At the New York Comic-Con, Game of Thrones star Kit Harington previews Jon Snow’s season 3 journey, hinting at the character’s darker turn.

Speaking to io9, Harington discusses the upcoming third season of Game of Thrones and what will happen to Jon once he enters Mance Rayder’s camp.

“He has tough decisions to make, he always does,” Harington says. “He gets a really rough ride in this series and it always tough, kind of having to deal with these things that he has to deal with. I always feel very sorry for him.”

But, as Harington says, what Jon goes through only serves to make him stronger. “He sees that he makes mistakes and gets stronger, makes mistakes. He’s always got a paternal figure telling him he’s wrong,” Harington reveals, and previewing that in season 3, “it’s going to be a man called Mance Rayder. Last season it was Qhorin Halfhand. The season before that it was his Uncle and his Father. He always has someone there as a patriarchal figure.”

On Ciaran Hinds, the actor cast as Mance, he says that he’s, “a fantastic, fantastic actor. Again, I got to work with one of those favorite actors of mine, and he’s going to be brilliant.”

Harington also speaks about Jon’s experiences with the Wildlings and how he changes them. He says that Jon will come to realise that they are just like himself, “they’re just living on a different side of the Wall. So that’s a big learning curve,” he says. “Having to infiltrate the wildlings is a big task for him. He has to become one of them and I think he becomes more one than he thinks he will.”

Game of Thrones returns next year, on March 31. Season 3 will span the first half of the third novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga, A Storm of Swords.