Melisandre’s return to Winterfell suggested that the final outcome had been preordained, much like some of the episode’s big deaths (Beric and Theon, along with Jorah, Edd, and little Lyanna Mormont). Bran, meanwhile, did little more than warg into a flock of ravens to alert the Night King to his presence.īut then, that was Bran’s apparent purpose in this Deathbowl: to sit tight and draw the Night King close so that Arya could get a clean shot at him. Her supposed rulers, Daenerys and Jon, were by and large duds throughout the conflict, zooming around the sky on their dragons, unable to see most of the action. I was a little let down, though, that Arya didn’t get to use her specific skills more (why not have her disguise herself as a White Walker?), but as far as dei ex machina go, it’s hard to argue with the pint-size killer Stark. The manner of his offing-death from above by Arya, wielding the Valyrian-steel dagger an assassin tried to murder Bran with way back in Season 1-was undeniably cool. They served no plot purpose other than to threaten to bring about the apocalypse, and the only thing more boring, story-wise, than defeating the Night King would have been letting him win and cover the world in mute zombies. The White Walkers were a means to unite ice and fire-Jon and Daenerys-and build an alliance in the North in order to sort out all the lingering conflict in the South. The comparison between his army of death and the looming threat of environmental catastrophe might feel facile, but in the end that’s all it really amounted to. Hence my main point: The Night King is dull as dishwater. Once the horde of corpses arrived, though, my brain quickly turned off. Less was always more: The opening sequence involving the Dothraki charge into total darkness was gripping and clear. That the Night King fights at night is hardly surprising, I suppose, but as a result the action was mostly choppy and unsatisfying. There were long tracking shots that staked out the location of every character before chaos arrived at the walls of Winterfell, plenty of shaky naturalism once the violence began, and, of course, darkness. “The Long Night” was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who also helmed “Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards,” and it was filled with all his favorite visual flourishes. Weiss had to put audiences through the wringer of yet another massive battle episode, similar to editions such as “Blackwater,” “The Watchers on the Wall,” “Hardhome,” and “Battle of the Bastards.” The problem, of course, was that the teeming wave of death from above the Wall couldn’t be easily batted away: It was part of the show’s very first set piece, and more often than not has been relied on for a cliffhanger at the end of a season. Now I’m here to dance on the Night King’s grave.įor the past two episodes, I have pleaded for the show to get the White Walkers out of the way so that viewers can return to the more important stuff-Westerosi politicking and grand romantic tension, the twin pillars that have held up Game of Thrones for nearly a decade. After all that, it took only one epic episode, “The Long Night,” to dash all his plans and turn him and his dramatically inert army into a pile of snowflakes. I’m glad he’s dead! Season after season of Game of Thrones has passed with the frost-faced White Walker silently promising doom for the denizens of Westeros. Because no screeners were made available to critics in advance this year, we’ll be posting our thoughts in installments.ĭavid Sims: After eight years of buildup, with promises of zombie swarms and ice dragons, it can finally be said: The Night King is a real bore. Every week for the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, three Atlantic staffers will be discussing new episodes of the HBO drama.
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