Game of Thrones S8E3: "The Long Night" / YMMV

Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Did Melisandre age and die because she discarded her necklace, or was she reaching the natural (if prolonged) end of her long life and dropped the necklace so she would die with her true appearance?
- Was Jon's last stand against Viserion an effort (as some have suggested) to distract the undead dragon from noticing Arya heading for the godswood, or just a decision to face death with what courage he could muster, given the battle seemed as good as lost?
Anti-Climax Boss:
- After eight seasons of buildup, the White Walkers arrive and... don't really do anything before dying, allowing the wights to do all of the fighting and shattering when the Night King is killed. The fact that they barely managed to kill any of the heroes in the climactic battle makes it somehow even worse, and makes what threat they actually had as an enormous force feel like it was just an Informed Attribute.
- Viserion likewise goes down without a fight when the Night King is killed, though at least he loses half of his jaws when fighting his living brothers and gets some action beforehand.
Ass Pull:
- In order to survive Viserion's Breath Weapon, Jon crouches behind a rock that protects him from the fire. Which would be fine and dandy, if this very same Breath Weapon hadn't destroyed Winterfell's solid stone walls only a few episodes earlier and now can't even blow apart some measly rubble to get at Jon. Even taking into account Rhaegal tore off half of Viserion's head and he's leaking fire as a result to make the argument he can't channel it as effectively anymore, such a massive loss of power can strain belief especially since Viserion gives a sustained blast at Jon's cover comparable to previous uses yet still can't destroy a much smaller and weaker target.
- The Night King goes down instantly from Valyrian steel but is immune to dragonfire. This is more egregious if you've read the supplemental books and know that what makes Valyrian steel special is most likely the essence of dragonfire being captured within it during the forging. Many fans felt that if one can kill him then so should the other, and that this was just a cheap twist to nerf Daenerys despite the long-held anticipation that her dragons would be the logical antidote to an army of White Walkers given the prophecy about Ice and Fire.
- Melisandre immediately dying by Rapid Aging when she removes her necklace, when removing it before merely dropped the illusion that concealed her true age.
Broken Base: Arya being the character to ultimately kill the Night King proves to be one of the single most controversial plot points of the series as a whole. By David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' admission, they ultimately choose Arya because they thought Jon would be "too obvious of a choice" and no one would expect Arya. Naturally this caused a divide with viewers who agreed with their assessment and those who felt this pushed Arya's assassin ability to absurd levels and that the reason Jon or Daenerys would be more "obvious" as the ultimate foe to the Night King was because it would make more sense.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In the writers' interview they directly refer to the battle as the end of the Dothraki. They then continue to reappear in greater and greater numbers in every episode after this, to the point that in the finale they appear to be back to full strength like they respawned in a videogame.
- Lyanna, the little girl who kills a giant. Also the fact she’s played by Bella Ramsey, whose other famous character would befriend giants.
Idiot Ball: In conjunction with with Hollywood Tactics ( summarized elsewhere) this entire episode is plotted along a chain of incredibly illogical and foolish decisions by characters like Jon, Daenerys, the Night King and many others who have been shown to be far smarter. In detail:
- The gathered forces of the Light start the battle by throwing their entire cavalry force (at least 50,000 mounted Dothraki screamers) in a charge that was guaranteed to completely wipe them out and gain them nothing. What makes it worse is that they were apparently planning to do this from the get-go even before Melissandre arrived and gave the Dothraki a Hope Spot by lighting the arakhs they all carry on fire, as this weapon is typically useless against wights and White Walkers (and unlike the Unsullied, they haven't been issued any dragonglass weapons). So why did Jon, Dany, and their war council plan this when this action would serve nothing but adding 50,000 fresh wights to the Army of the Dead?
- Why assemble all your infantry in the open when you're in front of a powerful fortress like Winterfell? After all, what use are the walls of a castle or a fortress if not to keep your troops safe? And even if they wanted to keep their troops in the open to provide another barrier to the wight charge, why didn't they put the flaming trenches and dragonglass-tipped spikes in front of them and light them at the first instance of the wights showing?
