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Game of Thrones S08 E03 – Dark and full of errors.

Previously: 99% of the named characters gathered at Winterfell and prepared to die.
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The Long Night

Marines: I could intro this for days, but I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to seeing how I feel about this episode on second watch, when I am not so stressed and I can slowly consume it. I probably still won’t be able to see it, but alas. 

Credits, through the hole in the Wall, past Last Hearth completely surrounded by blue tiles, down to Winterfell, where the blue tiles creep up to its border. Godswood, Crypts of Safety, King’s Landing and the Iron Throne. 

We start on Sam’s shaking hands right before someone puts two dragonglass weapons in them. Some Northern Jeff tells him to get a move on, and we see him walk through the courtyard, giving us a view of everyone organizing. Our Bearboss Lyanna Mormont is giving orders. Tyrion is taking one final look around, and we then start to follow him as he walks through the preparations, grabbing a bag, and seeing Bran being rolled out by the Iron Born contingent, out to the Godswood. 

Democracy Diva: I like starting out with Sam’s utter terror. It’s both familiar territory and highlights how much everyone around them has their shit together by comparison. (I’m talking about Bearboss, obviously).

Mari: Obviously. 

Battlements. Men stand ready with Davos at the lead. 

Nearby, Sansa and Arya stare out into the darkness. The silence is broken by the two dragons flying overhead. 

Down on the battlefield, the army is ready. The Dothraki Screamers are on horses out front, the Unsullied behind them. We see the Free Folk as the Hound and Pod push up to the front to stand with Sam and Definitely Edd. We get a few more, impressive long shots of the entire gathered army, fire blazing between them. Jorah is in front of the Dothraki, GHOST! just next to him, probably wondering when he got left behind for dragons. I’ll save my thoughts about the build-up (and payoff?) of this episode for later, but here, I was immediately feeling feelings about what it took to get this group of people together, at this moment. Dothraki, Unsullied, Free Folk, northerners, Night’s Watchmen– it certainly was a long journey to put together this stand. One that as impressive as it looks here, we know has a very slim chance against the approaching dead. 

Catherine: I also really appreciated Sam being the audience stand in here. My hands were legit shaking throughout the whole episode, too. 

Diva: I didn’t breathe until about ten minutes in.

Mari: Jorah’s eyes are watering as he looks out into the darkness, trying to see what is coming for them. 

On higher ground, Dany and Jon look over the battlefield, dragons nearby. 

Out of the darkness, a figure approaches on horseback. Davos sees them coming and his face is immediately like, “oh hell no.” It’s a slow canter for maximum dramatic entrance– everything we would expect of none other than our very own Creepy Red Lady, Melisandre. She asks if Jorah speaks Dothraki. He nods, hesitantly, but complies when Melisandre asks him to tell the Screamers to lift their swords. They all do. Melisandre grabs one of the swords and starts chanting in Valyrian. At the end of it, all of the swords catch on fire. We get a wide view of the fire spreading (and brightening this goddamn episode up for just a moment).

Work done, Melisandre keeps on with her lazy trot, passing by Grey Worm on her way, and wishing him a happy Valar Morghulis. He wishes her a happy Valar Dohaeris and she keeps walking. 

Diva: Wasn’t Melisandre supposed to be like, recruiting other red priestesses for the Great War, or something? I feel like her dramatic entrance was compensating for the fact that she just showed up to the potluck without a casserole.

Mari: She would, wouldn’t she? She’d BBQ anything uncooked for you, though.

Davos watches Melisandre approach the castle and yells for them to open the gate. He rushes down to meet the bitch that killed his daughter. She calmly encounters him and tells him that he won’t need to execute her. She’ll be dead before dawn. Getting the better of his anger, he steps aside and lets her pass. Melisandre catches a glimpse of Arya and they stare at each other intently, before they hear screaming and remember this is a war. 

Diva: Living for Arya glaring at Melisandre like, “don’t be trying any more leech shit on my boyfriend’s dick, ok?”

Mari: An important boundary to set. 

On the battlements again, Arya and Sansa watch as the Dothraki Screamers start charging. Jorah is in their midst. Dany and Jon watch as their lighted swords rush toward the dead. Lighted cannon balls are released and fly over the horde, landing first. We only get a brief glimpse of when the Dothraki first clash with the dead, and then pull back up to a high view. We see light clash with the moving darkness of the army of the dead. One of the Dothraki yells for them to cease fire. Wind whistles. Things get quieter and quieter. There is less and less fire, until it’s all gone. 

Catherine: That extra light was nice while it lasted, at least. 

