The fog of war in Winterfell

And yet, given the carnage, a surprising number of character names have survived. There are still a few unknowns, but the investigation of the people who remained standing as the episode drew to a close was a dreadful dance card. Among these names were Brienne (who, on several occasions, seemed to indicate that the episode was collapsing under an onslaught of white walkers, only to come up and swing), Pod, Jaime, Sam, the Dog, Davos , the Gray Worm, Gendry, Tormund, Dany, Jon, almost everyone threatened with imminent death in one scene or another survived. TEAR. Beric Dondarrion, Dolorueux Ed, Jorah Mormont, Lyanna Mormont and Theon Greyjoy. Oh, and Melisandre, although I do not think that removing his age-defying collar and going to the battlefield to commit suicide after helping mankind to defeat necessarily makes you a casualty of King Night. It seems like it's more like the call of the Lord of Light.

If the counting of names seems unfortunate, it is only because these final scenes of the surviving members of this conflict were almost comically limited to identifiable characters. This broad post-battle plan showing a castle filled with corpses and essentially composed only of Tormund, Gendry and Gray Worm was the equivalent of the series saying that anyone on the screen was not wearing the mention "Hello, my name is …" had to lie. die and die. A bit absurd, perhaps, but the show made it even bigger by showcasing the magnitude of the death that surrounded them all, while allowing those few we knew to breathe again. It is not that we necessarily need more people whose name is in the credits, but a balance with some anonymous would have given more likelihood.

Honestly, most of the acts in this episode have more to do with the scenes surrounding the huge melee than these clashes of hyper-edited swords. Namely: The preparation for the battle was wonderfully well done, starting with the long follow-up shot that followed Sam and then Tyrion as they nervously took their places for the fight. There was a palpable tension in the endless beats of the characters waiting and waiting, twisting their heads to try to see something, whatever, in the dark darkness that awaited them. Like Christmas, the anticipation has exceeded in some ways the gain. This includes the sudden reappearance of Melisandre, arriving just in time to make a prayer and ignite all of Dothraki's blades in the fire.

Similarly, the best interruption of the continuous sensory badault was the scene where Arya was hunted down in the library. It was so studied and so terribly tense – rather than letting it walk on tiptoe, avoiding the white strollers, the sequence highlighted its fear and uncertainty, increasing the stakes by giving it the pulse. There was certainly a lot of evil Arya before and after – more about it soon – but here is Arya, the living and breathing human person, more numerous and petrified to have made the only false move that would condemn her. Maisie Williams sold the hell out of it all. every decision twinkled on her face in a combination of paranoid panic and wilting, ranging from the impulsive throwing of papers into the room to the painful moments that crept from library to library, not knowing if the next would put her face to face with the Undead . It was a nervous thing that conferred an intimate immediacy on the issue.

But that's not what this episode was meant to present. "The long night" was the big battle of the year, the thing Game of thrones always as one of its most seasonal points, and this time it was pissed off even more, thanks to the truly stunning cost and size of the down payment. Rather than staging mbadive and elegant shots of this ambitious setup, it seems that director Miguel Sapochnik has very intentionally chosen to retreat to get disoriented close-ups. With some very nice exceptions (the burning swords of the Dothraki charging in the dark, the Unsullied burying the waves of white walkers, the fiery pit by Melisandre), the battle pointed to the fog of war – that chaos and a feeling Confusing too fast to save triggered by being in the middle of something too big for you to treat it.

This may have been effective in understanding the confusion of the situation, but it did not result in terribly exciting scenes. The blurred camera (literally sometimes) and the fast editing meant that the exchange of shots that should have been viscerally thrilling was often confusing, which captured the mood but was not very entertaining to watch. From time to time, a shot came out of the fog of conflict that persisted long enough to express the spatial geography of the character and the current threat he was facing. It was like a manna coming from the sky amid the chaos of surrounding imagery. The best of them was probably Lyanna Mormont coming out the giant, which only underscored how unfortunately such moments were rare. Sapochnik is capable of better than that, and it is really odd to use one of the most expensive battle sequences in history as an opportunity to trace sometimes vague contours of combat choreography. (The magical fog and cold that made everyone blinding certainly did not help to clarify things.)

Similarly, the dragon sequences have been marred by a lack of spatial geography – Jon and Dany may have flown blindly for much of their scenes, but that does not mean that the public should be as well. Even in times of dramatic conflict, such as the attack of Jon and Rhaegal by the king of nights and his ice dragon, the scene was so strangely cut that it was difficult to badyze the truth. and forth. When Dany came forward to throw the king of the night on his messenger and send him diving down to earth, it was at least a consistent action, which the brusque dragon who was struggling before failed to transmit.

But that's not what people will remember from this episode. What we will all remember is Arya Stark, the supreme Badbad of the seven kingdoms. Not Jon Snow, not Daenerys, but the warrior of the size of a pint who spends the first part of the battle just to annihilate the white walkers one after the other and then turns out to be the one who inflicts the deadly blow at King of the night. The scene with Melisandre recalls something that most viewers probably do not remember: an exchange between the two of season three that revealed to the youngest Stark that she was meant to kill those who had "eyes brown, blue eyes, green eyes … shut it forever. Combine that with the well-emblematic motto that Arya inherited from her former teacher, Syrio Forel, on what to say when the god of death calls ("Not today"), and you have a nice and enjoyable moment of victory for the crowd. The little criticism in me would say that the series could have done a better job by revealing how she got the win over Night King instead of just Deus Ex Arya's ing, but it's a very satisfying moment, so we will let it go.

After surviving "The Long Night", Daenerys will now focus on the problem that initially upset her: Cersei Lannister. It will be interesting to see how the show tries to raise the stakes of an intimate quarrel between rival monarchs over an existential threat to the very existence of humanity, but this series has always excelled when it delves into machinations of political chicane. There will probably be a bad lesson here: Nobody thanks you for saving the world two weeks later.

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