Ghost (Game of Thrones)

Warning: this entry contains minor spoilers for HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones and book series A Song of Ice and Fire.

About

Ghost is a character in book series A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. In the TV series, Ghost is a white direwolf accompanying major character Jon Snow and sometimes assisting him in combat. Due to rare appearances of Ghost in the later seasons of the show, the lack of his screen time became an in-joke in the Game of Thrones fandom.

Origin

On August 1st, 1996, epic fantasy novel A Game of Thrones, written by George R. R. Martin, was published.^[1] In one chapter of the novel, children of character Ned Stark discover a litter of direwolf pups whose mother was killed by a stag. Each of six children then claims one of the direwolfs, with Jon Snow, the bastard son of Ned Stark, getting the runt of the litter, an albino cub whom he names Ghost.

In the television adaptation of the book series, the scene appeared in the first episode of season one "Winter is Coming", aired on April 17th, 2011.^[2]

Spread

Ghost appeared in a total of 23 episodes of the Game of Thrones series, often seen accompanying Jon Snow or assisting him in combat.

In season six of Game of Thrones series, the character had limited screen time and did not appear in a major battle during the ninth episode Battle of the Bastards, aired on June 19th, 2016. Multiple fans reacted to the absence of the character with posts on social media (examples shown below). ^[3] On June 21st, 2016, the episode director Miguel Sapochnik clarified that the character was not included due to the limits of CGI budget.^[4]

In season seven of Game of Thrones series, aired between July and August 2017, the character wasn't shown in any of the episodes, causing further disappointment among the fans. During that period, jokes about the show's CGI budget being spent on other characters at expence of Ghost gained significant spread on Twitter, Reddit and other online platforms (examples shown below).

On May 5th, 2019, episode four of season eight "The Last of the Starks" premiered. In the episode, Jon Snow is shown parting ways with his companion, leaving him in custody of character Tormund Giantsbane. In the parting scene, Jon Snow does not pet Ghost before leaving, which caused dissapointment among the series fans, with multiple memes referencing the scene being posted online (examples shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References