Yes! I thought for sure I was seeing the high point of the episode (and it was really well done, and all the Tyrion awesomeness one could hope for), and then they just went and blew it out of the water.
Giant stomps seem to help, too.
Actually, I don’t think they were killed by the arrows—in the ensuing fight scene, there were several skeleton-y types with arrows through their heads, apparently unencumbered. (Well, it could have been several shots of the same guy, they all kinda look the same. Is that racist/speciesist/discriminating against the vitally challenged?)
I keep wondering if Stannis’ conversation with Sam ended with “I know what dragonglass is, we have it where I come from” Or did he send off a few ravens with orders to ship whatever dragonglass they could find up to the wall? He took the White Walker threat seriously enough to go there, Sam told him what they needed to kill them, did it not occur to him that they were going to need a bunch of the stuff?
There seems to be very little point in a turning a baby that was just born into a zombie, the zombie army is for fighting. That was clearly meant to be a white walker like them.
From what I gather the Night’s King can turn alive babies into more White Walkers and the dead - of any state of decomposition and more than one species, since we see skeletal humans and undead horses - into wights.
You are very likely right. In a fantasy setting, there’s no good reason for an arrow in the head to stop a monster made entirely of bones and malevolence. It’s better that way because it helps distance these bad guys from the tired zombie tropes that are everywhere nowadays.
I was so excited by the whole sequence that I could have missed it if they slipped in JD Salinger singing La Bamba in Hebrew.
You just know the Free Folk aren’t any good at standing in line, even in non-emergencies.
It made for a cool shot, which always trumps physics or common sense.
Sadly, it sounded like even the Wildlings think spiders the size of dogs are a bullshit story.
There was another callback to a throwaway line from years ago:
Giants really are shy, and belligerent about it.
Why did Jon Snow puke (possibly blood?) after killing the white walker? Internal injuries from falling off that mezzanine? Magical feedback from shattering a dude? Just worn out?
My problem with that scene is that if the widow does not get paid off, she just has to let the other ships captains know that Kenny Rogers does not pay off and they will stop using him. So he can pay off the widow or lose his business.
Perhaps if the head White Walker (what someone upthread called the Night’s King, although I don’t know where that name comes from) is killed, all of the wights and zombies drop dead immediately, since they’re only animated using his magic.
I got the faint impression that white walkers suppress fire by their very presence, in that the one walking through the flaming tent seemed to be passively suppressing the fire near him. Did anyone else notice something similar, or was that just me?
If so, I’m imagining a visually appealing scene where Dany’s dragons try to barbecue the head walker dude but their dragon breath fails to penetrate his aura of coldness.
EDIT: And then one of the dragons goes down, gets turned, and head walker in charge mounts an undead dragon to turn the tide of the fight. swoon
I also don’t know where the aforementioned name came from, I don’t recall if a story was told in previous episodes that gave him his name. I don’t remember if it was.
Ah, but dragon fire is different from regular fire.
Nice fantasy, but given that White Walkers explode on contact with dragon glass, I’m thinking that actual dragons are going to be even more lethal to them. I kind of assumed that at some point Danerys and her dragon kids are going to wind up fire-hosing the White Walkers and their army in a big way.