Diva: That image of the Dothraki arakhs being extinguished by a mostly-invisible wall of darkness was one of the top three moments of this episode. Absolutely haunting.

Mari: There is silence once again until we see a few horses running back from the fray, followed by the surviving Dothraki and maybe a badly hurt Jorah. It’s a weird shot, but he’s a white guy, so I’m going with Jorah. We don’t get to see how many more, if any, Dothraki survive because we soon cut back to Dany and Jon. 

At this point, I’m not sure how many Dothraki are alive. From what we saw, most them are dead. I think there are a number of things the show wanted us to get out of this: 1- oh SHIT. 2- the visual of the darkness consuming the first fighters. 3- the Dothraki, famed unbeatable fighters, taken out like lights and 4- the way that the chaos of the Dothraki fighting style was not suited for what is unarguably the even more chaotic dead. HOWEVER, let me be real clear that this is by far the greatest sin this episode committed. If the Dothraki are all gone, which they appear to be, the fact that this show sent an entire race of brown people out in front to be just short of eaten alive? WHAT THE FUCK.

We could go on and on about the tactics here, who approved just rushing head first into the dead and for what purpose. I think that means nothing up against what this show just did in an out-of0story sense. This is the show that gave us the bright idea of sending 10 Watchmen and a low-flying dragon up against the dead previously. WTF battle strategies are par for the course. But then again, maybe so is the disposability of people of color. -_-

Catherine: Yeah, that’s fucked up. I’ve seen a lot of internet people saying that it makes sense because the Dothraki horde didn’t have a definitive leader or something and I just…no. You’re missing the bigger picture here, friends. Please take us to the beach without racists. 

Diva: I hate a whole bunch of things about this episode (sorry, I’m that person, feel free to hate me), and this is at the top of the list. And let’s not forget that right after the Dothraki get slaughtered, they send the Unsullied out to die – you know, the only other brown people around. Fuck all of this.

Mari: Let’s reign that anger in; we have some episode to go. 

Dany is clearly distraught by what she’s seeing and turns to head for the dragons. Jon stops her and reminds her that the Night King is coming and I guess their plan is to just wait ’til he gets here. She snaps her hand away and says that the dead are already here. Because, again, saving the dragons for later is a terrible strategy dummies. 

Battlefield. We hear the first wights screeching and people are freaking out. Grey Worm dramatically puts on his helmet. He yells for the Unsullied to get ready (I’m sure) and then we see them: a variable wall of wights. The impact between the Unsullied and the Dead is loud. I will complain several times more about not being able to see things, but I’m kind of happy in this moment that all we get is an impression of blood and chaos as even more (brown) bodies are mauled. 

Catherine: I did really like how they portrayed the wall of the dead coming through the darkness. I was expecting like, a bunch of marching soldiers but it looked like a giant, many-legged centipede sort of spilling across the battlefield. It looked so ridiculously inhuman and unbeatable. 

Mari: Soon enough, the dead reach the Free Folk and the group Brienne is leading. She yells for them to stand their ground. We get flashes of wights chomping into the living. We see Beric, Pod and Jaime fighting for their lives. Brienne gets pummeled to the ground and screams. Jaime is there to help save her. And then dragon fire is there to help save them all. We watch Jaime see it coming, this time fighting on the same team as dragon fire. It has the same impact for us, the audience, as before. It’s a blast— fire with heft, you know? But you can only imagine that seeing it on this battleground is truly a different experience for Jaime Lannister. 

Dany keeps riding and blasting and soon we see that Jon has joined her. The (goddamn beautiful) (have I mentioned that forever and ever?) score kicks up as we see the twin blasts of dragon fire, now from the perspective of the Stark women on the battlements. I feel Sansa’s deep breath of wonder in my chest. 

From the sky, Dany and Jon both spot the White Walkers. They ride closer, but are engulfed in some sort of freak snow storm. Arya sees the storm coming for them. She turns and tells Sansa to get down to the crypts. Sansa is shocked. She isn’t going to abandon her people. Arya pulls out a dragonglass knife and hands it to her. Sansa admits that she doesn’t know how to use it, which is exactly why she can’t just stay here either. Arya is able to pass on the advice she got so many years ago: Stick ’em with the pointy end. Sansa considers, turns and leaves. Arya turns back to the oncoming storm and pulls off her bow.

Diva: “Stick them with the pointy end” got a sad chuckle out of me. I love these precious girls and all their murdering.

Mari: Hard same. 

From the Godswood, Theon and the Iron Born watch as the storm approaches. 

