Actually, we see the undead dragon preparing to use its breath weapon against Jon at the end. It is shown to be blue flames sneaking out the gaping hole in its neck. Cold/ice breath weapons aren’t usually depicted as flames. Flames is generally a heat thing no matter what color the flames are.
Besides their highly unlikely existence south of the wall and their penchant for jumping into the scene from out of nowhere to save their owners, we are shown Bran coming out of his coma precisely as Ned kills Lady. Ghost, from the opposite side of Castle Black, alerts Jon to the fact that the wight is about to attack Mormont. And later Ghost seemingly knows Jon has returned to life before we do.
Coincidences? Is it more a Bran thing than a dire wolf thing? Are dire wolves just really good at detecting wights and life coming back? Maybe. But it’s all on the screen for a reason and probably not to make the point that they are just regular wolves or large dogs.
At the very least, they are at the unexplainable end of preternatural, which might as well be magical.
I agree with you that they’re magical, but these aren’t great examples. I would expect a regular dog to be able to tell via smell both when wights are around and when a dead body animates back into a live person.
For those who wanted even more white walkers: what are you envisioning? Just continuing the kind of battle we saw for three more episodes? Or something I’m not thinking of? I just don’t see a lot you can do with them, when they don’t even talk or show any sign of complex motivations.
Pretty much anything more interesting than what we got. Some sort of twist, like the Night King isn’t quite what we thought he was, and there’s some sort of reveal that surprises us and makes him more interesting. Or a battle that’s only won because our heroes make lasting, personal sacrifices. Or some sort of trope breaking where something unexpected, but interesting and logical happens during the battle that changes the game up. Or the battle being solved by something more mystical or fitting than getting stabbed in the gut - particularly we’ve spent years building up Bran and his journey to be the rival and nemesis of the Night King and having all sorts of magical powers that went somewhere else. Or our heroes losing the battle against him and forced to flee, creating an interesting story where the rest of the kingdoms, who didn’t believe or unite to face this threat, now have to deal with it. There are dozens of ways it could’ve gone and every one of them more interesting than what we actually got, which had nothing interesting going for it.
I just realized that at Hardhome, it’s the Wildling dogs that first alert them to the attack. Of course, they might be barking at the incoming storm created by the Night King which appears first, not the wights. I mean, it’s not like the Wildlings ever said to Jon, “Pro tip- we’ve learned that dogs are really good at detecting wights,” so I doubt a dog could do that, let alone know that Mormont was in trouble.
Do you really think, in Ghost being alerted that Jon was coming back, that it was the writers intention to bring to the forefront the science of pheromones over the magical bond they share?
While watching the scene when Jon came back to life, my immediate/first thought was “Ghost smells him!”
Up until this very moment it never even occurred to me that (what I assumed was) Ghost smelling Jon was supposed to show something supernatural. I just saw a dog and his owner.
It seemed reasonably obvious to me that Bran, being bait, was letting the NK know where he was, ‘here I am, come and get me’, so as that particular endgame could play out. Hasn’t it been shown before that the NK could more easily locate Bran when he’s using his warging magic? Though I may be misremembering…
Note by the way that I personally don’t like zombies and the like. I was quite irritated that the big threat was of this nature. But once it has been established for years, they should do something significant with it, not make it go away in 5 minutes.
It’s not like it’s impossible to come up with ideas about drama related to a zombie apocalypse. Some have made whole series out of that. Surely, they could come up with enough ideas to make it last 2 or 3 episodes while building a sense of dread.
I kinda got an inkling Jon was ice-immune a few episodes back when he fell below the surface of a frozen lake and (I forget how) shrugged it off and kept going.