Beyond the Wall (episode)

"Beyond the Wall" is the upcoming sixth episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones. It will be the sixty-sixth episode of the series overall. It will premiere on August 20, 2017. It was written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss and directed by Alan Taylor.

Plot
Synopsis to be announced.

Cast
Starring
 * Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister
 * Emilia Clarke as Queen Daenerys Targaryen
 * Kit Harington as King Jon Snow
 * Aidan Gillen as Lord Petyr Baelish
 * Liam Cunningham as Ser Davos Seaworth
 * Sophie Turner as Princess Sansa Stark
 * Maisie Williams as Princess Arya Stark
 * Rory McCann as Sandor Clegane
 * Kristofer Hivju as Tormund Giantsbane
 * Joe Dempsie as Gendry
 * Iain Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont

Guest Starring
 * Richard Dormer as Lord Beric Dondarrion
 * Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr
 * Vladimir Furdik as the Night King

Deaths

 * Thoros
 * Viserion

General

 * King's Landing and its associated storylines do not appear in this episode. Samwell Tarly's storyline does not appear in this episode (though he left Oldtown in the preceding episode and is heading to other storylines). Most of this episode focuses on the Wight Hunt beyond the Wall.
 * This is only the eighth episode in the TV series in which King's Landing is not featured in any scene. The previous six were Season 1's "The Kingsroad" (because King Robert and Cersei were with the Starks on the road and had not yet reached the city), Season 3's "The Rains of Castamere" (which focused mostly on the Red Wedding), Season 4's "The Watchers on the Wall" (which focused entirely on the Battle of Castle Black), Season 5's "Kill the Boy" (which didn't feature any scene in the Seven Kingdoms not counting the North), and "The Dance of Dragons", and Season 6's "The Door" and "Battle of the Bastards" (both of which focused on major battle sequences outside of southern Westeros, but beyond the Wall, in the North, and in Meereen, respectively).
 * At 70 minutes running time, this episode is the longest episode in the television series so far.

Dragons traveling to the Wall

 * It is utterly implausible and outright absurd that Daenerys and her dragons could reach the Wall in the one or two days, at most, that Jon’s group was trapped by the White Walkers. The distance from the Wall to Dragonstone is half a continent – Cersei even stated in dialogue that Westeros is "a continent" two episodes ago in "The Spoils of War".  The Title sequence of the TV series itself even visually depicts a map indicating the vast distance between Dragonstone and the Wall.  There is no possible in-universe explanation for this.  Given that the showrunners have admitted that the Wight Hunt doesn’t even happen in future novels, it appears that they just wanted to have Daenerys swoop in to save Jon, without thinking out the logical repercussions - i.e. something as simple as, without a raven, Daenerys changed her mind and decided to head North to help Jon, in which case she could have spent over a week flying to the Wall catching up with them.  Instead, the episode clearly establishes that Gendry had a raven sent from the Wall to Dragonstone, and then Daenerys flew her dragons to the Wall after receiving the letter, in enough time to save Jon’s party while they were trapped on the island in the frozen lake.
 * While the top speed of dragons has never been confirmed in the novels, or how long they can travel in a single day, it has generally been presented as far less – even flying for one or two days non-stop (which, like a horse, they don’t seem to be able to do either). When King Jaehaerys I Targaryen and his wife flew to Winterfell two hundred years ago, it took far longer.  The Dance of the Dragons can also be used as a loose measure for how far and fast dragons can fly.  Muddying the issue in all these circumstances is that these dragons were usually shadowing armies on the ground for cover, and thus moving more slowly than they potentially could have.
 * Utterly ignoring, for the sake of argument, that the top flight distance and speed of dragons has never entirely been confirmed, the speed of the messenger-raven network across Westeros has been established. Even giving the over-generous assumption that Jon’s group survived at most two days on the island in the ice lake (and it seems more like one, until the ice refroze), and that dragons can fly from Dragonstone to the Wall in a single day, this would be claiming that a messenger-raven sent from the Wall could reach Dragonstone in at most a single day.  Prior seasons have repeatedly shown that the messenger-raven network isn’t nearly the fast, with messages taking days or sometimes weeks to cross large distances – particularly, the distance of half a continent from the Wall to Dragonstone (Dragonstone is roughly about as far from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea as King’s Landing was from Castle Black in prior seasons).  Even this is assuming that it wasn’t one raven in a direct flight, but fresh ravens spreading the message to new castles in a chain (i.e. like a human messenger switching to a fresh horse at each new castle he passed so he could ride for two days in a row, instead of staying on the same horse and tiring him to death).
 * Writer and staff "loremaster" Bryan Cogman began arguing with fans over Twitter in weeks leading up to this episode when they presented various questions about plot logic, among them increasing criticism that characters are moving around too fast in Season 7, rushing to get them where they need to be for plot points without thought to realism. As these criticisms mounted, Cogman quit Twitter a week before this episode aired – perhaps anticipating that it was an even more massive example of “traveling at the speed of plot” than has ever occurred before in the TV series and would lead to a wave of criticism.  In his final message thread announcing he was quitting Twitter, Cogman – the staff loremaster – took time to, with his final tweet, mock Game of Thrones Wiki's Administrator staff for asking such questions trying to make sense of the internal timeline.

