Small Council: What did we think of “The Long Night”?

The latest episode of Game of Thrones made lots of waves. What did we think of “The Long Night”? The Small Council is in session!

DAN: I can’t decide what was more interesting: this episode of Game of Thrones or the discussion around it. Certainly, the episode swung for the fences, with waves of zombies crashing over the walls of Winterfell, dragon-on-dragon dogfights, character deaths (although not enough, in my opinion), and the removal of the series’ most inscrutable villain earlier in the game than I think a lot of fans were expecting.

To me, the episode succeeds or fails on the strength of that last moment, and I think the show nailed it. Game of Thrones has built a reputation on subverting our expectations, and Arya stabbing the King of Winter in the godswood is very much in keeping with that. It does what a good twist is supposed to do: it surprises you, but when you look back, it all adds up, and it’s hard to imagine it going down any other way. That was a masterstroke.

I also think it opens the show up to a richer, knottier endgame than I was expecting. Like a lot of fans, I figured the living would lose the Battle of Winterfell, retreat south and take their chances with Cersei Lannister. I was genuinely surprised when the show swerved left, and delighted when I realized it meant we can get back to the scheming and plotting. Don’t get me wrong — I love a good undead army as much as the next guy, and I very much enjoyed the spectacle of the battle — but to me that was never the heart of this story.

But I know not everybody feels that way, and that there were many who took issue with this episode for one reason or another. Without getting into the details (y’all are more than welcome to do that), I think some of the backlash comes down to how you view the show: Is Game of Thrones a fantasy story with the trappings of a political drama, or the other way around? I’ve always preferred the latter formulation, and this twist pleased me big time.

I have thoughts about other parts of the episode, but I think I’ll leave it there. I’m very curious to hear what you all think.

SARAH: I hardly know where to begin with this episode. It was a strange one. The pacing was off in parts and the cinematographers certainly could have been more considerate of viewers with visual impairments, but I liked it all the same. I liked it even more on the second viewing. I loved it by the third.

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the number of named character deaths in this episode, with the general consensus being that not enough people died. I have no such complaints to offer. The death toll in this episode was always going to be a difficult balance to strike. The living were completely outnumbered by an army of supernatural zombies so too low a body count would, in a sense, be quite patronizing to the audience. The show asks us suspend our disbelief when we see dragons, wights, and omnipresent gods asserting their power, and that’s fine, as long as the resulting devastation seems like a realistic outcome of such chaos. It would be impossible to buy a battle of this scale if too many people escaped unscathed.

That said, this episode is but one cog in a larger machine, and the majority of the characters we know will have significant roles to play in the next three episodes. How many of them can we sacrifice before it begins to impact the quality of the larger story? Plot armor may be irritating to some, but it exists because there is a plot that needs to be served. We lost Edd, Lyanna, Beric, Jorah, Theon and Melisandre in this episode. Each death served a different narrative and each death was hugely meaningful in some way, not just to the audience, but to a number of characters who will undoubtedly be pained and altered by the losses they have suffered. Six deaths is a lot for one episode. Any more and it starts to mean less and less that anyone died at all, because the episode would not have had time to let us process and grieve those losses. I felt each and every one of those six deaths, and I’m glad I did. All six of those characters were deserving of my time. If you want to watch senseless carnage in your downtime, I hear AMC has just the show for you.

Screw the Night King, though. I could not give less of a shit about that dude. Basic bitch. Brought down by his own arrogance and an ambidextrous beauty.

I wanted Arya to kill the Night King. I had expected it. I had theorized, right down to the precise placement of her dagger, that his death would go down in exactly the way it did. I will never back down in my assertion that the only satisfying ending to Arya’s arc will be an ending in which she sets aside her kill list and ends her servitude to her god of Death, because I love Arya Stark with all my heart, and I want her to get her happy ending. It felt inevitable to me that she would need to kill the embodiment of death to free herself from his employ, that she would say, “not today” to death, finally, and put an end to it all. And though I think she will be torn between finishing her list or rediscovering her identity in the latter half of the season, I also feel quite confident that she will ultimately set her vengeance aside.

Arya benefited greatly from the best writing of the episode, as well as a cohesive, self-contained story that deconstructed her cool exterior and allowed us to reconnect with a humanity she has never quite been able to shake. She began the battle with confidence, laying wights down flat while an astonished Davos silently yass queened in her direction. One injury later, when faced with a room of staggering nightmare creatures, fear tore strips from the cold assurance she has tried to hard to feign for so many years. When she stuck her blade through the throat of an emaciated wight and laid her gently down on the floor, there was a kind of apology in the way she cradled the girl, a soft hint of compassion that feels especially poignant when one considers that they both are women from whom Death has taken far too much. She hated Beric for what he did to Gendry, yet she fought frantically to save his life and watched in genuine anguish when he passed away. On top of all of this, she learned that she was some sort of prophesied heroine and had not a second to consider how much of her life had even been her own — who knows for how long there have been cosmic machinations in place to ensure that Arya was equipped and ready to end the Night King’s reign, and how does one even begin to process what that means? — before she raced off to get the job done. There is so much richness in a revelation like that, and I am truly excited to see how this is going to change her moving forwards.

For all that we saw of her extensive assassin training and how wonderfully it served her in a practical sense, I am truly glad that Arya was not No One at any point in this episode. She was Arya Stark at her most humane and raw. She screamed when she took out the Night King, the way the real Arya would. It felt like she was reclaiming herself. It was beautiful.

ARIBA: “The Long Night” has sparked a ton of discussion and debate. Between the frustration over the lighting, Arya being the one to kill the Night King, and disappointment that certain theories didn’t come to fruition, fans had a lot to say. I, for one, was very content with the episode. Sure, I had a couple of things I wished would have gone differently, but overall it was pretty darn intense.

