Avengers: Endgame has the nearly impossible task of bringing plot threads established, expanded, and twisted across 21 different movies to a satisfying conclusion. All the stuff that's been set up, hinted at, or teased across the last decade is supposed to be leading to this one place--and not only does Endgame have to deal with all that plot, it also has to work on resolving a variety of years-long character arcs. With all that in mind, it's no wonder Endgame clocks in at three hours long.
Like any massive undertaking of this scope, some elements of Endgame are more successful than others, as Senior Entertainment Editor Mike Rougeau pointed out in his review. The story ultimately belongs to Tony Stark, and it is successful in bringing to a close what Iron Man started 11 years ago. But Endgame isn't nearly as well balanced as other Avengers movies, despite Thanos's many lectures about the importance of evening the scales, and several of its main characters are short-changed throughout the proceedings.
The character who gets mistreated the worst is, easily, Black Widow. The decision to sacrifice Black Widow for the Soul Stone is a messy and frustrating one on a lot of levels. First and foremost, Widow has more character development than just about anybody in Endgame, despite being more or less silent through the course of Infinity War. After the time skip in the post-Thanos world, it's not Captain America or Tony Stark holding the Avengers together to safeguard the world--it's Black Widow.
Natasha Romanoff has come a long way through the course of the MCU, from aloof spy at Nick Fury's beck and call to finding her calling as a full-fledged Avenger, and now, literally leading the cause. When everyone else wandered off into their respective lives--Tony starting a family, Steve processing his grief, Thor falling into depression, Hulk embracing his celebrity--Black Widow kept the lights on.
What's more, she's the character most obviously burdened by the aftermath of Thanos. Five years on and Nat can barely deal with what has happened to the world on her watch (a weight that, frankly, should have been borne by Captain America, but we'll get there). Nat talks in Endgame about how important the Avengers have been to her, and how the opportunity to become a superhero allowed her to make up for her darker spy history. The team means more to Nat, seemingly, than anyone else, and their loss to Thanos devastates her.
Especially painful for Nat is what the failure to stop Thanos has done to Clint "Hawkeye" Barton, who, after losing his family, has gone full-on psychopathic vigilante. Clint is out there dealing with his loss by racking up a major body count. Nat owes Clint a great deal, as established in The Avengers: though it's only discussed and alluded to, we know that it was Clint who brought Nat over to the side of the good guys years ago, when he could have killed her instead. A big part of Nat's story in The Avengers is that she feels indebted to Hawkeye and bent on saving him from Loki. She clearly feels responsible for what he has become in Endgame.
All that builds to a Black Widow who occupies a place at the heart of the Avengers in Endgame, but who never gets to fulfill that role in a movie that constantly overlooks her. In just a few scenes, it's clear she has the most skin in the game against Thanos, and that's where some of the most interesting potential character development in the movie resides. But then the movie sends Nat to Vormir with Barton, where they replay Thanos's sacrifice of Gamora, but, like, friendlier.
Chucking Black Widow over a cliff on Vormir is a complete waste of her character and a frustrating end to her arc throughout the MCU (Clint, on the other hand, makes more sense for the sacrifice given what he's done as Ronin, even if offing him there would be completely predictable). Black Widow has her own standalone movie coming, which you might think makes up a bit for her death in Endgame, but it actually makes the choice to use her in this way all the more baffling. The stories of women in the MCU are finally getting told, and one of the most important ones is finally getting the spotlight--why cut off her future when you're about to flesh out her character?
And not just that--killing Black Widow in the middle of the movie is also a really bad look for a studio that has struggled with perceived sexism throughout this franchise (Marvel infamously made toys of all the heroes except Black Widow back when The Avengers came out). The next scene after Black Widow's death throws into sharp relief the fact that the movie just disposed of its most major female character: we cut back to all the remaining Avengers having feelings about the loss of Nat--and they're all dudes. Twice, the MCU sacrificed important women characters for a magic rock in order to give surviving men their feels.
And while Tony gets a hero's sendoff and a funeral attended by a ridiculous number of big names--including some characters who appear in the movie only for that purpose--Natasha Romanoff, a character central to the MCU since Iron Man 2, gets a momentary mention from Barton, and she has to share it with Wanda lumping in Vision.
