The Night King has "a target he wants to kill...You will find out who that is"

We first met the Night King in Game of Thrones season 4, when he turned one of Craster’s sons into a little baby White Walker. There, he was played by actor Richard Brake. Brake reprised the role in season 5’s “Hardhome,” where he added thousands of wildlings to the army of the dead as Jon Snow looked on. It’s probably the most iconic moment we’ve gotten from the Night King thus far.

Good stuff.

For whatever reason, Brake stopped playing the Night King after season 5. He was replaced by Vladimir Furdik, a stuntman who doubled for Arthur Dayne in that terrific Tower of Joy scene fight scene. “When we did season 5, I was the White Walker who fought Jon Snow [in “Hardhome”] — the first time Jon Snow killed a White Walker, that was me,” Furdik tells Entertainment Weekly. “After that, [showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss] asked if I’d play the Night King for seasons 6 through 8. I never asked why. Maybe they were happy with what I did in season 5.”

Jon killing the White Walker at Hardhome was another iconic moment. That episode just had it going on, didn’t it?

“Every director has a different vision of how to play him,” Furdik said. “Dan and David want him to be like a cold man, some of the directors want to show that there’s some human in him. Yes, many times they ask me don’t try to blink your eyes. This is very difficult.”

Furdik also played the Night King as a human man in the season 6 episode “The Door,” where we see the Children of the Forest create him by shoving a piece of Dragonglass into his chest. “Somebody made him the Night King,” Furdik said. “Nobody knows who he was before — a soldier or part of [nobility]. He never wanted to be the Night King.”

"I think he wants revenge. Everybody in this story has two sides — a bad side and a good side. The Night King only has one side, a bad side."

It sounds like not even Furdik knows the full extent of the Night King’s motivation, or maybe he does and is making like a Game of Thrones cast member and not telling us the whole truth. He did say this, though:

"People will see he has a target he wants to kill, and you will find out who that is. There’s also that moment [in “Hardhome”] when Jon Snow was on the boat and the Night King looked at him and raised his arms — there’s a similar and even stronger moment between Jon and the Night King this time."

Sign me up.