The battlefield is getting even more hectic thanks to the snow. Jorah gets knocked off his horse, but manages to keep fighting. We watch Brienne, Gendry, the Hound and Podrick all hack and hack and hack at the wights. A wight runs and jumps on Jaime’s back. Sam stabs a couple of wights and then watches as Edd is taken down. He yells for him, but soon, he’s also knocked down. Sam struggles to push hard enough to keep the wight from stabbing him, the knife getting closer to his eye, but he’s saved by Edd. From the ground, we get Sam’s hazy view of the ice, the fire, and tumult.  Edd pulls him up and they look at each other for one second before Edd is run through by a sword. “Oh, God, Sam,” are his last words.

And now his watch is ended.

Catherine: Is it too soon to make a Definitely Dead joke? 

Diva: WHAT IS EDD MAY NEVER DIE. 

Mari: A+

Sansa heads down to the Crypts of Security. Everyone watches as she enters, their eyes searching. Sansa walks to Tyrion and they communicate a whole lot with just looks. He sees her fear, he hears her silence, and he drinks deeply. It reminds me a lot of Sansa waiting with Cersei during the Battle of the Blackwater. There are no prayer circles tonight. 

Back outside, the dragons are still lost in this snow storm. Visibility is so bad that they are running into trees and then Dany and Jon literally crash into each other. I missed that on first watch? They just had a car crash but on dragons and in the sky and during a magic snow storm. I’m laughing kind of a lot. 

They recover and try to give each other meaningful looks, I guess, but it’s a snow storm guys. Eyes on the road. 

Down below, we start hearing the order to fall back. Inside, Lyanna gives the order for them to open the gates and the surviving fighters come flooding in. The Unsullied are left, in formation, to protect the retreat. An overhead shot shows us how the Unsullied are closing ranks, in beautiful and heartbreaking coordination, as the retreat continues to move via the collapsable bridge into the castle. 

Jon is flying and maybe sees something? It’s hard to tell, but he just yells, “Dany!” and we cut away. It’s possible he lost Dany in the snowstorm, and that’s why he’s yelling. IDK, man, I’m lost in the snow storm, too. (C: Really hard to tell what’s happening when it’s either dark or foggy or dark and foggy in every scene.) (D: I have no idea how Mari is recapping any of this. I’m basically learning about all of this for the first time right now.)

In the Godswood, Bran watches while Jon lands Rhaegal nearby.

The survivors keep running in, and we see Brienne and Jaime among them. Some wights make it to the trench. The Hound is running for the castle and we watch as a flaming arrow takes out a wight on his heels. He looks up and sees Arya holding her bow, watching his back. 

The Unsullied are now running inside too, but there are still so many more left outside as the undead start penetrating deeper into their ranks. Grey Worm sees this happening and gives the signal to light the trench. Davos is on. He grabs two flaming logs and starts waving them, the agreed upon signal, but Jon and Dany can’t see him. The dead press in. Grey Worm collapses the bridge, I suppose cutting off the rest of his men from the castle. It’s AWFUL. 

Catherine: No one thought of what to do if Dany couldn’t see the signal to light the trench? NO ONE?? 

Diva: You don’t want to get me started on the lack of backup plans and sensible battle tactics in this episode. I will word vomit for ten thousand years.

Mari: You’re not wrong, but it seems that the back up plan is for the archers to use their flaming arrows to light they trench. They do that now, but the backup plan isn’t working. At least, not fast enough. 

Here comes Plan C: A fresh contingent of Unsullied head out of the castle to provide cover for Melisandre. She places her hands on the trench and starts chanting in Valyrian. It doesn’t catch immediately, and she watches and hears as the battle rages around her. You can see her faltering, becoming desperate, and finally managing to light the damn thing with her creepy magic. It also helps light up the damn scene again, for us and for Dany and Jon who can now see that they missed their cue, oops. At least Dany was still flying around. Jon parked like “yo, these are real unsafe conditions. I already died once.”

Now that Dany can see again, she starts blasting the remaining wights. We see that the wights have stopped attacking. Now they are just standing, looking at the firey trench. The Hound has had precisely enough of fire and leaves. 

Crypts of No Certain Harm. There are faint battles sounds. Varys says at least they are already in a crypt, because that’s not jinxing it at all. Tyrion thinks that if they were up there, they might be able to see something everyone else was missing. Something that makes a difference. Varys sighs deeply, and Tyrion reminds him that he contributed a lot during the Battle of Blackwater. Varys reminds him that he also got his face cut in half. Still, Tyrion made a difference. Sansa tells him that if he were up there right now, he would die. She didn’t want to leave her people, but she also saw the beginnings of the battle. No one else did. Tyrion grabs his drink and says that he would go to great lengths to avoid joining the army of the dead. It wouldn’t suit him. Sansa tells him witty remarks won’t make a difference. That’s why they are all in the crypts– none of them can make a difference. Sansa says the most heroic thing they can do now is look the truth in the face. 

