Review: Game of Thrones — “The Long Night”

That’s the twist, dummies.

I’ll open with this — it’s my best friend, Emma, watching the episode live yesterday.

Tag your friends. Are you more ugly than Emma? Probably not. Look at number 5 lmao. Which Emma are you? I’m all of them. Mainly 6.

Broken expectations is pretty much exactly how I’d sum up this episode of Game of Thrones. What was setup last week, the week before and the years gone by has kinda sorta been torn to shreds by an episode that had some utterly incredible moments that were slightly marred by some poor colour grading.

I’ll start there. This episode has been poorly done by in post-production somehow. I get that it’s a creative choice to obscure fucking everything but the point of emphasis across the fight is lost pretty heavily when I have to squint and pause like it’s the Zapruder film. Seriously, the amount of visual artifacts that popped up in the pitch black moments was ludicrous.

However, putting obscured vision aside the episode – technically – is a masterpiece in television production. Much like “Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards”, “The Long Night” presents another technical evolution for the show late in its run. The impressive setup of armies and action sequences – from Arya farting around with her spear, to the Fireplace Five (it’s five because Tyrion is in the crypts) duking it out at each stage of the fight, to Dany and Jon flying above the Fog of War to fight the Night King in the air, this episode looked unbelievably good and handled its action with ferocity and inspiration.

Jesus fucking christ, where do I start? This whole thing was an adrenaline rush from the opening credits. I have absolutely no idea where I want to start, so let’s go with…

Well, let’s go with the overall tension “The Long Night” delivered. It was an episode that knows exactly what it’s going to show — our gang in jeopardy after setting up our expectations so heavily last week and then breaking them. There’s a constant state of flux that our characters are all in; we know that they won’t all die, but there’s probably going to be heavily casualties.

I’ve seen a lot of complaints that people are disappointed in the episode for a multitude of reasons and, normally, those are reasons that I’d actually find myself siding with. But I can’t. Sure, I’m really pissed off the episode was colour graded so poorly — don’t tell me my TV needs calibration because it doesn’t — and there are a fair few logic, lore and Hollywood flaws that rear their head throughout the episode, yet, I can’t help but just recall the experience of watching this episode and there really isn’t anything quite like it. Perhaps that compromises this review. If it does? So be it.

I want to dive into some of the stupid stuff first. The most infuriating thing to watch was Dany and Jon’s handling of the battle through their hearts and not their heads. I couldn’t help but feel really upset that these two were making idiotic decisions throughout the episode — Dany completely nixing the plan of waiting for Night King to show up as she watches the Dothraki get wiped out, Jon seeing Night King and immediately giving chase without knowing where Dany was, and, perhaps, the most egregious: Dany landing Drogon and getting boarded quicker than a P&O cruise is boarded by the over-50s.

For the most part, their stupid decisions are designed to move the plot, but Dany’s mistake of landing Drogon is almost immediately forgotten as we watch Jorah come out of nowhere to lock her up and protect her until his last dying breath. It’s a rather shattering sequence watching him go down slowly and Dany panic stabs in the dark, but it feels so well done watching Jorah, essentially, fulfill his destiny. Sadly, he has no chance to say his last words to Dany, but he dies protecting the woman he loves so dearly with his sword, Heartsbane.

I could say the same for the rest of the Mormonts in this episode. I get that Lyanna is one of the Meme Royals for the show because “KWEEN ANGRY FACE” and that sort of fan service can be tiresome at times, but seeing Lyanna going out crushed by a giant was such an epic way to go. For a split second, I thought the show would give us a shot of her getting eaten alive, but ol’ Lyanna manages a Dragonglass stab to bring Wun Wun to the ground. Fan service aside, I just thought this was really cool.

The Crypts of Winterfell rising is not at all a surprise; it’s something the show has put a red flag on the moment it was first suggested, but for something that had alarm bells screaming it was also a place of quiet and something that served us one of the more emotionally charged moments the season has had so far – underpinned beautifully by Ramin Djawadi’s score – between Sansa and Tyrion.

Early on in the episode, Sansa and Arya stand on the wall watching their forces get demolished on the field. The pair both have a moment of clarity when they see just how bad the situation is — Arya’s confidence in Sansa is important to their relationship here. She hands Sansa the Dragonglass dagger and says, “Stick em’ with the pointy end.” It’s a little throwback to season 1 but it’s also Arya telling her “You’re not going to die.” The pair split.

Sansa arrives to the quiet of the crypts. The look she brings is one of despair and “hoooooly shite”. Tyrion, drunk, notices and continues to drink. From here, not much else happens; Tyrion gets angry that they should all be up there thinking of ways to help, but Sansa tells him that he’d be iced real fuckin’ quick, and the pair share a moment recalling their short lived coupling.

We only check back in on them for short bursts until Winterfell is overrun and the crypts awaken, those hiding with Sansa and co. are attacked by the undead, it all happens really quickly. Meanwhile, Sansa and Tyrion hide behind a massive crypt. They share a look, a look of defeat and acceptance that this is where they’ll die, but they’ll die defending their home and each other.

