Game of Thrones fans have a rough understanding of the Night King's origins and mission, there's
still so much to dig into as to why he did what he did, whether he might rise again,
and just how he planned to take over the world beyond Winterfell.
The Night King's story begins with the story of Westeros.
Before the First Men came, the Children of the Forest lived in harmony with the giants.
Though they forged no metal, they developed dragonglass — or as we know it, obsidian
— into useful tools and arrowheads, and developed their unique magic.
Unfortunately for them, the First Men invaded the Children's land across a then-intact land
bridge from Essos.
They brought bronze, masses of people, and a thirst for conquest.
Though the Children's magic was strong enough to shatter the land bridge and separate the
two continents, it proved no match for the sheer numbers and sturdy metal weaponry brought
by the First Men.
In a last-ditch attempt to save their way of life, the Children drove a dragonglass
dagger into a captured First Man, and used their magic to transform him into an undead
being of ice.
The Night King, first of his kind, had been born into a world utterly unprepared for his
bottomless bloodlust.
"It was you.
You made the white walkers."
"We were at war."
Though the Children and the First Men did ultimately end their hostilities, the Night
King and his undead disciples, known as White Walkers, had become creatures of entirely
alien purpose.
Game of Thrones never supplied any specifics as to when the Night King turned his forces
against warm-blooded life, nor even how long, precisely, their icy reign lasted.
What is known is that the Night King and his army of undead invaded northern Westeros,
and an entire generation suffered and died within the seemingly endless winter they brought.
This became known as the Long Night, marked by the failure of crops, massive casualties
by the sword, starvation, and sickness alike, complete darkness, and the destruction of
organized settlements.
It was, in the end, the closest the Night King ever came to succeeding in his goal of
wiping out all life — and, as Bran Stark later pointed out, all memory of life as well.
Though the Night King and the White Walkers never advanced beyond Westeros, their terror
became legendary.
They were ultimately pushed back to the polar wasteland through an enormous, conjoined effort
of magic, luck, and engineering referred to as The War for the Dawn.
Bran the Builder, an ancestor of House Stark, erected a 700 foot-tall barrier known as the
Wall through a powerful blend of magic and science so that the blue-eyed menace might
never return.
Millennia passed, during which the Night King and the Walkers became a long-ago threat,
a distant peril, and, finally, a story meant to frighten children in the dead of night.
Perhaps this was an intentional ploy on the part of the Night King, whose immortality
meant he could wait a long time for his opportunity to strike.
The Long Night had given way to the dawn, and the Night King bided his time for 8,000
years.
At some point in the decades before the events of Game of Thrones, the Night King demanded
a tribute from the Wildlings: male infants.
As revealed in the season 4 episode "Oathkeeper:" they were taken to the Lands of Always Winter,
laid upon icy altars, and turned into White Walkers by the Night King himself.
The process is apparently simple, yet notably enigmatic.
It's a notably different process than we see when the Night King raises corpses as wights,
but we never learn how often it was done, if every Walker had the power to do this,
nor how many human infants were turned over the course of the 8,000-year retreat.
Like so many things about the Night King and his subjects, this horrifying element would
remain a mystery.
Once he had gathered whatever number of corpses and infant sacrifices that he thought would
be enough to conquer Westeros the Night King sent out his forces to harass, murder, and
generally terrorize the Wildlings.
One especially horrible manifestation of this campaign makes up the first scene of the show's
very first episode.
Recall the Night's Watch deserter beheaded by Ned Stark, the artfully arranged circle
of corpse parts, and the dark shadow that would be all the audience saw of the Walkers
until the season 2 finale.
Westeros remained largely ignorant of the threat — but some were not so lucky.
The Walkers were making a statement, and the Night King showed no interest in pulling back
as the rumors grew.
In fact, it's likely that he was very purposefully looking to sow that sort of fear.
As the Wildlings grew more terrified, the Night's Watch grew divided as to how to deal
with them.
Dissent festered, culminating in Jon Snow's murder and the mutiny against Lord Commander
Mormont.
The humans had been turned against themselves, and all the Night King had to do was be there
to turn the corpses into his army.
Years passed over the course of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones while the
Night King gathered his strength.
The Night's Watch came to understand the White Walkers as a clear and present danger, finally
realizing that they were up against thousands of corpses raised to fight against the living.
It all came to a head in Season Five's "Hardhome."
Hardhome was the closest thing the Wildlings ever had to a city.
It's where Jon Snow, Tormund Giantsbane, and a handful of Nights' Watchmen and like-minded
Wildlings traveled to urge its denizens to join them in the fight against the Walkers.
But their best-laid plans went belly-up when the Walkers attacked just as the Wildling
boats set to sail to the Wall were beginning to fill.
An avalanche of wights overran the crude settlement, slaying thousands in a savage surge of brutality.
In the midst of the slaughter, Jon Snow discovered Valyrian steel's resiliency against Walker
ice magic — and, immediately after, its ability to shatter the beings themselves.
Those fighting on the side of the living might have learned something crucial about Valyrian
steel, but it came at a terrible cost.
