Fair enough, but Bran should’ve done something. Think about how much time we’ve spent on Bran’s journey. Literally hours worth of screen time over 8 years. Bran had this quest to find the three eyed raven, and then this transformation to become the three eyed raven, and it was clear that he had some huge role to play. The three eyed raven and the night king were both almost mythological god-like figures. They’re each other’s nemesis going back a thousand years or more. Bran’s entire storyline leads up to him becoming the three eyed raven, so that he could be the magical opponent of the personification of death, so that he… could sit around and be bait.
Nothing came out of that entire fucking plotline other than an explanation as to why the NK attacked winterfell rather than bypassed it. Bran’s all-knowing, time-travelling, mind-warging powers, his special connection to the night king, all of it amounted to jack shit.
That’s an incredible dropping of the ball, dramatically.
The way he died is cliche. Almost every fantasy story has some character die to raise the stakes or to give some cost to the heroes. But the character always gets to go out on his own terms, dying exactly how he would’ve wanted. So even with Jorah dead, he died in the exact heroic way you’d expect every standard trope-ridden story to have their character die.
Think of it this way:
The Dothraki go out and charge the dead. Tactically stupid, but whatever, fine. The flaming swords charging into the night is a very cool image. Jorah charging with them makes sense - he speaks their language, he’s one of Dany’s top soldiers, it makes sense that he would lead them. And then the firey Arakhs going out one by one - a very cool, dramatic scene. The badass Dothraki, who we know to be a force to be reckoned with, were just snuffed out by the dead. Oh shit, the dead must be really powerful. Maybe things aren’t going to go well for our heroes. Maybe shit just got real. Maybe the Night King really will win.
That was a great choice on their part. In terms of character, setting, cinematography, ramping up the stakes, creating tension. Great job guys.
Except… 10 seconds later, despite the death of the entire fucking Dothraki, Jorah comes back unharmed. Of course. Now we know that major characters have invincible forcefields. Sure, Jorah may die at some point, but he’s going to die doing what he wants to do, heroically, not as a normal consequence of battle, or in order to ramp up the stakes to show us that the NK might actually win and that our characters are in danger.
They created the whole Dothraki shot to ramp up the stakes, show us that the dead really are a threat, and that the good guys might not win. They undermined it 10 seconds later by saying oh hey, no, don’t worry, the good guys are fine. This is gonna go exactly how you expect it to go.
After 8 seasons of anticipating this ultimate, climactic battle, it was literally 10 fucking seconds between “Oh shit, the good guys may actually lose” to “oh no, don’t worry, the good guys aren’t going to lose, there’s no tension here”
If they had Jorah die, suddenly, without a glorious, fitting, poetic death… and then the wave of the dead hit our infantry, and Brienne and Jaime and Pod and Grey Worm died too… we’d have spent the whole battle on the edge of our seats wondering if the good guys were going to lose, and if everyone was going to die.
Instead, what we got was Jorah coming back just fine, and the rest of our heroes being fucking comically buried under hostile armed undead troops and somehow, inexplicably, being just fine over and over again.