On Dragonstone

 * The TV series never clearly established before that Daenerys Targaryen believes she cannot have children again, which was a plot point in the books. In book/Season 1, Mirri Maz Duur performed a blood magic curse which caused Daenerys’s baby Rhaego to be stillborn and monstrously deformed.  The book version made it more clear that Mirri believed this had done so much damage to Daenerys’s womb that she could never have children again; in subsequent books, Daenerys will repeatedly reflect in her internal monologue that she considers her three dragons her “children” in part because she feels they are the only children she will ever have.  The TV series didn’t make this clear:  it only had Mirri Maz Dur give her vague, poetic line from the book, when Daenerys asked if Drogo would recover, that he will recover “when the sun rises in the west, and your womb quickens again” (i.e. never).  Even Season 1 didn’t make this very clear, but it was never elaborated upon or mentioned again in the intervening ‘’five TV seasons’’.
 * The TV series was so vague about this, and didn’t bring it up for years, that ‘’Game of Thrones Wiki’’ treated it as an abandoned plot point not included from the books – never took Mirri Maz Dur’s vague single line as establishing this was the same in the TV continuity, and thus never included it as a biographical detail in the Daenerys Targaryen article.
 * The final chapter of the fifth and most current novel hints that Daenerys only ‘’believes’’ she can no longer have children, but will recover. In her last chapter, she has been stranded by Drogon back in the Dothraki Sea (corresponding to the Season 5 finale “Mother’s Mercy”), she notes in her inner POV monologue that she has started “passing blood” – apparently just thinking she is sick, but there are fan theories that it could actually mean that she has begun Flowering again and her reproductive organs have recovered.
 * It is possible, but totally unconfirmed, that magically resurrected people like Jon Snow or Beric Dondarrion cannot have children – meaning that the bloodline of Daenerys’s brother Rhaegar would go extinct as well. In which case, the last blood relative of either of them is actually Gendry – House Baratheon intermarried with the Targaryens, so (in the books) Robert Baratheon’s grandmother was a younger Targaryen princess, and thus Robert was actually the second cousin of both Rhaegar and Daenerys.
 * Tyrion even specifically brings up that if Daenerys think she can’t have children, she will need to plan for the future of the crown after her eventual death. He brings up that the Night’s Watch and the ironborn have their own methods for selecting new rulers without inheritance (elections, a Chossing and a Kingsmoot, respectively).
 * In the backstory, when there has been no clear successor, a “Great Council” is called by all the major lords of the realm to choose the lawful successor. The last major one picked Aegon V Targaryen, as his eldest brother was dead but left behind a mentally handicapped daughter, his second brother was insane and left an infant son behind who many feared inherited his insanity, and his third brother, Aemon, was a maester who had foresworn inheritance.  A prior Great Council at the end of the reign of Jaeherys I Targaryen tried to sort out the succession dispute between the heirs of his first two sons, who had both predeceased him, before settling on Viserys I Targaryen.  Prior Great Councils, however, relied on picking between rival heirs, not a situation in which there was no clear lawful blood heir.
 * It is also possible that she might just name Gendry as her heir – reconciling with Robert Baratheon’s former supporters. A hint at this might be how the real-life War of the Roses ended, which George R.R. Martin said the War of the Five Kings is loosely inspired by.  This was a civil war in Medieval England between the Yorks and Lancasters - i.e. Starks and Lannisters, though the roles are reversed in the fictional story:  the Lancasters are considered the “good” faction and the Yorks the “bad”/cunning faction.  The War of the Roses began with the Lancasters being usurpsed by the Yorks (as the Lannisters usurp the Starks & Baratheons), only for the Yorks to ultimately be defeated – Henry Tudor, a bastard descendant of the Lancasters, eventually rallied the kingdom against Yorkist king Richard III and defeated him.  Similarly, the Baratheons were seemingly wiped out, but left bastard descendant Gendry behind – perhaps to one day reclaim the throne.
 * As in the preceding episode, Daenerys and Tyrion heavily reference her intention to “break the wheel” of one tyrant replacing another on the Iron Throne, be it Targaryen, Baratheon, or Lannister. This is an invention of the TV series, possibly to present Daenerys as more of an overt hero, and doelsn’t happen in the novels.  In the books, she wants to reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen and be a ‘’good’’, benevolent monarch, by the measure of their existing value system.
 * Tyrion Lannister recalls that, while not a particularly capable or brave physical warrior, he did lead a charge out the Mud Gate – which was during the Battle of the Blackwater.

