By traditional high-fantasy standards, this should be the climactic moment of the whole series. Like death itself, we simply know they’re out there coming for us all. Across the field of battle, the literal forces of darkness arrive with nary a whisper or signpost to guide their way. This fact is accentuated by the sparse use of dialogue and the determination of encapsulating every choice and moment in the most starkly visual terms-and perhaps there’s been nothing quite so stark (forgive the pun) as Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, a child of fire and a child of ice, looking on from their dragon nest encampment on a hill high above Winterfell as the dead approach.īeneath these two star-crossed lovers are the forces of the living and the dead, light and dark, which has never been so perfectly crystallized than the lit torches and fiery weapons of Winterfell facing an enemy shrouded in a blackness deeper than the grave. Returning this week with Miguel Sapochnik at the helm-director of the two most visually dazzling previous episodes of Game of Thrones, “Battle of the Bastards” and the “The Winds of Winter”-tonight’s hour-plus more closely resembled cinema than any previous episode. Never have the stakes been higher in the series, nor have they been better visually realized. “The Long Night,” the third episode of Game of Thrones’ final season, made good on a promise that opened the very series: this would end with a battle between not just good and evil, but the living and the dead. To say it was a heartwarming relief would be an understatement. Tonight we stared into the icy blue eyes of that enemy and saw them meet their own version of the Many-Faced God of Death.
The battle for that very sunrise has been described by a red priestess as the only war that matters, and by a man who surrendered his crown for the hand of a Dragon Queen as the Great War against the True Enemy. The long night that defines all nights to come, and whether there will be anyone left in Westeros to see another dawn. Ever since three men in black rode out beyond the Wall never to return, we knew Game of Thrones was building to this moment-to this night.