While Jon Snow and the Night's Watch were battling the Walkers with sword and shield,
Bran Stark was on a crusade of his own, learning to harness his psychic powers.
Emboldened, he entered a vision, only to be spotted by the Night King, who was able to
grab Bran's arm across miles of distance and brand it with his mark.
"But he can’t get in.”
“He can now."
Despite Hodor's tragic sacrifice and the Children's magic, the Walkers were not stopped.
Though the Three-Eyed Raven was able to pass on his powers to Bran, he still fell to the
Night King's spear, along with many of what might have been the only Children of the Forest
left.
In stripping Bran of his most important allies, protectors, and teachers, he managed to further
that goal considerably.
As the Night King neared the Wall, Jon Snow proposed something drastic: gathering a party
of warriors to capture a wight that would prove the truth of the threat to Queen Cersei
and her skeptical court.
Though the grizzled band was, in fact, able to present the queen with a real-deal blue-eyed
corpse, it came at tremendous cost.
The Walkers and their army killed much of the group, including Viserion, one of Daenerys
Targeryan's trio of dragons.
The fact that Cersei didn't join forces with Daenerys and Jon in the war against the Walkers
is cruel enough.
But even worse, The Night King was able to raise Viserion as an undead dragon, complete
with the ability to breathe massively destructive blue fire.
Jon Snow might have accomplished what he set out to do in the most literal sense, but on
a much more important scale, this was yet another victory for the Night King.
The army of death had only grown in its size and sinister capabilities.
"The Night King is coming."
"The dead are already here."
It wasn't long before the Night King decided to put his brand new steed to the test.
Leading untold thousands of resurrected corpses, a host of mounted White Walkers, and a fearsome
number of undead beasts, the Night King descended upon the castle of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with
frozen fury.
One fiery assault from Viserion was all it took to pierce the wall — thousands of tons
of enchanted ice, rock, and masonry fell beneath the eerie blue flame, leaving a clear road
through to Westeros.
It was this shocking image that closed out the seventh season finale of Game of Thrones:
the last, best defense of the living, torn asunder at last.
The Wall, which had stood for 8,000 years, had fallen before the Night King and his seemingly
unstoppable army.
All he had left to do was massacre his prey, starting with Winterfell and all the living
souls who dwelt within.
The Night King advanced upon the North quickly.
His first stop was the Last Hearth, the home of House Umber.
Though battered by the war and tasked with maintaining a remote position between the
unknown wastes and the comforts of Winterfell, Umber was a proud house with a long and glorious
history.
In the aftermath of the Battle of the Bastards, the house was headed by Lord Ned Umber, a
ten-year-old looking to regain the honor lost when his family backed the Boltons.
"Will you stand beside me, Ned and Alys, now and always?"
Unfortunately, the Night King made that "always" quite a bit shorter than it should have been.
The Last Hearth was the Walkers' first stop on the way to Winterfell, and after slaughtering
Ned Umber and his household, they left a grim warning behind in the form of their characteristic
spiral of body parts.
Though Ned was prevented from causing more carnage as a wight courtesy of a flaming sword,
killing Umber stands as one of the saddest crimes the Night King perpetrated.
With the Wall breached, the armies massed, a dragon risen from the grave and the living
forces of Westeros getting their hands on every ounce of dragonglass that they could,
there was no more time for preparation.
Instead, it was war.
The Night King descended upon Winterfell like a tempest, swallowing the fires of Dothraki
warriors, trenches of flame and valiant charges alike within his icy darkness.
Beyond the mayhem and death that he brought with him, the Night King had a mission: to
find Bran Stark, the new Three-Eyed Raven, and kill him.
Bran knew this, and allowed himself to be used as bait.
The stakes were high — Theon Greyjoy died in his efforts to protect Bran, the dead in
the crypts and on the battlefields of Winterfell were raised by the Night King's powers, and
Jon Snow resorted to facing Viserion with nothing but a sword.
Then, out of nowhere, came Arya Stark, honed into one of the finest warriors alive.
With one swift stab the Night King was slain, along with all the creatures he'd created.
The army of the dead was gone.
An eternity of winter had been avoided.
And the White Walkers, with the death of their leader and progenitor, instantly became extinct.
Thus ended the war audiences had been teased with for years.
With Arya's devastatingly precise stab, she vanquished the White Walkers completely.
The Night King's reign of terror lives on, however, in the hearts of Game of Thrones'
principal characters.
Jon Snow, free at last to live beyond titles and great houses, cannot ever rid himself
of the evil he stared down, and returns to the Night's Watch.
Bran, elevated to king, is also tasked with remembering what brought the Walkers about
in the first place.
Arya, off on adventures beyond the borders of Westeros, will doubtlessly be followed
everywhere she goes by the fact of her great, world-saving deed.
These, and many other characters, now live in a Westeros that's as much defined by the
Night King's absence as it was by his presence.
The Night King might be dead, but his memory will linger on for years to come — if only
as a terrifying fairytale.
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