There’s sooo many things I dislike about season 8 of Game of Thrones obviously, but one thing that drives me absolutely insane is the Battle of Winterfell. Arya killing the Night King doesn’t make ANY sense. Yes, she is an extremely skilled fighter, and I absolutely adore Arya. However, her primary skillset lies with assassination type of killing: poison, disguises, sneaking up on people, etc.
Having Arya kill the Night King disregards literally all of the build up of previous seasons AND all of the background about the Prince That Was Promised. The second Long Night was prophecized CENTURIES before the GOT timeline. So many Targaryens dreamed about it and believed themselves or their children to be the PTWP (prince that was promised). Rhaegar himself believed that his and Elia’s son Aegon was the Prince.
George RR Martin and even the show make it pretty clear that Daenerys is the PTWP, who is said to stand against the Others and deliver the world from darkness. Melisandre says, “When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt." This obviously refers to the birth of Daenerys’s dragons and the red comet that appears at the same time. While Daenerys did play a large role by bringing her armies and dragons to fight—essentially becoming the main reason they were able to win and thereby fulfilling the prophecy—it’s Jon Snow’s sidelining that aggravates me.
Through the entire series, I felt like everything was building up to Jon killing the Night King, or at least playing a strong role in his death. His entire plot line was based around fighting the Others and convincing other people to fight them. He’s even brought back to life! So obviously he has a large part to play, right? But then he spends half the battle pointlessly on dragon back when he can’t even see 6 feet in front of him and the other half walking through the battlefield doing… basically nothing. He literally walks right by Samwell as he’s about to get killed by a wight and looks straight at him then continues walking without bothering to help him. Overall, it was just a disappointing direction to take his story arc in.
Bran’s arc was also rather infuriating. He has actual magical freaking powers that he cultivated over the course of the entire series, and he just sits there and does nothing? He’s just BAIT? Like surely there’s something he could do, even if that had just been warning people away from horrible and stupid mistakes well before they even reached the Long Night.
Oh, but what bothers me perhaps more than ANYTHING else—WHY WOULD THEY PUT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE CRYPTS? WITH THE DEAD BODIES? WHILE THEY ARE FIGHTING THE DEAD? It was just the stupidest and most obvious thing from the moment it was suggested. Why not send them further south to another castle? Or if you’re going to hide them in the crypts, burn all of the dead bodies down there first.
Anyways, to sum everything up, I thought the episode was nonsensical and disappointing. Yes, I love Arya, but her plot line should have led to fighting the Mountain or something like that. As much as I would love to see her kill Cersei, I have never thought that was the direction she would go. I’ve always thought it would be Jaime to kill Cersei, especially because of the prophecy that she’s given in the books about a “valonqar” (younger brother) choking her to death. She of course interpreted it to mean Tyrion, furthering her hatred for him, but I think Jaime is the most likely one to do it. Especially as he starts to realize how monstrous Cersei really is. I have a whole other essay worth of thoughts on how they messed up Jaime’s arc, but I’m not going to add them to this.
