Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 3, “The Long Night”

By taking place entirely in one location and focusing on one large-scale conflict, “The Long Night,” like season two’s “Blackwater” and season four’s “The Watchers on the Wall” before it, presents some interesting storytelling challenges: how do you pace what is essentially one long battle? How do you portray its many different dimensions – its epic scope, but also its quiet, intimate moments? How do you convey the mélange of emotions its characters experience – despair, terror, defiance, grief, rage, exhaustion, triumph – and make them all contribute to the overall arc of the episode (and without making the episode seem choppy or incoherent)? “The Long Night” presents a particular challenge in that it’s 82 minutes long, essentially the length of a short feature film. However, the episode turns this long runtime into an advantage, allowing different aspects of the battle room to breathe, and creating some absolutely stunning imagery and moments of high suspense in the process, all while resolving one of the series longest-running plotlines.

The beginning of the episode is exemplary of how "The Long Night" negotiates its pacing challenges: for the first ten minutes, there’s nearly no dialogue. We simply see various characters hurry to their positions while everyone awaits the undead army, most sounds consisting of the marching of feet, the roaring of dragons, and the pulsating base of the score. The air is thick with tension, which is finally cut when Melisandre saunters in from the tundra just prior to the start of the battle, and provides the first of many wonderful images when she lights all of the Dothraki swords on fire, her spell snaking its way along their lines like a fire flowing up a river of gasoline.

It’s a wonderful moment, both narratively and stylistically, because it makes the Dothraki look even more fearsome, especially when we see them roar into battle from Jon and Dany’s viewpoint atop a hill. However, the true ingenuity of these flaming swords is that they allow us to observe the Dothraki’s fatal skirmish with the undead from the distant vantage point of others on the frontline. We watch with them as the Dothraki swords are slowly and silently extinguished. It’s one of many chilling moments where “The Long Night” uses its dark aesthetic to its advantage.

The Dothraki’s annihilation sets up another lull in the action, providing space for tension to mount once again as the other forces of the living brace for the coming onslaught. When the undead horde finally descend on their lines, we get some very interesting stylistic flourishes: lots of relatively low-level shots have them rush past, over, and around the camera, strongly emphasizing their overwhelming, swarm-like nature. Shots will feature Brienne or Tormund, for instance, standing in the middle ground while the undead rush by in both the foreground and background. This stylization also obfuscates the actual fighting, making the whole battle seem chaotic. These moments will then be complimented by grandiose, aerial shots that display the epic scope of the battle and allow us to better trace the undead’s inevitable encroachment on the positions of the living (an especially good example occurs later when the Unsullied guard the retreat into Winterfell).

Once the undead engage the main forces twenty minutes into the episode, how do you break up the battle to give it an ebb and flow? Jaime, Brienne, Tormund, Pod, and Sam will be preoccupied with this kind of fighting for the rest of the episode, so sticking with them for sixty more minutes of non-stop fighting could grow tedious. The answer: intersperse it with other characters reacting to the battle or engaging it from different vantage points.

In a stunning reversal, Jon behaves like a smart character for once when he tries to stop Daenerys from impulsively flying into the fight on the front lines, prudently reminding her that they need to save their dragons to fight the Night King and Viserion. However, the Breaker of Chains will not be deterred, and she and Jon fly into battle. What follows is more visually satisfying undead barbeque, made all the more slick for it happening at night, where the dragon fire provides the strongest illumination at any given moment. Jon and Dany’s flight will serve an important function throughout the rest of the episode, because it provides another way to control the battle’s pace: it’s a separate theater to cut to or away from at any given moment, and allow other portions of the battle to advance.

