Game of Thrones: Squandering 8 Years of Character Development

NOTE: SPOILERS and this is a Rant, which means it is not as well edited or well documented as I usually like to be.

The Night King died like a punk. Like a stupid punk. I'm beyond disappointed in episode three of season eight. Not in the action, or the directing, or the acting, or the music, or the production design but in the nonsensical story decisions that have squandered seven seasons of character development and plot lines for no apparent reason.

First of all, the battle seems to be comprised by one major mistake after another on both our heroes' side and on the part of the Night King. Let's charge all of our Dothraki into the black night against a vastly superior force. Perfect. Next lets' never fire our catapults more than once. Excellent. Thirdly, let's not have any catapults behind the safety of castle walls. Genius. Then, lets have no backup plan if the dragons can't light the fire trench, the one piece of our defense that was actually a good idea. Nailed it. Finally, let's put all of the women and children in a locked dungeon that's filled with dead bodies. Wonderful. On the Night King's side, he attacks two dragons guerrilla style but then decides that they probably forgot about that and starts attacking the castle. Why not attack the castle first? Then let's walk into an ongoing battle, not waiting for the defenders to be eradicated, and go straight for the one person that his enemies know that he wants to kill. Finally, let's wait like two minutes to kill him so we can have a silent stare down. Then let's not just snap the neck of the random, tiny human that jumped into my hands so that they have time to knife me in the stomach. I am brilliant.

Then we get to the writing. Not a single Stark dies in the conflict against the army of the undead, their ancient enemy, the prophesied end of days. I mean what the hell is Bran's purpose in this story now. What does he do? We had two moderately significant deaths in Jorah and Theon and three other expected ends in Beric, Ed and Lyanna. Okay... Then we have all of the other pointless characters that somehow survived an endless onslaught of ice zombies. I'm talking Grey Worm, Tormund, Missandei, Varys, Podrick, and even Gendry, Brienne, Sam, and Gilly all who have reached the end of their character arcs and now literally do nothing. Did I want them all to die? No, but for the foretold prophecy of death that was coming to sweep over the lands and the unbelievably dire circumstances that they were all in, the fact that they all made it is pretty absurd and trope-y. Which would be fine in a show that hasn't built itself upon the groundwork of being against the tropes of typical fantasy. It just goes so hard against the grain of the show that it's sad.

Then we get to the dumbest (and I mean in the literal sense as in uneducated, unlearned, and uncaring) scene of the whole episode which was the fact that Arya, an assassin who has had literally no stake in the war with the undead for the entire show delivers the final blow without the Night King so much as unsheathing his sword. I actually vocalized,  "I don't like that. That's dumb" when that scene played out and instead of a triumphant or melancholy or bittersweet ending to the longest running storyline in the entire show, instead we get this trash. Unfulfilling, unrewarding, and completely uncaring of the groundwork that had previously been laid in the show. 

Now, is it the fact that Arya delivered the final blow? Not at all. It's the sum of the parts that really put the nail in the coffin. First off, Jon is pinned down by the undead dragon. Why on God's green earth did one of the other dragons not come and distract him. There both still alive apparently, not that I would know that from the show's conclusion. So, then Jon could run and have a final encounter with The Night King. Have the Night King actually draw his sword and speak a few lines about his motivations. Or just one line. Or just anything instead of dying like a punk. Then they have a fight, which Jon loses, barely alive (or dead if this show had any balls left), The Night King turns and stabs Bran through the chest. That's when Arya strikes and as the Night King tries to pull his sword out of Bran, Bran grabs the sword preventing him from drawing it. Then Arya strikes and it all plays out as it did in the show. Boom. You have an unbelievably better ending along with satisfaction that the prophesies and the buildup and the expectation aren't completely let down.

As a quick note as well for all of you who think that this has been foreshadowed in the show, you're wrong. Melisandre said that Arya was going to close all colors of eyes but her original emphasis was put on green i.e. Cersei. The fact that she got the dagger from Bran was from one season ago, where they (D.B. Weiss and David Benioff) were hellbent on letting her kill the Night King, as they say in the after episode notes. There was also a mention that the 'Prince that was Promised' could be interpreted as 'Princess', from, again a season ago and it's interesting that that is never mentioned by Melisandre, though she apparently speaks Valyrian. So three brief, sideways clues don't amount to any sort of foreshadowing no matter how hard you squint your eyes and she has been completely divorced from the North storyline. Unlike, I don't know, Jon, Bran or even Sansa. And for all of you who are going to be saying that this is sexist and all that crap, it's not at all. I already said I don't mind her killing the Night King if there was ANY payoff for his storyline with Jon or ANY tiny detail about his motivations. But nope, he just dies, and turns into a character very much like Sauron from Lord of the Rings: a big, stupid manifestation of evil with no further character which is utterly contemptuous of George R.R. Martin's original vision of his stories, his books and even the early seasons of this show.

Honestly, I have dwindling hope now that this show can even come close to ending on an adequately appropriate note. There's still a little flame inside my chest that hasn't quite flickered out, hoping and praying that all of these characters get paid off in some way for still being alive. The show now has to justify the existence of these characters beyond fighting the literal embodiment of death. I don't think they can do it but this show has surprised me before so hopefully they don't subvert my expectations in such a disappointingly pathetic way again. I expected greatness and fulfillment and while the technical aspects of 'The Long Night' were masterful, they don't cover up the trope-ridden, unsatisfactory, lazy, and downright terrible plot choices that this episode put on display. 

This is long and rambling and there's probably more than one grammatical error and spelling mistake. For that, I am sorry.