For the watch: the Jon Snow spinoff is (at least temporarily) dead

And now for some news no one needed a watcher on the wall to foresee: the long-rumored but barely moved-on Jon Snow-themed spinoff is officially dead—at least for the time being. Valar Morghulis.

The news comes from Kit Harrington, who finally spoke about the long-gestating Game Of Thrones sequel with ScreenRant while promoting his upcoming crime thriller, Blood For Dust (which is actually about two cocaine smugglers despite the fact that the title sounds like yet another one of the approximately 875 Thrones spinoffs in itself). “I hadn’t really ever spoken about [the series], because it was in development. I didn’t want it leaked out that it was being developed, and I didn’t want the thing to happen where people kind of start theorizing, getting either excited about it or hating the idea of it, when it may never happen. Because in development, you look at every angle, and you see whether it’s worth it,” Harrington shared.

“And currently, it’s not,” the actor continued. “Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough. So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being.”

Considering Jon got a pretty classic rom-com ending—stabbed his beloved, rode off into the sunset with his bearded buddy to protect the realm against who knows what, completely renouncing his secretive claim to the throne the series had worked so hard to make the axis of everything up until that point—it’s pretty hard to imagine what they could have possibly come up with. But, like the character, what is dead may never really die in the ever-expanding Game Of Thrones universe. “There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf,” Harrington concluded.

In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with some much older Targaryens when House Of The Dragon starts airing its second season June 16. (The HBO series also just shared two competing Team Green and Team Black trailers that you can watch here.) A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight—the only other Thrones prequel this writer has any faith will actually make it to a TV screen—also just announced its first few actors, so there’s actually some movement there, shockingly. But to Jon Snow, we say (for now), “for the watch.”