The same is true of Arya shooing Sansa into the crypt with the other non-combatants, as well as the few interludes we get with Theon and Bran in the godswood. Brief scenes with these characters will serve as breaks from the high tension of the battle, allowing us to recover before the next action sequence, and adding other emotional valences to the episode. That is, at least until the Night King turns these locations into battles as well (pardon me as I smugly bask in my predictive powers for a moment). Before that happens, however, these scenes, especially those in the crypt, provide moments of levity, like when Sansa teases Tyrion about his being the best of her spouses (nicely paving the way for a moment of sincere affection between them later when they both think they’re about to die), as well as moments that look forward to likely tension in subsequent episodes, expressed most clearly through Missandei's irritation over Sansa’s resistance to Daenerys.

The action picks up again after the living have retreated into Winterfell, and the Night King compels the wights to use their bodies to form bridges across Winterfell’s flaming barricades and scale the castle’s walls. Here, “The Long Night” borrows a page from Dunkirk, saturating the score with fast-paced ticking clock sounds to further heighten the suspense. It helps that this is the moment where the tide seems to turn against the living, with the undead beginning to overrun Winterfell’s defenses.

It’s also here that we get the long interlude of Arya playing hide and seek with some wights in the library. The episode sagged a bit here. It’s an important scene because it reminds us that Arya is not just a good fighter, but that she's also stealthy, which will become essential in the episode’s climax. However, it felt out of place in the context of the rest of the battle. The undead horde is overrunning Winterfell’s defenses on nearly every front – Jaime, Brienne, and the rest are fighting for their lives – yet the undead are also slowly creeping through the library as Arya carefully dodges them? Why are they even here in the first place? They mill about as if they’re looking for books to read. Shouldn’t they pour through the library in a swarm, like they do through the hallways at the scene’s conclusion? The whole scene is skillfully executed – a Game of Thrones version of the velociraptor kitchen scene from Jurassic Park – but its lengthiness and jarring contrast in both action and tone made it seem out of place.

Also jarring: Daenerys suddenly takes over the role of “tactically unsound leader” from Jon, making a series of foolish mistakes in this episode. In addition to impulsively flying into battle, she continues to fly around uselessly even after the Night King has created another sudden blizzard to herald his arrival (we saw him do the same in “Hardhome”), and later she makes herself an easy target for the Night King by hovering above the clouds, allowing the Night King to use the clouds for cover until the moment he strikes (Jon is guilty of this mistake as well – they could both use some aerial dogfight training). However, her most egregious mistake is landing Drogon on the battlefield and allowing a swarm of wights to climb all over him, leading to her being unseated as Drogon tries to shake them loose. Apparently, she learned nothing from having landed Drogon on the battlefield back in “The Spoils of War,” where she was almost run through by Jaime. Maybe she caught Stupid Stark Syndrome from all of her sex with Jon.

It’s toward the end of the episode that we start to see some surprises, and some answers to lingering narrative questions. Jon and Dany’s aerial battle with the Night King is suitably epic, as well as grotesque: Viserion and Rhaegal seriously wound each other, with Viserion tearing up Rhaegal’s back, and Rhaegal ripping off part of Viserion’s jaw and leaving deep puncture wounds in his neck. The latter creates a wonderful visual effect later, as every time Viserion breathes fire, blue flames shoot from the holes in his neck, making him look like a dragon hot rod.

Dany manages to unseat the Night King, and then answers the question of what dragon fire does to white walkers: nothing. In yet another chilling moment, the Night King emerges from Drogon’s flames like the he’s auditioning for the opening title sequence in Terminator 2, then displays the first emphatic emotion we’ve ever seen him register, smirking at Dany before trying to impale Drogon on an ice lance. Dany makes her first wise move of the battle and flies away before she loses a second dragon.

Another of my lingering questions from last week is answered when Rhaegal’s wounds prevent him from continuing to fight, forcing Jon to pursue the Night King on foot. Here, it seems, is how Jon will end up using both his dragon and his sword. However, before Jon can cover the ground between him and the Night King, the Night King uses his "come at me, bro" reanimation powers to draft new recruits -- the recently fallen -- into his undead army, surrounding Jon and screwing everyone else still alive and fighting.

