GoT’ episode 3: Potential wasted for cheap payoffs

As the lights go out little by little, we know bad omens are afoot for Winterfell

KARACHI: SPOILER ALERT!

It was never going to be easy, was it? It’s said no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy and that is precisely what the defenders of Winterfell experience in the opening half hour of episode three, titled quite aptly ‘The Long Night.’

Compared to other episodes in the series, thi is almost twice as long in running, and for good reason. Unlike the one it follows, there is no filler material here. There are no meandering conversations and only a lone witty comeback. The most lines most characters say are just battle orders they bark at the various nameless extras that make up the bulk of Winterfell’s defence.

PHOTO: HBO

But, back to the matter at hand. As the Army of the Dead descends upon the Starks’ ancestral keep, one by one each, contingency fails. It starts ominously – Daenarys’ Dothraki cavalry, led by her most loyal companion Jorah Mormont, charges headfirst into the darkness, swords and sickles alight with fire, before the opposing supernatural army even begins its advance.  But as little by little, those lights go out, we, like the living characters in Winterfell, know bad omens are afoot.

Pretty soon the characters and the audience find themselves in familiar unnerving territory. Like the Battle of the Bastards in season six, this fight becomes increasingly hopeless. Defences fail and key characters fall in action sequences that switch from exciting to frustrating for the viewer, though not in a bad way.

PHOTO: HBO

Dany’s dragons, in keeping with the foreshadowing from the previous season, appear out of their depth before the Night King’s army and soon enough, Winterfell is overrun.

As the Night King makes his way towards Bran, who volunteered to be used as bait, Jon, who many believed would be one to end the Long Night, appears pinned between unending numbers of wights and the resurrected Viserion.

And then, when all appears lost, deliverance comes from the most unexpected source, turning all prophecies in the story and fan theories outside of it on their head.

PHOTO: HBO

The threat crumbles in place, the Night King is no more. The survivors, now, can take stock of the carnage he had wreaked and the dead – the ‘dead’ dead – left in its wake.

Although the subversion of expectations could be a welcome touch for some and may appear to hearken back to the unexpectedness in earlier seasons that made Game of Thrones the hit it has become, one can’t help but wonder that it came too early with too many questions still unanswered. We are still no closer to knowing the Night King and his White Walker cohort’s motivations. While there are still three episodes left to potentially explore that area, it does feel that in the end, despite all the buildup in the battle for Winterfell, the Night King went out with a whimper, not a bang.

What is more unforgivable is that in one stroke, the showrunners have robbed the central theme of the show – that certain shared challenges trump personal aims – of all meaning in the context of the series. Advertently or inadvertently, they have also shown Cersei’s gambit to have been right all along. Rather than being poised to confront her folly, she now has the upper hand over Jon and Dany’s combined forces.

In the end, in trying to deliver a mid-season twist to reinvigorate interest, they have wasted all narrative groundwork the books-inspired early seasons laid down.

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