Avengers, Assemble (Around Iron Man)
Endgame's handling of Natasha is its biggest problem, but far from its only one. Rocket, Nebula, War Machine, Ant-Man--they have next to nothing going on in terms of character development and are mostly warm bodies waiting to serve functions in the plot. If they're lucky, they get a few jokes.
Hulk is flubbed even more than those others, though. Like most of the Avengers, Hulk has zero arc in Endgame; he mostly exists to push buttons on a console and say time travely things. It's worse than just a misuse of one of the main cast of Avengers, though. The driving force of Bruce Banner's story, the motivation at his core, is the conflict between Banner and Hulk. Banner is constantly afraid he'll lose control, and lose his very sense of self, by becoming Hulk, hurting people in the process. Through his life with the Avengers, Banner has found a use for Hulk, and in Infinity War, their dynamic changed. Banner could no longer use Hulk as his battering ram when danger reared up, and as Thor: Ragnarok established, Hulk was more than just a raging monster--he was a person unto himself.
Endgame deals with these evolving ideas about Hulk's dichotomy by resolving all these issues off-screen. During the five-year time skip, Bruce just figures out how to mix his own personality together with Hulk's. In the post-Thanos world, Bruce is doing pretty great! He gets to be huge and strong while maintaining his intellect and personality, all his personal demons have been exorcized, and he finally has love and acceptance from the people, rather than their fear and resentment--another core driver of his character throughout the MCU. Banner didn't resolve his troubles by learning or growing or doing anything; Endgame just handwaved them away and moved on.
And then there's Captain America, whose wrap-up in Endgame Meg Downey already addressed. The Avengers' through-line since the very beginning has been an ideological schism between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers that speaks to the fundamental nature of their characters. Tony will give up a lot for safety and protection, and is often looking for the preemptive solution to a problem. Steve has, tragically, lost everything and has no ties to the present world, but given the chance to get back some of what he's lost in past movies, he's willing to gamble everything. These things are why Steve would fight his Avengers pals to try to save Bucky; they're what blinded Tony to what he was risking in creating Ultron. They're why the two of them clashed in Captain America: Civil War. The wounds from that movie never healed and its conflicts were never resolved. Endgame positioned itself to deal with all of them, especially early on, when Tony, half-dead from starvation, took Cap to task for failing to be there to fight Thanos together as a result of their schism.
Endgame is perfectly positioned to pit these two characters and their ideologies against one another. When Cap gets a time travel solution to undo Thanos' snap, Tony is stuck worrying about the family he's gained in the five years since. Cap is willing to die to retrieve what he lost; Tony is willing to die to protect what he has. It's a great setup for conflict and, eventually, resolution between the two men.
Instead, the movie conveniently just puts an end to the longstanding feud between Cap and Tony in one conversation, where both basically say, "Eh, let's move on." Meanwhile, Cap winds up with no character arc at all. He executes some time travel shenanigans and he hits Thanos in the face, and the real character stuff gets handed off to Tony. Pointedly, Steve and Tony never exchange words again before Tony's death.
Endgame completely wastes plot threads set up over multiple movies that have informed the core plotlines of what makes the Avengers interesting. It's not that Endgame couldn't or shouldn't be Tony Stark's movie--it's fitting to focus on him as a bookend to how the MCU started--but a focus on Tony doesn't necessarily require the exclusion of the other Avengers. So much of Tony's development as a character has come through his interactions and disagreements with Cap, so why not bring those disagreements to a thorough conclusion that allows them both to grow? Why call the movie "Avengers" if all the Avengers aren't going to have equal importance in the story?
The thing that made the Marvel Cinematic Universe exciting was its ability and willingness to pay off investment, to build character arcs over multiple stories, making interactions between superheroes that go beyond punching people to deal with deeper emotional conflicts, scars, and baggage. Telling what is more or less one story over more than 20 disparate films has been an incredible achievement--and something that made being an MCU fan worth the time and money it requires. There are a ton of these movies, but tuning in for all of them allowed you to enjoy and understand each one in more ways than is usually possible with film franchises.
