Game of Thrones Season 8: Is Winterfell Ready for the White Walker War?

People who comment online on Game of thrones divided about the latest episode of "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms". Was it a thoughtful and melancholy look at a group of people who were preparing to die in a battle with King Night and his army? Or was it a boring and useless episode that did not explain how these characters were preparing for a massive war between the living and the dead?

Yes, technically, the episode is what you do with it. But speaking of "Knight" in Vox's Game of thrones discussion room, it became clear that the debate is more nuanced than the above. There are people who think that the use of the military strategy by the series was deeply imperfect, those who think it was right, and those who do not really care about the other way.

We asked Matt Yglesias (defective team), Alex Ward (team just right) and Todd VanDerWerff (indifferent team) to argue about this and what could happen if the show was heading towards the biggest battle of his very next episode series.

Matthew Yglesias: Todd called me in his article on "A knight of the seven kingdoms", because this guy complained on Twitter not to see enough. tedious war planning meetings. I want to say that I am very much in favor of television shows not losing an hour of on-screen time to describe a boring meeting. But what I thought was the missing episode was the slightest feeling that planning was happening off-screen, anywhere.

Some quick shots of Gendry at work effectively evoke the idea of ​​a team of blacksmiths preparing dragonglass weapons. But nothing seemed to indicate that the key decision makers really took the tactical military situation seriously.

And the little we've seen of their tactical deliberations does not make much sense. Bran mentions at the last minute that he is personally the target of the king of the night attack. But no one thinks of asking everyone's favorite omniscient brother to give details about the exact location of the Army of the Dead. The Dothraki cavalry is obviously kept somewhere in the reserve – no doubt to maximize the public's surprise when they show up – but nobody talks about their disposition, even when the plan is reviewed and Bran is used as bait.

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Brienne became a knight, as for her, was comforting and apparently deserved. Despite all the considerable virtues she has seen over the years, there is nothing to indicate that she is qualified to command troopseven less to take charge of the crucial left flank. As a writer who briefly appointed himself to a senior management position when I–Founded Vox only to discover that I was really bad, I am perhaps more sensitive than most others on this point. But there is a difference between being an exceptional fighter and be an outstanding senior officer. A lot of other people with command experience are available for this post, and Brienne's background seems to make her the best candidate for the Protect Bran concert that goes to Theon Greyjoy for no discernible reason.

Last but not least, sending civilians into the crypts for security reasons seems like a good idea with a big flaw. The crypts are full of dead Starks. And the enemy can resurrect the dead. Oops!

Alex Ward: For the record, I agree with Matt on a lot of things here – especially that Game of thrones should not devote an entire episode to military strategy – but I think it's a little unfair.

Let me quickly highlight some of the things we saw in the episode:

• The Living gave their most important pitch to one of their best fighters and leaders, Brienne, to order. By giving him the heights that will allow him to make the right calls in one of the most important areas.
• They installed important defenses outside of Winterfell, including a line of fire, spades, a cheat deck and many more scenes.
• We saw Winterfell deal with major logistical challenges, consisting mainly of feeding and arming the troops, although the details of this "somewhere" were unsatisfactory for many.
• We saw everyone agree on the main goal: Kill the king of the night.
• Finally, a special operations pseudo-special team was organized to defend Bran.

And let 's not forget that the opening credits now show the fortifications, especially the trenches, dug around Winterfell.

For a 60-minute episode, it's a lot of information. And as the next episode will cover the Great War, the audience certainly want to keep a lot of surprises. Remember the episode of the fourth season "The Observers on the Wall" when Night's Watch defended the wall against the Wildlings: we did not really know how they were going to do it, but it was still exciting and surprising, especially this fake swing!

The other reason we should be easier for Winterfell's defense is that it is by far the weakest force. War is a game of compromise: you must take risks somewhere on the battlefield to maximize your winnings elsewhere. Living must take a lot of risks in their plan as they are in the proverbial country of the wrong options. For example, it would be nice to have Brienne to defend Bran, but his skills would not be available for the battlefield, where they are probably better used.

