The third episode of Game of Thrones' eighth season wasted no time diving into the action
of the Battle of Winterfell, coming in hot and holding nothing back.
Sure to be remembered as one of the most epic entries in Thrones history, "The Long Night"
pitted the living against the dead, the light against the dark, and fire against ice.
Many characters took their final breaths in the cold Winterfell air.
Here's a look at the characters who didn't make it, and one big winner.
The bodies start falling from the first swing of a sword.
Even equipped with flaming weapons and steadfast determination, the Dothraki aren't men of
myths or the enders of the Long Night.
Soon after they forge ahead into the darkness, with Jon's direwolf Ghost charging alongside
them, the Dothraki outriders are wiped out by the wights.
The side of the living quickly becomes overwhelmed by the dead.
Jon and Daenerys send their dragons, Rhaegal and Drogon, out into battle to breathe fire
onto the enemy, to little avail.
The dead aren't dying, an out-of-this-world windstorm clouds everyone's vision, people
are dropping left and right, and the episode's first major death comes when Lord Commander
of the Night's Watch Dolorous Edd dies via stabbing when trying to save Samwell Tarly.
Newly knighted Brienne then orders the forces to retreat into Winterfell's gates.
"Fall back!"
The speed at which the battle devolves into chaos pushes Arya to send her sister Sansa
to the crypts, the so-called safest place in Winterfell, with a dragonglass dagger.
"I don't know how to use it."
"Stick them with the pointy end."
In the catacombs, Sansa joins her former husband Tyrion Lannister, Sam's partner Gilly, Varys,
and Missandei, plus every woman, child, and elderly person in Winterfell.
Sansa, Tyrion, and Missandei exchange barbs before the situation becomes no laughing matter.
As fans predicted, the corpses resting in the Stark family crypt come back to life and
take victims down with zero difficulty or remorse.
While dozens die screaming behind them, Sansa, Tyrion, Gilly, Varys, and Missandei make it
out of the crypts alive, and their survival may spell trouble moving forward.
Tyrion, Varys, and Missandei are on Daenerys' side; they've all bent the knee and pledged
loyalty to her.
Sansa, on the other hand, hasn't warmed up to her yet, and might never once she realizes
that Jon is the true heir to the Iron Throne.
Theon Greyjoy has done some serious repenting since betraying House Stark at the start of
the War of the Five Kings.
Taken in as a ward and a prisoner of Ned Stark following his own father's duplicity, Theon
grew up in Winterfell and had long been considered a member of the Stark family.
Theon's treachery against the Starks reached its apex when he seized Winterfell in the
second season of Game of Thrones, capturing two farm boys and displaying their burned
bodies on the castle's walls, passing them off as Bran and Rickon Stark.
Beneath the Weirwood tree in Winterfell's godswood, where Bran awaits the Night King,
Bran absolves Theon of his sins.
Bran tells him that everything he's done brought him to where he is now: home.
You are a good man."
The Night King then emerges, and Theon attempts stab him with a spear, but it's no use.
The Night King kills Theon with a swift jab.
There's a bright side, though: at least he died knowing Sansa, Jon, and finally Bran
forgave him.
Several more perished fighting in the Battle of Winterfell.
Beric Dondarrion was all out of extra lives when the wights stabbed him multiple times
while he protected Arya.
Little Lyanna Mormont, the ferocious lass from Bear Island who insisted she take part
in the fight, dies a heroic death when she bravely stabs a wight giant in the eye and
is subsequently crushed in its hand.
Alys Karstark falls offscreen.
She was among the people protecting Bran alongside Theon in the godswood.
Then came Jorah Mormont, who died defending Daenerys to the bitter end.
When a pack of wights unleash fury on Drogon, who takes flight and abandons Dany, the Mother
of Dragons is left to fight off enemies herself — until Jorah swoops in and protects her
from what end up being fatal blows.
Dany sheds many tears over the loyal Jorah.
As the sun begins to rise and the night slips under the horizon, the Red Woman Melisandre
walks out of Winterfell, stepping between two mounds of dead bodies like Moses parting
the Red Sea, and willingly ends her own life.
She removes the red-amulet-adorned necklace that perpetually sat around her throat, continues
out into the battlefield, and leaves this mortal coil.
In season 6, it was revealed that Melisandre wasn't the youthful woman she appeared to
be.
She was incredibly old, and the necklace extended her life.
With it off for too long, she was bound to succumb to the effects of extreme old age.
Melisandre likely felt her work in Westeros was complete, and she may have been harboring
guilt over the death of little Shireen Baratheon, whom she helped burn at the stake in season
5.
She also kept good on two past promises.
She once shared a prediction with Varys:
"I will return, dear spider.
One last time."
"My lady…"
"I have to die in this strange country."
She also told Ser Davos at the start of the Battle of Winterfell that she would "be dead
before dawn."
Arya didn't just evade death in the Battle of Winterfell.
She lengthed the lives of everyone in the Seven Kingdoms by killing the Night King.
In the corridors of Winterfell, Melisandre reminds Arya that she will indeed "shut many
eyes forever … brown, green, and blue eyes, too," a prophecy as to what Arya is about
to do.
"What do we say to the god of death?"
"Not today."
Moments after the Night King sticks a spear through Theon's torso and turns his attention
to Bran, Arya suddenly appears behind the frosty villain.
He attempts to choke her, and her Valyrian steel dagger falls.
But Arya catches the weapon with her other hand, finds a space in the Night King's armor,
and stabs him there, causing him and all of his underlings to shatter into a million tiny
pieces.
The Night King's undoing came around the same place his "birth" did: in a godswood near
a Heart Tree.
Even more poetically, Bran's life was saved using the very same dagger that a catspaw
used during an attempt to assassinate him way back in season one.
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