Emotionally, Endgame hits a lot of the right notes to pay off all that MCU work. There's a reason it's breaking box office records--it's a fun, exciting movie that works with the broad strokes of the MCU. As epic conclusions go, it's pretty damn epic. And the conclusion of Tony Stark's story is legitimately well-executed, thoughtful, and powerful. Despite its problems, at the top level, there's a lot of payoff for MCU fans to be had in Endgame.
But from a more granular, close-up perspective, the conclusion of that story and the MCU experiment, Avengers: Endgame is something of failure. Tony Stark's story gets the wrap-up it deserves, and a few other characters (Thor, most notably) get an emotional and involved journey that uses the best elements of the MCU to its advantage. But Endgame drops the ball on what has made the MCU movies, and the Avengers films in particular, worth showing up for over the last few years. In trying to wrap up everything neatly, Endgame fails to be the satisfying conclusion the Avengers deserved.
Treyarch has released a new Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 trailer for the game's upcoming content drop, titled Operation Spectre Rising. The new Operation introduces a brand-new Specialist, as well as new features in Black Ops 4's different multiplayer modes.
The new Specialist is called Spectre. Armed with a sharp katana, Spectre is able to approach groups of enemies and quickly leap between them to deliver devastating slashes. They can also see the outlines of enemies through their smoke grenades, allowing them to get the drop on targets. Spectre will also be added to Blackout as a new skin for your character.
Strike from the shadows. Operation Spectre Rising introduces Spectre as the latest Multiplayer Specialist and Blackout character. Drop into the Wetworks Map Update, unlock new weapons, take on new Zombies Gauntlets, and much more. #BlackOps4pic.twitter.com/XVXwAh27iQ
Three new maps drop in Operation Spectre Rising as well. Artifact is a collection of narrow paths that weave between a collection of rocks and cliffs. You can stay hidden down below, but have the chance of running into an enemy hiding behind a corner, or take the high ground at the cost of exposing yourself. Masquerade is a new metropolitan map that intermixes back alleys with large open spaces that are populated by festival decorations you can use as cover. Finally, WMD comes to Black Ops 4 in the new Operation as well, which is a remaster of the map of the same name from the original Black Ops.
The Blackout map receives a huge update in Operation Spectre Rising. Much like how Fortnite's map transforms over time, the original map in Call of Duty's battle royale mode is undergoing a change, nicknamed Wetworks. The dam that marked the top of Blackout will be destroyed, allowing all the water behind it to flood into the rest of the map. This sees all of the shipping containers at shipyard get washed out to sea, and for many of the areas at lower elevations to become flooded. This provides greater utility to boats and helicopters in Blackout, as many pathways on the map can now only be traversed by going through or over water.
Operation Spectre Rising also adds new characters to play as in Blackout battle royale, new game modes (Bounty Hunter, Prop Hunt, and Zombie Gauntlets), and new weapons (Ballistic Knife, Tigershark LMG, Nifo'oti Club), outfits, and weapon charms and camos. The Operation goes live on April 30 on PS4, and follows on Xbox One and PC at a later date.
Time is running out to catch Giratina in Pokemon Go. Niantic brought the Legendary Pokemon back to Raid Battles earlier this month, this time in its Origin Forme, but it's slated to leave the mobile game once again today, April 29, at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET, making this your last opportunity to capture one for the foreseeable future.
Unlike Giratina's standard Altered Form--the form it took when it first appeared in Pokemon Go during last year's Halloween event--its Origin Forme is more serpentine in appearance and has offense-oriented stats. In Pokemon lore, this is the form Giratina assumes in the Distortion World--a parallel universe the Pokemon was banished to.
To catch Origin Forme Giratina, you'll first need to travel to a Gym where a Giratina Raid is taking place and team up with other players in the real world to battle it. If you manage to successfully defeat the Renegade Pokemon, you'll be rewarded with a handful of Premier Balls and an opportunity to capture it.
Like its Altered Forme, Origin Forme Giratina is a dual Dragon/Ghost Pokemon, which makes it vulnerable to its own types. Your best bet is to bring along Pokemon like Salamence, Rayquaza, and Gengar, or Dark-types such as Tyranitar and Houndoom. You can read more tips on how to catch Giratina here.