  - On that note, if you are going to deploy your army in front of the walls at night, set up some fires ahead of you so you can see the enemy coming! The Unsullied probably could have held a lot longer if they could have seen what they were doing.
- Not having something like boiling oil or flammable liquid pitch to fight the wights climbing the walls. The Night's Watch had such things on top of the Wall as the battle of Castle Black showed in Season 4.
- Putting the trebuchets in front of the army, and then only firing one salvo, makes the living look more than a little scatterbrained. For that matter, they could have easily set up smaller catapults on the tops of Winterfell's towers and inside the huge courtyard to rain flaming rocks on the wights with impunity.
- Having only a handful of archers on the wall battlements and practically none on top of the towers and other buildings. Forget ranged weapons, wights don't so much as throw rocks - any archers shooting at them from Winterfell would have been perfectly safe until the wights scaled the walls! Even if there weren't enough archers to man the walls from among the Northern and Vale forces, they could have borrowed hundreds if not thousands of Dothraki horse archers instead of throwing away their lives in a brainless suicide charge.
- Sam waltzing onto the battlefield, even after he had been given the strong suggestion of remaining in the crypts to help protect those inside. His comrades can't rely on him, and Dolorous Edd ends up being stabbed at least in part due to a loss of situational awareness after saving Sam. Sam would also likely have been capable at least of defending the crypts against the few wights within, so his absence likely got even more people killed indirectly.
- Hiding in a crypt to protect yourselves against a mighty Necromancer who Jon knows can raise thousands of dead at a distance, and not even bothering to burn the corpses inside? What a great idea, everyone!
  - On a similar level, not providing one or two capable men to guard the people in the crypts (and also not giving anyone there a weapon) means that a small number of wights raised are able to slaughter a large number of those hiding as they have no means of defending themselves. While there is some sense in thinking that if the crypt is breached the battle is already lost, a couple of soldiers wouldn't make much difference and would safeguard some valuable people against unexpected events. And as mentioned above, that outcome was also predictable as a possibility...
- Jon is pursuing the Night King after both are dismounted, but halts his run giving his quarry time to realise he is there. Jon only continues his charge once the Night King is in the process of raising the dead. If Jon had carried on with his run and hadn't hesitated, he likely would have been able to attack the Night King in time.
- Daenerys lands after saving Jon and pays no attention to her surroundings, allowing Drogon to be swarmed by wights and losing him for the remainder of the battle.
- The Night King makes a fatal mistake by exposing himself out in the open just for the personal satisfaction of getting to kill Bran, despite the fact that he could have probably easily managed to accomplish the same by simply allowing his wights to Zerg Rush Bran, or letting undead Viserion incinerate him in a single strafing run.
I Knew It!:
- Theon and Jorah were two of the most popular choices among the episode's major casualties. Though it was intended for quite a while that Jorah would survive.
- The Night King raising the corpses buried in the crypt had been called by a lot of fans since the previous episode.
Like You Would Really Do It: The episode was hyped up as being the death of a very high number of characters. In the end, only a few major characters actually die, even fewer subvert the standard Sorting Algorithm of Mortality, and the threat of the White Walkers is ended before it even gets past Winterfell. Of the characters featured in the instantly iconic "Jenny of Oldstones" montage in the previous episode, including everyone around the fireplace, only Theon and Jorah died, despite the fact that the montage visually was indicating and communicating that some or all of those characters would die.
Memetic Badass:
- Lyanna Mormont's Dying Moment of Awesome added to her already impressive resume as the show's resident Little Miss Badass.
- The badass credentials of trained assassin Arya Stark, the show's original Little Miss Badass, went much higher by personally killing the Night King after virtually appearing out of nowhere — with only a gust of air signaling her arrival.
- Theon Greyjoy was the walking definition of awesome in this episode. He puts his excellent archery skills to good use and when he runs out of arrows he uses his bow as a weapon before grabbing a spear. He then proceeds to kill dozens of wights all by himself. He’s the last man standing when the Night King arrives in the godswood. Theon dies a good man and an excellent warrior. He truly earned his redemption.
- Grey Worm dodging a blatant Death Flag for the second time also came across as this. Not to mention that during the panning shot of the various Back-to-Back Badasses covering for one another, Grey Worm is fighting off the wights completely solo.
