Thanos and the king of the night were engaged in exactly the same battle

Attention: the upcoming spoilers for season 8 of Game of thrones and Avengers: End of the game.

The morning of Game of thronesThe long-awaited episode of the Battle of Winterfell, "The Long Night", Avengers: End of the game directors Joe and Anthony Russo tweeted a photo made by a fan King of the night and Thanos face to face, with the hashtag #WeWannaSeeThisFight. But the truth about the bad guys – two of the most important of this decade's popular culture and both facing their deadliest clashes in a weekend – is that they have no reason to fight. From what we know of their goals, their fight is essentially the same.

For several seasons of Game of thronesthe king of the night is above all a bastion of pure death. But during the episode preceding the great battle "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms", a conversation between Bran Stark and Samwell Tarly added a more terrifying and more specific dimension. "He wants to erase this world and I'm his memory," says Bran. "It's death, is not it?" Sam answers. "Forgetting … to be forgotten. If we forget where we have been and what we have done, we are no longer men, but animals. Your memories do not come from books; your stories are not just stories. If I wanted to erase the world of men, I would start with you. "

Photo: HBO

Thanos did not start on the same page as the king of the night. It initially aimed to eliminate half of the universe in order to extend the resources. In Avengers: war in the infinitehe succeeded. At this point, he had not begun to focus on the memory of the world. After stabbing Tony Stark, he reminds Tony that half of humanity will survive the upcoming apocalypse and adds, "I hope they will remember you."

But this hope is his biggest mistake. He allows the heroes of all peoples to remember what he has done. And like Avengers: End of the game unfolds, they can not move forward and can not stop trying to undo what he did. So, the objectives of Thanos change. "As long as there will be those who will remember what was, there will always be those who will be unable to accept what can be," he says in End of Game. It focuses on total annihilation. He wants to completely end the universe in order to be able to create a new one from scratch – a space with no memory of the blood on which it was built and no memory of the Avengers.

The Night King and Thanos want to win their wars by convincing everyone that they have never existed. Like Keyser Söze from The usual suspectsthey are devils, and the biggest thing they want to do is convince the world that they do not exist. The king of the night is able to pose such a threat in the first place, precisely because his memory and that of the dead have disappeared in Westeros, as well as the belief that winter is coming. The loss of cultural memory is a huge threat to Westeros as we approach a new winter.

Photo: HBO

With the ideas of cycles and repetition of the story, especially his mistakes, Game of thrones pushes the boundaries of the TV screen in the real world. From negationists to those who refuse to believe in US internment camps in Japan and other atrocities committed by their own means, the real world has experienced endless cycles of historic denial. Trying to erase history is a favorite trick of dictators, regimes destroying the cultural and religious texts of the old regimes to the Nazis who plunder books, works of art and artifacts until Mao's cultural revolution systematically end existing traditions and cultures. Game of thrones is no stranger to modern political parallels, with Jon Snow's final speech for season 7 on the lies that resonate in Trump's time and author George RR Martin describing the entire series as a parable about climate change . It is quite natural that representations of dictators and existential threats such as Thanos and the king of the night in popular culture badume the atmosphere of the time.

The way the two villains represent the same type of struggle against cultural memory indicates a connection in their DNA, a shared connection through a long narrative. The Marvel cinematic universe – a series often compared to television, but on a much larger scale – will continue until the first three phases of the MCU – Infinity Saga – resemble season 1 of the year. a much more important story.

So how can the MCU both offer a sense of purpose and start from scratch? Avengers: End of the gameThanos 'response is to turn Thanos' threat of erasing the Avengers into a truly monstrous idea, a way to multiply by a previous mbadacre and to throw the universe into a vicious repetition. He's a pretentious villain, but in a way it's one of the superhero comics we've been embracing for decades. The MCU could have pressed the reset button after End of Game, as comic strips of superheroes so often do to avoid overly complicated worlds and start over with new stories about the same characters. DC seems to be doing the same thing with his films, giving up the idea of ​​a single continuity to recast major roles such as Batman and Superman or to release some of the films from the screenplay, such as the upcoming movie. Joker.

Photo: Marvel Studios

Game of thrones is different, not just because it's his last season, but because the show has always been more cynical than the MCU. The end is approaching for these characters. Thus, although the theme of memory and reflection on their beginnings is natural, it is unlikely that we will see a lasting answer as to whether the memory is really worthless after the fighting in progress. In fact, the show could even set up an end that leaves memory in danger again. The last three episodes will deal with arguments for the throne that Jon Snow has so often repeated does not really matter – the quarrels are now resolved. Will the Westeros heroes forget so quickly what united them?

The idea of ​​memory puts the Game of thrones Prequel is also presented in a new light, as it is designed to explore key events in Westeros' history whose current heroes knew nothing as they battled the dead and repeated the cycle. This tragedy has already given rise to an underlying tragedy, as the public knows that most of what they will see is lost afterwards. The previous show is a period similar to that of the MCU. Saga of infinitywith Game of thrones representing the second round in the cycle.

But the uncertainty about what lies ahead remains. Thanos and the king of the night were defeated, their battles against memory were broken and stabbed. There may be a lot of time before bad guys like them come back, but the time itself is a cycle that allows people to forget and naughty like them to get up again and again .