game of thrones beyond the wall night king

#GAME OF THRONES BEYOND THE WALL NIGHT KING MOVIE#

It was delightful and unexpected in the moment. I don’t object in the least to Arya’s triumph over the Night King. The Night King seemed like an argument about history- long history, epic history, natural history-mattering. This supervillain whose actions set in motion the entire series, and whose horrifying symbols-rendered in severed limbs and mutilated bodies-beg for decryption this extraordinary, fireproof being who anonymizes everyone he recruits, and has never spoken a single line, turns out to be … snarky? Millennia of waiting, and planning, of White Walkers trained up from infancy (I guess?) into generals for some epic purpose having to do with sin and nature and humankind this creature who seems to be both myth and history and nature all bound up in one-he is winter, he is coming, and he desires (Bran said) the erasure of human memory-this colossus against which the show was built just falls off a dragon, smirks at fire, and then dies with one thrust to a conveniently exposed spot in his armor? Yes, he’s been systematically building up a giant army for thousands of years, but he didn’t count on a cool knife trick?

#GAME OF THRONES BEYOND THE WALL NIGHT KING MOVIE#

He smirked! Like he’s the bully in a teenage movie or a baddie out of the Avengers! Like he knows he’s a GIF! The Night King smirked after Dany tried to burn him with dragon fire. At long last, it was confronting the longtime and central tension between petty politics (over who sits in some chair) and a world-altering apocalypse that dwarfs human abilities and human concerns. That’s what it seemed like the episode was doing.

“It’s the most heroic thing we can do now, look the truth in the face,” as Sansa said. Melisandre’s earned collapse at the end, in which she dropped her magical necklace and transformed back into the old exhausted woman she really was, expressed something the episode as a whole seemed to be getting at: Sometimes there’s no point in continuing to wear the mask and stave off the inevitable. Terrible as all this was, it felt correct. Theon’s eyes twitched after his stabbing we got to watch him watch his sacrifice be for nothing, and little Lyanna Mormont’s reward for her final sacrifice was to be reanimated, mute and blue-eyed. The human response was muted and understated: “I’m hurt,” Jorah said to Daenerys as he died. At its best, the episode showed the shear and torque this hellscape exerted on our characters’ psyches: The Hound froze up, stone-cold Arya panicked, Samwell wept and stabbed, and Tyrion and Sansa prepared for what looked like a suicide pact.

Game of thrones beyond the wall night king