After a nine-year wait--or longer, if you've been reading the books since the '90s--Game of Thrones' big fight with the dead reached its climax on Sunday. HBO delivered the show's longest episode ever, clocking in at 82 minutes. As we've seen a few times before, Season 8, Episode 3--"The Long Night"--centered entirely around a single fight--in this case, The Battle of Winterfell, which saw the forces of the Night King take on Jon, Dany, Arya, and company in a fight between the living and the dead. It's proven to be a controversial entry in the series for a number of reasons, as you can read about in our Episode 3 review. In the video above, some of our biggest Game of Thrones fans offer their take on this supersized episode. Spoiler warning for the video above and text below.
If you're looking for more, HBO has released a behind-the-scenes breakdown of how the episode came together, and we've assembled a list of Easter eggs and references you might have missed, either because of the general darkness or because they were extremely deep cuts. However you might feel about The Long Night, it proved to be a major event--it was the most-viewed episode of Game of Thrones ever.
Episode 4 is coming this Sunday, and a preview trailer teases how it will set up the final big battle between the remaining forces in the north and those in King's Landing. We'll surely get more deaths once that goes down, but those in Episode 3 left us feeling cold. Cersei surely won't be satisfied until all of her enemies are dead, and we know she's already dispatched Bronn to deal with her siblings. Whether he sees her wish fulfilled remains to be seen, but one thing that's looking increasingly likely is Cleganebowl. With The Hound and The Mountain both still alive (well, sort of), these final episodes are primed to give us the showdown between the two that we got a small taste of back in Season 1.