Memetic Loser:
- Sam's less than impressive showing during the battle made him the source of mockery among fans, especially after he insisted on taking part in the battle after Jon suggested that he protect the women and children in the Crypt. The fact that he may or may not have been the reason Dolorous Edd died (after Edd had to save Sam's ass in the first place) has outweighed his Memetic Badass state from earlier seasons with a certain contingent of fans. It also doesn't help that the final time we see Sam in the episode through Jon's POV, he's flailing helplessly on the ground while the other, more experienced, fighters are fending off White Walkers.
- The Night King, after being built up all series as the ultimate threat, becomes this in the eyes of many fans. All he really does in the episode is ride on Viserion, get knocked off, raise the dead, kill Theon quickly, and Neck Lift Arya when she tries to stab him before she kills him with a single fake-out strike to the gut. He doesn't even get a proper fight scene with anyone in the cast.
- Jon Snow, whose primary storyline focus since Season 1 was on defeating the White Walkers, who Melisandre claimed was "The Prince Who Was Promised" (in Season 6), who had several stare-downs with the Night King, whose meeting with Daenerys was the meeting of "Ice and Fire" (in Season 7), and who kept trying to convince people that it is the Long Night which is the greatest battle, had pretty much every single plot element and article of belief shredded in this episode. It's not his destiny to kill the Night's King, there was possibly never a Prince That Was Promised. For some, Jon's last scene in the episode shouting and screaming at the Viserion wight dragon, made him look especially foolish in what should have been the culminating moment of his character arc.
Memetic Mutation:
- Sports memes have emerged after the episode.
  - Pics with captions of "I gotta admit, they had us in the first half".
  - End game/season statistics (e.g. MVP = Arya, Defensive Player of the Game = Theon, Grey Worm, Beric, or Jorah, Rookie of the Year = Lyanna Mormont, Most Improved = Theon, Melisandre, Daenerys, or Podrick, Sixth Man = Melisandre, etc.).
  - Air Jordan logos being replaced with Arya's sneak attack stance.
  - A video where Arya killing the Night King is superimposed over game footage on a TV in a bar, with mass celebration ensuing.
  - Arya's face being edited into NBA players making winning buzzer beaters.
  - Michael Jordan's infamous crying meme being edited into the Night King's face.
- Arya killing the Night King plays out so much like Éowyn killing the Witch-king of Angmar that this exchange would not have been out of place.
  Night King: (holds Arya by the throat) Fool! No one can kill me! Die now!
  Arya: (drops knife to her other hand) A girl IS no one! *STAB*
- Bran telling Theon that "he's gonna go now" spawned a lot of memes. An example is "Bran deciding to finish Avengers: Endgame".
- Gendry's dick being the source of power due to Arya's impressive showing this episode.
- Memes of Cersei, who never appears in the episode, chilling and relaxing in King's Landing while everybody in the North is dying and fighting.
- Following the admission that Arya was chosen to kill the Night King over Jon for "avoiding the expected", David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been compared to Rian Johnson who is notorious for his love of subverting expectations.
- Pictures with captions of thanking Melisandre, Beric, Drogon, Rhaegal, Viserion, and the moon for providing light. And in fact, pictures complaining on how the episode (at least on first broadcast) was so badly lit viewers could hardly see anything.
- Comments surrounding Arya's absurd amounts of Plot Armor flared up right after her killing the Night King.
- Fans started claiming that Jon is the Dragonborn after Viserion dropped dead while Jon was screaming at him, with edited videos of Jon using the Thuum to kill Viserion popping up.
- Due to this episode and Avengers: Endgame being released in the same week, there's a lot of memes regarding a Stark defeating the Big Bad and saving the day.
Narm: When the Night King finally dies, Viserion and all the other wights drop dead. Several of the wights plop down from the parapets and other high places in an almost cartoony fashion.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Melisandre was always a polarising character and, to many, she crossed the Moral Event Horizon after burning Shireen. But her turn in this episode as a Gandalf-esque wizard who arrives just in time — lighting up the Dothraki's arakhs with fire and directing Arya to the Night King, revealed to have been her Trickster Mentor all along — won many over. Melisandre's arrival being the accidental remedy to the detested poor lighting during the battle helps.
