Hey guys, here we go with another review for the last season of Game of Thrones, looking
at Episode 3, The Long Night.
Ok so this episode was a lot to take in.
When it was immediately over I felt like I’d gone through 10 years worth of emotions in
an hour and half.
And, unfortunately, even after thinking about it and rewatching it a multiple times, Im
still torn on how to feel.
On the one hand this is one of the most impressive productions I’ve ever seen, and in the moment
I was on the edge of my seat, barely able to breath from the intensity of my emotions.
If I was to judge this episode purely on spectacle and production value, I might give it a 10
out of 10, but unfortunately the story side of this, I feel was nowhere near as impressive,
and left me pretty underwhelmed.
But I’ll wait till the end to go over my criticisms and so for now let’s go over
my top 5 moments of the night, which were difficult to narrow down because this episode
definitely had a lot of incredible scenes.
At number 5 I chose the Unsullied Last Stand, where Greyworm’s men held the center of
their lines while everyone else retreated inside Winterell.
This is the Unsullied at their best and finally shows us the true value of these warriors,
because not only are they highly skilled and resistant to pain, but they are also supposed
to be the most disciplined and fearless soldiers in the world.
In the books they earned this reputation in the Battle of Qohor during the century of
blood before the Targaryens conquered Westeros, when 3000 unsullied repelled a Dothraki army
of 25000.
The Dothraki were so confident they would win, they didn’t bother with strategy and
just charged their cavalry directly into the Unsullied lines.
And while only 600 Unsullied survived, they withstood 18 cavalry charges, and 3 archer
attacks, killing 12000 enemy warriors, including their leader and his sons.
To demonstrate their surrender, the Dothraki cut off their hair braids, and gave them to
Qohori government, who were so impressed that from that day forward they were permanently
defended by unsullied warriors, who adorned their weapons with the braids of their vanquished
foes, in memory of their great victory.
At number 4, I choose a moment which actually didn’t have too much significance in the
overall scheme of things, but really struck me, and I think will be one of the things
I most remember from this episode, and that was Jon Snow at the very end, when he was
trapped by Viserion and gave up any pretense of surviving the battle or defeating the night
king, but refused to die cowering in fear, and simply stood up screamed in the face of
the undead dragon.
To me this was an immensely powerful scene, that reminded me a lot of a brief moment in
the opening minutes of the battle of the Bastards, when at one point there is so much death and
chaos around him that jon just stops fighting and with a look of disgust in his face just
stands still not even bothering to look around him.
Though in that case Jon quickly snapped out of it, here, facing Viserion there was nothing
else to do but meet death with courage.
At number 3, I’ve chosen the heartbreaking death of Theon Greyjoy in the godswood.
After seeing this character suffer so terribly for his mistakes, this was a death worthy
of him, facing down the night king in the battle to save humanity.
As the last of the Ironborn left protecting Bran, they became surrounded by wights and
white walkers as the Night King made his entrance.
Theon seemed pretty freaked out which is completely understandable, but then, as I understood
it, Bran gave him some final words of encouragement to ensure he would attack the Night King and
buy Arya just a few more seconds more to properly position herself.
Although it was sad seeing him die, Theon had been in so many horrible situations in
his life, he might have died in any number of miserable ways, and so dying for his adoptive
family, after winning back their respect and playing a role in saving humanity is just
about the best sad ending his character could possibly hope for.
In the number 2 spot, there was the dragon battle in the skies above winterfell, a scene
so many of us have been waiting for, and personally it did not disappoint.
Seeing Viserion and Rhaegal tearing into each other was absolutely amazing, especially after
reading about all the dragon battles in Westerosi history, especially during the Dance of the
Dragons Civil War, the conflict which killed so many of them it led to the extinction of
their species until Danaerys raised her dragons nearly 200 years later.
I also loved some of those long shots of the dragons flying above the clouds, a lot of
this episode was really beautiful but these scenes especially felt impressive to me.
And finally for me, the best scene of the episode, was at the very beginning, with the
massacre of the Dothraki vanguard.
I think this was an excellent way to start off the battle and really gave me a powerful
sense of dread as I saw those lights start flickering out.
For such a significant loss to come minutes after Melisandre lit up their swords and gave
everyone hope, they really did a good job of setting up the undead army as a unstoppable
killing force.
Although I saw some people online criticize the Dothraki for being used in this way, I
actually don’t quite agree, in theory I think this was one of the better ways to use
them, as Dothraki are most effective on horseback and in an open field.
Aside from that I don’t think the plan was for them to simply charge in and fight to
the last man, it seemed like they were doing a cavalry charge to test the enemy lines,
see their numbers and how they’re positioned, as well as doing some quick damage before
riding back to the main army where they can either make another charge or change the plan
based on what they learned.
But unfortunately no one expected the wight army to be so effective they wiped out the
entire vanguard in the first charge.
There is also an argument to be made that the Dragons should have been used to scout
the enemy and do some preliminary damage, and that’s a fair criticism I think, though
apparently Jon’s plan was to have the dragons wait near bran and not join in the early stages
of the battle.
But that obviously seems like a pretty silly plan in retrospect as the enemy turned out
to be so powerful.
But in any case, losing the Dothraki so early on I think was a really terrifying way to
start what might be one of the most impressive battles in television and even movie history.
Now for the best Kill of the Night, the honor goes to Little Lyanna Giantslayer, for her
badass take down of an undead giant.
