Part of the problem with "The Long Night" was on the technical side.
The death toll contained fewer familiar faces than I expected, but it still included Dolorous Edd, Beric Dondarrion, Lyanna Mormont, Theon Greyjoy, Jorah Mormont, Melisandre, and literally every wight or White Walker, including the Night King and the much-hyped zombie dragon. If it wasn’t a great episode, it was certainly a consequential one. White Walkers and delivered a standard-issue, generic-brand fantasy battle, complete with a series of deaths that were as poignant as they were predictable. With all that in mind, I guess it’s no surprise that Game of Thrones took the black-and-white moral struggle of humans vs. It’s a battle that we’ve been told, over and over again, will be vastly more important than anything else in the series.
Every season or two since, Game of Thrones has doubled down on that promise with episodes like "The Watchers on the Wall," "Hardhome," and "Battle of the Bastards."īut on paper, a Game of Thrones battle was never going to be any bigger than this week’s long-awaited "The Long Night," which serves as the culmination of a series-long struggle between the humans and the White Walkers. Martin’s novels, with point-of-view characters getting knocked out just as the battle began, or arriving victorious after a battle had already ended, with a prisoner in tow.Ĭoming at the end of season two, "Blackwater" was a statement of purpose: a sign that Game of Thrones was willing to spend the time (and HBO was willing to spend the money) to bring these sprawling fantasy battles to life. Way back in 2012, Game of Thrones delivered its first large-scale, episode-spanning battle sequence in "Blackwater." Until then, budgetary constraints had forced the series to write around the massive battle sequences of George R.R.
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