The Long Night

So, let's talk about the latest Game of Thrones episode. Judging by the way the online community has protected Avengers: Endgame spoilers (like Fort Knox gold or something) vs. Game of Thrones spoilers (spraying them all over like weed control on a suburban lawn), I'm just going to dive right in and talk about it all.

Most of the complaints I've seen about the episode seem to fall into two camps. One is people who had a bad picture, either because their streaming service couldn't handle the load of everyone wanting to watch all at once or because their televisions were calibrated well for the darkness permeating the episode. There's an interesting question in there, about whether the creators should have thought more about how their creation would be delivered, or whether it's better to totally ignore such matters. But it's not a question I feel much like delving into here.

The other criticisms mostly come from people who note that this is all unfolding in a way that surely will be nothing like the books. Yeah, duh. I mean, there's no Night King in the books, for one. But more to the point, there have been enough adjustments and outright departures from George R.R. Martin's narrative over the seasons that of course, we should all assume we're not watching the ending he would have written. But then... he could write that ending any time he likes. That's on him. I truly in my heart don't believe he ever will. I think back to the day a decade ago when I heard HBO had bought the rights to these books. I thought to myself, "I hope the show catches on, because then we'll actually get an ending." Even back then, I was doubtful Martin would ever finish his series on his own. (And that was even before the eight-years-and-counting wait for The Winds of Winter began.) So basically, I'm setting aside the matter of how this season comports with a book that may never be written. I'm judging whether the show is making the right moves for itself, and presenting things well.

Mostly, I think it did. By and large, I thought it did a great job of delivering an extended and complicated battle sequence -- better, in fact, than Avengers: Endgame did with its big battle. I found Endgame to get confusing and too chaotic in moments of the big showdown. But the action in this episode of Game of Thrones (assuming you got to see it properly, anyway) was always clear and specific.

At the script level, this was accomplished by carefully dividing up the battle just as you would any other more dialogue driven story. There were stages of the battle: outside the wall, the storming of the wall, and inside the keep. Characters were given not just little moments to shine, they were given entire story lines within the whole -- stories which allowed the action to ebb and flow. There were loud and brash stories, like Lyanna's confrontation with the giant and Beric Dondarrion's sacrifice. There were quiet and tense stories, like those with the group hiding in the crypt, and Arya's "stealth video game" sequence against dozens of wights.

At the production level, clarity was achieved through the careful directing, photography, and editing. Cutting was only rapid and frenetic when a sense of confusion was intentional. Otherwise, the camera often lingered on action for a long time, allowing us to understand who things were happening to and where they were. (It helps when you have a cast who can handle this kind of fight choreography, that you don't have to edit around rapidly to make look good.)

And yet, while this episode was certainly stronger than 80 minutes of pure action might have been, there were a few aspects of it that didn't completely work for me. One was the odd use of Bran throughout. What exactly was he doing? Was there no useful application for his warging abilities? He wasn't gathering intelligence, since he never "reported back." Perhaps we were meant to interpret that he was gathering footage for historical documentation, in his role as the Three-Eyed Raven... but we were shown pretty explicitly that once the bad weather rolled in, he couldn't actually see a damn thing. 

A bigger issue for me was the low body count, anonymous fodder notwithstanding. Now, I have been thinking of the season, the ending, as a whole: I'll bet not as many people are going to die as many might think. And I suppose I should heed my own advice there. And yet, the White Walkers have been set up from the very first scene of the very first episode as The Threat to End All Threats. Impossible. Terrifying. I feel like the price extracted to finally defeat them, once and for all, should have been higher than it was.

I cannot quibble, though, with how the Night King was ultimately taken down. Giving the kill to Arya, a kill more important than any on her list, seemed the perfect culmination to her long journey throughout the series. (And having Jon pinned down in that moment, in a desperate situation after a half-baked plan didn't go as imagined? Also very on brand.) Nice moments too for Theon (who completed the big redemptive arc), Jorah (who loved Daenerys unconditionally to the bitter end), and Melisandre (who discharged her final duty, sacrificing her own life as willingly as she'd sacrificed many others before). I suppose if the deaths of this episode were to be surprisingly limited, at least the ones depicted were chosen for good effect.

But I actually preferred the two "build-up" episodes before this to the battle itself. Overall, I'd give "The Long Night" a B+. It shouldn't be possible that 80 minutes of action and "huh, that's it?" both seem like accurate ways of describing the episode... yet, there it is. But of course, the deeper struggles of this story have always been between the characters, and we still have some very important beats left to play.