Shocking Moments: Basically the entire episode is made on surpassing this multiple times. The greatest example has to be the final showdown in the Godswood. At the last possible moment, with the Night King preparing to kill Bran, having handily killed all of his defenders, Arya Stark leaps out of nowhere screaming to stab him at close quarters with the Valyrian steel dagger that's been a part of the series since Season 1 — except the Night's King catches her by the throat mid-leap. His keen perception wasn't enough to see where she dropped her dagger to, however; her other hand. Into his gut went the dagger, and the Night's King died in an explosion of shattered ice.
Special Effect Failure: There's some shoddy green screen going on as Jon and Dany take to the air.
Tear Jerker: Many, considering the subject matter of this episode.
- Jorah dying in his beloved Khaleesi’s arms while she weeps over him. Even sadder is the fact that Jorah was too injured to get any last words out. Even mighty Drogon cannot help but mourn someone who was there since his beginning.
- Theon’s Heroic Sacrifice to give Bran a few more seconds of life. Even more touching is that, right before, Bran thanks him and calls him a good man, completing Theon’s redemption arc.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- As mentioned above, the White Walkers other than the Night King didn't do anything this episode.
- When the deceased people from the crypts were raised, Rickon and Lyanna Stark are not among them.
- The undead Viserion is hardly used, only having a brief fight scene with his brothers. Moreover, we never really see Dany’s (or Drogon and Rhaegal’s, for that matter) reaction to being forced to fight her own child.
- Despite showing them reanimating, the undead Eddison Tollett and Lyanna Mormont did nothing.
- After seven and a half seasons of setup the entire combined horde of the Dothraki people is wiped out in the opening moments and achieves nothing.
  - Given that the audience doesn’t see the same amount of white walkers enter Winterfell as were seen on horseback at the end of the last episode ^note, the Dothraki charge did manage something, but in the end, the enemy had such a big force, that it didn’t matter anyways, and they might as well have done nothing for all the good it did.
- The Night King was killed by a single stab, and with him all the fear and intimidation he'd brought to the table as one of the series' most prominent Knights of Cerebus dissipates entirely, when he could have done so much more, even in the three episodes the series had had left.
- This video makes an interesting case story-wise for why Theon should have been the one to kill the Night King, even if it would have been an unexpected (and possibly controversial) twist.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- A popular theory that developed before this episode aired was that only a fraction of the Night King's army attacked Winterfell to serve as a distraction and the Night King and his main force were marching to the less prepared but more heavily populated King's Landing first. Not only would this show tactical brilliance on the Night King's part but preserve his status as the climactic villain built up since the first episode. ^note
- Much like Snoke, it seems half the fans are outraged that in the end there wasn’t any kind of big reveal about the Night King after years of theorizing (his being a future Bran was especially popular), while the other half argue that the show itself never actually promised such a reveal (especially since the origin story of the Night King was already shown in "The Door" and time travel doesn't work that way in this series but instead as a Stable Time Loop) and they’re victims of their own assumptions.
- While Jon is a Targaryen and therefore qualifies as a Dragon Rider, his riding a dragon in combat has basically no buildup. He did ride on Rhaegal in the season premiere, but that was also criticized for coming pretty much out of nowhere and not acknowledging just how rare being able to bond with and ride a dragon is (only those with the blood of the dragon descended from Valyrian dragonlords can do it, which should have tipped Dany and Jon off, and makes it odd that she invited him to try in the first place given that failed would-be riders have died).
- The dragonglass weapons were built up as one of the living's best chances, but they didn't do much more (save for Lyanna Mormont stabbing the giant wight's eye) than normal weapons would do against wights, given no White Walker even ventured on the front until the way to Bran was cleared.
- The prophecy of Azor Ahai plays no role whatsoever in the defeat of the Night King in favor of the resolution with Arya. Jon Snow never makes a single long-anticipated confrontation with the leader of the undead.
- Bran's warging powers play no role in the battle apart from using some crows to let the Night King know where he is.

YMMV / Game of Thrones S8E3: "The Long Night"

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