Winterfell

 * It is unclear why Arya Stark is behaving the way she does in her scenes with her sister Sansa Stark: outright threatening to kill her and take her face. After launching into a long and uncharacteristically dark threat against Sansa, however, Arya then simply hands her the Valyrian steel dagger she had been brandishing.
 * Fan speculation is rampant that this is all some elaborate ruse by one or both of the Stark sisters to trick Littlefinger, given that they know he has spies everywhere.
 * On the other hand, such speculation occurred all too frequently in past seasons to try to explain what turned out to simply be plot holes or inconsistent writing: i.e. all of the fan theories that Talisa’s behavior with Robb Stark seemed odd because she was really a Lannister spy.  The TV writers later admitted that they rewrote the Robb Stark/Talisa relationship into a romance (which it isn’t in the books) primarily for the out-of-universe reason that they wanted to show off Richard Madden (Robb) as an actor.  Therefore it is equally possible that Arya is uncharacteristically making dark speeches threatening to kill Sansa in this episode…purely because the TV writers wanted to show off Maisie Williams, the actor, chewing the scenery in a dark speech scene, with no thought to the character repercussions.
 * One way or another, we’ll find out in one week when the Season 7 finale airs.
 * Arya seemingly waves aside Sansa’s accurate defense that she wrote the letter to Robb under duress, writing what Cersei told her to write, when she was a frightened 13 year old child told that this was the only way to save her father’s life. In Season 1, Robb and Maester Luwin weren’t even angry that Sansa wrote the letter, realizing simply from its contents that while it was in her handwriting she was obviously writing down Cersei’s words, and was writing under duress as the Lannisters’ prisoner.  Thus it is odd that the other Northern lords wouldn’t take these factors into account as well if they learned of it.
 * Arya recalls their father Eddard Stark watching from the catwalk while the boys practiced archery in the courtyard, then she practiced when the boys left but had to try many times to hit the target. While this is similar to the Stark family’s first scene in the Season 1 premiere “Winter is Coming”, it must be describing something that happened earlier:  in that episode, Arya fired one arrow and hit the target, while her parents and the boys were still there.
 * Arya says that Sansa didn’t really watch the archery practice sessions because she was at the sewing circle with Septa Mordane, who Joffrey executed along with the rest of Ned’s household servants in King’s Landing at the end of Season 1. In the Season 1 premiere, Arya snuck away from the sewing circle with Sansa and Mordane to watch the archery practice.
 * In the novels, Arya actually isn’t skilled at archery, at least in the first novel. Fans have pointed out that her scene in Season 1 scoring a bull’s eye on her target when Bran failed to contradicted this, as she isn’t a preternaturally skilled archer with no training.  This episode retroactively explains that she was simply practicing in secret for some time before that.
 * Arya explains to Sansa for the first time that she was actually watching their father’s execution, in Season 1’s “Baelor”, as she was hiding in the crowd in front of the Great Sept. Again, it is bizarre that Arya accuses Sansa of being there willingly, dressed up in a fancy southern-style dress like Joffrey’s girl – given that Sansa broke into screaming when Joffrey declared he would kill Ned, and then outright fainted when he was beheaded (though it’s possible Arya shielded her eyes from that last point so she didn’t see her fainting).