As Matt rightly points out, the combat readiness we saw in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" had major flaws, the most important being that Bran does not reveal his great secret until late and that the Living did not use it as an endless font. intelligence.

But at the end of the episode, I felt that we had learned a lot on a military level – and that it was a plan as good as this one could be designed given the dire circumstances.

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Todd: I think planning is bad!

Ok, I do not really think that. It is clear that the Winterfell gang should have a plan to eliminate the king of the night stronger than "Maybe Bran can attract it to the outdoors?", Because I guess the king of the night reflected on his own plan for more than a few seconds. It's literally the thing he was born for!

And it also highlights something that has been infuriating about Game of thrones in the past – he likes to treat the developments of a given battle as a startling revelation to the public, while there was probably at least one conversation about them in advance. This stems from the way the series has always favored surprise at suspense. He prefers you to feel taken by surprise, rather than make you wait for a bomb you already know it's there.

I think that sounds like the experience of reading George R.R. Martin's books. But the main difference is that in books we are limited to a handful of character perspectives. So when the surprise comes, we are really shaken because character is thrown by her. The importance of the event for the plot is still present, but its importance for the character is subtly given in the foreground.

The television show, which is necessarily more intrigue-oriented, had somehow the best of both worlds, because the viewers who had read the books were aware of the big and dark events that were going to happen. complete shocks for people who knew this story only via television.

But the show was already more omniscient than the limited prospects of the books, and it became even more true as he left the books behind. We are now trying to capture the effect of the occurrence of a large event while disturbing the minimum ad.

That said, where I think Game of thrones excel always is in emotional prefiguring, and it is in this department that a "Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" excels. The series has a lot of suspense in the corner because there are only four episodes left. Even if Brienne ends up becoming a bad manager one day, it does not matter, we will not see it. (And probably, she will die anyway.)

My point is not that I do not think the series should even pretend to a strategy – it probably should, and its attempts to do as little as possible have harmed its narrative in a way that I did not really understand it before writing about it. above. I think rather that the focus on the emotional strategy, preparing the public to know who is where and when and why, is ultimately more important to his long-term story.

Whatever the case may be, given what we know about the preparations for the battle, how do you expect things to go? Basing myself simply on the fact that there are three episodes to follow after the next, I bet on "not good".

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Alex: I think it's quite clear that the Army of the Dead wins at Winterfell for the simple reason that they have the numbers. This would force Jon and Dany and others to retreat south with fewer forces as the night king's troops grow as they reanimate the Winterfell casualties.

But strangely, fighting at King's Landing would be better. It is a city with well-reinforced naval and land forces, as well as anti-dragon weapons.

Winterfell was still likely to burn. Oddly, the Living has a better shot at King's Landing.

Mast: I think you can at least imagine this plan slightly half assed work. The living are outnumbered, but Winterfell is a castle and they have fortified it. The troops should be able to hold on for a long time. And there are two living dragons against an undead dragon. Suppose an air combat against the dragons modifies these numbers in 1-0 or even 2-0 in favor of the living. Then, they will have air superiority plus a strong defensive position, and the largest number of deaths will be somewhat thwarted by the fact that every breath of dragon fire that kills a white walker drops all his enemies.

But more specifically, I hope Living's victory because now that she has arrived, I find White Walker's plot rather boring.

During the first six and a half seasons of Game of thrones, the White Walkers were a really cool background of everything that was happening in the series – look at all those silly humans who bicker while the apocalypse waits – but the soulless killers who have no These dialogues turn out to be rather trivial antagonists compared to bad guys like Walder Frey or Tywin Lannister. It would be rather strange, in terms of intrigue, to conclude the entire zombie on ice in the third episode of the last season, but it would also be satisfying to turn to the more interesting question: how are all these people going? tell each other when they are do not unified by an external threat? Do we really need a few more hours for everyone to work together against the common enemy?

Maybe this will even prove that one of the reasons Game of thrones Explicitly, it is not indicated that planning is very advanced, it is that the various elements of the Army of the Living have each developed their own private system to win the post-war.