**MAJOR SPOILER FOR GAME OF THRONES**
Like most of the world, I'm a big fan of Game of Thrones. So I tuned in to watch the most recent episode with the much hyped 'Battle of Winterfell'.
There was questionable military tactics on display, character deaths, spectacular set pieces (though sometimes hard to see) but ultimately, I found it disappointing. And that is because of the death of the Night King.
So in case you have been living under a rock, the Night King was killed by Arya Stark. It was a spectacular moment: Arya leaping from nowhere, caught by the NK but one cool trick with her knife and thrust to the chest later the Night King, the Big Evil of the show, is down with his armies decimated. Westeros is saved! A cool moment but once the euphoria has died down, the thought that comes is 'Wait, what?'
I like the Arya character, I have enjoyed the journey she's been on (for the most part, the less said about the House of Black and White the better) but should she have been the one to kill the Night King? I don't think so.
Before the episode, everything pointed to Jon Snow being the one to take down the Night King. Jon Snow's whole story line throughout all the seasons had been about the White Walkers. He spent the best part of seven seasons trying to convince the rest of the world the White Walkers existed; broke the rules of his ancient order to bring Wildlings south of the wall to save them from the Long Night; had two confrontations with the Night King himself and literally came back from the dead to fight them. But show runners David Benioff and D.B Weiss decided they weren't going to pay any of that off because it was 'too obvious'.
Here is the problem: the Night King is not a nobody in the Game of Thrones world. He is the Big Evil (episode order is also an issue with this last season but that's for another time), who gets to kill him matters. Once you have decided you are going to deny fans the showdown they have all been waiting for, you need to have very good narrative justification for the character you give that kill to. This is where Arya is sorely lacking.
Arya has been on a tough journey no doubt and she has the scars to prove it. None of it however, involved the White Walkers or the Night King. She has no history with them. Right up until the Battle of Winterfell, she had never seen a member of the Army of the Dead. She had never lost anything because of them. The narrative case for Arya to be the one to to take down the Night King is no stronger than any other character and in some cases weaker. Gilly, not even a B player in the show, has a stronger narrative case than Arya having seen her sisters children be sacrificed to the Night King.
In the real world, the reason its Arya is because actress Maisie Williams is the shows break out star (though if Dark Phoenix does well, maybe Sophie Turner could eclipse her?) but also because writers Benioff and Weiss put 'shocking the audience' above good story telling. On You Tube now, there are loads of videos trying to explain why Arya was the right person to kill the Night King. The irony being that the very existence of these videos proves the opposite and that the writers didn't do a good enough job in justifying it. Nobody will ever need to make a video explaining why it was Luke and not Leia that blew up the Death Star because the narrative can stand up for itself.
A twist ending can work but it needs to be both logical and narratively justified. Arya has the skills but not the justification. Game of Thrones isn't the only show guilty of nonsensical twists but none are so high profile as most recent one. It feels as if writers are conditioned to think everything needs to have a twist now when there is nothing shameful in following the expected path every now and then. If it had been Jon Snow to kill the Night King, nobody would have complained too hard about it.
'Subverting the audiences expectations' is a fine thing to do from time to time. But not every time. It's not always clever, sometimes its just dumb.
(off topic but how much like an old man does Maisie Williams look like in that picture?)
