Game of Thrones fans, have you ever wondered about the Night King? We know he’s bad, but why does he do what he does? What’s his goal? The character isn’t in the novels, so if there’s anyone who would know, it’s Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. The two talked about the show’s shadowy antagonist with Entertainment Weekly.
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We first met the Night King back in the fourth season, when he brought one of Craster’s sons to a mysterious alter in the far north. Since then, he’s been a force to be reckoned with. His chilling (ha!) presence went the ultimate distance in season 7 when he killed one of Daenerys’ dragons and turned it into an undead slave. And then, of course, there’s the whole destroying the Wall thing.
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If you recall, in season 6, we learned about how the Children of the Forest created the Night King by piercing him with a shard of dragonglass. Weiss explained why getting the history of the Night King was important for the series:
"It was almost logical as you went back in time, as you create the prehistory for all this. We’ve seen what the White Walkers do, we’ve seen how they perpetuate themselves and created the wights. If you’re going backwards, well, they made these things … so what made them? We always liked the implication that they weren’t some kind of cosmic evil that had been around since the beginning to time but that the White Walkers had a history — that something that seems legendary and mythological and permanent wasn’t. They had a historical cause that was comprehensible like the way the wars on screen we’re seeing unfold are comprehensible. They’re the result of people, or beings, with motivations we can understand."
A motivation we can understand, huh? Well, we understood why the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers — to defeat the First Men, who were then invading their lands — but what’s driving the White Walkers now? Does he want the Throne? Something else? According to Benioff, we’re looking at something more elemental:
"I don’t think of him as evil, I think of him as Death. And that’s what he wants — for all of us. It’s why he was created and that’s what he’s after."
Great, well, have fun bargaining with that, Tyrion.
Finally, there’s the question of why the Night King doesn’t speak. “What’s he going to say?” Benioff asked. “Anything the Night King says diminishes him.”
So that’s a no on a Night King soliloquy in season 8. I’ll cross it off the wish list.
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