Tyrion seems half impressed and half chastised. He tells her they should’ve stayed married. She replies that he was the best of her husbands. He knows that’s actually kind of terrifying. (D: Dinklage’s delivery of that line was another highlight of this episode for me. Flawless.) She smiles at him and says that it wouldn’t work between them. He asks why not, but won’t exactly meet her eye. She’s thinking, though, of his allegiance to the Dragon Queen. His divided loyalties would become a problem. He smiles at her,, but it’s Missandei who’s had enough of this. “Yes, without the Dragon Queen there would be no problem at all. We’d all be dead already.” She leaves them. It’s a good Missandei moment, but also I love Sansa and hate Dany so, you know, bias. 

It’s quiet in the Godswood, but Theon can see that they lit the trench. He knows what’s coming soon. He turns to Bran and tries to apologize again. “I just want you to know, I wish… the things I did…” (Not Really) Bran tells him that everything he did brought him to where he is now, where he belongs: home. It’s a nice Bran moment and then one second later, he’s like, but don’t forget I’m creepy! He says he’s going to go now and wargs out and into an unkindness of ravens.

Catherine: That’s how I’m ending all unpleasant conversations from now on. “I’m going to go now” and then sit back and roll my eyes into the back of my head. 

Diva: This power would transform my life. No more meetings that should have been emails! I’m out, bitches! 

Mari: The ravens fly over the battlefield, past Winterfell, into the storm, until we see The Night King on Zombie Viserion. The Night King extends his hand toward the battle field, and we see that the previously motionless wights begin to move. First one and then another and then another, straight into the trench until they knock over the wooden barricade with their bodies, piling up until that they smother the fire enough to create an opening. How many wights does it take to smother a fire like a fire blanket? It doesn’t matter because the Night King has a million wights. 

From inside, the orders begin to man the walls. There are already archers up there, as we’ve seen, but the rest of the fighters heads up to the battlements. 

Jon sees The Night King in the sky and decides he’s done parking. 

The wights reach the castle walls. The archers try to keep them off for as long as possible, but when it becomes inevitable that they will reach the top, soldiers relieve archers and wait to fight. The first wight reaches Gendry and we see him slash. Jaime next, and then on and on as wights try to gain the castle. They are fighting sheer numbers. It’s one slash that takes them down, but there are so many. Jaime is soon cornered, but Brienne runs to his rescue. We get a backlit view of them, fighting together, one holding Oathkeeper and one holding Widow’s Wail, two halves of Ned Stark’s sword, up on the parapets of Winterfell. 

Catherine: I’m sobbing. Also, I saw some people saying that Oathkeeper is Ned (because of his oath to Lyanna) and Widow’s Wail is Catelyn (because of obvious reasons) so I’m DOUBLE sobbing.  

Diva: I am honestly mad at you for telling me that because I will NEVER STOP CRYING.

Mari: Sam is also almost overtaken, but Jorah saves him. The wights start jumping down to the courtyard with no regard to their safety, as the undead are wont to do. As the fighting spreads, we see the Hound hiding, having what I would call a panic attack. From his face, we head to a wight being beheaded. The hero score soars as we see Arya with her double-tipped dragonglass weapon just OWN an entire row of wights. Beric sees the Hound hiding and yells for his help. Arya kills and kills and kills. Davos sees her in action, and I can’t tell if he’s scared, impressed, wants to adopt her or all three. 

Arya soon finds herself cornered as wights approach her from the battlements and from a stairwell. She flips OVER THE BACKS OF THE WIGHTS, though one catches her and smashes her head into a wall. From her back, she sees these particularly skeletal wights chomping and charging, and you can just see the fear dawn on her face. 

Down in the courtyard, a wight giant is crushing people. Lyanna Mormont gets battered aside. You should’ve heard my yell when I watched this the first time, my god.  (C: She’s so tiny he literally yeeted her clear across the courtyard.) 

Beric is still yelling at the Hound to get his head in the game and not give up. The Hound tells Beric to fuck off, because they are fighting death and you can’t beat death. Nearby, we see Arya launch herself onto the roof of a building, wights trying to follow her and slipping off completely. She waits a moment and then climbs into an open, nearby window. On the ground, Beric points to Arya and tells the Hound to tell that badass queen that you can’t beat death. The Hound sees Arya in danger and just TAKES OFF. Why are they so precious? I mean, as precious as you can be in the middle of a zombie war, or whatever.

