Kit Harington Once Convinced Sophie Turner He Had Been Killed Off Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones's upcoming eighth and final season will surely feature a few shocking deaths, as the show has become notorious for unexpectedly killing off prominent characters.

Perhaps the most devastating death in the series so far occurred at the end of season five, when Jon Snow was fatally stabbed by Alliser Thorne and other members of the Night's Watch. While the death was unexpected, diehard fans of the series refused to believe that Kit Harington's character would not be returning for season six. Of course, as it turned out, their intuition was correct.

But just because fans sensed Jon wasn't gone for good doesn't mean that some of Harington's very own co-stars weren't convinced that the actor had been axed from the show. Though Harington knew he'd be back for another season, the showrunners kept the news from the cast and crew, forcing the 32-year-old London native to offer fake goodbyes to his co-stars.

"At first I thought I would find it fun," Harington told Entertainment Weekly in 2016 of faking his own death. "But I had to lie to a lot of close friends and cast members and crew. The longer it went, the more I felt like I was betraying them."

Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, took the news particularly hard.

"Sophie Turner, bless her, wrote me a really long letter about how much she loved working with me—and I still it," Harington admitted. "That made me chuckle."

Game of Thrones will return to HBO for its final season on April 14, 2019.