[Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.]

“What do we say to the god of death?” “Not today.”

The final death in The Battle of Winterfell is unexpected. It is a quiet, sombre death that does not come from murder but from acceptance. Melisandre, The Red Woman, walks out into the snow, strips off the magical charm that’s been keeping her young, and collapses—dead. She fulfilled her purpose—she aided Azor Ahai, the Prince(ess) who was Promised. Only it wasn’t Stannis Baratheon and it wasn’t Jon Snow. It wasn’t even Daenerys or Jorah Mormont or Jaime Lannister. It was someone wholly unexpected.

But the question remains, is Arya Stark Azor Ahai? Sure, she did leap out of nowhere to stab the Night King and put an end to the Long Night, killing all of the walkers and the wights in one blow. But what about everything else? The Prince who was Promised was supposed to be someone wielding a flaming sword that they had just pulled from the bosom of their lover.

As much as I admire Arya’s arc—from naive tomboy to faceless assassin—there is something that doesn’t quite sit right with her killing the Night King. All the Azor Ahai prophecy aside, it turns out that the Night King was just a run-of-the-mill villain, someone with no deeper motivations than to murder all humans. The show had led us to believe that the White Walkers wanted something more, what with all the spiral symbolism, their creation at the hands of the Children of the Forest, their taking of dead babies, and the once-glimpsed Lands of Always Winter. The Night King’s death feels like poor writing, doing away with all the complex characterisation that made Game of Thrones unique. It feels like something that George RR Martin—he who relishes in turning high fantasy tropes on their head—would never have written.

These last two seasons have shown how much Martin is missed. With no more books to follow, showrunners DB Weiss and David Benioff have turned Game of Thrones into a straightforward television show—full of good guys and bad guys, all with predictable character arcs. So it was fitting that Theon and Ser Jorah died in this episode, not so much that Brienne, Podrick and Grey Worm didn’t.

First, Theon, and what an arc he’s had. Alfie Allen is easily one of the best actors on the show, going from the despicably arrogant Theon who took Winterfell while the Starks were away to the broken and pitiful Reek, tortured endlessly by the sadistic Ramsay Bolton. His rebirth happened slow, prodded multiple times by his sister Yara, but he needed to return to Winterfell to gain closure. “You’re a good man,” Bran says to Theon. And in one of the more poignant moments of the episode, Theon, armed with a spear, charges the Night King, fully expecting to die. When he dies, it is with the knowledge that he died in Winterfell, his home, protecting his family, the Starks. What is dead may never die.

Second, Ser Jorah Mormont, son of Jeor Mormont, uncle to Lyanna Mormont. There was only one way Jorah could’ve died in the show and he did so predictably, falling only after he’d protected the love of his life, his queen and Khaleesi. Initially, Jorah was spying on Dany, which led her to exile him. But he’d fallen in love with her and so, he came back. She sent him away again after he contracted greyscale. And again, he came back, healed by Samwell Tarly. All the while, he watched as she loved others—Khal Drogo, Daario, Jon Snow. He was jealous but he came to terms with it. He wanted desperately to be her Hand but in the end, he accepted even that, advising Dany not to treat Tyrion so harshly.

“I’m hurt” is the last thing Jorah says and it’s a fitting last line. He’s always been hurt by his Khaleesi, and yet, he stood by her. Dany seems to finally realise this, as she weeps over Jorah’s body, the first real outpouring of emotion we’ve seen from her in a long time. Even Drogon swoops down to comfort his mother, signalling just how broken Dany is at Jorah’s death.

Speaking of the Mormonts, Lyanna’s death wasn’t as emotional as it was valiant. The headstrong head of House Mormont won a legion of fans the moment she was introduced last season. But last episode, when she pledged to fight alongside her men, it was a foregone conclusion that she wouldn’t survive the Battle of Winterfell. After all, she was only a child. But even in death, Lyanna provides an example of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Picked up like a ragdoll by an undead giant and crushed to death, Lady Lyanna manages one last act of defiance, stabbing the giant in its eye. A fitting way to go.  

Among the others who died are the horde of Dothraki, countless Unsullied, Beric Dondarrion, and Dolorous Edd. Those who didn’t die but maybe should have are Ser Brienne of Tarth and Grey Worm—both of whose character arcs have been duly satisfied and there is nowhere else for them to go, emotionally at least.

Characters aside, this episode was an expertly crafted 80 minutes. The showrunners and director Miguel Sapochnik, who also directed the ‘Battle of the Bastards’, studied the Battle of Helm’s Deep in Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers as a model for this episode, but they don’t seem to have taken much from it. The epic scale of Jackson’s Helm’s Deep is missing. Instead, Sapochnik chooses to place us in the thick of things, as with the ‘Battle of the Bastards’, with close shots, fast cuts, and even faster-moving action. The atmosphere is dark, often too dark, and there is an oppressive fog-of-war over the battlefield. This approach works—we are as disoriented by the chaos and confusion of war as its participants. There are numerous instances where you’re wondering whether a certain character, generally Sam, is alive or dead.  

Certain scenes stand out. Like at  very beginning, where the Dothraki, their araks on fire courtesy of Melisandre, charge the undead, only for their flames to go out as they all die. A more discerning viewer might ask, why did the Dothraki charge a seemingly infinite army of undead zombies when they had a fortified castle they could’ve retreated to? Why did the defenders rely on dragons to light their ditches when pitch and a flaming arrow would’ve worked just as well? These decisions, it seems, were made for the sake of expediency and again, because this is now wholly a television show. George RR Martin would’ve had better sense, one imagines.

The crowning moment of the show is a slow montage set to another of Ramin Djawadi’s excellent scores. The chaos of the battle recedes and we’re finally allowed a few private moments with our characters. So far, we’ve seen them all—Jaime and Brienne battling side-by-side, saving each other time and again; the Hound shaking off his PTSD to come to Arya’s aid; Samwell lying in a pile of bodies, stabbing indiscriminately left and right while crying his eyes out; Tyrion and Sansa sharing a quiet moment together before deciding to save who they can in the crypts. This montage allows breathing room, a calm before the climactic end.

So the Night King is dead and there are still three more episodes to go. The fantasy part of the show is over, now back to the political intrigue that made Game of Thrones great. In King’s Landing, queen Cersei awaits, an infinitely more complex villain than the Night King. And as Cersei herself once told Ned Stark, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.”