often wondered about why we're watching this particular slice of Westerosi history, but with Daenerys' bringing back the dragons and now Jon Snow coming back from the dead to face down the impending attack of the White Walkers... yeah, we're in an age of myth here.
Jon Snow coming back to life was a great way to end an episode (and boy did they milk it,) but I'm far more excited to see what comes next.
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