It’s not as if the release of The Dreadful is poised to move crowds or redefine the horror market. But it speaks very directly, and almost provocatively, to a persistent sub-phenomenon within the Game of Thrones universe: the so-called Jonsas. Yes, there has long been a group of fans who championed a romance between Jon Snow and Sansa Stark. Technically, first cousins, raised as siblings, are bound more by shared trauma than by any romantic tension explicitly written into the source material.

It all began, as so much in this mythology does, with emotion that was poorly processed. After five seasons of loss, abuse, and the brutal scattering of the Stark family, the reunion between Jon and Sansa was one of the most moving scenes in the entire series. For the first time, the family seemed able to breathe. The embrace was painful, intense, deeply fraternal. But part of the audience chose to read something more into it. That was the birth of the Jonsas.

The irony is that Game of Thrones never shied away from incest. Jon becomes romantically involved with his aunt, Daenerys, before learning the truth about his lineage. When he does find out, his reaction is one of rejection and withdrawal, a choice that accelerates an ending already historically doomed. For the Jonsas, none of that mattered. The chemistry was there, they insisted, even if the narrative never endorsed it.

This is where The Dreadful enters the conversation, almost as a conscious provocation.

Directed as an atmospheric, curse-driven gothic horror film, The Dreadful marks the first on-screen reunion of Kit Harington and Sophie Turner since the end of HBO’s series, now in roles that could not feel more uncomfortable to anyone who spent eight seasons watching them as quasi-siblings. Here, they are not family. They are lovers.

Set in medieval England, The Dreadful follows Anne, a woman living on the fringes of society under the oppressive control of her domineering mother-in-law, Morwen, played by Marcia Gay Harden. When a man from Anne’s past returns from war, a curse begins to take form through a mysterious knight, unleashing a spiral of psychological horror, guilt, repressed desire, and symbolic violence. It is less a jump-scare film than a study in atmosphere, repression, and moral punishment, closely aligned with the traditions of classic gothic horror.

The project itself emerged, somewhat ironically, from Turner’s own initiative. She sent the script to Harington without immediately realizing what it entailed. He realized it first. And he was unsettled. In interviews, Harington has admitted feeling genuinely strange when he understood that those former “siblings” were now written as a romantic couple. Turner, for her part, has said she only fully grasped it upon rereading the script and encountering a succession of kisses and sex scenes. Their reaction on set, according to her, was almost physical: gagging, embarrassment, visceral discomfort. Entirely human.

And yet, they agreed to do it. Perhaps precisely because of that discomfort. They are close friends in real life, with a shared history and a level of trust that requires no artificial construction. When they speak about the shoot, they describe it as a familial reunion that paradoxically demanded they cross into completely opposite narrative territory. Awkward, yes. But also honest.

The title, The Dreadful, could not be more fitting. For those who always rejected the idea of Jon and Sansa together, the film plays like a kind of meta-nightmare. For the Jonsas, it is almost a belated acknowledgment, albeit displaced, dark, and wrapped in horror. This is not an epic romance. It is not redemption. It is a curse.

Distributed by Lionsgate, The Dreadful opens in theaters on February 20. It does not rewrite the canon of Westeros, nor does it try to. What it does expose is something more curious: the persistence of fandom projection, and how certain readings refuse to disappear even when the official narrative moves firmly in another direction. In the end, The Dreadful does not validate Jon and Sansa. It turns them into something far more unsettling. And perhaps that is exactly what makes it worth watching.