“The Long Night” is the biggest, baddest battle sequence ever put on TV and yet it might be one of the least satisfying of the many Thrones has delivered. It was a perfect storm of factors: a silent, implacable, and one-dimensional villain, the plot armor that kept so many major characters alive to the end, or the dark and occasionally incoherent cinematography.
Despite this being the show’s literal and figurative “darkest hour,” I never really feared for many of the characters’ lives. The great moments were disconnected and, unlike last week, only rarely played into each other in interesting or subtextual ways.
It was more “Here’s a shot of this guy swinging a sword, then this guy, oh no [INSERT CHARACTER HERE] got trapped in a pile on, oh no s/he’s surrounded, the wights will rip them to shreds! Nope just kidding, s/he’s fine, back to sword swinging.”
Rinse. Repeat.
That said, my favorite moments: Arya killing the Night King was cool by virtue of being unexpected. The Dothraki charge with flaming arakhs was filmed really well. The shot of the wight horde as a wave then ant-piling up Winterfell’s walls World War Z-style was awesome. As far as deaths go, Lyanna Mormont’s and Theon’s got to me, with the former being particularly cool and the latter more subtly powerful*.
*Though it could have been better, imo. First of all, we didn’t need the umpteenth “I’m sorry ” from him. Second, did his death really need to happen? Did Omniscient Robot Bran know he was sending him to a meaningless death because he’d foreseen Arya was gonna fuck shit up moments later? If so, that’s cold, Bran).
I enjoyed the tonal shift midway through from expansive battle to claustrophobic horror. Arya’s storyline in particular went full stealth mission in the style of The Last of Us even if it didn’t make sense why it was so quiet in those sequences.
As far as ranking Thrones battle episodes, this one enters at the bottom, grouped with “The Watchers on the Wall” and “Battle of the Bastards” (my least favorite, dear lord, someone save Jon’s armies from him). “Blackwater” remains the undisputed champion and I also enjoy “Hardhome” and “The Spoils of War.”
The Essosi had a rough night. The Dothraki were wiped out (which is one way of circumventing culture clashes, I guess) while Jon and Dany fuck off on their dragons mostly (cool shots tho).
Followers of the Lord of Light Melisandre and Beric bit the dust, the former literally so. I predicted prior to the episode Arya would die only to be brought back by Beric as justification for his repeated resurrections (an echo of the fate that I think awaits Lady Stoneheart in the books). We got a version of that when he sacrificed himself so she and the Hound can escape.
Therein lies a problem: fans of GRRM’s books spend years, decades even, delving into his text for new clues, symbols, interpretations, and extrapolations and to this day it still continues. The show has taken the fandom to hitherto undreamed of levels, but the core has been there since the late 90s/early 00s. The show meanwhile, feels as shallow as a kiddie pool.
Why do the White Walkers like spirals? Because they’re real emo about their creators, the Children of the Forest. That’s it. How do we stop the ice demons and their hordes of undead? We kill their leader. That’s it. The moments that work echo larger themes or character arcs.
The reason the Lyanna and Arya stuff worked was because both faced opponents designed to test their established fortitude. Thus, the smallest warrior took down the biggest wight and the water dancer got to meet Death and tell him “Not today.” On the flip side, characters such as Jorah, and Edd have had nothing but the same shit to do for a few seasons now. Consequently, their deaths feel perfunctory.
Speaking of lack of depth, I need to say something brave, something controversial, something that apparently occurred to no one at Winterfell: hiding in crypts when a necromancer is on the way is a BAD IDEA.
Where is the agency of the characters in the crypts? This was always going to be an issue with confronting such a monolithic force. So many characters get left with naught to do but sit around. Tyrion got a nice moment with Sansa, but that’s more to do with Peter “The Dink” Dinklage than the writing being great. At least Varys got another line.
The only way the typical Deus Ex Machina ending works for me is a thematic framework where the White Walkers are basically bad weather incarnate, a personified wintry storm of zombies (literalized by their wave-like charge) so the storm breaking suddenly and dawn rising served its metaphorical if not consistent purpose.
The Great War is over. One battle. A lot of World War I victims and veterans are rolling in their graves.
Now that we’ve defeated the ice demon king, our final opponents are Mad Queen Cersei, her pirate boyfriend Euron, her Mengele-adjacent Qyburn and his zombified knights, plus the Golden Company sans elephants. Episode 5 is shaping up to be this confrontation.
Please, for the love of all that is good, let there be something more to the coming southern conflict than convenient resolution. There’s a chance that this conflict will fulfill what this one lacked: a compelling antagonist, unpredictability of behavior, truly tragic consequence, genuine surprises etc. I even have ideas!
There’s only three episodes left before the Thrones‘ globe stops spinning. The predictability of “The Long Night” isn’t encouraging.
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