There's no telling yet what Legendary Pokemon will replace Origin Forme Giratina, but a couple of new ones will be available through May and June's Field Research quests. If you achieve a Research Breakthrough during those two months, you'll have a chance to encounter Ho-Oh, Lugia, Latios, or Latias. On top of that, Shiny Meltan is appearing in Pokemon Go again right now, but it'll only be available until May 5.
The third episode of Game of Thrones' final season, The Long Night, finally brought about a climax we've been waiting for since the very first moments of the show. The Night King's army of the dead breached the wall, and the forces of the living, led by Daenerys, Jon Snow, and Dany's two dragons, laid down everything to try to stop them once and for all.
It was a pitched battle that had lots of casualties--check out our full rundown of everyone who didn't make it through, and our review for our take on whether The Long Night succeeded in its aims of resolving the conflict with the Night King. But after the dust had settled, there were still a few lingering questions. Ghost, Jon Snow's direwolf, disappeared in the first charge, leaving everyone online asking what happened to him (here's the answer). And then there was Rhaegal, the dragon ridden by Jon, who fell halfway through the battle and was never seen again. So what happened to him?
Despite it looking pretty harrowing for Rhaegal in the middle of the battle, we know for sure he survived the Battle of Winterfell. That's because he appears, albeit very briefly, in HBO's teaser for Episode 4.
Rhaegal and Drogon, the dragon Daenerys rides, were a powerful force in the battle until a snowstorm wrecked all visibility, and the dragons struggled to help out the fighters on the ground. When the Night King showed up riding the undead Viserion, things got even more hectic.
Viserion and Rhaegal literally slammed into each other in the snowstorm, with the wight dragon trying to cook Rhaegal's rider as they slashed away at each other. The Night King took the opportunity to try to spear Rhaegal and take him down for good, just as he did with Viserion during the Season 7 episode Beyond the Wall. But Rhaegal eventually won the fight, tearing off a piece of Viserion's face, and both the Night King and the wight dragon fell to Earth. But Rhaegal's injuries were pretty severe, and he went plummeting to the ground, too--he crashed, throwing Jon from his back, and that was the last we saw of the dragon.
So the question that remains now is what condition Rhaegal will be in going forward. Like Daenerys's other forces, Rhaegal took a beating during the battle with the Night King, with Viserion raking a huge gash in his chest. It's also looks like he has tears in his wings in the teaser (although it's tough to tell the dragons apart at any distance). It's very likely he won't be back to 100% for some time, and that could call into question his role in the coming battle for the Iron Throne at King's Landing.
Daenerys has already lost a lot of her military might leading up to her final push to take down Cersei Lannister, and the dragons have always been her ace in the hole. We've seen her get a lot done with just one dragon, but a weakened Rhaegal (and possibly Drogon) will definitely be a setback.
It appears that the "Mad Box" console from Project CARS developer Slightly Mad is going to need to find a different name. Following a trademark dispute, the studio has withdrawn the application.
PC Games Insider reports that on January 3, 2019, the studio filed a trademark with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), but a French casual games company called "Madbox" filed opposition to the trademark on March 25. It cited "likelihood of confusion on the part of the public," and Slightly Mad subsequently withdrew its application on April 5.
That doesn't necessarily mean the Mad Box is dead, but it will likely need to find a new name and start the trademark registration process anew. It could also have an impact on the slogan contest announced by studio head Ian Bell, who promised $10,000 and free games for life to the winner. Any entries that used the prior name will likely need to be resubmitted if the name changes.
Earlier this year, Bell showed off some potential designs for the console. We still know very little about the Mad Box--or whatever it's destined to be called now--other than Bell's word that it will be the "most powerful console ever built." That boast comes with some big promises like 120 FPS in virtual reality, and a price point in the realm of current consoles. He has conceded that it's still in development, though, and likely three years away from coming to market. By then it could face competition from the next generation of consoles--especially as Sony is already outlining its next-generation plans.