  

Catherine: He didn’t even hesitate when he saw that she was in danger. My heart, it hurts. 

Diva: What’s the word for platonic shipping? Pl-OTP? They’re my plotp. 

Mari: Lyanna struggles to stand, grabbing her weapon, and roaring like the bear that she is. She charges at the giant, but he sees her coming and easily grabs her, crushing her in his grip. She struggles to breathe, holding on to life as the giant brings her closer and closer to his mouth. And then she stabs her dragonglass weapon into his eye. Down goes the wight and so does the Bearboss of my heart, Lyanna Mormont. 

Catherine: RIP Bearboss. She died as she lived: like a total fucking badass. 

Diva: The crunch noise her body made will haunt my nightmares. This was the only part of the episode I cried actual tears at. I also basically dove into my husband’s stomach in my effort to look away from the screen. RIP to the absolute greatest of all greats, a tiny feminist icon and legend, Princess Bearboss of House Mormont. 

Mari: In the skies, Dany and Jon fly up high enough to get out of the gathered storm clouds. They look and wait. Zombie Viserion breaks through the clouds and attacks with his ice fire. Dany and Jon manage to dodge him.

Arya sneaks around the castle, letting herself into a library. She takes a deep breath in the silence, but it’s short-lived. There is a wight in here. There are multiple wights in here, banging around as they amble, looking for something to chomp on, I guess. Arya sneaks past them all, quiet as she ever is. Her pained faces and fear are really difficult to watch. She sneaks under a table, but crouched this way, her blood starts to drip on the floor, catching the attention of a nearby wight. He peaks under the table, but by the time he does, Arya is gone. 

She grabs a book and tosses it, causing all the wights to come running, giving her a chance to sneak out into the hall. She runs directly into another wight, but kills her quietly. 

Arya thinks she’s made it past them all, but she hears snarling getting closer. Two separate groups of wights barrel into the hallway and she runs. 

Innocuous Crypts. The battle sounds have become louder still. We see the little Child Jeff soldier from the last episode, looking fiercely in the direction of the door. The silence is broken by banging. We hear soldiers yelling for them to please open the door. Everyone stars in horror, but the yells quickly turn to silence. 

The Hound is also prowling the castle hallways alongside Beric. They turn a corner just in time to see Arya get pushed a door, a wight landing on top of her. She screams. Beric throws his sword so that it pierces the wight. He runs to her and helps her up. A wight stabs Beric in the leg. Arya runs off in front of him to join the Hound, and a struggling and straggling behind Beric gets stabbed a couple more times before he manages to follow behind them. Arya tries to help Beric, but the Hound picks her up and runs off with her, saying they have to go. Beric gets stabbed again as Arya watches and reaches for him. 

Arya and the Hound make it into a large room, waiting for a moment until Beric stumbles in. They close the door and barricade it. Beric looks at Arya and tries to say something, but he can’t. He dies. 

Catherine: This sequence is so well shot, with a tracking shot following them through the hallways. It was one of my favorite parts of the episode and really compounded the hopelessness that everyone was feeling being overrun by wights. There’s just nowhere to escape to. They are everywhere. 

Diva: It was a little on the nose to have Beric die in a Jesus-on-the-cross pose, but agreed re: the compounding hopelessness. 

Mari: In the shadows, Creepy Red is creeping, and tells Arya that the Lord of Light brought Beric back for a purpose and that purpose is now complete. Arya recognizes Melisandre and repeats her prophetic words from season ago– Arya would shut many eyes forever, brown eyes, green eyes… pregnant pause… and blue eyes. Arya hears the wights snarling at the door. Melisandre asks what they say to the god of death. “Not today.” Arya looks back at Melisandre again, understanding passing between then, and then runs off. 

Godswood. The wights have reached them. The Iron Born light their arrows and get ready to fight. 

Zombie Viserion blasts the walls of Winterfell, but Jon is there to intercept. Listen, I can barely describe properly lit people fights, so I don’t have much detail for you here. The Dragons scratch and grab at each other. It’s hard to tell who has the upper hand. Jon yells, “get off!” at one point, and I honestly wonder who he’s talking to. I mean, I take that back. I remember fighting with my sisters and being like “get off me!” for all the good it did, so fine, Jon. Fine. Dany swoops in to help Jon and her attack causes the Night King to fall off Zombie Viserion and fall rather beautifully and very dramatically to the ground below. 