 * Sansa says she fears the Northern lords would think her suspect for marrying into enemy Houses “twice” – even though her marriage to Tyrion Lannister in Season 3 was blatantly made under duress while she was literally a prisoner and hostage of the Lannisters in King’s Landing. Meanwhile, her marriage to Ramsay Bolton was allegedly part of some bizarre scheme to “undermine the Boltons from within” – even though “Marriage” doesn’t work like that in Westeros, the Lannisters weren’t worried about her “undermining them from within” when they forced her to marry Tyrion, and even Sansa – when she later confronted Littlefinger in Season 6’s “The Door” – berated Littlefinger that his plot to marry her to Ramsay didn’t really make sense (this doesn’t happen in the novels, and basically the TV writers were maneuvering Sansa into a position where Ramsay would rape her, without developing sensical in-universe reasons for this scenario to occur).
 * One of the faces Arya has created as magic Faceless Men shapeshifter masks is clearly the face of Walder Frey. It is unknown who the other faces are from.
 * Arya accuses Sansa that Lyanna Mormont is “younger than you were” when Cersei forced her to write the letter begging Robb to surrender, in exchange for their father’s life. The passage of time between Seasons 6 and 7 is somewhat unclear, as is Lyanna Mormont’s age.  She was stated to be 10 years old in Season 5, but then described as 10 years old again in Season 6, even though other story elements seem to indicate that around a year passed between those seasons – it’s possible that they were rounding, or that this was simply a dialogue error (repeating the line about her age without the TV writers taking the passage of time into account).  Lyanna should have been 11 years old in Season 6, and at most 12 years old in Season 7 (assuming that one year passes each season, a pattern which generally held in prior seasons – but for all we know Season 7 might simply break with this and happen in a shorter timeframe).  The matter is moot, however, because Sansa was stated in dialogue to be 13 years old in Season 1 – so whichever scenario, Lyanna is at most 12 years old now, and thus still “younger” than Sansa was.
 * Also regarding the passage of time, Sansa makes the only comment ever to address this in Season 7 itself, but only by vaguely saying that it has been “weeks” since Jon left Winterfell for Dragonstone. Given that months are composed of weeks, this could refer to anything from four weeks to four months – the TV writers may have been deliberately ambiguous about this.
 * Sansa says that they’re asking “20,000 men” to fight for them. This doesn’t seem to match prior numbers:  earlier this season, Jon said there were fewer than 10,000 soldiers left in the North – though he was possibly referring to just the soldiers raised in the North itself, and not the large army from the Vale that came to Winterfell.  Given that the Vale stayed neural for most of the War of the Five Kings, until heading to Winterfell to help defeat the Boltons, it should have a full strength army in the range of 20-30,000 men (i.e. Robb could raise 20,000 men from the North in Season 1 when their armies were fresh, Tywin could raise even more in the south, etc.).

