Strap yourselves in, this promises to be a long read.
I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones. It’s one of the few shows that’s managed to keep my interest in recent years, because it had compelling characters, a good story, and defied a lot of the things we’ve come to expect from modern television; stuck two fingers up at the TV tropes which just make plots boring and predictable after a while.
My girlfriend at the time got me into it as Season 4 was ending, and we binged the episodes to try and catch up before Season 5 launched. I stuck with it and even managed to get my current girlfriend into it after Season 7 had ended, so that we are now ready to experience the finale together. I never read the books, but I’m also not that much of a reader anyway. I’m currently working my way through the books on Audible and comparing the differences. I may well discuss that in a future entry once I’ve caught up (I’ve only just finished the first book).
I came in to the latest episode, titled “The Long Night” with a lot of fear for some of the characters that I’d grown to love and have seen develop over the last 4 years of my watching of the show. It promised to be one of the biggest episodes in television history, not just in Thrones’ history, promising one of, if not the, biggest and longest battles ever broadcast on mainstream television, even longer than The Battle of Helms Deep in Lord of the Rings. There was a lot to make this amazing, and a lot to go wrong, and after watching it, I was so conflicted at the resolution, and I still am conflicted. So here are my thoughts on Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 3, “The Long Night”. Spoilers ahead.
First of all, let’s talk technical aspects of the show. Director Miguel Sapochnik – who also directed S5 E7 “The Gift”, S5 E8 “Hardhome”, S6 E9 “The Battle of the Bastards” and S6 E10 “The Winds of Winter” – did a stellar job of making the action look chaotic and frantic. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss clearly trust him to make a big battle scene look fantastic and I can see why.
I’ve heard a lot of complaints that the episode was dark and very hard to understand, which I get. The open 15 minutes or so was very messy as a viewer; you were unsure where you were supposed to be looking in a lot of places. I definitely felt this at the start. A lot of people have said “it’s supposed to look messy and weird. They’re fighting masses of disorganised dead, it isn’t going to be a clean battle.” I sort of take this point, but with the caveat that we shouldn’t set that as too much of a precedent, as I generally don’t like the idea that “ooh it’s supposed to look like shit.” Ok. Cool. Still looks like shit though. I don’t care for artistic pretentiousness and the idea that criticism isn’t valid in the art world because it’s how the art is supposed to be. If the layman doesn’t understand your message then you haven’t conveyed your message clearly enough. That is on you, not anybody else. That’s a topic for another time though, and I do think that this episode gets away with it because it focuses down when a major character is doing something significant, and the important details are not lost (RIP Ed).
Secondly, the music. Ramin Djawadi’s composition “The Night King” that played over the final act really captured the tone perfectly, really made you feel that the pressure was on for our heroes to fight off the threat of death that was looming, and closing in on its target. It had moments of triumph and moments where you thought all hope was lost, and this was weaved together delightfully with the shots over the top of them. The editing team deserve a lot of kudos for that.
All of the actors deserve credit for the work that they put in to help immerse you into the episode, not one of them put in a bad performance here. There was tension from start to finish and it really made you wonder which characters were going to live and which were going to die.
However, at the end of it all, there weren’t a major amount of character deaths. The ones that we got were incredibly satisfying and poetic; Theon Greyjoy redeeming himself after bravely defending Bran to the last. Jorah Mormont dying to defend his Khaleesi from the threat of the resurrected whites after everyone else had abandoned her. Beric Dondarrion saving Arya so that she may perform her duty. Lyanna Mormont stabbing a dead giant right in its eye. All fantastic deaths, but I feel like there should have been more.
Game of Thrones has set us up to expect that anyone can die at any time. The Red Wedding is the obvious example, and the other one being the destruction of The Sept of Baelor in the aforementioned Winds of Winter episode. This was supposedly the culmination of Winter finally coming for the living, which has been set up since the pilot, so you’d expect some big character deaths, or at least the deaths of the majority of the minor cast. Instead, most of the big battle commanders, on the front lines at the start of the episode, still battling at the end and somehow not getting swamped, despite the sheer volume and scale of the danger that is in front of them. I’d have liked to see more of Brienne, Jaime, Tormund, Samwell, Grey Worm, and possibly two of those characters to die. Instead they all live? I could only really suspend my disbelief for so long when you see Brienne or Jaime backed against a wall looking like they might fall, and then the next time we cut to them they’re fine, just going through the same motions.
