Game Of Thrones: The Battle Of Winterfell's Deaths Left Me Cold (Season 8, Episode 3)

The only theory that can save me from the disappointing feeling about the 'long night' is that the real night king be alive. As we remember one of the gilli's baby brothers was given to night king and we watched how he turned to white walker by the night king touching his head. What if the real night king is still out there and this one (who get killed by Arya) was just one of his Supreme Generals with special abilities. As we know the night king actor changed from season 5. ( I think it was season 5). What if the previous actor is still alive and he is the real night king. I can't see another reason for changing an important actor in middle of show replacing with someone who clearly has noting in common ( I mean his face) with previous one. Battle with death supposed to be the main battle. Not the battle with cersi. And another point. In the first episode of the first season we saw that white walkers cut the bodies parts and put them beside each other like a circle shape. We saw again in episode 1 of season 8 that night king has cut the bodies of umbers and put them beside each other like a circle or whatever shape it was look like. What was the message of them.?what was the message that night king was trying to send.? All of those mysterious stuffs went down by some girl jumping on his back?? His killing was that much easy??

Where I think the depiction of the battle failed was in it conforming to money/TV ideals and focusing on the main characters. Every major character was at the front of their respective shot so we could see then. Even in the crypt, the frontline was Varys/Sansa/Gilly/Tyrion/Missandei... no 'nobodies' crowding out the famous, just recognisable faces.

So when we pan around Winterfell at the 11th hour and see everyone saved from the inevitability of death at the last possible second, it's the Names we see. Every group has fought to the last (wo)man, and the last ones standing are people we know.

Now, that's storytelling - some of the characters we follow to the end HAVE to survive, or they wouldn't be characters we follow to the end. Equally, we can presume that (crypt aside), these are amkng the best fighters, and thus the most likely to survive.

However... if we had seen (say) a group of seven fighting the dead and it was Jaime, Brienne, some guy, a farmer and maybe the chap who was holding a door open earlier, possibly Podrick and... whoevencares: THAT would have been immeasurably more believable than there being two people standing in a sea of undead enemies and they're Brienne and Jaime.

Some suggestion that nobodies managed to survive as well. A pan past fighting featuring irrelevant people from unremarkable houses. The Hound, Beric *and someone else* venturing inside, etc.

I disagree the episide was great. But everyone has there own opinions, its what makes us human and different. If we all agreed on anything it would be a miracle. I want these peoples jobscwerevi get paid to criticize other peoples efforts. Opinions are like aholes everybody has one just some stink more then others.

Good points, Michael.

For me, though, this being the final season and the end of the story, most of the character's arcs are already winding up. In the grand scheme of things, there were really only two major plot paths left anyway, both of which have been going on since episode one or since early in "Game of Thrones" if you read the books: Dealing with the Lannisters and dealing with the Others/White Walkers. Since so many of the character's entire set of hopes and dreams dealt with the White Walker arc, there is no way to *not* complete a whole bunch of these arcs at the final battle with the Night King.

In fact, Bran's arc is pretty much done now. He doesn't care about Jaime, and his nemesis is destroyed, so, unless they develop some new character arc for him in the next three episodes, he served his purpose (although his ability to see everything in the past and some of the things in the present and future would make him an asset to anyone). I kind of expected him to die in the battle to even the playing field a little for Cersei.

Generally speaking, though, if you wiped out any of the main character arcs this late in the story, there would be no time to correct for that and still have a satisfying story. Sure, they could have killed Jaime or Tyrion or Jon or the Hound, and it would have been shocking, but it would have left no time to reign in the damage it would do to the overall storylines, and it is, after all, a story.

If you like stories with messed up endings, try reading the folk story about the Sons of Tuireann. It follows some boys who anger the king by killing the wrong man, who is in disguise. Anyway, the king demands that they bring him some items, then shot at the top of a hill when they come back with the items, then all will be forgiven. The items are 3 apples, a pigskin, a spear, a chariot, 7 pigs, a puppy, and a cooking spit. The boys are like "oh, that's easy," then the king tells them that all of the items are either magical and guarded by vast armies or cursed. But whatever, the boys set out and go through all sorts of tribulations to retrieve the items for the king. Each item is an epic adventure, and as you read through the pages of each episode, you grow to like the characters. When the boys finally return, ages later, with all of these magical items, they go to shout at the top of the hill and some grumpy old man kills them for disturbing his peace. The end. When you read such a story, you sort of feel like the whole thing was a bit of a waste of time, because there is something so unsatisfying about a story that ends abruptly like that without final resolution going how you expect a story to go.

Guys if they killed a lot of them then there would be no one left for Cersei to kill. So yeah, most of them will die upcoming episodes, have patience.

That's fairly much it in a nutshell - no-one of any consequence died last night, which was plainly ridiculous given that they spent at least 45 minutes being totally overwhelmed (again and again). I actually laughed out loud when they did the pan across the surviving people in the castle and it was literally ONLY the major characters.

They got to tie up loose ends at some point or at least allude to what will happen once the shows end. Killing off certain characters without addressing them would be like when the Sept and all the people there got blown up. It felt like a cop out to get rid of storylines.

Haha, can't tell if you guys are actually trolling with the minor spoilers.