(How did she get through the Night King’s army without getting killed, by the way?) She’s been oh so wrong about so many things-Stannis, sacrificing Shireen, not sleeping with beautiful, beautiful Gendry when she had the shot-but there was never any denying the Red Woman’s mystical powers. Which made Melisandre’s return a sort of lukewarm comfort. Weirdly and rather aptly, it felt like the TV was spitting a version of our nervous selves back out at us. Sam’s shaking hands are the first thing we see in the episode, then the masses of waiting soldiers, tense and grim. The first hint that this battle would be different was the utter lack of pre-battle pomp (and language-it took several minutes for the first line, “for fucks sake, you took your time,” to come out). Everything goes wrong-as, admittedly, it often does in Game of Thrones battles-but this time, we get the deus ex machina we deserve.
A dragon is pinned to the ground by a swarm of dead soldiers. But “ The Long Night” walks away from the old music, the old cinematography, the old tactic of a cavalry arriving just over the rise to swoop in and save the day.
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There have been blowout battle scenes in this series before-picture the ships exploding in Blackwater Bay, the dead coming over the wall at Hardhome, Jon Snow rising like a mud-soaked Civil War soldier out of a pile of bodies in the Battle of the Bastards. Game of Thrones abandoned itself five minutes into this episode, and I mean that in the best way possible. “What do we say to the God of Death?” chanted every single one of us watching this blazing, ink-black, smoggy, high-pitched, wild, sweaty, taut, pin-drop-silent, brilliant whirlwind of an episode.