Game of Thones: The Short End of the Long Night
By Cory Thone
Criticism 5: What does Bran do?
As I said in the section about character deaths, it’s not fair to fully judge Bran Stark’s character and abilities until his arc has ended. However, it sure did seem like he didn’t do a damn thing in this episode except warg into some ravens.
We are all hopeful that we’ll get to see just how much work Bran put into the plot to kill the Night King in the next episode, or maybe at some point in the final season. Lots of little things had to happen for us to get there. Obviously, Bran giving Arya the dagger she used to kill the Night King was part of his plan, but was there more?
Maybe we’ll get to find out what else Bran set up in the next episode. But until there, this criticism has legs.
Verdict: Fair, but there’s still more story to tell
Criticism 6: The Night King was an over hyped threat
I can understand why, at face value, one might see this episode as resolving the threat of the Night King in too quick of fashion. It really was just a one-episode battle that ended with humans defeating the centuries-old threat.
But let’s not forget that his army of 100,000 wights were once living people that the Night King killed and turned into his army. Let’s not forget about the many lives that were lost in the Battle of Winterfell alone. The repercussions of this battle will be felt for a long time, even though people outside of the North might not ever fully grasp just how severe the threat was.
What the armies of the North did by defeating the Night King and his minions was huge, even if the fight itself went down in the space of an episode.
Verdict: Short-sighted but understandable. The army of the dead was a huge threat, but a one-episode battle did feel a little rushed, even if the episode was super-sized.
When it’s all said and done, “The Long Night” was the culmination of eight seasons of storytelling. And while fans can be upset that the Night King died sooner than they wanted, it honestly couldn’t have gone on any longer, practically or thematically.
Practically, they filmed this huge battle scene and it’s going to have to end with something big. This is what they went with.
Thematically, you don’t have “the longest battle scene ever filmed” and not have it end in a huge moment like the one we got here. Winter fell at Winterfell, and the Starks were responsible.
The only people who really weren’t ready were the Dothraki. Oof.
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