SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8 EPISODE 3
So we watched the big battle last night, the one that took 55 days of filming in cold rain and more special effects than one can shake a stick at. Unfortunately the latter rather lost their impact as our TV, which is small and not the best quality, could not keep up with the darkness, so a lot of the episode seemed to be black tessellations with the occasional skull grimacing through the gloom.
Fortunately, it didn’t really matter as there was nothing to this episode. It was certainly gripping television, but it also betrayed the one redeeming point about a TV show that is complete dross: the overarching idea that there is a great existential threat from, basically, climate change and the only way humanity can survive is by putting aside politics and uniting against it. This was the message repeatedly throughout the series and by having the battle with the white walkers now, defeating them so that the show could get on with what really matters (who sits on the throne) the show has done itself a great disservice. As my favourite writers about the show put it, in the LA Review of Books:
Benioff and Weiss didn’t want the Night King to speak because they didn’t want him to be on the record. They wanted—as they have invoked countless times when called out for bungling something—plausible deniability that their art could ever really mean anything beyond the surface, or beyond the compelling, yet conventional, political and social entanglements of the main, humanoid cast.
It would have, perhaps, been best if the white walkers had in fact won the battle. If all except a handful of humans had died and the survivors gone south while the zombies swarmed over Westeros. Then had a single lsat desperate stand, with Cersei, or else been defeated and left as small bands of survivors with only a hope that one day in the future they would be able to rise again. Instead, the Night King who has just survived incineration by dragonfire goes down to a single stab to the tummy and his entire army, all the zombies, shatter like crystal goblets at a full performance of the Ring Cycle. That is it, that is what it takes to destroy the greatest threat to humanity.
No one of any importance dies. The Dothraki, all the Dokhraki, perish in one of the best scenes in the episode, their only purpose to show the stakes for our heroes. Two of the more important characters die, one of whom should have died years ago and the other gets a redemption arc. A couple of other nonentities die, whose names I barely remember. The named characters, the ones who moped around and sang ballads the night before the battle, remain protected by the armour of plot. They get piled on by zombies, pinned against walls, but nothing happens. When the zombie army shatters, they brush it all off them and are good to fight another day. Even Greyworm the black character, doesn’t seem to have died despite all the foreshadowing.
And then there is the stupidity of it all. You are facing a foe whose big trick is bringing the dead back to life to fight on his side. Let’s hide all the most defenceless characters in the crypt. THEY’LL BE SAFE THERE. One of the main purposes of the invasion is, we are told, to capture the memory of the world, hosted within creepy Bran. Great, let’s put him under a tree with ten men to guard him. That’s not even getting into the battlefield tactics which, to my untutored eye, looked nonsensical.
So why keep watching? Well, for one there are only three episodes left and I have watched it for years and I intend to never read the books, even if they are ever written. But it really feels like participating in a global phenomenon. The excellent LARB episode recaps are an example of the really intelligent thinking that goes into them, and there is a flood of memes after every episode that is a delight to see. Pakistan has its own little meme industry, such as the excellent one of a man in his bedroom, made up like the Night King, dancing wildly to Daler Mehndi’s bhangra song Sadhe dil pe chhuriyan chalayan. GoT will be forgotten except by scholars, but the memes may have made it worthwhile.