By Anonymous on Apr 29, 2019 08:45 pm Survive the post-apocalypse in Rage 2 or get spooky with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection and Nintendo Switch ports of the Resident Evil series.
A brand-new clip taken from what appears to be the start of the upcoming anime film, Saga of Tanya the Evil the Movie, has been released. Above, you can also watch the official trailer for the movie, which is set to release internationally on May 16.
In the new clip, the titular Tanya is flying through the air alongside her 5th Aerial Mage Wing in order to defeat the enemy army, the Free Republic. However, when the enemy is nowhere to be found, Tanya realizes she and her battalion have fallen for a trap designed to stretch their troops and leave their main force exposed. Rather than return to aid the main force, Tanya decides to do the unexpected and lead the small battalion in a direct assault on the enemy's HQ, hoping to destroy the Free Republic's leadership and confuse their soldiers.
Saga of Tanya the Evil the Movie acts as a direct sequel to the 2017 anime series, taking place immediately after the events of the show. The anime follows a man who's pushed to his death, only for a mysterious voice to begin demanding the man refer to it as God before the man is allowed into heaven. Being an atheist, the man refuses and instead calls the voice Being X. Being X, thinking the man lacks faith and needs more time to learn the power of belief, reincarnates the man in a version of early 1900s Germany, called the Empire, that exists in an alternate world.
The man is reborn as a girl named Tanya, but retains all the memories of her previous life. Recognizing the similarities to Earth's history, Tanya uses her knowledge of how major events are bound to transpire, as well as her cunning intellect, to become one of the most formidable pilots in the Empire's air force. Her hope is to rise in the ranks and then lead a life of relaxation on the rear lines as war with the Empire's neighbors begins to grow. However, Being X sets events in motion that push Tanya to the front, and also begins to escalate the conflicts that will inevitably start a world war.
You can find the Saga of Tanya the Evil series on Crunchyroll if you need to catch up before watching the movie. Tanya and her allies also star in a non-canon anime, Isekai Quartet, which sees all the characters from Saga of Tanya the Evil, Konosuba, Re:Zero, and Overlord get transported to Earth and attend high school together.
Days Gone is the UK's biggest launch of the year so far, according to sales monitor Chart-Track. Sony's PS4 exclusive has received a mixed response from critics, but that hasn't stopped it outselling fellow new entry Mortal Kombat 11, which debuts at No.2.
The rest of the top 10 paints a familiar picture for the week ending April 27. FIFA 19 is at No.3, while Red Dead Redemption 2 continues its strong chart performance at No.4. The Division 2 slips two places to No.5, and last week's No.1, World War Z, drops to No.10 this week.
But this week's No.1 received a 5/10 in our Days Gone review. "I did a lot of things in Days Gone," wrote Kallie Plagge. "I burned every single Freaker nest; I cleared every ambush camp; I maxed out my bike; I took out a few optional hordes just because. Like Deacon with Sarah, I kept going because I hoped to find something, to follow a thread to a possibly fascinating or satisfying or impactful conclusion. But at the end of it all, I'd only gotten scraps."
Our Mortal Kombat 11 review-in-progress, meanwhile, awards the fighting game an 8/10. Edmond Tran wrote: "MK11 isn't just a sequel for series fans and Netherrealm devotees, it's a gateway into the realm of fighting games for anyone who has a passing interest in watching ruthless warriors beat each other silly. Streamlined mechanics keep the act of fighting furiously exciting no matter what your skill level, and comprehensive tutorials encourage you to dig into the nitty-gritty. There's a diverse roster of interesting characters and playstyles, and the story mode is an entertaining romp. The unfulfilling approaches to the game's dynamic single-player content and progression may feel like they've totally whiffed (at least at this early stage), but Mortal Kombat 11 hits where it matters."
You can read the full top 10 sales chart for this week below, courtesy of UKIE and GfK Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3--The Long Night--aired last night, marking the longest-ever episode of the show. It also featured the show's biggest battle. You can check out our Episode 3 review for our impressions, but you might be wondering what happened to Ghost. Read on for what we know about his status.
Game of Thrones hit a huge climax in the middle of its final season with The Long Night, the third of the show's final six episodes. With the army of the dead at its gates, the forces of the living, led by Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, faced a final showdown to defeat the Night King once and for all. Finally, Jon Snow's long-missing direwolf, Ghost, was among the fighters for the living--least for a second.
We've been wondering what the deal is with Ghost for quite a while. He last had any real screentime back in Season 6, when Melisandre resurrected Jon from the dead. He basically vanished after that, on account of the effort and cost of animating the direwolves being actually pretty high. But we saw him briefly return in Season 8's second episode, establishing that the pup was hanging around Winterfell with Jon. And finally, we saw him get into the action at the start of the Battle of Winterfell.
Ghost charges into the fight with Daenerys's Dothraki screamers and Jorah Mormont, who lead the battle against the army of the dead. Slowly, however, we realize the Dothraki are completely overmatched, and only a few horses and Jorah Mormont seem to survive the attack. Ghost isn't among the survivors who come fleeing back to Winterfell--so what happened to the direwolf?
It seems there's no wight version of Ghost out there in the fields around Winterfell, despite the suggestion that the direwolf might have fallen in battle. Though he never shows up again in Episode 3, HBO gave a super-quick hint that there's more Ghost to come, at least in the next episode of the show.
You can very briefly glimpse Ghost with the survivors of the Battle of Winterfell in the teaser for Episode 4, which aired at the end of The Long Night. Look extremely closely on the right side of the frame, behind Daenerys and Samwell Tarly, and you'll catch sight of Ghost hanging out with everybody else just outside the Winterfell gates, as the survivors ostensibly prepare to burn the many, many bodies piled up outside the castle. A flash of white fur and four legs is about all we can spot, though.
Not seeing what Ghost got up to in the Battle of Winterfell was definitely something of a bummer. In the early seasons of the show and in George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels on which they're based, the direwolves and their connection to the Stark children always seemed like a very big deal, and a relationship that was leading somewhere. The show has all but written the remaining direwolves out altogether, though. Summer, Bran's wolf, died protecting him at the cave of the Three-Eyed Raven, and Rickon's wolf Shaggy Dog died off-screen before the Battle of the Bastards in Season 6. Ghost pretty much vanished from the show, along with Arya's wolf Nymeria, who showed up briefly in Season 7 to give Arya an emotional moment before disappearing back into the woods. In fact, there were some fan theories that suggested both Ghost and Nymeria would have a part to play in the battle against the Night King and in saving their respective Starks. That the direwolves and their relationships with the Stark family has seemingly amounted to so little is one of the bigger disappointments with the show's adaptation of the novels.
It's not clear what role Ghost might have, if any, going forward. We know Daenerys means to head south to King's Landing with her remaining forces to take the Iron Throne, and one assumes Jon will be in tow to help. So maybe Ghost is heading down to rip out the throats of some Golden Company dudes. Maybe Ghost will take a page from his sister and go be free, now that the threat of the Night King has been eliminated. It would certainly help keep the effects budget down for show's last few episodes.
Sony released the PlayStation Classic mini-console in December for $100 USD. It was very quickly discounted to $60, and now you can get it for $40 or less. Now, we've finally reached the point where the console is being given away for free (kind of). As part of a one-day flash sale at Best Buy, you can get the mini retro console as a free bonus when you buy a PS4 Pro, which is selling for $400 USD.
This deal is available for today only--Best Buy's flash sale ends tonight at 10 PM PT / 1 AM ET. For what it's worth, the sale also includes some solid deals on laptops, Apple products, monitors, TVs, speakers, and home accessories, so it's worth checking out the full list of deals if you've been shopping around for any of those items.
A warning of sorts is in order for the PlayStation Classic. In GameSpot's PlayStation Classic review, critic Peter Brown wasn't thrilled with the retro console. "The PS Classic doesn't feel like a celebration of PlayStation's formative years the way Nintendo's systems do," he wrote.
The PlayStation Classic comes with 20 games pre-installed, including classics like Metal Gear Solid and the original Grand Theft Auto, as well as Resident Evil Director's Cut, Rayman, and Twisted Metal. You can see the full list of games below.
With only three episodes of Game of Thrones left, Season 8 Episode 3, "The Long Night," left us cold. If you want to dig deeper, here's what happened to Ghost in the episode. Then, refresh yourself on everyone who's died this season, including at the Battle of Winterfell. What did you think of this episode? Let us know in the comments below.
Through all the twists and turns over the last eight seasons, Game of Thrones has never been straightforward--until now. Season 8 Episode 3, "The Long Night," brought one of Game of Thrones' main storylines to its conclusion. The battle with the dead is over, the Night King is defeated, and the forces of the living are victorious. And it happened in the least inventive, most predictable way imaginable.
It's possible that I've been immersed in the world of Game of Thrones theories, speculating, and prophecies for too long. But that's a huge part of the fun of being a Game of Thrones fan: The books, and sometimes the show, are crafted so densely, with layers on layers of meaning and allusion, that combing through line-by-line to suss out every last secret feels endlessly rewarding. Fan communities across the internet have been cranking out theories for literally decades, even as the pace of book releases slowed to a crawl (and apparently stopped altogether at some point).
All these years of deep-digging have sometimes made it hard to enjoy the show, which is (understandably) simplified compared with the source material. But it also gives the series' biggest fans a huge amount of perspective: We can see all the possibilities for which the groundwork has been expertly laid over the years. And in "The Long Night," those possibilities all amounted to basically nothing.
Where do I even start? I guess with the fact that it seems like Game of Thrones, the show, has just missed the point of the entire series: that the squabbles between the great houses of Westeros are nothing compared with the unstoppable force of nature slowly bearing down on them from the wintery north. Game of Thrones was never supposed to actually be about the battle for the throne--it's supposed to be about the characters coming together to realize what was really important. The quintessential human fallacy, according to the brain of George R.R. Martin, is believing with absolute certainty that your personal battles are the most important fights that exist. It's a failure of perspective.
Now, with three episodes left, the series' ultimate threat died with a whimper, and its most short-sighted characters turned out to be right, their selfishness justified. As we saw in the preview for next week's episode, the survivors are going right back to their squabbles. They won the great war, but lost the thematic throughline. Why did any of this matter? To give Arya a cool hero moment? So Bran could keep doing absolutely nothing? So Theon could die pointlessly?
The litany of "whys," "whats," and "wheres" won't stop marching through my mind: What has Melisandre been doing in Volantis since last season? Where was undead Rickon Stark (or any other recognizable character) when the Stark corpses came alive in the crypts? Why was there so much foreshadowing about the crypts if nobody important was going to die down there? Why does the show refuse to acknowledge Ghost or include the direwolf in any meaningful way? Why did Jon's revelation to Dany--one of the most important plotlines in the entire series--occur right before this battle if it wasn't going to have any bearing on the events of this episode?
There's no catharsis or payoff in anything that happened in "The Long Night." Yes, it was cool to see Jon and Dany tearing through the sky on their dragons laying waste to the army of the dead with massive gouts of flame. But this episode felt weirdly self-contained, like everything that's happened leading up to it didn't matter. Every fan theory I've seen about the battle with the dead--whether it's a theory from the books 20 years ago or from Reddit last week--is immeasurably more interesting than what actually happened.
One of my favorites until now was that the Night King wouldn't actually show up at this battle--that the attack on Winterfell was a feint, and he was flying to King's Landing to roast Cersei on her throne. There was a ton of evidence for it, but it still would have been a shock. And even better, it would have fit that ultimate series theme--that the fight for the throne was a petty squabble, and the people who failed to see the big picture (i.e. Cersei) would pay a price for it. Instead, the Night King took the bait at Winterfell and died like an idiot. He took his entire race with him, and we never learned anything about them besides "White Walkers=bad."
There are so, so many things that will just never be paid off now. Dany unified the Dothraki tribes and brought them to Westeros so they could die, one and all, in a single ill-conceived charge (seriously, what was the strategy there?). What was the point of Melisandre's entire storyline--the Lord of Light, the resurrections, the Prince that was Promised? Was it really all so she could light some swords on fire and tell Arya to go stab a dude?
Even within the confines of this episode's story--Night King is just a dumb Big Bad Guy after all, he comes to Winterfell, he gets killed--there are endless more rewarding ways it could have gone down. Remember when Dany magically survived Khal Drogo's funeral pyre in Season 1? Now imagine Jon hadn't told Dany about his true identity last season, and instead she had realized there was more to him than she thought when he stepped into her dragonfire, unharmed, and stabbed the Night King in the back. Or it's Arya--but instead of nonsensically jumping onto the Night King's back, she employs her Faceless Men magic to pose as Bran. Bran stabs the Night King, removes his face, bam, it's Arya.
That's payoff. This was boring.
The battle wasn't even that cool, for all the show's creators hyped it up. Long, yes, but much of it was so dark that it was hard to read the action and tell what was happening. And all their strategies were terrible: They wasted the Dothraki in a single pointless charge, Jon and Dany flew around in the clouds doing nothing for minutes on end, and they sent their most vulnerable people underground to the place with dozens of pre-packaged zombies just waiting for the Night King to pop them into the microwave. Dany sat on the ground for no reason and didn't notice the horde of undead crawling onto Drogon's back, and the Night King and all his generals didn't hear the young woman sneaking up on them through the snow. Every single character, living or dead, acted in the stupidest ways possible. It's incredible to me that this episode was written by showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, because it feels like it was written by somebody who's never seen the show before, much less has any understanding of the source material.
With three episodes left, Game of Thrones has pulled one of its final twists: It subverted all our expectations in the worst ways possible. We expected some real, impactful main character deaths in this episode, and it turned out the stakes weren't nearly as high as we thought. We expected some payoff for things Game of Thrones has spent seven seasons setting up, and the reality is much of it was simply pointless. And worst of all, we expected the culmination of Game of Thrones' most important storyline--the literal battle between life and death--to matter.
We expected Game of Thrones to be better. And unfortunately, the show did what it's done so many times before: It turned our expectations upside-down. But being surprised by Game of Thrones has never felt worse.
HBO has officially passed on one of the Game of Thrones prequel shows it was exploring. One of the show's writers and producers, Bryan Cogman, had been working on the concept with George R.R. Martin, but he's now revealed that HBO is going in a different direction.
"My prequel show is not happening and will not happen. HBO decided to go a different way," he told The Hollywood Reporter. Cogman is now working at Amazon on their own shows.
"I am done with Westeros. It's wonderfully bittersweet. I'll certainly miss it, but I'm excited to go out on my own and try to be in the captain's chair of my own projects, armed with everything I've learned," Cogman said. "I've learned more than I could possibly imagine from eight seasons of this thing. I'm eager to start the next chapter, but a part of my heart will always live with Game of Thrones."
Cogman wrote many episodes of Game of Thrones over the years, including Season 8 Episode 2, "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," which was much-loved by fans. He's also an executive producer of Game of Thrones overall.
Regarding the prequel show he was working on, George R.R. Martin said it was set in a "very exciting" period of Westerosi history. "Bryan's series will be an adaptation, and one that will thrill most fans of the books, I think, set during a very exciting period of Westerosi history," he said. "And I'll be working with him every step of the way; we're going to be co-creating the show."
Things can change, and they did, it seems. It's not immediately clear why HBO decided to pass on Cogman's Game of Thrones prequel idea, but HBO programming boss Casey Bloys previously talked about why the network was commissioning so many--as many as five were reportedly considered.
"The idea was, if we're going to try it, let's take a couple of shots and see," he said. "My hope is at least one lives up to the level of quality [showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss] have set."
HBO is producing at least one Game of Thrones prequel, from Kingsman and Kick-Ass writer Jane Goldman. The spinoff will follow the progression from the Age of Heroes into the Long Night, which takes place roughly ten thousand years before the events in the original show. None of the characters or actors from the main Game of Thrones will appear in the new show.
HBO has ordered a pilot for the new show, but not a full series. Naomi Watts is reportedly going to play the lead actress role in the show. Following Watts, HBO has added another person to the Game of Thrones prequel cast.
Meanwhile, Game of Thrones just aired its longest episode ever; you can check out our Episode 3 review for our thoughts. We also have a breakdown about Ghost.
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