Before she’s unseated, Dany saves Jon by blasting him a path to Winterfell, at which point we get a wonderful series of moments where he sees the other main characters battling, some desperately. Jon knows the only way he can help them is to kill the Night King, so he’s forced to rush past them, as much as it pains him to do so.

What follows next is the episode’s climax, and I loved every second of it, both for its surprises and for its execution. The sounds of the battle become distant and muted, and are replaced with a piano score that evokes the music that accompanied Cersei’s bombing of the Sept of Baelor in season six. Slow motion then drives home the desperation of most of the remaining protagonists, all of whom appear to be on the verge of defeat, all while the Night King slowly approaches Bran. The entire sequence seems to be asking, “Who can get to the Night King?” We have strong reason to believe that it will be Jon, because his entire arc on the series seems to be pointed toward him crossing swords with the Night King. Jon, however, is pinned down by Viserion in the courtyard – he can’t help.

Instead, in the first surprise of this climax, it’s Arya who leaps out of the shadows to stab at the Night King. A second surprise follows immediately: her scream gives her away, and the Night King turns around in time to stop her mid-leap. The next four seconds are pregnant with the possibility of Game of Thrones delivering one of its cruelest, bitterest murders by having the Night King kill Arya just when she was on the verge of killing him. He is interrupted, however, by surprise number three: Arya drops her Valyrian steel knife, catches it in her other hand (a move seemingly borrowed from Rey in The Last Jedi), and stabs the Night King in the abdomen, shattering him in one stroke. It's a sweet moment of victory, and it's prolonged as his death ripples out over the battlefield. The rest of his army either shatters or falls to the ground, allowing us to relish the Night King's defeat again and again.

However, this victory doesn’t come without cost. Anyone bemoaning the lack of character deaths in the previous two episodes surely must have had their bloodlust sated by “The Long Night,” which features the deaths of seven characters. Yes, all but two or three are relatively minor, but the variety in their causes and circumstances make them dramaturgically satisfying, regardless of the characters’ stature in the show.

Dolorous Edd’s death is the most offhanded: he dies defending Sam during the initial onslaught, seemingly in order to prevent it from seeming like everyone of note is invulnerable. Lyanna Mormont gets a much more grandiose sendoff, dying while reenacting David versus Goliath: the smallest soldier takes out the largest threat (other than Viserion). She allows herself to be picked up by an undead giant in order to stab him in the eye, sacrificing herself to spare everyone else. Lyanna’s death is suitably noble, one well-deserving of her bravery and tenacity.

The two remaining Lord of Light devotees, Beric and Melisandre, also perish, both seeming to have served the purpose the Lord of Light had for them. Melisandre makes this explicit, both in predicting her own death and in eulogizing Beric, who sacrifices himself to save Arya (and the Hound). Beric shrugs off dozens of seemingly fatal stab wounds and somehow manages to stay upright in the course of ushering Arya into the great hall. His death is like the Game of Thrones version of a John Woo death scene, where most bullet wounds seem a mere inconvenience until a final, fatal barrage. Beric’s resilience is fitting: given the number of times he’s already died and been resurrected, it’s as if he’s built up a resistance to it.

When Melisandre arrives near the start of “The Long Night,” Davos is the one to let her into Winterfell. My first thought was that it was so he could follow through on his promise to execute her if he ever saw her again, but she reassures him she’ll die before sunrise without his assistance. And indeed, “The Long Night” ends with Melisandre sauntering back into the pre-dawn tundra, removing her youth-preserving (or age-concealing) jeweled choker, and collapsing in a pile of rapidly emaciating flesh. It’s unclear whether she dies of her own volition, old age, or if, as she always claimed, she served the Lord of Light’s purpose and was simply no longer needed by the deity. Given all of the supernatural activities Game of Thrones attributes to the Lord of Light, I’m inclined to believe the latter, which raises the question: what, exactly, was her purpose in this final battle?

