Spoiler Alert - The story below features key Game of Thrones plot details through season five of the HBO series. If you aren't caught up yet, read on at your own risk!
Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest and the Seattle area even experienced some summer-like heat earlier this week, but winter is coming for fans of the fantasy series Game of Thrones, with the show's season six premiere set for Sunday night on HBO.
Kevin Peirre-Louis is one such fan who will have his eyes glued to the screen as the story of the Seven Kingdoms continues to unfold, this time going off-book now that the show's script has caught up to author George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels.
The Seahawks linebacker revealed last August that it's his favorite program on television, and he couldn't wait to talk about it when the subject came up in between voluntary offseason workouts at team headquarters this past week.
"I know there's a lot of speculation," Pierre-Louis said. "I want to know if Jon Snow's going to come back. I believe that he's going to come back."
Snow's fate has been a hot topic since Game of Thrones last aired, when the Night's Watch Lord Commander was betrayed and repeatedly stabbed by his own men, leaving Snow lying in a pool of his own blood as season five came to a close. Central protagonists meeting their demise is nothing new to the Game of Thrones universe, and the show's creators have said Snow is dead, but in a series bound with sorcery and the supernatural, fans like Pierre-Louis believe, or at least hope, that there's more to Snow's story.
"In the past, people that you've grown to love in the series, once they're gone, they're gone," Pierre-Louis said. "But I think this is going to be one of those times where he's going to come back. There's going to be an uproar if he doesn't."
The third-year linebacker offered up a theory of his own on the future of Ned Stark's imperfect son.
"One thing about Jon Snow is he died in the snow," Pierre-Louis said. "It's cold. I feel like that's going to have something to do with him coming back. I don't think he's going to bleed out fully. He's not going to fully die. That cold is going to save him. I think it's going to be something with like a White Walker coming in and saving him. There's going to be something that's going to happen. I hope so."
Snow's outcome aside, Pierre-Louis said there's a couple other storylines he'll be interested in following as the newest season unravels.
"I'm looking forward to seeing what's going to happen to Arya and how that season ended with her," Pierre-Louis said of Ned and Catelyn Stark's youngest daughter. "And then her little brother, Bran. I feel like their characters are going to pick up a little bit and we'll really get to see more of them, so I'm excited to see what they're going to bring to the table."
Pierre-Louis doesn't have any big plans for Game of Thrones' opening episode, but when 9 p.m. rolls around on the west coast, you can expect him to be fully engulfed in the world of Westeros.
"No special plans," he said. "But there were a couple friends that were asking me what I'm going to do on Sunday. I was telling them like, 'What do you think I'm doing on Sunday?' There's nothing else to do on Sunday. I'm getting everything out of the way. I'm going to be watching."
