Jon Snow makes a fair number of dumb decisions. One of them: Not wearing a hat, or any sort of head covering, not even a nice fur-lined hood, when his entire family schtick is wandering around gloomily informing people that winter is both coming and also here. But it turns out this one’s not entirely his fault!
The New York Times has blessedly addressed this question with the man himself, Kit Harington:
I was asking for one! I wanted a hat when we were shooting in Iceland. We’ve had endless conversations about it. It’s been a big, big question in “Thrones,” about when they’re up North, whether they wear headgear or not. It seems ridiculous in cold climates not to have your head protected. But it’s a decision they made a long time ago, the decision that we need to see faces more than heads being warm. It’s very difficult when you’re filming people in that environment, to differentiate between people’s faces. I think they decided that was the most important thing. But trust me, no one wants a hat more than me. [Laughs]
He gets into a fistfight at McDonald’s the night before his audition; now he has to stand around freezing his hairs off his very head just so we can see his beautiful mopey face. Once they wrap this show Harington and the rest of the Northerner crew deserve a solid year on a beach somewhere.