Yes, she lights the Dothraki weapons on fire, but other than providing us with some of the episode’s most spectacular visuals, it seems of little use, given how quickly the Dothraki are wiped out. Yes, she lights the barricade on fire when the living are forced back into Winterfell’s walls, but this seems only a delaying (and pacing) tactic – the undead quickly overcome this obstacle after a few breather scenes.

Her main purpose seems to have been putting herself in the right place at the right time to inspire Arya to be her badass self and save humanity by stalking and killing the Night King (signaled earlier when Melisandre gives Arya a long look just after entering Winterfell). Melisandre reminds Arya of what Arya’s fencing instructor, Syrio Forel, once told her about the proper thing to say when confronted with death: “Not today.” It’s a stirring callback to season one, but one that also draws on Arya’s rich character history in the time since, particularly the many faces through which she’s come to “know” death in training to become a Faceless Man. Still, if nudging Arya was the Lord of Light’s final purpose for Melisandre, it left me feeling a bit underwhelmed, because it seems like something anyone could have done. Moreover, it certainly doesn’t justify all of the horrific things Melisandre did in the name of contributing to this battle.

Theon and Jorah are the two major characters to die in “The Long Night.” Theon’s extremely predictable death completes his redemption arc, and prior to dying, his valiant defense of Bran stokes the smoldering embers of Bran’s lingering humanity: Bran thanks him and calls him a good man. This praise might not seem like much, but it’s exactly what Theon needed to hear – and from Bran, the Stark whom he most wronged – in order to be fully redeemed. Given the incredible struggle Theon went through to become a good man, it’s a well-earned moment that rings true, much to my own surprise, given my exhaustion with Theon. Theon perishes when his battle prowess momentarily escapes him: after going berserk and mowing down scores of undead, he charges at the Night King, who uses judo to impale Theon on his own spear. Rest well, Theon. I’m glad I’ll never have to see another scene of you being tortured.

Jorah’s death is perhaps the saddest of them all, a product both of the affection viewers have for him – he is, after all, Daenerys’s longest and most ardent devotee – and of the rawness of Daenerys’s grief. Jorah dies defending Daenerys from the undead on the open field. Sad as it may be, he dies saving his queen, his unrequited love, who weeps as she cradles him. He’s been ready to sacrifice himself for Dany ever since he saved her from one of Robert’s assassins in season one, and he’s proven his devotion to her time and again in their adventures across the Narrow Sea (entering the fighting pits of Meereen, infiltrating Vaes Dothrak, etc.) He couldn’t ask for a more fitting warrior’s death. Valar morghulis and valar dohearis, Ser Jorah the Andal. I’ll miss your stoic knowingness in these final three episodes.

Of course, the Night King also dies in this episode, but he was always more of a plot device than a fleshed out character, especially relative to the complexity of other characters on Game of Thrones. He might have loomed large in the show’s plot, but he doesn’t even appear until season four, he never had any dialogue, and over the course of the entire series, he probably received less total screen time than even Dolorous Edd. Perhaps there could have been more to his plan than just killing Bran along with the rest of humanity, but the Night King was always most interesting for how he shaped the other characters’ interactions, like in forcing most of them into an uneasy alliance against him. Besides, Bran gives his showdown with the Night King some heft in the previous episode, when he describes how countless Night Kings have tried to kill the Three-Eyed Raven across thousands of years of Westeros history. The weight of that history seems especially present in the moment where the two stare each other down.

Moreover, the Night King’s death creates room for more interesting plot developments and character interactions. Where will the chips fall now that he’s dead? A lot of the characters put aside conflicts, rivalries, and grievances in order to fight this battle. It’s not for nothing that the first thing that happens as soon as it’s over is that one of these characters resumes their pre-battle conflict: Davos follows Melisandre out of Winterfell, clearly intending to execute her if she doesn’t follow through on her promise to die before dawn. Many more conflicts will surely follow now that the Night King is dead, the most obvious being Dany and Jon’s war against Cersei. Do they still have enough of an army to take her on, or has the Night King evened the odds? Will Sansa throw wrenches into Dany’s war machine? Will Cersei have further cause to lament her army’s lack of elephants? Whatever happens in the next three episodes, they’ll have a difficult time topping the spectacle of the “The Long Night,” but it might not matter much, since the most compelling remaining conflicts are between characters rather than armies.

