It's like you're not even trying at this stage, Kit Harrington.

The out-and-out denials, the "Yes, he's totally dead" proclamations - and then we started seeing photos of him cropping up at Wimbledon with that hairdo still intact. Then we saw him in Belfast, hanging out with the cast. Now? A photo of him on set, in armour, with a sword, with his hair in a tight bun.

Come on, man. Why the lies?

Yes, it could very well be a flashback scene - but let's be honest here, Jon Snow / Kit Harrington even let it slip during a recent interview that he's set for the next few years with Game of Thrones. So either he's going to be only present in flashback scenes or he's actually alive. If it's just flashback scenes, it makes no sense to keep him on contract for the next few years. There can't be that many flashbacks, can there? So why all the denials, eh?

Anyway, as you can imagine, the photos aren't, strictly speaking, official or authorised and we're not going to post them here. But, you can look at them... over here.

Or not. You can go, living in blissful ignorance about the whole thing. We won't judge. Unlike the way we're judging Game of Thrones and Kit Harrington for LYING TO OUR FACES.

So, let's talk about Jon Snow and the whole "How is he alive if he was stabbed a whole bunch of times?" For uber-Throners, you'll be familiar with Azor Azhai, the so-called religious saviour that will defeat the White Walkers and will lead Westeros into a new age of yada-yada. Melisandre, the red-haired lady who likes to burn people, believed that Stannis Baratheon was Azor Azhai reborn and that he would be the one to sort out the White Walkers.

But, as we know from the final episode of the last season, Stannis is well and truly dead. Not only that, it was basically hinted at that Melisandre was having doubts about him and the whole Azor Azhai thing, so when she finds Jon Snow in the snow, dead as disco, she decides to revive him because HE is Azhor Azhai.

That'd track with the prevailing fan theories we've seen and heard and, in the sense of the story, it all makes sense. However, George RR Martin's poured some cold water all over that. In a recent interview, Martin confirmed that - in the next book, The Winds of Winter, Stannis Baratheon is still alive. We knew that the TV show would eventually surpass the books and that, on some level, there'd be deviations between what happens in the book and what's happens in the series.

This is a pretty clean break between the two if Stannis is dead in the series and alive in the books - and would throw that whole Jon Snow is Azor Azhai reborn theory out the window. Then, of course, you also have the Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targarayen and Lyanna Stark theory to contend with as well, which we have a sneaking suspicion will finally be answered in the next season.

In any case, much like Jon Snow, we know nothing. Except that he's totally alive.