It’s a beautiful directorial choice from Miguel Sapochnik to have the score and sound design dip from huge and destructive to something that’s introspective and almost final. It’s a moment that’s so beautiful and so heart wrenching that I teared up — something I’ve not done watching this since the Rains of Castamere, and even then I can’t remember if I cried then.

But I honestly can’t place my feeling in that moment… to me, I said to myself “that’s fucking bold of the show to axe these two.” I think it was a moment of acceptance for myself that we were going to lose Sansa and Tyrion, but it’s aided by the fact that Dinklage and Turner were fucking INCREDIBLE for just a minute. This was their moment that perhaps wasn’t the most fitting end to their journey but it’s so, so sweet nonetheless.

So let’s talk about Bran and the Godswood and Theon AND FUCKING ARYA KILLING THE NIGHT KING. If you reacted in the following way:

“I saw that coming, ha.”

You are absolutely incorrect and are lying to me and all of your friends, because the reaction I saw most was, “WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!” And, yeah, that’s the more appropriate response to what we witnessed in those final moments. Melisandre is the bringer of good news here. I actually completely forgot about her impact on the episode as whole. Melisandre reminds Arya of an important fact that Syrio taught her as a girl: “What Do We Say to the God of Death?” It’s a catalyst moment for Arya who is reminded of blue eyes. She takes off into the night… to do what?

We’ll get back to that target in second, because I have a bone to pick with Bran so far and it’s the fact that he’s a fucking useless piece of shit who wargs into some torched crows. He offers no advice, no anything at this stage of the fight and chooses to watch Winterfell fall than offer anything else. Now, I get Bran has a larger role to play — whether it’s the reappearance, perhaps, of the White Walkers or strategic advice to defeat Cersei etc. — but the show is just coasting by on his sprinkling of information and it’s, to be frank, really fucking annoying.

That’s not to say the Godswood sequences were all annoying, though, because Theon’s death was, I’ll admit, rather touching. He’s a character I’ve not rushed to defend at any stage of this show; the Greyjoys, as a whole, are just not a great House to follow, but one of the great flaws of Game of Thrones the TV show is its waste of time on Theon’s torture arc. However, here, having Theon hear the words from Bran that he’s home and that he’s a good man. That’s all I need.

But no one really gives a flying fuck about these two lol because Arya “The Motherfucker” Stark just bodied The Night King so hard in a bit that was so fucking epic that I’m still shaking from it the next day. The Night King rocks up with the crew, Bran sits there and watches Theon get mauled by a spear and the Night King wanders over, slowly.

Meanwhile, Jon is playing hide and seek with Viserion and we take a nice fucking long 5 minutes to see the Night King raise his bla — WHOA, fuck Jon, ARYA goes Sonic levels fast past the guardsmen and LEAPS onto the NK who stops her in her tracks. Hand on the throat. We’re all fucking holding our breaths. Is this her moment? Is this the moment we see Arya fall? NOPE. It’s the moment we see Arya put all her training under Syrio, in Braavos, her sparring with the Hound and Brienne into one action: stabbing that motherfucker in the goddamn heart.

This is a moment that I think a lot of people will cherish. I know I will. Again, like Tyrion and Sansa in the crypts, my reaction was jumping out of my chair, hands over my mouth. I still can’t believe it. This is why entertainment exists. This is why we watch this show. For a moment, we can put aside our theories, our indifference to what’s happening, and just enjoy it. At this stage, I just cannot realistically put all that excitement and joy aside just to nitpick. I really can’t. It’s too goddamn epic.

It also feels too good to be true. The Night King is really brought down this quickly? This build up and mystery has been established and we don’t get to investigate towards a potential result? I don’t think we’re done with this arc and I think even after all this toying with viewers, I still don’t buy into this argument that because no one died this episode is disappointing.

I think viewers are jumping the gun a bit here and I think we all may have missed a point: the twist of the episode is that we’ve got survivors and not victims. There’s those moments from last week where we were saying our farewells and having those special moments, and I get where people are coming from when they’ve got that feeling of being shortchanged, but there’s unfinished business still. Big deaths are still on the board and going out at Winterfell just isn’t for everyone.

We’ve got three episodes remaining, and while I’m a tiny bit disappointed that most of the periphery characters were taken it makes sense that we’ve got a few heavy hitters that are survivors and it’s a big reason: Cersei Lannister, the true villain of the show (apparently.)

And, you know what, logic issues and lore issues aside (I have them) I really have to crown this as a stunning and pantheon-esque episode in Game of Thrones history. I seriously cannot come down from what I saw (three times, so far) and I think it’s okay to have the viewing experience outweigh some criticism from time to time.

You made it this far? SOME THOUGHTS!

• The Hound waking up from his fear after seeing Arya pretty much get dunked on by a bunch of White Walkers was so nice!
• Greyworm going ham was pretty sick, I’ll give him that.
• No more sultry tones from Beric.
• Melisandre is a lowkey MVP of all this. I’d extrapolate further here, but this is running into 2000 words already. I could go ALL DAY.
• Goodbye Edd :(
• I forgot about Missandei too. She had a line.
• Podcast goes up tomorrow morning! Council Member Sampson is on!