Game of thrones s08e01 dany greets sansa series#
The “Knight” of the episode’s title turns out to be Brienne, who has in all her time on the series never been knighted, because that’s not something women can do in the Seven Kingdoms. Winner: Ser Brienne We did it, everybody. When you know your hours are probably limited, what are you going to do with those last few hours? Who are you going to spend them with? Well. It’s a scene that occasionally brings up the specter of death directly (mostly when Tyrion can’t seem to let go that this little group of people is going to die fighting to save Winterfell when they’ve all battled the Starks at one time or another), but it’s largely an indirect reflection on this idea. Except here, the characters were peeling off from the long overnight wait for the Night King to arrive in favor of sitting by a crackling fire. My favorite scene in this regard felt like what happens at a wedding reception when guests start to peel off from the main party and go hang out by the hotel pool with a few drinks. From Sam musing on the way that the White Walkers’ desire to wipe humankind from the map parallels the way death makes us forget (and causes us to be forgotten) to the constant refrains of “We’re all going to die here!” from just about everybody, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” zeroes in on who these characters are, who they were, and where they’re going, as the world seemingly draws to a close. It works so much better than I ever would have expected it to. Martin will ultimately find a way to undercut the one-size-fits-all, generically evil nature of the White Walkers in his books, but the show, seeing how little time is left (just four more episodes after this one!), goes all in on making the White Walkers stand in for death itself. They can stand in for climate change or for evil or for whatever you want, but they’re not really characters so much as an overwhelming force. The White Walkers have always been a little paltry in terms of metaphor. If there’s a central theme of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” it’s that death is coming for us all, but also, more specifically, for the hardy band of warriors gathered at Winterfell. But let’s break out some other winners and losers from within the episode itself. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was a marked improvement over the season eight premiere and the kind of episode that Game of Thrones needed to have before it descends into the chaos of the impending war with the Night King. It was how the show’s collection of characters felt just a little like real people living through massive, life-changing events. It wasn’t even the crazy twists or the political intrigue. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” reminded me that what got viewers hooked on Game of Thrones wasn’t the spectacle or the battles. The whole thing takes place in and around Winterfell, over what amounts to a 12-hour period, and you can almost feel writer Bryan Cogman and director David Nutter thrilling to the prospect of only having to service this one specific window of time in these characters’ lives, before they get stuck in yet another giant battle. But the core of the episode is a bunch of beloved characters spending one last, long night together, before the White Walkers arrive to possibly turn them into ice zombies. It contains plenty of clunky scenes, and it’s remarkable how little we know about how the Jon and Dany alliance plans to fight the Night King. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is the sort of episode that first made me fall in love with Game of Thrones.
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