I mean, I expect Sam to live through to the end. I like the theory that he is the one who documents the majority of this journey, so I think he will survive it all somehow. Again, a lot of people saying that he got lucky and was plot armoured to the nines here. Hate to break it to you, but Sam has been covered in plot armour since the start of Game of Thrones. Why the massive army of White Walkers didn’t kill him at The Fist of the First Men is beyond me, this isn’t a new thing for Sam. So I can kind of suspend my disbelief for him. Even Jaime Lannister, because there’s clearly more that he has to do in King’s Landing yet. The set-up with Bronn, how Cersei will react to potentially seeing him again. His arc isn’t done yet, I can understand him surviving that little bit longer.
Brienne, Grey Worm and Tormund, though, where do they go from here?
Brienne’s story was tied of beautifully in the previous episode. She is now a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Her going down at the head of an army defending her Queen (Sansa) from impending doom would have been perfect here. It would’ve been sad, but perfect. Bittersweet. Even better if she dies so that Jaime or Podrick may live, the two characters that she has spent the most time with, who have aided her development the most. I can only guess that they have a different way out for her. We shall see in the coming weeks I guess.
Grey Worm is another one who could have died in the most noble way. Let’s face it, he is dying at some point. After you promise a quiet future with the one that you love in an explicit form, particularly in Game of Thrones, there is no way that both of you make it out alive. I don’t see Missandei dying, as I think the role of “tragic female partner death” will go to Gilly before the show is done. I’ll get to them later though. To me it just doesn’t make sense how the rest of the Unsullied get absolutely swamped yet he, at the very front of all of them, manages to pull back and make it through. He gets his moment, deploying the trenches so that they have a moment of respite, but him going down after that would have made the tension pay off, to remind us that yes, this is Game of Thrones. People die.
Just picture this moment: you are Daenerys Targaryen and/or Jon Snow. You have just bested The Night King, but at the cost of the majority of your forces destroyed. Your loyal commanders, the people you trust to control and move your armies, dead. The only person you have with enough battle knowledge is the very man who killed your ancestor. The Kingslayer. You have no choice but to trust Jaime Lannister with control of what is left. I just think that it will make an interesting dynamic and for some great scenes where they stick together out of necessity. It would be the cherry on top for Jaime’s redemption arc, leading his former enemies against the woman that he loves for honour. We saw that tension in Episode 2, let’s see more of it. As it stands though, you would entrust Brienne and Grey Worm to take control of your ground troops. I say ground troops as it looks like the next major battle will be a naval one and involve Yara and the Iron Fleet heavily.
Before we leave this and elaborate on more of the things that I really didn’t like about this episode, I will present this counter-argument, as I thought it was a pretty good one when I saw it on a random Youtube comment. Think back over the history of Game of Thrones. Think about all the big battles that have happened over the last 7 and a bit seasons. The Battle of Blackwater Bay. Hardhome. The Battle of the Bastards. The Loot Train Assault. The Battle of Castle Black. How many major characters have died in those battles? I can only think of two. Stannis and Ygritte. I don’t count Ramsay as he died after the fighting was done, and not on the battlefield. I don’t regard Pypar or Rickon as major characters. In Game of Thrones, people don’t die on the battlefield. They die at weddings, in their castles, in their places of worship, on the toilet. I think that’s why I’m so conflicted on this point, because it seems pretty consistent with what has come before, but at the same time this was supposed to be the end times. The Long Night. The big culmination of several series of build-up and several character story arcs. The lack of deaths just fell a little bit flat for me.
Let’s now discuss more of the things that definitely didn’t work in this episode. Let’s go with the crypt scenes first shall we? I don’t think that D&D are hack writers as some have suggested. I think back to The Battle of the Bastards, The Winds of Winter, Hardhome. Widely regarded as the greatest episodes. All written by Benioff and Weiss, long after GRRM’s affiliation with the show had ended. However, I do think that they have made some really bad writing choices, particularly in the latter seasons. The zombie polar bear in “Beyond the Wall” was a big one. The other was the Crypt of Foreshadowing. Let’s wind back to the previous episode. Does anyone know how many times somebody said “The crypt is the safest place”? I reckon it was in double figures by the end of the episode, and it hinted at something so much bigger happening down there when the fighting was going on. It made you feel tense and worried for those innocents. It made me think of the prophecy Melisandre gave to Varys at the end of Season 7:
“I will return, dear Spider, one last time. I have to die in this strange country, just like you.”