Diva: I don’t know if it was the CGI, the poor lighting, or my general lack of caring about Jon and Dany, but I checked out during almost every scene with the dragons. Aside from that one shot of them in the moonlight, they just took me out of the action and confused me as to where the fuck everybody was. And not in a “fog of war” kind of way, just in a “I’m no longer engaged in this scene” kind of way.

Mari: All the dragon stuff has been underwhelming to me this season so far. I’d take an awkward direwolf any day.

Rhagel is hurt enough that he crash lands, also causing Jon to fall off, but he’s not the magical leader of an undead army, so his crash is ugly.

The courtyard fighting goes on and on. Jorah hears the dragon screeching, and his Dany sense must be tingling, because he heads toward it. 

Dany sees the Night King just standing where he landed, pretty unfazed by the fall. She commands Drogon to dracarys, but all the dracarys in the world can’t burn this Night King. He just smiles up at Dany. He throws a spear at her, but she dodges in time. 

Jon has seen all of this happen, so he thinks it’s down to him. He pulls his sword and runs after the Night King, who is calmly walking through all the carnage on the battlefield. It’s a hell of a lot of carnage. The Night King hears Jon, because he isn’t being particularly subtle about his plan of just… charging at the Night King (?). (C: Classic Jon.) (D: I fucking can’t with him.) The Night King turns toward Jon and starts to work his magic, causing all of the lost Winterfell soldiers to become his second contingent. Jon tries to run fast enough to reach the Night King before the army is risen, but he doesn’t make it. Inside the castle, those remaining alive watch as the fallen start waking up. We watch Lyanna, Definitely (un)Dead and the head Dothraki dude reanimate. It’s absolutely gutting. There are even more now, and they’ve been fighting all this time. 

The Night King leaves Jon to face all of the undead. (D: SUPER GREAT PLAN, JON.)The White Walkers walk into the castle. 

Crypts of Safety. Gilly is the first to see a dead Stark bust their way out of their coffin. It takes them all a minute to process wtf is going on, because this box of dead people was supposed to be the safest place, but then the screams and running begin as we watch a few people being dragged away by Stark Wights. 

Diva: I was hyped for Zombie Starks, but this was more like, “oh, I guess there’s more zombies” rather than anyone actually grappling with the fact that their family members were rising from the dead. Kind of disappointing, as far as Zombie Starks go. 

Mari: They probably should’ve cooled it with all the reminders the crypts were safe, too. 

The Iron Born continue to fight.

Jon is doing his best, but soon gets an assist from Dany who blasts the wights away with dragon fire. She lands next to him. Jon yells, “Bran!” and Dany tells him to go. Dany is watching him run, so she doesn’t see that there are wights behind her. They jump on Drogon and start stabbing him repeatedly. Drogon thrashes around, and tries to shake them off, unfortunately also knocking Dany down. Drogon flies off and some wights fall as he does, but things aren’t looking good for him. Things are fine for the wights who land, crack bones back into place, and stand. Things are not looking good for Dany, who finds herself dragonless in a field of wights. But who should come to her rescue? Jorah Mormont. He knew his Dany sense was tingling. 

Jon fights his way through the courtyard. Tt is literally raining wights, presumably still off the battlements, as he runs in. Jesus. The show gives us a little roll call so we know who is alive. Sam is in a pile of wights, fighting them from the ground. It’s so Sam, I love it. Grey Worm is using his spear to just blast through wights. Brienne is up against a wall, slashing wights as the keep on toward her. Jon fights down a long hallway as wights crash through the roof. He closes a gate behind him to keep them locked in. 

Catherine: Jon having to run by Sam and not help him was heartbreaking. You could see in his face that he wanted to but if he stopped he’d get overrun, and he had to get to Bran. Again, this scene really brought home the hopelessness of the battle for me. 

Diva: Same, since they literally showed all of our heroes facing truly insurmountable circumstances that they had absolutely no way out of. I’ll…. come back to this point.

Mari: The Iron Born are starting to falter. Theon uses his last arrow and picks up a dropped weapon to start hacking at the wights that way. 

Dany also picks up a fallen weapon, and we pull up out of the shot so we can see a rush of wights head for Jorah and Dany. 

The Crypts have become an open slaughter. Sansa and Tyrion are hiding behind a stone coffin, listening to the screams. Sansa is breathing deeply. With a shaking hand, she shows Tyrion the dragonglass she’s grasping. The music tinkles at us softly, starting “The Night King” by Ramin Djawadi, a haunting and beautiful song I cannot say enough about, but I’ll contain myself. The two of them try to gather their courage, exchanging another look that deserves an Emmy all by itself. Tyrion grabs Sansa’s hand and kisses it. He smiles at her sadly, quickly, takes one final steadying breath, and makes a motion to head out toward the wights. 

