The Long Night was destined to be a divisive episode because of how it ended. Just like The Last Jedi, you have an almost evenly divided fan-base over the outcome of the end of Season 8, Episode 3 when Arya drove her Valeryian Steel dagger into the side of the Night King and shattered him to a thousand pieces. Just like that the biggest threat in the show was dead and the “long night” that Jon had warned us all about for about 5 seasons now was gone.
After the Night King’s death, two negative reactions emerged in response to the episode. The first was fans complaining that we didn’t learn enough about the Night King before he died. Fans expected to learn a fleshed-out history of the Night King before his death so you can imagine the shock on fans faces when Arya actually managed to kill him last Sunday. Secondly, fans were upset that Arya killed the Night King because many fans believed Jon was destined to kill the Night King.
This is obviously understandable because he has been primed to be Azor Ahai since we were first told about the prophecy. He was born among “smoke and salt” (resurrected in front of Melisandre and Davos), he wields a Valeryian steel sword, and he is the song of ice and fire (Stark and Targaryen). Obviously, Jon seemed like the only one who could kill the Night King based on what the show has set up. Everyone seemed to know this prophecy and it seems like the Night King did too. This is probably why the Night King never wanted to face Jon one on one in combat in this most recent episode. When Jon ran after the Night King, he raised the dead around Jon in order to try to kill him. The Night King himself seemed to also be convinced that Jon was the chosen one to defeat him.
Arya put a stop to all of that, but I won’t get into the foreshadowing the show laid into place because the show basically ret-conned Arya’s place in the show by making her the one destined to kill the Night King. This article by Kim Renfro outlines everything surrounding Arya’s destiny to kill the Night King and how the show had to basically invent an end for him without the help of George R.R. Martin to guide them.
I will leave the analysis of the decision to have Arya kill the Night King to experts who know even more about the Night King than me. I just want to go through some GOT history and research whether we actually learned enough about the Night King before he died. In order to feel like we learned about him I want to go through some basic characteristics that we learned about him and see if we should feel satisfied with what we learned. However, if it turns out that, in some crazy twist the Night King isn’t dead or Bloodraven is the real Night King and Bran was tricked into defeating him, I want to preface this by saying everything I will include below is just what we know from the previous episodes and books.
What are the fundamental characteristics we learned about the Night King from explicit discussion in the show?
Origins:
We see in The Door that the Night King used to be a regular man who was stabbed through the heart with Valeryian Steel by the Children of the Forest in an attempt to repel The First Men who had come North and invaded the Children’s homeland. Their idea was that by making a White Walker the Children could use them as weapons to fight back against the First Men. This is an idea that obviously went horribly wrong.
The Night King versus the Night’s King
The Night King, as he exists in the show does not exist in The Song of Ice and Fire series, however there is no Night King in the books; there is only the Night’s King. According to the stories Old Nan told Bran, the Night’s King was the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and was a warrior “who knew no fear”. Additionally, we know the Night’s King is from the North. There theories that he may have been a Stark which would explain why he has warging abilities (if the Night King and the Night’s King are the same person).
However, besides the brief mentions of the Night’s King in the ASOIAF books by Martin, the Night King is basically entirely invented by the show. For the sake of simplicity though, let’s assume that the Night King and the Night’s King are the same person, or at least that the Night King takes attributes from the Night’s King since they seem to have similar features. We don’t know anything else about the Night’s King so, like I said, we really only can go off of what the show told us about the Night king regarding who he is and his motivations.
One MAOR difference between the two Night characters is their origin. The Night’s King was said to be a Night’s Watchmen which means that he came around after the Wall was built. It appears that the Night King from the show was created before the Wall was built because the Wall was built to protect the realm from the Great Others (White Walkers). However, we have to assume that the similarity in names is not a coincidence and that the show was clearly inspired by the books’ references to the Night’s King.
Motivations:
We learned from Bran in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, that the Night King wanted to create an “endless night” and that he wanted to specifically kill Bran since he (Bran) is the world’s memories. Sam elaborates on this point by saying that death is basically just forgetting so by killing Bran the Night King can kill the entire world. So we know that the Night King wants to end the world, a simple goal but a powerful one.
Characteristics:
Obvious Characteristics: We know he can raise the dead; we know he has some warging abilities because that’s what allows him to control the other wights; and we also know that he could see where Bran was at all times. He just wasn’t able to get to him until he touched him which cancelled out the magic by the Children of the Forest and Bloodraven that protected Bran. We also know he can’t be harmed by fire of any kind and we know that Valeryian steel/dragon glass is the only thing that can defeat him or any other White Walkers.
Additional characteristics we can infer based on his actions: he is slow, methodical and patient. He is thousands of years old, so time is different to him than it is so us. His idea and concept of time could explain why he is always walking everywhere instead of having some sort of urgency. In every scene he is in, or his White Walkers are in, they are walking slowly at their own pace. This may seem like a stereotypical bad guy thing to do and make no sense in a show that is supposed to be realistic in terms of characters’ actions. This makes sense to me though because, like I said before, their concept of time is entirely different than ours since they have been alive for so long. Think about their life (which has been thousands of years) compared to a human’s typical 70 to 80-year life span. We run and have a sense of urgency because we know our time is so limited. Imagine if you were thousands of years old and you had no signs of dying and there was nothing within thousands of miles that could even almost kill you. Your idea of a slow walk would probably feel like a regular brisk pace to you because of how long everything takes. The White Walkers, after The Wall was build by Brandon Stark, waited thousands and thousands of years to make their move. Two to three extra days of waiting or thirty seconds of staring at Bran before he kills him probably feels like less than a second to them. This could explain why he took so long to try to kill Bran and this also explains why the White Walkers walked so slowly when approaching him in the Godswood.
