Game of Thrones Sunday at 9 p.m., HBO

And so it looks as though (spoiler alert from last week’s episode) Jon Snow has been revivified. That wrinkled crone who wears the Melisandre flesh costume appears to have brought him to awareness with a few incantations and the burning of some of his rock-star hair.

Surprise [said in irony].

It may turn out that the new Lord Commander isn’t the same as the old Lord Commander, so there may be a twist in store for us. But after almost a year of manipulative promotion about whether or not Jon Snow was really, truly, honestly dead, I ultimately felt disappointed and misused.

Indeed, after a while all the promo around the question of a Jon Snow resurrection felt like a whole lot of trolling, a cheap ruse rather than an organically grown plot twist.

This week, I found myself wishing that HBO and the “Game of Thrones’’ producers had played off all the expectation and let Jon Snow remain dead, really dead. Partly that’s because there’s something about the way “Game of Thrones’’ kills off characters for good that appealingly ups the stakes on all the action.

And partly that’s because it would have been a big, fat — and kind of funny — twist in all of the is-he-or-isn’t-he-dead business. It would have been a sideways comment on all the hype, a giant, resounding “Psych!’’

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.