It's entirely possible that the Living win the battle of Winterfell, but it's a gigantic feint on the part of the Night King, who instead travels via zombie-dragon to Kings Landing and proceeds to convert the entire population into White Walkers.
It is just as well that it was not Tywin's head that held the
Crown of Ice, for he would have done exactly that, and passed Winterfell by, turning the surrounding populace as he went.
Ramsay Bolton, being even more cruel, would have lain siege--laughing like a Nazgul as the dothraki and unsullied turned one upon the other in a starven frenzy. He then would have raised the dead, only to leave them there--milling about the same prison in which he met his own end.
I thought Melisandre was going to remove her mask and be revealed as Syrio.
Bran **might** have escaped with Arya to Bravos, had the fight gone badly. There, the Night's King would have finished the Game in the temple of Death. This sense of completion was denied, in that the Night's King still had too much that was human about him, smiling after having basked in Drogon's flame. Perhaps there was even a bit of Dornish blood in him, as yet unfrozen (Ithaqua was not pleased).
To have true
sangfroid, however--one must truly lose one's self--one's emotions. Something neither the King nor his assassin fully lost.
That was how Deep Blue bested Kasparov:
What is Deep Blue's secret? Grand master Yasser Seirawan put it most succinctly: "The machine has no fear." He did not just mean the obvious, that silicon cannot quake. He meant something deeper...The omniscient have no fear...Late in the game, Blue's king was under savage attack by Kasparov. Any human player under such assault by a world champion would be staring at his own king trying to figure out how to get away. Instead, Blue ignored the threat and quite nonchalantly went hunting for lowly pawns at the other end of the board....It could return from its pawn-picking expedition and destroy Kasparov exactly one move before Kasparov could destroy it. Which it did. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135544,00.html
She used the dagger that Bran gave to her in the exact same spot where she would use the dagger. Did Bran know? I think he did. It's almost like he saw 14 million possible outcomes and only one where the good guys win.
Exactly. Bran **
did** give himself over fully, and was thus unscathed.
He, not the Night King, was DEEP BLUE.
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Still, there is a part of me that wonders if we have really seen the last of the Night's King. The Mountain, after all, seems to exist in a state Coleridge called "life-in-death."
Perhaps he will be a vessel for some kind of
return.
As for the ending....
The "Clegane bowl" wasn't to be denied of course, and this episode --perhaps the finest 90 minutes in all television--"ended as it must."
Of course it was to be Arya who shattered the plans of the dead.
We saw a little "Red October" in the murk of the
purga above, as kings made battle in the air. We saw THE FOG of John Carpenter, and a little of THE WALKING DEAD in the Stark Library. We even got a taste of A.C. Clarke, where the flames of the dothraki winked out one by one, as did the stars themselves in
THE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD.
Poor Jorah. He somehow escaped the absorption of "his light, his heat"(to quote from one of Laird Barron's tales) into the gloom, only to fall at the last.
He was at least cradled by the one he loved and served best--and received affection, which is all he ever really wanted, but "too late, too late."
I doubt my own death will be a tenth that noble.
For all we know, the Night King will appear--kill Theon, and then sit down for a long chat with Bran as the battle rages around them.
Half right. I would have loved to have seen that. "Let me sing you a song of Ice and Fire."
Bring in Daario Naheris and the Second Sons to counter the Golden Company!
No--the new army will come from Dorne. The Ice has had its day. Time for the fire of the sands, as Cersi's hourglass drains.
Did they do one of those 20 minute behind-the-scenes features for this week? Can't find it on YouTube.
There is a 40 minute special
On Demand. There we learn one of the wights (the one that looked for Arya under the table) is Spanish performer Javier Botet, who is triple-jointed:
https://ew.com/movies/2018/09/07/javier-botet-slender-man-mara/
I only really noticed his gaunt frame in the special, however.