A second explanation for his actions is that he is literally death, and since death is inevitable, he has no sense of urgency when it comes to doing anything because death will always happen. Two major characteristics we associate with death are fear and “forgetting” – to quote Sam. The Night King loved to instill fear (and hopelessness to an extent to) in his enemies. Think back to Hardhome when the Night King raised all the dead in front of Jon. He probably could have just killed Jon then and there; but he wanted Jon to know how hopeless his endeavors kill him would be. He wanted Jon to give up and except his death. He wanted his enemies to know that the end of the world was here and that there was nothing they could do about it. He did the same thing with the Dothraki and Jorah when they charged into battle. They could have all been slaughtered and none of them could have escaped but he wanted them to. He wanted them to spread fear for him. When the dead were haulted by Melisandre’s fire, they could have continued to charge. He wanted them to stay still for a second and make the humans feel like they were safe for a second before his undead army assaulted the walls again and made our protagonists feel truly helpless. He finally did it again when Dany shot him with dragon’s fire. He took the hit from Drogon’s fire head on and even smiled as he emerged from the flames. Dany’s look in her eyes after was a look of fear and surprise. Exactly what the Night King wanted.
Flaws and Weaknesses.
However, his biggest characteristic was probably also his biggest flaw. The idea that he was the ultimate end was his undoing. If we are still assuming the Night King and the Night’s King share similar attributes, then Old Nan’s story to Bran will certainly give us insight into his biggest flaw. According to Old Nan, the Night’s King was a “warrior who knew no fear…and that was the fault in him…for all men must know fear” (ASOS).
The Night King not knowing fear would explain his undoing. It would explain why he moved slowly and methodically (besides the time thing) and it would explain why he never expected Arya. The Night King was probably expecting that he had beaten all of his enemies and they had all given up hope since he had instilled fear and hopelessness into him. He was not expecting for someone (who had literally faced death before) to be ready and willing to take him down when he least expected it.
Reasons for His Existence and What Was the Point of the Night King?
If you’re seeking a larger-scale, more significant reason for the Night King’s existence, you could go with the theory that he is political commentary for climate change and nuclear war because he is inevitable or he is a weapon made to protect us that could now end us at any time. My only real gripe with that is we can’t end either of those things with a simple dragon glass dagger to the chest. That’s why I theorize that the Night King (or Night’s King) will meet a different end in the books. The creators of GOT said in the Behind the Scenes part of the episode last Sunday that they had Arya in mind as the one to kill the Night King for about three years now. That was right about when the show significantly deviated from the books. On top of that, because of time and budgets, in addition to not having a fleshed-out road map, the show simplified many plots and changed many points in order to advance the characters without exactly knowing how the books would play out.
Also, the show is at its best when it is a political drama. The show is at its best when it is dialogue and character interactions. That’s why having the Night King be the final bad guy at the end of all this never really made any sense. As was written about yesterday, nothing else in the show matters if the Night King was still around. I think the show started out with the White Walkers in the very first episode of the show in order to showcase an existential threat and introduce magic into the world. The showrunners probably included them because they figured George would finish the books by the time they got to Season 7 (or whenever the White Walkers became a bigger threat) and the show would just adapt what he wrote. However, the show slowly started making the White Walkers a bigger threat than they are in even the books which then made us as an audience care about them even more. The show started to speed up after it got off the books and the plot started to become simpler as the White Walkers got closer and closer to reaching Winterfell. Suddenly the interesting sub-plots couldn’t happen anymore because, like I said, they just didn’t matter anymore.
The show overemphasized the White Walkers and showcased them to a point where it could no longer cover any other important story beat in the show until they died. That is why they ultimately had to kill them in one episode. The Night King was an incredibly scary threat, but he also was the personification of pure evil and death. He was a far echo from being a defined multi-dimensional character like everyone else is on the show.
The show was never going to come down to the Night King versus everyone else because that just isn’t what Game of Thrones is about and because he underestimated his enemies. He failed to understand who he was facing and consider every single factor that he faced at Winterfell because he simply didn’t know anything about his enemies. He is sort of like Jon in that way, he is a bad tactician…he just isn’t lucky like Jon.
We Will Learn More About the Night King
I personally think we learned enough about the Night King to be satisfied by his conclusion, but I understand if you aren't because GOT is great at creating incredible back stories for every single character in the show.
One of the upcoming GOT spin-offs from HBO will be about the Long Night which means that, presumably, we will learn more about the Night King then. The show had to simplify a lot of the storytelling elements from Game of Thrones in order to finish the show in 8 seasons. This mainline Game of Thrones story is about the Lannisters, Baratheons, Starks, and Targaryens. The next show will be about the Night King. They are probably saving more of the Night King’s backstory for that show in order to keep fans interested and motivated to watch…unless the Night King’s story isn’t done yet.
***For more info about the Night King and Night’s King: