Game of Thrones has come to an end, like a baby seal finding a club, and sadly, that seal is not dancing the night away to trance music. There are many problems with the show, and many, many people have gone over them in far more detail than I ever could. However, I’ve noticed that there is one flaw that no one seems to talk about, a flaw that started in the land of always winter, a flaw which sends icy shivers down my spine whenever the sun sets and the north wind blows.
What on Planetos was the Night King’s plan?
In the books and the show, the main defense keeping the horrors of the north at bay is the Wall, a 700-foot-high barrier of ice spreading from sea to shining sea. It’s kinda like Hadrian’s Wall, except made of ice instead of stone. And keeping unspeakable northern horrors from invading the civilized lands instead of just walling off the Scots.
Anyways, in the books, we don’t know how the White Walkers plan to take down the Wall, but there’s a theory that a magic horn will go all Jerico on Bran the Builder’s magnum Opus, allowing the White Walkers on their dead horses to stream south, followed by thousands of wights and packs of ghostly spiders as big as hounds.
In the TV show, they didn’t use a horn. No, the white walkers used an ice dragon.
At first, this seems cool. I mean, if I had to choose between some silly trumpet and riding an ice dragon, I know which way I’m going, no matter how bitchin’ my wall-shattering jazz solo would sound. But how did the Night King know he’d get a dragon? I mean, they were right up against the Wall when they obtained it! What if they’d never gotten the dragon? Would they have just milled around in front of the wall, sipping gin and staring up going, “Man, we really didn’t think this through.”
The more you consider the Night King’s plan, the stupider it seems, to the point where I’d like to have heard the pitch meeting where it was first laid out.
No, not the pitch meeting where D and D came up with the idea. The meeting where the Night King pitched it to the other white walkers.
I think it might have sounded a little like this:
Night King: Hello, everyone. I’m glad to see you all came today. I have something very near and dear to my cold, black heart that I’d like to discuss with you. Now, ten thousand years ago, we made a play at taking over Westeros and plunging the world into an endless winter night. It didn’t go too well for us, but I think the time is right for us to try again! What do you say, shall we give the Long Night another try?
White Walker: Ok, that sounds fun. I mean, everyone here would love another long night, but since the last attempt, the mortals have put up a massive wall of magical ice. I mean, we couldn’t get through it last time. How are we going to get around it now?
Night King: Two words: “Ice Dragons.”
White Walker: Woah, you have an Ice Dragon? Dude, that’s fucking awesome! I take back everything I said! This is going to be amazing!
Night King: Glad to have you on board! Just one little problem.
White Walker: What?
Night King: I don’t have the Ice Dragon yet.
White Walker: No Ice Dragon?
Night King: Not so much, no. But I’ll have one soon! All we need is a live dragon.
White Walker: Oh, whew! For a moment, you had me worried! I mean, dragons are still really common over in Valeria, right?
Night King: Exactly! If by “common,” you mean “extinct.”
White Walker: Wait a minute, there are no dragons left at all? Shit man, how we gonna get an ice dragon, then?
Night King: Oh, easy! There are three dragon eggs left.
White Walker: Nearby in Westeros?
Night King: On another continent entirely! In Essos. But don’t worry! We have the Targaeryan heir on that continent.
White Walker: Oh, great! They have the blood of dragons, right? So we’ll give him the eggs…
Night King: Not him. His little sister.
White Walker: What? Why?
Night King: Because he’s an ordinary obnoxious rapey shit with no magical powers. His little SISTER is the blood of the dragon. So, we just marry her to a barbarian, hope she receives the eggs as a wedding present, her husband will kill her brother, then die himself, prompting the girl to come to Westeros.
White Walker: Okay, so we get her to bring the eggs north, then incubate these eggs until they hatch…
Night King: They’re Fossilized.
White Walker: What?
Night King: They can only hatch if somebody with a magic connection walks into the fire with them while sacrificing a person to give them life. But she’ll do that to avenge her husband’s death.
White Walker: This plan seems complicated.
Night King: WAIT UNTIL I GET GOING! The mother of dragons will raise her dragons across the sea, gaining and losing several armies before finally invading Westeros. We’ll cause enough trouble to convince the Night Watch to fight us, and we’ll destroy them, causing a ruggedly handsome man to go negotiate with her after he wins a multi-sided side-civil war, the northern theater of an even more complex Westeros-wide civil war, and become King in the North, so she’ll want to have sex with him instead of feeding him to her dragons. Then he’ll come north to kidnap a wight, killing a white walker in the process.
White Walker: Won’t that kill all the wights under his control?
Night King: Which is why we’ll have a backup white walker nearby! Come on, keep up! We’ll have to sacrifice a white walker, by the way. Sorry, Steve.
Steve: Wait, what was that last part?
Night King: I don’t repeat stuff for people who don’t pay attention, Steve! Now, we’ve got the handsome man trapped on a lake of ice, but we’ll let one of his friends get away, and they can send a supersonic raven to the mother of dragons, and she’ll bring all three dragons up here.
White Walker: Wait, you want to bring three fire-breathing dragons up here, north of the Wall?
Night King: Yeah, why?
White Walker: Dragons breath fire.
Night King: Yeah, why?
White Walker: Fire is, like, one of three things that can kill us!
Night King: Pssh. Sissy. I’m immune to fire, dragon or otherwise.
White Walker: We are? Dude, When did we get flame immunity?
Night King: Not you. Just me.
White Walker: That seems kinda selfish, hogging the fireproofing like that.
Night King: Wah wah wah, I only gave you IMMORTALITY, didn’t I? I didn’t expect to get such sass about it!
White Walker: That still doesn’t tell us how we’re going to kill one of these dragons.
Night King: Oh, I’ll just summon a magic ice javelin and use my super-strength to throw it through a dragon’s hide.
White Walker: You have SUPER STRENGTH?
Night King: Duh. Wasn’t it obvious?
White Walker: NO.
Night King: Oh. Well, anyways, we’ll use these giant chains I’ve been keeping buried next to the lake to pull the dragon out of the water, I’ll do my resurrection thing, and boom! Ice Dragon. Any questions?
Steve: I still think we should use the giant wall-climbing ice spiders…
Night King: DAMN IT STEVE! We decided this like a thousand years ago! We’re not doing the ice spiders! Capiche? Now, if everyone’s on board, let’s get this Long Night a-started.
White Walker: Well, I can see no problems with this plan, and see no way how it could possibly fail! I mean, it’s not like we will all die if you get ganked, and even if that was so, you wouldn’t be so stupid as to get involved in the front-line fighting. I mean, that would be just, so unbelievably imbecilic! Right?
Awkward Silence
Night King: Let’s put a pin in that thought, and come back to it once we’re south of the wall.