"Book readers" - Season 8 Episode 3 "The Long Night" - Spoilers post 2 forward

Deleted User wrote: »

It's why I enjoy Brandon Sanderson.

That man writes like he's in lunch-time detention, but writing plots and dialogue instead of "I won't put trenches behind my army again." a hundred times.

Even having enough time to finish Wheel of Time

Deleted User wrote: »

Even having enough time to finish Wheel of Time

The Stormlight Archive lacks many things that ASOIAF has, but it is thoroughly entertaining and the world-building is true fantasy, which is too much for most.

I make sure to read them when I've time off and end up reading all day and going to sleep at 5am because of them. Humongous books; The last one was 480k words.

Even after a couple of days to let it simmer and with a second viewing, Arya killing the NK is just a letdown for me to the story they had been building beyond The Wall for the last few seasons.

As producers of slick, ground-breaking television and no doubt very hard and talented workers, I take my hat off to D+D. As writers to bring the GOT/ASOIAF story to a satisfying conclusion which actually serves the story and arcs the show has been building, I'm not as confident as I was before this episode. For the last few seasons there have been criticisms that the story has become weaker now that the writers have run out of books to adapt, and I'm starting to see that myself unfortunately.

It can't be all to do with having no source material to adapt from. Even after a few rewatches, I still adore the Battle of the Bastards episode which is not ripped from the books. Think back to the final fight between Jon and Ramsay, the build-up for the whole episode to those few moments, the work involved to actually get to Ramsay beyond his army and the Winterfell gates, the sacrifice of Wun-Wun the giant, the tension and anticipation as Jon advances on Ramsay who is shooting arrows at him from close-range in the Winterfell courtyard, the satisfaction and pay-off when Jon finally gets his hands on Ramsay. Because of the build-up and previous events in the show, someone like Jon or Theon had to get that particular moment with Ramsay for maximum story resolution and effect. Then...when Sansa gets to release the hounds on Ramsay and actually kill him, remember that satisfaction and pay-off? It was pretty much perfect. The producers/Kit Harrington explained on 'Inside The Episode' why Jon stopped punching Ramsay to death and looked up at Sansa - It was Sansa's kill to make, not Jon's. Imagine though if it were Brienne or a shadow-baby from the Red Woman who slipped in to the kennels to kill Ramsey, and not Sansa. That's sort of how I feel about Arya and the Night King.

I like Arya, but I felt absolutely none of that BotB involvement, tension and pay-off when she killed the NK. I have no problem with Arya's ability to sneak up on the NK on her home turf and in the Godswood where she also got the drop on Jon recently. I have no problem with the method of the kill. The episode showed us earlier both 1) How light-footed Arya was while dodging library zombies, and 2) What happens when you dash up on the NK from behind like Jon did on the battlefield.

On second watch of that all-too-brief Jon v NK encounter, I noticed that Jon made a clatter of noise and the scene specifically shows that you can potentially sneak up on the NK, he doesn't have some supernatural presence detector, he just has ears like everyone else. NK was just plodding along thinking NK shít until Jon the Elephant got within earshot of him, and then NK paused and turned to face him. In the Godswood a few minutes later, the NK heard nothing until Arya's leaping "Arghhhhhh!!", and only one of the WW soldiers sensed something as his hair moved with a breeze. Incidentally, this is the only thing a WW soldier did in this episode, in the WW's 'all or nothing' showdown...just about as much as when they were first introduced in season 4's baby/WW conversion scene.

So, I've no problems with how Arya did it. It's the story choice of it being Arya to make the kill and essentially not Jon or someone who has been related to the NK or the 'Great War' in the series all along. It didn't have to be a testosterone-fest with a male protagonist v the NK, just someone who earned that particular kill. Even Dany earned it more than Arya considering she watched the NK spear one of her dragons/children out of the sky. It also makes so much of Jon's story since his resurrection seem pointless. People can now point back after the fact to 'The Red Woman said something to Arya in Season 3 about blue eyes and repeats it in this episode' as clever foreshadowing, but that is not the build-up this particular story was leading towards or the resolution it deserved. It's the writers going back to see what they can draw upon from Arya's past to justify the "unexpected" decision of her killing the NK.

As opposed to actual build-up and foreshadowing with Jon Snow over the years. The show had him brought back from the dead because he apparently served some ultimate purpose in the fight against the eternal night. The show had the NK take notice of Jon as a possible threat at Hardhomme from up on the cliffs after Jon bested one of the WWs in 1 v 1 combat on the ground below. The NK then stared Jon down specifically as he raised the dead at the end of that encounter. From that moment on, it was 'game on' with Jon v the NK in the show. That's build-up, that's anticipation, it's not what some are calling 'too obvious', it's the history of story-telling. While Jon was doing all of this and the show was building up to an eventual battle between the two, Arya was in Bravos selling oysters and thinking about a kill-list of Westeros' political players which did not include the NK. The NK was literally no one to her for much of her journey in the show, and that's pretty much why the resolution to the Great War plot feels so hollow to me.

Arya chopping Meryn 'too old' Trant to bits, massacring the Freys, plotting to kill Cersei, they are all earned kills in the story and make sense to her arc. It was a play Arya watched in Bravos portraying her family's obliteration masterminded by the Lannisters which moved Arya and affected her journey. It wasn't a play of Brandon the Builder flinging up the The Wall which almost brought her to tears. Arya killing the NK is a surprise, but not a satisfying one for the overall story. I even saw a quote from Maisie Williams about her boyfriend's reaction when she told him that Arya was going to kill the NK - "...and then I told my boyfriend and he was like, ‘Mmm, should be Jon though really, shouldn’t it?'"

I have positives to take from 'The Long Night' elsewhere in the story and it was genuinely epic as an episode of television, but where other fans/viewers have been going 'Wait...what?' with story choices over the last couple of seasons (like Littlefinger's death which I was fine with), this was the first choice to really make me feel that way too. Well, the first non-Dorne related one.

We are getting to the end of a story many of us love, and as book-readers the show might be the only ending we get to ASOIAF and those answers and resolutions we've been mulling over for years. This first major resolution - Arya/Unexpected character kills the NK and WW threat, I find it underwhelming at best. It would be as if Tormund were to go on and kill Cersei, just surprise for the sake of surprise and nothing resonant with the story or arcs which the writers set out for us over the years.

They said they chose Arya because it would be "unexpected" and "hopefully with all the other characters you care about in the battle...people would forget about Arya leaving that room". If D+D's primary intention is to subvert our expectations in an episode with the ending of GoT rather than serve a story built up over seasons, well that's a letdown. It reminds me of another property whose most recent major installment 'subverted expectations' in a very divisive way just like this episode did. That movie abandoned build-up and foundations which previous episodes had set up as it took the story in another direction to subvert expectations. Funny enough, D+D are going to be writing a trilogy for this other property in the near future. They even received a set visit from the creator of this other property during filming of GoT's final season. No point in me naming this other property though, you probably wouldn't have heard of it.





When GRRM subverted expectations in the books, it served the future story and motivations for other characters. The likes of killing Ned Stark early in the story wasn't done primarily for surprise, which is unfortunately where it seems the show has now gone.

I'm still looking forward to the last 3 episodes and there will be enjoyment to be had, but my interest in seeing GRRM finish these books has been reignited in the aftermath of The Long Night. It's as if the Red Woman laid her hands on it and said a decade of the R'hllor rosary.