I was really hoping that she would somehow find a way to survive the battle, but if she
was going to die this was the only way I could have accepted it, somehow managing to take
out the biggest baddest enemy she could find.
Although this episode didn’t have much dialog, for me the best line of the night goes to
melisandre when she quoted Syrio Forel by asking arya, “What do we say to the god
of death?” to which she replied “Not today.”
Ok, now to get into my criticisms of the episode, of which I will admit there are a lot, all
related to the thoroughly underwhelming storyline relating to the White Walkers and the direction
of many of the characters.
However most of these criticisms are actually pretty minor in my opinion given the overall
scope of what they are trying to accomplish with this show.
After all the show is not the books, the complexity and detailed story being told in the novels
is simply too much for any show to realistically handle, so I treat the two as entirely separate
entities, and try not to let my expectations for the books get in the way of enjoying the
show.
But even so, for me there were 2 important and deeply disappointing decisions they made
in this episode that made it impossible for me to enjoy it as much as I wanted too.
The first is the moment that broke that fan base in two, and that was Arya killing the
Night King.
However, my problem with this scene is much more basic then what ive seen other people
saying as I actually have no problem with Arya being the one to kill him.
Although I of course was dying to see Jon Snow fight the Night king in a final duel,
I get that a scene like that might be too obvious of an ending.
And either way Jon has already proven himself to be the Last hero/ PWWP/ Azor Ahai by leading
the war effort and gathering the alliance, and that was all he was meant to do as there
was nothing in the prophecies or stories to suggest he would necessarily be the one to
kill their leader.
And if it wasn’t going to be Jon, and it wasn’t going to be a proper fight, then
I think Arya is the most qualified to assassinate the enemy leader.
So my problem is not that she killed him, but rather how she killed him, as she quite
literally just seems to appear out of nowhere.
Having more or less pieced together what happened, it appears she was hiding in the shadows,
raced past the white walkers and wights, leapt into the air and tried to stab the night king.
And unfortunately, for me, this entire situation just doesn’t make sense.
Having seen the behind the scenes video they made, they set up a ramp for Arya in order
to get the height she needed for her jump, but that ramp obviously doesn’t exist in
the context of the show, so not only did Arya somehow manage to evade all those wights and
white walkers but then she leapt into the air far higher than she should have been able
too, with no explination, and stabbed the night king through a gap in his armor that
should not have been there in the first place.
And that brings me to another problem with this scene, and the White Walkers in general,
as the Night King, it turns out, seems to be pretty dumb.
Even after this episode was over I still have absolutely no idea why he went after Bran
in the middle of the battle, let alone why he wore such flimsy armor when he had such
a significant vulnerability.
But seriously why did he not just wait like 2 more hours until everyone was dead before
seeing bran.
He’s marked afterall, the Night King will always know where he is, just wait until the
battle is over.
Also why did the Night king only have one spear for the enemy dragons, he should have
had dozens and so should his White Walkers who ended up doing absolutely nothing in the
battle.
But even though the ending was fairly disappointing, there was one another aspect to this episode
that for me was the most unforgiveable sin they committed, and that was having so many
of the main characters survive.
This more then anything else took me out of the battle and made Game of Thrones seem like
every other show on tv.
In a world like Lord of the Rings, it is entirely reasonable for a main character like Aragorn
to slay hundereds of enemy soldiers and stand heroically over a pile of bodies as the last
to survive.
But that’s because the world of lord of the rings is based more on mythology then
history, where the heroes are larger then life and have magic and powerful bloodlines
that make them special.
But Game of Thrones was supposed to more realistic then that, more random and chaotic.
And in the early seasons it was, but as the show has gone on they have started to pull
more and more of their punches, going with tired tropes like all the nobodies die but
the heroes all survive no matter the situation.
I would have been much more understanding of so many characters surviving, if they had
all started the battle inside the castle, avoiding the early slaughter, but so many
of those characters were in the very front lines during the initial undead attack, and
of all of them only Edd Tolett died in the opening fighting.
This to me was the ultimately failure of the episode, and contributed to my negative views
on what should have been the most significant moment in the series.
Now with all of that said, it’s really difficult for me to score this episode.
Like I said earlier if I was just basing it on production value and the intensity of my
emotions while I was watching, this would score a 10 out of 10, but if I were to purely
base it on the quality of the storyline and the conclusion to the White Walkers, I would
probably give it a 4 out of 10.
So to be fair I should probably give it a 6, but I’m actually going to give it a 7
out of 10.
And the reason for the extra point is because I can’t ignore the intensity my feelings
while I was watching it.
Even with the problems I had, throughout this episode at different moments my heart was
racing, my stomach was twisted in knots, and I had tears in my eyes.
This episode may have invoked more emotion in me then just about anything I’ve ever
seen on television.
So how can I not look kindly upon a piece of fiction that affected my feelings so significantly.
So that’s it for me, and now that I’m sure I’ve thoroughly pissed everyone off
with my middling score for the episode, I’ll throw it over to you guys, so be sure to let
me know your thoughts in the comments below, as I’m sure everyone has an opinion.
And like always don’t forget to watch my episode recap already out where I recreate
the battle with my illustrations, and be sure to check out The Thrones Effect: How game
of thrones conquered pop culture, a book which I coauthored alongside a number of other GoT
youtubers.
So that’s all for now guys, only 3 episodes left till it’s all over, I’ll see you all next week.