The Wight Hunt - Jon’s group heading north, and back

 * Gendry may be making a meta-narrative joke when he complains that the Brotherhood Without Banners sold him to Melisandre, when he wanted to stay and join the Brotherhood: this is what Gendry did in the novels, and leaving with Melisandre was a condensation of the TV series (merging him with the story of another of Robert’s bastards from the novels, Edric Storm, who doesn’t exist in the TV show).  Sandor gruffly tells him to quit his bickering, however, because he’s alive now and came to no lasting harm, the Brotherhood has the same goal as him now, so they should work together.  Gendry seems on the way to reconciling with them when he briskly accepts Thoros’s offer of a swig of ale from his flask.
 * The preview video for this episode raised the possibility that Gendry would die in it, because Sandor was seen wielding his war hammer, and he isn’t in shots of the battle scene. This may have been the producers intentionally toying with the audience, because as it turned out, Gendry simply left to go for help before the main battle started, and left his heavy war hammer behind so it wouldn’t slow him down.
 * Gendry mentions that he never saw snow before – which makes sense, given that he grew up in King’s Landing to the south. He is roughly the same age as Jon Snow or Samwell Tarly, and most of the younger characters can’t remember the last winter (the previous summer, that ended at the beginning of Season 2, lasted a full ten years, and there was a spring before that too).  Samwell, who is from even farther south in the Reach, states in the books that he never saw snow before he came to the Wall.
 * Tormund makes a lot of sexually flippant remarks– but there’s no way of being sure how serious he is. He remarks to Gendry that the wildlings try to stay warm by having sex, but with no women around, they may have to “make do” – but this might have just been him joking around (we have no idea what the attitudes of the Free Folk are about same-sex relationships – Ygritte made a similar remark to Jon in Season 2 about the Night’s Watch, but in context she may have just been being sarcastic).  In the books moreso than the TV series, Tormund frequently makes sex jokes, boasting about his sexual prowess, so it is in character that he is playing around with Sandor and Gendry like this (in both books and TV series, this is a man who boasts that he allegedly had sex with a she-bear).
 * Tormund now regrets Mance Rayder’s “pride” not to bend the knee which got a lot of the wildlings killed – actually, the wildlings couldn’t get through the Wall for years because the Night’s Watch wouldn’t let them even if they asked. If Tormund is referring to when Mance refused to surrender to Stannis and was burned alive for it (in the Season 5 premiere “The War to Come”), at the time, Mance actually said “fuck my pride” to Jon, and explained he wouldn’t surrender because if he did, his men would lose respect for him and simply refuse to accept such an order, abandoning him as their leader.
 * Jon Snow and Jorah Mormont recount Jorah’s father Jeor Mormont, former leader of the Night’s Watch, how Jon was proud to serve under him. He also recounts how he died but assures Jorah that he managed to avenge his death.
 * Jorah then recounts his backstory with Jon’s (adoptive) father Eddard Stark, and how Eddard was entirely right to want to execute him for the crime he committed (though he admits he still didn’t like Eddard for it, even knowing Eddard was just carrying out the law).
 * Jon offers to return Longclaw to Jorah, the ancestral Valyrian steel sword of House Mormont, but he declines, citing that he gave up the right to it long ago. Jeor left the sword behind when he joined the Night’s Watch and passed it to Jorah, but then Jorah left it behind at Bear Island when he fled into exile (and it was returned to his father at the Wall).
 * It is unclear if Jorah has the authority to grant such a request, or if Lyanna Mormont might like the sword back – though, as Jorah points out, its last Mormont owner was Jeor himself, and it was Jeor’s intention to give it to Jon as a gift, so Lyanna might not want to challenge her honored grandfather’s wish. So it’s not so much that Jorah “gave it back” to Jon, as he simply said he would honor his father’s wish that Jon should have it.
 * In the books, Jeor Mormont’s dying words to Samwell Tarly are actually that he should find his son Jorah, and tell him to redeem his honor by going to the Wall (and joining the Night’s Watch). In this episode, Jorah indeed goes to the Wall and helps fight the monsters beyond it, in a way fulfilling his father’s wish.