Other thoughts:

- Another new opening credits detail: the Winterfell model now includes a barricade around it.

- Some fat lot of good the Dothraki did, huh? Much like the malleability of travel time last season, Game of Thrones seems to make the fighting prowess of its armies rise and fall with the needs of the plot. The Dothraki (plus Drogon) were able to annihilate the Lannister forces in “The Spoils of War,” yet here they hardly last a minute against the undead. The same is true of Euron decimating Yara’s fleet.

- “The Long Night” also plays a little fast and loose with nighttime visibility – the undead horde is practically invisible until the Dothraki are literally right on top of them. Or perhaps I should say until the undead are on top of the Dothraki: one poor rider doesn’t even spot a giant until it’s about to step on him.

- Some of the wider shots of the open field battle sure reminded me of my time spent playing real time strategy games like Starcraft and Warcraft.

- Ghost! What happened to Ghost?

- In addition to the great visuals I mentioned above, another fantastic shot is the first we get of the Night King flying above the battle, out of focus. 

- Speaking of the visuals, some have complained the episode was too dark to see what was happening. I didn't have this problem when I initially watched it on my laptop via HBO GO, but when I rewatched it on my television via my DVR, it did seem a bit muddier -- in some scenes the blacks lost some detail. Perhaps the problem some has something to do with the compression of DVR boxes. Or perhaps I need to adjust the brightness and contrast levels on my television. Certainly, the episode needs to be watched in a darkened room - the more like a movie theater, the better. Technical issues aside, the dark aesthetic works for the episode rather than against it, because it provides a stylistic compliment appropriate to the narrative action. This is a desperate battle with little chance of success against a overwhelming opponent -- it should take place in darkness because the future seems dark for much it. The night is dark and full of terrors, after all.

- Bran wargs into some ravens to get a better view of the battle. Makes sense to me – I’d want to see what was going on too.

- Why does Dany seem to panic when the Night King chases her through the sky with Viserion’s blue flame? Isn’t she fireproof? Or is the blue flame so different that it would hurt even her?

- We also miss out on a chance to find out if Jon is similarly fireproof, because the Night King dies just as Viserion is rearing up to blast Jon with fire.

- Another parallel with “Blackwater”: Sansa hides during both battles. Each is terrifying, but for different reasons. In “Blackwater,” Sansa feared Cersei’s malice, while here, she fears the battle raging above her, and eventually, her own ancestors risen from the grave.

- Speaking of which, I kept half expecting to see Ned among the undead terrorizing the crypt dwellers, but then I remembered he was beheaded, and thus would be ineligible to return. The same is true of Robb. Like many good movie zombies, wights are killed if you sever their head or damage their brain. Maybe Catelyn was there instead. Lady Stoneheart lives after all!

- The Night King has some fierce nails.

- Retrospectively, it’s clear that the scene in “Winterfell” where Jon and Arya complement each other on their weapons is designed to remind us that the dagger Arya carries is made of Valyrian steel, and thus capable of shattering white walkers. It’s nice piece of subtle foreshadowing.

- I liked the moment where Arya looks at Bran after she kills the Night King. Suddenly, her action becomes not about saving humanity, but about saving her brother, reminding us that Game of Thrones is ultimately a story about families.

- Theon and Jorah’s deaths also neatly parallel one another: both are their leaders’ the last defense against the undead, both die defending those whom they once betrayed, and if they had to die, this was the way each of them likely wanted to go out.

- I love the little flick of the Night King's eyes as he sees Arya drop her dagger. His first humanizing moment of self-doubt is also his last.

- The music was once again phenomenal in this episode. In addition to the number that accompanies the climax, interesting things continue to be done with Stannis’s motif, which can sound triumphant or somber when it's resolved. The final moments of the episode yield a gentle violin rendition.