Furious Game of Thrones star Kit Harington lashes out at critics

Kit Harrington as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. Photo / HBO

Kit Harington has angrily hit back at critics of Game of Thrones' long-awaited final season.

The actor, who played Jon Snow in the TV phenomenon, admitted to feeling "quite defiant" amid heavy fan backlash over the final six episodes.

"Whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their judgment on it, in my head they can go f**k themselves," he told Esquire .

"Because I know how much work was put into this."

Harington later apologised, saying he didn't intend to "sound mean about critics", but added that the show meant too much to him for him to allow it to be bashed online.

"A lot of jobs, everyone goes back to their apartments at the end of the day. They have their lives, and they have their families, and they have their girlfriends or boyfriends back home," Harington said. "I think part of what made (GoT) successful was the fact that we got on like a family. Everyone who came in was welcomed into the family."

Harington's comments follow weeks of backlash over season eight, which has culminated in more than 1.2 million disgruntled fans "signing" a Change.org petition demanding a remake of the last season.

"David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on," the petition states. "This series deserves a final season that makes sense. Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!"

Benioff and Weiss have been the main targets of fans' ire, with many complaining that their writing has been lazy in the final run of episodes.

The criticism began gathering pace as a result about the "too dark" Battle of Winterfell (episode three) and reached fever pitch thanks to "Coffeegate" — when a Starbucks-like coffee cup was accidentally left in a scene.

It wasn't helped by the fact that a promo shot was shared last week showed Jaime Lannister's (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) severed right hand appearing to have miraculously grown back.

"Jaime's hand magically healed in Episode 5," one fan groused in a since-deleted tweet. "As if we needed any more proof D & D simply stopped caring about GoT a long time ago."