No he didn’t. That was Arya. Team effort, really, but most of the team weren’t LoL adherents.
The baby forming in Arya’s womb will most likely come out on top.
I thought that was Pod.
I was told here that the Lord of Light, the Red God, and the Many Faced God were all the same. Was I misinformed?
I think it was both of them. Pod was fighting beside Brienne and Jamie, Gendry was, I think, fighting beside The Hound, Beric Dondarian, etc. We didn’t see Gendry die, but I can’t remember if we saw him alive at the very end either. But the general rule is that major characters don’t die off-screen deaths, so Gendry is almost certainly still around.
The Red God and the LoL are the same. The Many Faced God is basically all gods put together though. The Faceless Men believe that all gods that people worship are just different faces of the one Many-Faced God, who is the God of Death.
And Arya was raised with the Old Gods and almost certainly still believes in them, too.
Religion is a fuzzy concept on this show. Just because Mellisandre had some magic powers and her “Night is Dark and Full of Terrors” speech came true doesn’t mean the LoL is real in this universe, anymore than Bran warging and using the weirwoods proves the Old Gods are real. Or that Euron coming back from drowning proves the Drowned God exists. And what about the Lamb God that Mirri Maz Durr worshiped? She pulled off arguably the greatest miracle on the show.
Pretty sure we’ve seen zero evidence for the Seven existing or having any real power though.
This episode included the second tragic name-origin story. First we had Hodor and “hold the door,” and this time it was Beric and his hallway beric-ade.
They don’t have to believe in him to be used by him. And who besides Melisandre was on team Arya? Everyone is going to be surprised as hell that she pulled that off. A lot of folks knew she was a badass but Night King-killing badass?
Jaqen H’ghar specifically says on the show that he worships ‘The Red God’. That’s why I have always believed that they intentionally sought out and trained Arya, then let her go, so that she could aid in the fight against the white walkers. That’s why Jaqen was in Westeros in the first place - to find Arya, protect her, and get her to voluntarily go to Braavos to be trained. In my opinion.
Although death is one of the faces of the ‘Many Faced God’, that doesn’t mean they would choose the Army of the dead. The faceless men see death as a ‘gift’ to those who need it - either to end suffering, or at a natural end to life, or to correct injustice for a fee - gotta pay for that snazzy huge house of Black and White somehow. The kind of indiscriminate death that the Night’s King was bringing is not what they want, and is probably heretical to their beliefs.
Religion in Westeros is strange and hard to parse sometimes, but my understanding is that the Lord of Light IS the many-faced God. All the other Gods in the show are aspects of the LoL, or the Red God. And it’s clear which side the Lord of Light is on.
Yes, it’s interesting that the most prevalent religion in Westeros, and the analogy for the medieval Catholic Church, seems to have no supernatural power or be capable of working miracles, while various animistic or “pagan” religions do.
Another thing that I don’t think we’ve seen is an actual “ghost” in the sense of the spirit of a dead person that manifests itself to living people. And Melisandre is puzzled when both Jon and Beric tell her they experienced nothing between their death(s) and being resurrected.
As for the Night King being a Targaeryan because he could withstand fire. Nuts. Not when his clothes stayed whole without a touch of scorch marks. Dany, at least, emerged naked and covered in soot from her first fire.
The NK survived because magic. The NK was killed because magic. Don’t waste time trying to rationalize magic. We haven’t been given the rules of GoT magic, and that’s clearly because the writers will use magic however and whenever they feel.
You CANNOT rework Valerian steel!
You can, however, walk into Mordor.
Great link! Thanks for posting it. This is the best analysis of the battle I’ve seen to date. With that said, while the author makes a great point regarding the threat of a prolonged siege to Team Alive, the Army of the Dead had never shown any tendency to engage in siege tactics.
The author put in words another thought that I’d had while watching the show:
I’m sure it was to raise the dramatic tension in the reveal that the NK had survived the dragonfire attack, but at the time I wondered why Drogon didn’t accompany the dragonfire blast with a physical attack.
There are some other great quotes and asides (like referring to Arya as a Special Forces asset) in that link:
Doesn’t (or didn’t, anyway) the NK have the ability to shatter conventional steel by touching it? Could he have had similar destructive abilities if he touched living flesh?
Exactly. However, there are two ways to write magic - as a logical part of a consistent universe with known rules, or as a mysterious force that the writer can pull from his nethers whenever he needs to write himself out of a corner (see also: Trek-speak in Star Trek). Good magical stories are the former.
You can tell that this episode was scripted by people who think visually. It was all about cool set pieces and visuals and big moments of heroism and near-death, and the writing suffered for it. When trading off realistic strategy and consequences for ‘cool’, cool wins every time if you are a TV guy. Especially on a show like this, with half the audience demanding a faithful adaptation and the other half demanding constant spectacle and big surprises and reveals. Sometimes a show or movie delivers both, and it becomes legendary. Game of Thrones may have just come screeching to a halt and become just another visual spectacle of cool scenes (see: any superhero movie of the past decade).
It has three episodes left to correct this, though.
If he said that, it’s only because the Lord of Light is one of the aspects of the Many-faced God.
You have that exactly backwards with respect to the beliefs of the Faceless Men. All other gods are aspects of the Many-faced God, which is Death, including the Lord of Light, Old Gods, Drowned God, and The Seven (specifically the aspect of The Stranger). Inside the House of Black and White we see symbols of all the gods, but the flaming heart symbolizing the Lord of Light has no special place and is just one of many.
Booooooooo
I think it’s as simple as when Jaqen told Arya that she owed the Red God three deaths (he didn’t specifically say he worshiped the Red God, did he?), he was just pretending to be Jaqen from Lorath. Jaqen is just a face, and the person he was died when the faceless man took it. The faceless man is only pretending to be Jaqen, and claiming to worship the Red God is just part of keeping up the act. The real faceless man under Jaqen’s face worships the Many-Faced God of Death, of which the Lord of Light is just one small piece.
Hardly likely, since the Night King was created many thousands of years ago when the First Men first arrived in Westeros, and the Targaryens have been in Westeros only a few centuries. I don’t think the show is specific on this, but the Night King may predate the rise of Valyria itself.
I’m pretty sure that we saw White Walkers touch people without damaging them by cold. The White Walker that Jon Snow ultimately killed with Longclaw at Hardhome tossed Jon around a few times and didn’t do any permanent damage to him.
Another WW carried Craster’s baby to the NK without harming the baby…until the NK’s touch turned the baby into a WW. Hmmm… 
Regardless, since eliminating the NK was the only way to win the battle, it likely would have been worth the risk to Drogon for the chance to end the battle right right then and there.