 * Beric Dondarion recounts to Jon that it was actually Eddard Stark himself who sent out Beric and several knights to the Riverlands, which they did to bring Gregor Clegane to justice. These men became the core of the Brotherhood Without Banners, who continue to fight in the name of King Robert to fulfil Eddard’s directive to restore peace to the realm and defend the commoners.  Eddard was actually shown sending Beric on this mission in Season 1’s “A Golden Crown” (though it wasn’t the same actor, a stand-in was used with minimal dialogue, for such a brief scene, knowing they would recast the role by Season 3).
 * Given that Beric met Eddard, he remarks that Jon Snow doesn’t look very much like him, and he must take after his mother – of course, implying that he isn’t really Eddard’s son, but son of Ned’s sister Lyanna. In the books, Jon is actually said to strongly resemble Ned, to the point that no one questions he must be Ned’s son – though a hint that this is actually because he’s Jon’s uncle is a parallel situation with Arya:  Arya is said to strongly resemble her ‘’aunt’’ Lyanna, more than her mother Catelyn.  In contrast, Ned’s other children with Catelyn took more after her Tully features of auburn hair and blue eyes (Robb, Sansa, Bran, Rickon).  Of course, it’s possible that there’s some variation within the main “Stark” look, so that Jon can still have strong “Stark features” while nonetheless looking a little more like Lyanna than Eddard, so this isn’t an outright contradiction.
 * Thoros of Myr hasn’t died as of the most current novel, while Beric Dondarrion ‘’has’’ died for the seventh and final time (in a way that would be a major spoiler for the books and will not be elaborated upon in this article). The Brotherhood never attempts to go to the Wall like this, though again, the showrunners admitted that the Wight Hunt is an invention of the TV series.
 * Thoros and Jorah Mormont recount how they both fought together at the Siege of Pyke, at which Thoros charged headlong through the breach in the castle wall with his flaming sword, with Jorah the second in behind him. This has been recounted by several characters since Season 1.  Thoros now admits that he was so drunk at the time that he doesn’t really remember doing it.
 * A ferocious wight-snow bear appears in this episode – a reminder that the White Walkers can resurrect ‘’any’’ animal as a wight. This was already established in prior seasons showing they can resurrect wight-horses, and this season that they can resurrect wight-giants.  This was introduced a bit earlier in the novels than the TV series, probably due to budget constraints (though the undead horses appeared in Season 2).  In the books, a wight-snow bear attacked the Night’s Watch during the Battle of the Fist of the First Men (which occurred off-screen between Seasons 2 and 3).  Thoron Smallwood rushed ahead and nearly hacked its head off, but then with a single mighty swipe from its paw the wight-bear tore Smallwood’s head clean off from his shoulders.
 * Snow bears are not the same thing as regular polar bears from real-life. They are comparable to the difference in size between direwolves and regular wolves:  a polar bear, while being the largest living species of bear in real life, is only 5 feet tall at the shoulder – while snow bears are described as being a massive 13 feet tall at the shoulder.  This wight-bear is clearly much taller than a grown man like Sandor at the shoulder, so it is a snow bear.
 * The wight-snow bear is finally brought down, despite being on fire, when it is stabbed with a dragonglass dagger. As explained in prior episodes this season, dragonglass doesn’t work on wights in the books, only on their masters, but writer Dave Hill confirmed in an interview that they didn’t forget this, rather, it is an official thought-out change from books to TV series (apparently to make fight scenes more practical – the stuntwork involved with having numerous extras set on fire in ‘’close quarters combat’’ is always difficult).
 * As Daenerys Targaryen points out, the only person who actually called her “Dany” was her abusive brother Viserys Targaryen who died in Season 1. No one called her “Dany” since, in the books or TV series.  Nonetheless, a large number of fans of both the books and TV series have come to call her that for short, because “Daenerys” is a complex name (Martin said he made it complex on purpose, who show how much more refined the royal Targaryens were).  Jon apparently calls her “Dany” here as well because he isn’t used to saying “Daenerys” – but she urges that she really doesn’t like that name due to reminding her of Viserys.

