Game of Thrones S8 Ep 3 – The criticism of "The Long Night"

By Laura Prudom

This review contains comments about Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3, entitled "The Long Night". To refresh your memory, check out our Season 8, Episode 2 report, as well as our predictions about the deaths at the Battle of Winterfell to see if our assumptions were true.

Game of Thrones has promised us something new for the third episode of Season 8, and it has been delivered like never before.

Nevertheless, it is impossible not to feel a little disconcerted, given the hype of this episode, that we have only seven deaths of notable people (and let's face it, Beric, Edd and Jorah could have just as easily wearing red shirts heard this battle was coming). Theon and Melisandre also served their narrative objectives in a way that did not surprise me (or particularly devastated) to see them leave, and although Lyanna's death is clearly intended to be the preferred exit of fans who really twisted the knife, according to the writers, she was originally designed to be a character of a scene, so this obviously does not affect the end of the game in the series.

Not that I want to lose beloved characters, of course, but the fact that the episode spared the entire main cast somehow undermined the stakes of an otherwise monumental business. There have been times when Brienne, Jaime, Sam, Tyrion and Sansa, in particular, have been completely encircled and overgrown, and yet their conspiracy armor has proved too thick to penetrate. That's not to say that some of them will not die in the last three episodes, of course, but for an as expected and expected confrontation since the last fight with the king of the night, the episode has had echoes of "Beyond the Wall," where the characters made dubious decisions because the plot dictated it, and yet managed to survive despite the probabilities for the same reason.

Nevertheless, in terms of size, "The Long Night" easily overshadowed the ambition and tension of "Battle of the Bastards" and "Hardhome", also led by Miguel Sapochnik. If we measured the episode solely on the basis of technical difficulty, it's an easy 10 (that's probably why our review of previous seasons, Matt Fowler, gave Hardhome and Battle of the Bastards a perfect score. ).

I've been tempted to do the same thing here, simply because "The Long Night" is a spectacular achievement in filmmaking – it's shameful to many of the decisive battles in the filmmaking world of MCU and DC, and could easily be measured in relation to the intensity of the film. The Deep sequence of Helm in The Lord of the Rings: The two rounds – but I had to deduct points according to some of the tricks of the plot.

Where did Bran go after being introduced into crows to spy on the king of the night? We do not see him taking a look at the progress of the villain at any given time, yet he is still excluded for most of Theon's last fight. What was the point of checking on Night King in the first place if Bran was not even trying to warn Theon or Jon about his pointy head? Why did Jon and Dany MIA spend long moments before hitting the king of the night, when their dragons could easily defend the ramparts when the warriors began to invade the walls? Where in the hell was Ghost after being found in a wall of warriors who wiped out most of the Dothraki? How did Arya go through all these zombies and White Walkers to get the King of the Nights' coup de grace? And why was it so dang dark? (Visually, not even the plot.)

It's not unravels that completely undermine the logic of the show like it's done "Beyond the Wall," but for such a meticulously crafted episode, these are frustrating distractions designed to exacerbate the public's tension without giving of meaning to the world. of the battle – and this is especially true of the small number of people among our protagonists. In the past, George RR Martin was not afraid to kill his darlings, which gave A Song of Ice and Fire (and thus the first seasons of Game of Thrones) a certain unpredictability, but while "The Long Night" flirted with that feeling. several times, he stopped before making the fatal blow.

Still in the wake of "The Battle of the Bastards", "The Long Night" summed up more than anything else the frenzied disorientation of a war zone on television, while strengthening the tone and momentum to keep viewers on the living. Arya's heartbreaking attempt to navigate an infested wight library looked like something from the first seasons of The Walking Dead (at the time this show still knew how to create tension) – and the silence of the scene, a horror film, only increased fear, so much so that I held my breath with Arya as she tried to escape unnoticed. It is particularly moving to think that the ancestral home of the Starks – the sacred halls where Jon, Arya, Sansa, Bran and Theon grow up – has become the theater of this terror and destruction; a subtle nod to the innocence they lost during the series.

And by using long unique shots (or at least very effective approximations using sneaky hidden cuts) and giving us an overall view of the fight, Sapochnik once again put us on the ground during this melee to life or death, masterfully describing claustrophobia, chaos and carnage in a way that will not be easily forgotten.

There were clever and indelible images that will remain among the most iconic in the series: Melisandre's spectacular spell to illuminate Dothraki's arakhs before the battle (and the haunted fire of these fires eclipsing in a disturbing way off Dothraki reached the warriors at the poetic "dragon dance" between Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion as they fought brutally in the skies over Winterfell.

The more subtle character of the beats gave even more weight to the scenes of brutal action: Tyrion and the tender moment of Sansa in the crypts; The literal panic attack of the dog (followed by his decision to protect Arya independently of his own fear); Beric's stubborn determination to hold wars aside to give them both a chance to escape, given the controversy that reigned in their relationship; Jaime and Brienne fighting through hordes of warriors to defend each other; Daenerys picks up a sword probably the first time in his life to help Jorah; and Theon's condemned charge to the Night King to buy a few more seconds from Bran. These are characters who have already faced insurmountable obstacles, and in fact, who were opposed to the war not so long ago, and yet we saw them united in a battle not only for the Winterfell's fate, but also for everyone. Westeros.

I can not think of a more enjoyable moment in the story of the series than Arya killing the Night King. There are certainly murders we have rooted in the past, such as Joffrey and Ramsay and Walder Frey, but honestly, this episode has earned almost 10 out of 10 points just for giving Arya such an impressive scene – not least because for a brief moment it seemed as though the king of the night was going to break his neck like a twig.

Some fans might have expected – at least since Hardhome – that the last showdown between Jon and the king of the night (apparently, Kit Harington and Maisie Williams), but it was a delightful subversion for Jon to do the typical heroic race towards the night. King, only for the villain to turn his back on him like an insignificant gnat that was not worthy of recognition, leaving a horde of reanimated warriors doing his dirty work.

The fact that Arya killed the king of the night with a movement that she also deployed against Brienne in the scene of season 7 of his fight is a major plus, as well as his use of the dagger in Valyrian steel, which has virtually unleashed all the conflict at the heart of the war. Game of Thrones, when Littlefinger attempted to assign the Lannisters to the assassination attempt against Bran during Season 1. This is a highlight of the years of training and trauma of Arya – that even if she was unable to save her father from Joffrey or her mother and brother Freys, or the dog's butcher, she could at least protect Bran when he needed it the most. If you think back to the scene where Ned Stark watched Arya train with Syrio Forel in Season 1 and heard the roar of real metal swords instead of their wooden training weapons, he could – be expected this fate for his daughter and seemed troubled by but at least now we know that there was a purpose to all this, despite the pain.

It seems impossible to think that after years of predicting the threat of the White Walkers – in fact, from the first shot of the series – they were scattered in a single episode, without us ever having anything learned about the motivations of the Night King. mythology of the White Walkers beyond what was revealed by the seasons of Children of the Forest. It was not easybut he did not feel as hard won as he should have been.

This is perhaps why, under all the undeniably impressive effects of the show and the special effects, the episode seems a little anticlimatic. (Unless, of course, the series is about to reveal a larger, older, supernatural threat behind all of this – but it would look like some sort of trap after seeing the entire Army of the Dead disintegrating like so much dust from Gauntlet Infinity).

In some ways, it is normal that the final battle for the future of the Seven Kingdoms comes down to humans and their choices – Jon, Daenerys, and Cersei, and the efforts they are willing to make for the search for power. But after the epic of this episode and the many battles that preceded it, will the final phase of Game of Thrones still shock us? We only have three more episodes before knowing for sure. Check out our overview of the preview of Season 8, Episode 4 here.