Throne Logic versus Wall Logic: Thoughts on the Game of Thrones Endgame
Arya about to kill the Night King. © HBO.
I’ve been a huge Game of Thrones fan since the first episode aired on HBO. I haven’t read the books, and don’t plan to – because 1. I don’t have the time; and 2. I’m told that the tv version is better. But tip of the hat to George RR Martin for coming up with such a great, epic story – and one that is highly socially relevant. It’s got everything, and that’s why I love it.
I’ve even said that I think it’s the best TV show in the history of television. One of the reasons the show is so amazing is that it was absolutely unafraid to show us uncomfortable things - like the stark (no pun intended) finality and irreversibility of death and decline. The show was unique and lovable in no small part because it wasn’t afraid to shock us by killing favorite characters.
I’m writing this on the Tuesday after the Battle of Winterfell (officially known as “The Long Night”, i.e. Season 8, episode 3, so let’s go with “TLN” for the episode and “BoW” for the event depicted in the episode). But I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, TLN was a masterpiece both as entertainment and in terms of technical execution. On the other hand, I am disappointed in the trajectory it seems to have taken for the narrative’s endgame.
To put it bluntly, I found it anticlimactic.
After the end of season 7, like many others I tried to discern where the story was going, and I came up with what I thought was the most likely and most dramatically compelling scenario. I don’t know if George RR Martin’s narrative/endgame is the same as the HBO show, but in any case, I maintain that my idea was better than the tv show’s.
In my fan theory scenario:
As in the actual show, the Army of the Undead quickly marches from the Wall to Winterfell. The first two episodes were completely consistent with my version. But in mine, the Battle of Winterfell resulted in a catastrophic loss for the good guys, and resulted in the deaths of many more major characters than actually did die in TLN (which was limited to: the Dothraki, Beric, Ser Jorah, Edd, Lyanna Mormont, Theon, Melisandre, and of course the other guy – about whom more soon).
In my version, Daenerys, Jon, and a more limited group of survivors escape and retreat from Winterfell and take refuge in the Iron Islands. I thought the Unsullied would be decimated but the Dothraki largely intact (the reverse was true in the show). The Night King, having possibly taken Bran as hostage for some unknown purpose, marches on Kings Landing, sacks it quickly, and makes Cersei his Night Queen (and her womb baby becomes their presumed heir apparent). Daenerys et. al. regroup with Yara Greyjoy and the remnants of the Dothraki, Unsullied, and Iron Fleet, setting things up for the big, really existential ultimate battle at Kings Landing in the final episode. What specific battle tactics the good guys took for the Battle of King’s Landing I didn’t figure out, but after a terrible battle, the good guys prevail, Arya kills Cersei/Night Queen, and maybe also the Night King too. Danerys and Jon take the throne and rule jointly as a wise and just leaders. But that is really just the icing on the cake. The real victory was defeating the forces of Darkness and Death.
Here’s why I think my version is better:
Despite thinking Daenerys/Jon would ultimately sit on the throne, I was mostly agnostic on that question. Why? Because it doesn't matter! The whole point of the main GoT story is that all that throne business is a mere game (hence the title), while the real battle is the one between light and darkness, the living and the undead, civilization and its opposite. If we look at the whole story as a political parable with relevance for us (as all good science fiction does), then the "Throne morality/logic" is a mere game: there are better leaders and worse leaders, but nothing really makes much of a difference for most of the people of Westeros. It’s a feudalistic aristocratic dystopia. The really important morality is that of the Night's Watch (or call it "Wall morality/logic" - although that contains certain unintended political baggage nowadays), which is what keeps civilization from falling into anarchy - or much much worse. The Night King is a symbol of (take your pick of truly existential evil) climate change, fascism, etc., and that is what we were, up to now, led to believe that the story was really about.
If one thinks the story is about mere Throne logic, then defeating the Night King at Winterfell is for you. If one thinks the story is ultimately about how to prevent civilization from collapsing into darkness, then the Wall morality is the real story, and that's what my preferred version is about. It's also got more dramatic heft, in that Cersei is already about as evil as she can be according to Throne logic. How to make her even more evil – and thus her ultimate death even more desirable, and how to make the ultimate battle even more dramatic and urgent? Only if she becomes the Night Queen, and if she and the Night King are holding all the cards at the beginning of the final episode.
A big part of the horror in my season 8 scenario would have been for the living (and us, the audience) to not just see some of our beloved characters die at the Battle of Winterfell (viz., one from each of the following dyads: Brienne/Jamie, Grey Worm/Missandei, Tyrion/Sansa), but to become part of the Army of the Dead, and fighting against the Living. This would have been powerful, really disturbing stuff - but it's also highly relevant for where we find ourselves as a civilization that is also perched on the edge of darkness - as we, too, have our own zombie plague that we are faced with. Let’s just say that family Thanksgivings ain't what they were before 2016 and leave it at that.
As things look like they're headed in the show, we're left with a relatively pedestrian battle over which privileged family gets the throne. I find that boring, though I hope I'm wrong - but as of today it doesn't look good. It seems the writers have lost their courage to tell the kind of story that made it so special up until now.
Random side points:
Season 5 was criticized by some as being “too talky”, but it was my favorite because it was all about how to exercise and maintain power for just ends. The motif running through that season was blindness: being focused on distant threats and ignoring the ones right in front of you (Jon, worrying about the White Walkers and not the treachery plotting against him in the Night’s Watch; Daenerys trying to end all injustice and ignoring the Sons of Harpy terrorists) or only seeing nearby threats and not the worse ones coming at you (Cersei, feeling threatened by Margaery, makes a foolish alliance with a much worse threat, the Sparrows; Sansa taken in by Ramsey Bolton; etc.). In that season, Danerys got a very compelling series of lessons on what it means to be a good ruler. By Wall logic, Danerys should be the one to sit on the throne after the undead are vanquished because she is the one who has actually had experience in trying to create a just rule). But I digress.
Showrunners Benioff and Weiss said they’ve known for about three years that Arya would be the one who would kill the Night King, so one assumes that’s in GRRM’s vision. Even before knowing this (revealed only after TLN, obviously), I had Arya pegged as the person to take out either the Night King, Night Queen/Cersei, or both. She was really the logical choice, at least for Cersei (she was on her list, after all).
I’m not alone in feeling that killing the Night King at the Battle of Winterfell was the wrong narrative choice. New York Times chief television critic James Poniewozik writes:
I have issues with what this [killing the Night King at Winterfell] means for the story. For years, “Game of Thrones” has been a story of the folly of seeking power. The consuming battle to rule Westeros — the “game” cynically named as such by the villainous Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) — is precisely what kept the continent from uniting to face this threat. Now, with this existential threat eliminated three episodes before the finale, it seems as though that foolish game might become the series’ endgame, as if the Iron Throne, and not life, were the real prize all along.