The Wight Hunt – the battle

 * The initial skirmish with a scouting party explicitly reveals that the White Walkers and their undead horde are a keystone army: if a White Walker dies, any wights that it has personally reanimated fill drop dead, the White Walker’s magic no longer animating them.  This hasn’t revealed yet in the novels – if it is even true in the novels – and may in fact be a massive, TV-first revelation.
 * The showrunners stated in the Inside the Episode video for the preceding episode that ‘’’the Wight Hunt is “an idea we came up with”’’’ – in a context that almost assuredly means it won’t actually happen in the next novel, but is an invention of the TV series. Similarly, the climaxes for Seasons 5 and 6 – “Hardhome” and ‘’Battle of the Bastards” – are large action sequences heavily featuring Kit Harington, but which probably won’t actually happen in the novels.  “Hardhome” certainly won’t happen:  Jon doesn’t go to Hardhome in the current novels, and while an expedition was sent there, it won’t involve him and will apparently happen off-screen.  There is no guarantee that Jon will actually fight Ramsay Bolton in a future novel (anymore than it seemed that Robb Stark would face off against Joffrey Baratheon, but then didn’t).  It is entirely possible that Stannis Baratheon will defeat the Boltons in his upcoming battle against him, and that Theon Greyjoy may execute Ramsay (or they might all die, no one knows for sure).  In the Blu-ray commentary and behind the scenes videos for these first two battles, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss frequently remark that after the Battle of Castle Black, they were so impressed that actor Kit Harington can do his own stuntwork with swords that they wanted to show it off again, and remark on how impressed they are with how much emotion Harington can convey with his non-verbal facial reactions.  Weiss eve boasts in the behind the scenes video for “Battle of the Bastards” that “It’s got minimal dialogue in it!”.
 * The battle scene, before Daenerys arrives, even uses a slow-motion shot to focus on Jon Snow, as Kit Harington reacts in wordless horror to the waves of wights overwhelming them. The showrunners have previously said in numerous videos that they avoid using slow motion whenever possible, feeling that it is a cheap trick, and have only sparingly used it a few times to convey extreme emotion during a battle (i.e. Jon focusing on Ygritte dying so much during the Battle of Castle Black that the camera slows down to shift to his perception, a slow-motion shot of Jaime watching men on fire flee Daenerys’s dragon, which otherwise would happen too fast for the audience to experience as he does, etc.).
 * The entire battle scene, from when the wights start crossing the frozen lake to when Jon is saved by Benjen, lasts a full 10 minutes with no significant dialogue (other than shouts of “Help!”, “Get back!”, etc.), instead focusing on the non-verbal reactions of the cast. After the battle begins, but before Daenerys arrives, consist of 4 full minutes of just Jon’s party circled up and defending themselves from waves after wave of undead wights, with no dialogue – in contrast with the Massacre at Hardhome] or Battle of the Bastards, which had more dialogue interspersed throughout, and incremental phases to each part of their battle sequences (i.e. at Hardhome, Jon tries to run into a building to retrieve dragonglass daggers, fails, then faces a White Walker, then new waves of wights appear).
 * The choreography of the battle is confusing: as presented, Drogon had landed and was ‘’closer’’ to the Night King, and evacuating valuable human leaders ‘’including’’ the dragons’ rider and master, yet he instead chose to make the more difficult shot of throwing his ice-spear at Viserion, who was a more difficult shot, as he was both farther away and flying in motion.  Either there was some miscommunication with the special effects team when they were adding the dragon CGI in, or this is a major example of “plot armor” defending the main characters from certain death.
 * Benjen Stark dies for the last time, torn apart by wights, holding them off so his nephew Jon could escape on his horse. It is still unclear in the books what happened to Benjen, as he has not returned yet:  the TV producers refer to him now as “Coldhands Benjen”.  In the books, “Coldhands” is a character who has similarly been reanimated but kept his own mind and free will due to the magic of the Children of the Forest, who helps Samwell Tarly and Bran Stark.  There are three possibilities:  either “Coldhands” really is Benjen, or perhaps Coldhands is a separate character setting up that Benjen will be reanimated in similar fashion, or this is just a pure invention of the TV series – it is currently unknown.
 * This episode of course marks the first time that a dragon has died on-screen, Viserions the white dragon. Dragons are nearly impervious to conventional weapons – but even in the backstory of the books, they have never been tested against Magic powers and weapons, like those of the White Walkers.  Given that the showrunners admitted that the White Hunt is an invention of the TV series, this introduces a massive and unresolved question:  would the showrunners totally invent something on the scale of ‘’killing one of Daenerys’s three dragons?’’’  Or, will Viserion be killed by the White Walkers in the novels, but in different circumstances?  Answers will have to wait for the next upcoming novel to be released.

In the books
[This section will be updated with comparisons after the sixth novel is released.]

Memorable quotes
Beric Dondarrion: "Death is the enemy. The first enemy and the last. The enemy always wins and we still need to fight him."

Arya Stark: "You're scared, aren't you? What are you scared of?"