In the end, though, what did we get? The old Starks rose from the crypt, and basically ran right past everyone important. Again, I don’t expect everyone to die, there are still 3 episodes left so we need some form of story to see us out, but it just doesn’t seem believable to me. Gilly and Baby Sam are right there when one of the Starks breaks out of their tomb, and they don’t immediately get destroyed? Again, imagine how interesting it would be to see a Samwell Tarly that now has nothing to live for. Everything he loves, everything he fights for is embodied in those two. Now they’re gone. I still think that they will die, because nobody gets a happy ending in Game of Thrones, but it was just asking me to suspend my disbelief a little too much there.
“If you think that this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” Ramsay Snow.
Also Sansa and Tyrion. They’re hiding behind one of the tombs as the walkers start attacking. Together. She holds the dagger in her hand. He grabs his dagger and kisses her hand. They turn together, the music swells. They…run and hide in the next cubby hole over. Again, I expect them to live (I’ve even boldly predicted that Sansa ends up on the Iron Throne) but the moment called for something bigger. Those deaths would have shocked me, and I’d have been sad. But it would have been very Game of Thrones to see that happen.
Now let’s get to the final thing. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but for me this is the worst scene in the episode, and one of the worst writing decisions that has been made across the entire show. Let’s discuss the scene with Arya and Melisandre in the dining hall after Beric Dondarrion’s death.
Now, let me preface this by saying the following: I like that Arya was the one to kill The Night King. It makes a lot of sense. Her story has entirely revolved around death and confronting the God of Death. It has all led to this moment, her confronting the personification of Death and sticking it with the pointy end. I loved that. I cheered when she stuck the knife in.
I also don’t care that The Night King was dispatched here. I think, if anything, I’d have been more annoyed had it suddenly thrown out all of the political intrigue that has built up, Cersei’s rise to power, in favour of ice zombies. I’m bored of zombies, give me something with more substance. So I don’t hate it because of either of those choices.
The reason I hate this scene is because it took all the subtlety that the show writers had had planned and threw it right out of the window. It is all ruined with one simple dialogue.
Arya recalling who Melisandre is, and then going on to recite the damn prophecy that she gave back in Season 3:
“You said I’d shut many eyes. Brown eyes. Green eyes…”
“…”
“…”
“and blue eyes.”
As soon as those two words were said I knew what was coming. I heard D&D being interviewed about the episode and they said that they said that it would work well, provided we weren’t thinking about Arya in that moment. Well, guess what? You ruined that idea when you decided to go ahead and lump the audience over the head with a line that makes it entirely obvious what you’re planning. You could have just had Melisandre say something like “If you know who I am then you know what you must do,” and then have the “What do we say to the God of Death” callback. That would’ve been perfect. Instead we got a completely obvious plan that eliminated a lot of The Night King tension.
What happened to subtlety in story writing? Are we all just regarded with such contempt by writers that we can’t be allowed to just remember stuff anymore? In an age of binge watching culture did you just think that nobody would remember. Even then, in an age of Google and having so much information at our fingertips, did you not think that people would figure it out after the fact? I hated that line and it undermined a lot of the shock that came with Arya leaping out from the darkness to get the kill.
There were other weaknesses to the episode. The Dothraki being sent out as cannon fodder at the start. The fact that we never got to see Jon Snow fight The Night King (which is more of a fan expectation to be honest) and the whole Arya materialising out of seemingly nowhere thing, but these are more minor nitpicks in my opinion. The main points for me are the above. It was very well shot and directed, the music was beautiful, the acting was great, and it was very tense on first viewing. But there was no substance to it in reality, and some of the writing choices really broke the tension in a lot of ways, particularly on second viewing.
So, in the final analysis, where do I sit on S8 E3 – The Long Night? I kind of wanted to write something really quippy here like “The Long Night – too short” to round off this Deathly Hallows sized novel that I’ve written, but my opinion is more complicated than that. If this entry looks confusing it’s because I’m confused. I don’t know where I stand with it. On the one hand I loved it, and on the other I hated it, and I’m not here trying to convince you one way or the other. If you loved it, great. If you hated it, great. That’s your viewing experience. This was mine.
The only thing that I do know is that there are 3 episodes left of this terrific series, and I have only vague ideas of where it’s going from here. Maybe I’ll discuss some of my theories or what I would like to see happen in the last few episodes, how I see it all playing out. For now though, here are my thoughts. I’ll just leave you with one last quote:
“When you play the game of thrones you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” – Cersei Lannister.
Also Melisandre’s “Welp. Guess I’ll die” right at the end of the episode was dumb. I’m putting it in here as I couldn’t think of where else it would go.
Random Ramblings 