Game of Thrones Rant (SPOILERS!)

If you haven’t watched the battle of Winterfell episode yet, then — well first of all, what is wrong with you?! I mean I know *I* fell behind, but I’m working, prepping for grad school, writing a novel, and trying to keep up with my girlfriend, so no more excuses; go get caught up!

Oh and also, if you haven’t watched the battle of Winterfell episode yet, then you should do that BEFORE YOU READ ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS POST BECAUSE IT’S FULL OF SPOILERS!

Okay, you’ve been warned! Here comes the ranty spoiler part!

Arya is a badass. No doubt. And I loved that *she* was the one who killed the Night King. Girl power!

But dude.

Seriously?! Are you f-ing kidding me? You tease how Big and Bad and Evil the Night King is for EIGHT SEASONS, giving us a glimpse of how big and bad he is from the first scene of S1 E1, and you’re gonna go all slow-mo

I’ma kill Bran, y’all watch out, I’m a kill Bran

for like an agonizing forty or fifty seconds, in which we *know* he’s not going to *really* kill Bran, and at the end of all that, Arya just hops in and…

BAM!!!! Exploding ice heads everywhere!

The End.

W.

T.

F.

I talked with LT about it, and we both agreed the writers really screwed the pooch on this one.

Now, granted, maybe they had to wrap it up in season eight, and if what SHOULD have happened happened, then maybe they wouldn’t have been able to do it and they would have had to give us a season nine and HBO was just not down with that. And maybe THAT is why what should have happened didn’t happen.

“And what should have happened?”

Oh, dude, c’mon. Any fan of the books and the show knows what *should* have happened: The humans should have lost the battle of Winterfell! There should have been only a few survivors left — a Stark here and there, Tyrion because he’s awesome, Bran because he’s weird and we still want to see what happens with him, and Dany because we still want to see her kick Cersei’s ass. The survivors should have met up with each other somewhere south of Winterfell, all of them on the run, the army of the undead and his long winter on their heels.

They should have stayed just one step ahead of him as they scramble to save as many humans as they can, but of course far too many don’t take the threat seriously until it’s too late, and so far more die than survive.

Meanwhile, the characters should be trying to figure out what can actually stop the Night King (not *just* dragonglass, but what can stop him in a battle as he gathers more and more dead) and Bran should be explaining what he wants (and sorry Bran, but “an unceasing night” isn’t going to do it — you’ve got to give us a bit more depth than that!).

At last, they should near King’s Landing, and the fight that Cersei was trying to avoid is now on her doorstep, whether she likes it or not. She *has* to ally with Jon and Dany and the gang, and Jon and Dany have no choice but to ally with her, and then and ONLY then do we get the final big showdown of dead vs. living in King’s Landing.

Arya can still kill the Night King, but we needed to see Bran vs. Night King and we needed to see Jon vs. the Night King, because this was promised to the audience and the one thing you cannot do as a writer is make a promise and then not fulfill it.

It’s the whole “Chekhov’s gun” thing:

Russian playwright and master of the short form, Anton Chekhov, famously said that if you have a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired in the third act.

The battle of Winterfell violates that fundamental law of writing. As an audience, we were promised a Jon vs. Night King showdown and some version of Bran vs. Night King. Like I said, Jon doesn’t need to be the one who actually kills the Night King, but they need to at least face off. And Bran… I mean, what is the point of Bran right now?? When are we going to get to see more of what he knows?

At this point, I’m praying — praying! — that the Night King has only temporarily been killed somehow, and that he will still go down to King’s Landing and force another big battle.

If not… wow. Epic let down for an epic show.