Diva: Emmys to everybody in this brief, heartbreaking moment, but especially to Ramin Djawadi, the honest-to-gods heart and soul of this entire show.

Mari: Amen.

We only get the hint of Tyrion heading for the fight, though, because we cut to Jon, the slow start of “The Night King” still playing and the others sounds muted as we see Zombie Viserion land and start blasting people with his fire ice. Jon takes cover. Jorah and Dany fight on, though it looks like Jorah’s been hurt. We seen a number of bodies fall in the crypts, but it’s hard to tell if they are wights or people. Tyrion and Sansa find Varys and other survivors, hiding in a dark corner of the crypts. Tyrion looks at them and them back out into the melee. 

Jon is doing his best to get to the Godswood, but Zombie Viserion is parked there, guarding the entrance with his icy fire blasts. Jon can’t get close. 

Theon fights on. Bran is doing raven things with his friends. (D: Seriously, wtf was Bran doing?)

The Night King and the White Walkers reach the Godswood. 

Jorah is still fighting, but he’s down. He’s very hurt. 

Jaime, Pod and Brienne are still up against a wall, clearly exhausted as it’s all they can do to keep hacking. 

Sam is on the floor, crying. 

Theon is getting after it, the last man standing, but even for all that, he’s surrounded by new wights who have accompanied the Night King here. Bran de-wargs with perfect timing, suggesting maybe he was was just watching the Night King?

Bran calls to Theon: “You’re a good man. Thank you.“

  

  

Theon cries and faces the Night King again. Taking a page from Jon’s book of battle strategy, Theon just charges at the Night King with his spear. To be fair, it’s a suicide mission either way because it’s one Theon against one Night King, his whole executive team and a nice gathering of wights. The Night King easily dodges Theon and stabs him in return. 

My journey with Theon has been wild. We’ve talked about him a lot in terms of making up for what he did to the Starks, hating him so deeply then and then watching him be utterly broken by Ramsay. Bran has told Jaime and Theon both that the bad things they’ve done changed them and put them on a course that specifically led them here. Lots has been said about the kind of payoff this episode provides and the varying reactions I’ve seen seem to mostly come from this place– how satisfying it was to watch some of these pieces come together. What I’ll say is that I couldn’t stop feeling the weight of how many things had to come together for this moment to even happen. A cocky Theon in season one, displaced from his home and never feeling fully adopted went through a hell of a lot– some of his own doing, some not– to be here in this Godswood. And Alfie Allen gave one of the best performance of the entire series.

Diva: Theon got what he wanted – to die as Theon, not as Reek, in service to Winterfell, to defend the Starks. That’s about as happy an ending as Theon Greyjoy was ever going to get.

Mari: Jon tries to get past the dragon again, but it’s no use. 

We watch as Jorah gets stabbed in the chest, kills two more wights, and then stands shakily to continue fighting. 

The Night King does his slow motion walk toward Bran. 

Jon is hiding behind some rubble, but in a final burst of energy and courage, he stands and yells. 

The Night King reaches for his sword, but from just behind him, we see Arya, jumping with her Valyrian steel dagger. The Night King turns and grabs her by the neck before she reaches him. In a flash, I was surprised to see her, and then dreading her death and failure. As the Night King holds her by the neck, Arya drops the knife from her left hand… but catches it in her right, stabbing the Night King in the torso. He explode into shards of ice. Arya gasps for breath. She did it, though. Arya Stark of Winterfell fucking did it. 

Catherine: I cannot explain to you the noise that I made while watching this. That moment where the Night King grabs Arya by the throat and you know it would take less than a flick of his wrist for her to die. She literally has SECONDS to act, and she does. I was screaming. I woke up everyone in my house. Arya. Motherfucking. Stark. 

Diva: I can’t explain the noises I made either, but I can explain the ones my neighbors made when they started watching the episode at 10:30 and didn’t stop screaming the entire time.

Mari: Sounds about right.

The White Walkers explode. 

Zombie Viserion dies, again. 

Throughout the castle we watch as the wights drop. Outside the castle, we see how many more were still trying to get in, but they all drop as well. 

Jorah also drops, all the strength and fight gone out of him. “I’m hurt,” he whispers. 

It’s quiet in the crypts again, though not everyone survived. 

Arya turns to Bran. Bran… stares at her blankly. (D: Classic Bran.)

Dany sobs over Jorah. We see him moving slightly, but then he goes completely still. As she sobs, one of the dragons lands next to her and lays down. Jorah is another character I had complicated feelings, but dying for the woman he loved was also exactly the end I imagined for Jorah.