Before I get into all the things I loved, I just want to point out that the one thing that did disappoint me was the crypts. The promos, the intro, and the fact that “the crypts are the safest” was mentioned five times in Episode 2 led me to believe that the crypts would play a significant role in this battle. The Night King has the ability to make the dead rise and given that the crypts are a burial ground for deceased Starks, I was almost certain we’d see a familiar face. The return of Ned Stark holding his head or even a surprise Lady Stoneheart appearance would have been divine. The whole scene felt anti-climactic to me, especially given how much focus the location had over the past few weeks.

But that’s about it for my complaints about “The Long Night.” I know darkness was an issue for many, but luckily I didn’t have that problem and appreciated the artistry of the lighting. But I absolutely sympathize with those who couldn’t see it! For a battle so epic, it’s unfortunate that not everyone could enjoy it on the same level across the board.

Of course, my favorite part was Arya killing the Night King. I can’t think of a better person to do the job. Arya has literally been preparing for this since day one. Arya can lurk around without being heard, make surgical strikes with pinpoint precision, and to small and light enough to dash by her enemies, her feet muffled in snow, to land the killing blow before anyone realizes what’s happened. Having Arya deliver the final blow was oh so satisfying.

As we move ahead to the final three episodes, I (along with everyone else) would really like to know what the heck Bran has been doing all this time. He’s arguably the most important character on the series, even if he hasn’t seemed like it. There are so many subtle moments in the episode where I couldn’t help but wonder: does this mean something? Whether it was the curious glance he and the Night King shared, or the odd looks he and Tyrion keep giving each other, I have to know what’s happening here, because whatever it is, it’s something big. I just know it.

Also, what does everyone think about the idea of Jon yelling “Go!” while screaming at Viserion? I’ve rewatched that scene like 20 times now and I’m convinced that he is yelling “Go!” as a way to distract the dragon so Arya can slip into the godswood. Then again, he could have just been yelling out of frustration. Either way, I like thinking it could have given Arya the opening she needed.

SEBASTIAN: I went into this one not expecting too much. I don’t hate the more recent seasons of Game of Thrones, but I am also not going to lie: The passion I used to feel for it has cooled down substantially over the years. That said, I was pretty happy with the setup for “The Long Night.” Nearly everything I did not like about recent season had already been wrapped up, like the plot in Dorne. Other things had been pushed to the background for now, like the show’s take on Euron Greyjoy. I was waiting for this episode three with tempered anticipation.

I loved the charge of the Dothraki. I heard many people say it didn’t make much sense, but I don’t see that at all. For one thing, we need to remember that these are the Dothraki. Are you really going to tell them to hide behind walls like a coward? Tactically, I can also see how it could have made sense to use them like that. There hadn’t been enough of a precedent to conclude that such a charge wouldn’t work. We do not even know if it really didn’t work. While the Dothraki were wiped out pretty much to a man, we have no idea how many undead they eradicated.

More importantly, I loved the visual of the charge basically vanishing into darkness. The monstrous is always also the unknown. By that point I began hoping this would, against all odds, be a special episode.

When Jorah returned pretty much unharmed, that hope vanished. This is even more true with Jorah later dying anyway. This was the chance to tell the audience that the stakes are real again and that nobody is safe. Right from the beginning. I couldn’t believe how few people died, and almost all of them either tertiary, not long for this world anyway, and/or not exactly everyone’s favorite.

Looking forward, I am not as optimistic as you are, Dan. I feel like there is a huge risk of these last three episodes feeling like an epilogue, tacked on and superfluous. Is Cersei really believable as the ultimate villain? Who would fight for her now, against the saviors of humanity, against two dragons, against a king and a queen both with a better claim to the throne, alongside Euron Greyjoy, an Ironborn raider who can expect little love from greenlanders? Right now I can’t see how this will be both interesting and believable.

Oh, and there are so many questions that look like they won’t be answered with the Night King dead and everyone moving on. Let’s hope we will at least get some on Sunday.

RAZOR: Look, I’m just going to ask the hard questions that no one here is brave enough to ask: WHERE DID GHOST EVEN GO? You made sure to put him on the front lines of the Dothraki cavalry assault rather than have him guard the people in the crypts or something…but, like, why didn’t he come back?

We see him in the trailer for Episode 804, so he obviously survived. All I’m saying is it’s not too much to ask to show Ghost running back with Ser Jorah. I’m glad he had a quick moment to look cool and snarl as he charged, but I legit spent 79 minutes of that episode worried about my favorite character.

And while we’re at it, why didn’t we use two massive flying flamethrowers on the lines of the dead before the battle started? Jon knows when the Night King shows up, the cold mist cloud comes rolling in, but in the early going there was clear sky. I think maybe torching an open field would have saved the Dothraki, who were clearly so inspired by their flaming arakhs.

Finally, why aren’t enough people worried about Rhaegal? Dude took several direct hits and landed like Oceanic Flight 815. That’s a LOST joke, folks. Get in my headspace. Again, I know we saw him in the trailer for Episode 804, but come on man, even Drogon was able to shake off the thousand or so wights he had on him and still made it back in time to give Dany a hug. Is it too much to ask that we get a shot of Rhaegal limping around, trying to find Jon so he can give him a hug? IS IT? You people are monsters.

Overall, I really enjoyed the episode. 9/10. Have watched multiple times.

What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments and vote in our poll below!

Game of Thrones Episode 804 airs Sunday!

To stay up to date on everything Game of Thrones, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels