Will of the Night's Watch
A poacher pardoned into the black, ranging beyond the Wall in the tale's first pages, who sees something in the haunted forest no living man has seen in an age.
A soul born at The Riverlands, sworn to The Night's Watch.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
On the screen. Killed beyond the Wall (S1┬ÀE1)
Fled south from the massacre at the ranging camp and was taken as a deserter near Winterfell. Lord Eddard Stark heard his last words about white shadows in the wood, and swung the sword himself, as the old way demands.
On the page. Killed in the haunted forest (AGOT, ch. 1)
In the prologue of the whole tale, Will watches the Others take Ser Waymar apart in the haunted forest and climbs a tree to hide. What comes up after him wears his commander's face and moves his commander's dead hands.
In the books Will dies in the haunted forest, minutes after the story begins. Hidden aloft, he watches the pale shadows shatter Waymar RoyceÔÇÖs sword and leave the boy dead in the snow ÔÇö and then the corpse rises, and climbs. The last thing Will feels is cold fingers at his throat: killed by the wight of the commander he could not save, the sagaÔÇÖs first named death and its thesis statement in one.
In the show he lives a little longer and dies warmer. Fleeing the massacre, he makes it south of the Wall ÔÇö the first deserter of the story ÔÇö and is taken near Winterfell, where he tells Lord Eddard Stark, calmly and without hope, exactly what he saw. Ned hears him out, calls him deserter, and swings the greatsword himself while the Stark children watch. The realmÔÇÖs first warning of the White Walkers dies as a criminal, believed by no one; the audience, who saw what he saw, spends the rest of the tale knowing he told the truth.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter of their own
Where the page and the screen part
The book and the show quietly swap the fates of the rangingÔÇÖs two survivors. On the page, Will climbs a sentinel tree when the Others take Ser Waymar apart, and what comes up the trunk after him wears his commanderÔÇÖs face; it is Gared who flees south to be executed as a deserter. The show folds the two men together and hands the desertion, the flight, and Ned StarkÔÇÖs sword to Will ÔÇö making him the wide-eyed deserter whose garbled warning about white shadows opens the series proper and whose death introduces the Stark creed of the man who passes the sentence. Same prologue, same lesson; the tellings simply disagree about which broken man carried it to Winterfell.