The Hound and Melisandre walk out of the castle. Melisandre walks past him, dropping her cape and making her way out into the snow past the bodies of the wights. Davos is there, watching her. She grabs her necklace and also drops it on the ground. We watch her hair go gray and her body go frail. She dies. 

And that’s the end of the episode.

My timeline was pretty split, but I’m prepared to say that I liked this. I really, really did. It was everything it promised to be– an epic, drawn out battle that felt pretty hopeless 99% of the time. I came in with all of my own expectations: Winterfell would fall, some of my favorites would die, there would be a round 2 showdown with the Night King at some point. None of those things were true, but not in a bad way for me. It seemed like a lot of people were let down by their own expectations. (D: It me.)

There are valid criticisms, of course. We mentioned the Dothraki. We also mentioned some of the questionable battle strategies, but that wasn’t something that was ever going to be a total break it for me. Watching this entire show has been in experience in shrugging off some of the battle logic in order to enjoy. 

It’s hard to make further pronouncements because I very much feel like we are still in the middle of the thing, not the end of it. I mean, if we learn nothing further about the Night King and his agenda to kill everyone, I’m personally a-okay. I suspect, though, that there might be fallout that informs a little more of what we saw here. 

Catherine: Personally, I loved it although I’m aware that I might be biased because I’m a huge Arya stan, and she did a thing that was cool. A lot of people were upset that after like, four seasons of facing off with the Night King (and those sexy, sexy stare downs they shared) Jon didn’t get to kill him. Which I think is fair. I can see that being a disappointment for those that were more keen for the episode to live up to their expectations than surprise them.  To me, even reading this recap it seems obvious that Jon could never have gotten close enough to kill the Night King because he was expecting that fight. The Night King had literally never seen Arya before, had no idea what her deal was and assumed that he could crush her like a bug, therefore his sense of smug self-satisfaction when he had her by the throat gave her that extra second she needed to catch the knife. Would he have given Jon that same second? I say no, but it’s tough to say. 

Either way everyone has to admit that it was an unexpected ending. 

Diva: Sorry to be That Girl, but I’m disappointed. There were strong individual moments,  though I spent a full twenty minutes of this episode struggling to see anything or understand any part of the battle. I have no problem with Arya being the one to kill the Night King – it at least partially works within the show’s logic. And obviously I am always rooting for Arya to fuck Gendry and slay the apocalypse within the span of a few hours, as only Arya can do.

My problem is with where the hell we go from here. And what this show is about. By far the worst part of S08 E01 was the brief time we spent in King’s Landing. Because Cersei stopped being interesting somewhere around the time she blew up Baelor’s Sept. She has nothing left but a super uncomfortable chair. I don’t care about what happens to her anymore; I can’t, because the show has spent eight seasons TELLING me that all these petty squabbles were minuscule in comparison to the Real Threat, that the War of the Five Kings was just a distraction from the Great War.

And for a show that brags nonstop about its willingness to kill its darlings… I mean, I’m not saying Sansa should have died or anything, or that I didn’t cry when Lyanna fought a LITERAL ZOMBIE GIANT – I am human, after all. But it doesn’t make sense for Grey Worm to have survived the front lines, for Podrick and Gendry to have fought off the zombies they were basically drowning under, for Gilly to have made it out of the crypts alive, for almost every single person at this entire fucking battle to die except the dozen people we like most, especially after we spent 60 minutes last week with all of them saying their goodbyes. This was a Jeffpocalypse, but it didn’t do the damage the show has been building up to for years. The Literal Leader of Death, Darkness, and Destruction can’t even kill as many important characters as fuckin’ Walder Frey and Roose Bolton at a wedding reception? 

And I have to have motherfucking Arbor Day Sale Pacey on my screen next week. I might be more angry about that than anything else.

Mari: I’m not sad my favorites are dead, though. I mean, I get what you are saying, but I’m not sad. The only thing left to do is to wait to see where we do go from here. 

As always, here are some other reactions to this episode! If you’d like to join in the conversation, tweet us your thoughts with the hashtag #gameofsnark and we’ll pick our favorites to include in the recap:

Next time on Game of Thrones: Night King down, Cersei to go in S08 E04. 

 

Marines (all posts)

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.





Catherine (all posts)

I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.





DemocracyDiva (all posts)

I'm a J.D. by day/blogger by night who directs her snark and judgment primarily towards celebrities and their many red carpet mishaps. Blogging from the style capital of the world (just kidding - I live in DC), I rant and rave over the best and worst in fashion and pop culture.





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Marines

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.