The Night King in Game of Thrones is one of the most fearsome baddies ever to appear on page and screen. Nearly immortal and indestructible, he can resurrect and control the dead. Mostly what we’ve seen him do with his army of dead is to create more dead, then resurrect them to increase his army, ad infinitum. His goal, I suppose, is to wipe out all the life.
We’ve also learned that he’s been after the Three-Eyed Raven for some time, as the TER represents the memory of the world’s past, which he wants to eradicate along with its future. OK, but…
Why?
What’s his end game? What’s he planning to do when he’s ruler of a world full of undead corpses? He’s a formidable threat, and has been used to great dramatic effect on the show, but I’m not clear on his ultimate motivation.
I watch the show but have not read the books. However, since this is my thread, I will allow discussion based on both media. And yes, I know he’s been destroyed; I was waiting until after mouse-over territory to mention it. We can refer to him in the past tense now.
So then the question becomes: what do the children of the forest want?
“No humans,” apparently.
(Not as interesting as it could have been, really. What if they didn’t care at all about the existence of humans, but just hated, I don’t know, seeing water moved out of its natural course? So the children of the forest would want to kill off all the humans and the beavers.)
Well they were at war because the humans were taking over the territory, being left alone would have probably been enough for them. They eventually allied with humans to fight the Night King, so it wasn’t simply pure hatred driving them.
The NK is essentially a bioweapon that got out of hand - similar, thematically, to the planetkiller from the original Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine” - continuing to inexorably wage a long-ended war according to his lethal “programming.”
It’s hard to see how this supernatural element can still play a major role in the show’s resolution, though of course the books may be a different matter.
That makes sense. I do still wonder, had NK managed to succeed in wiping all humanity from the face of the earth, what he would do then. He’s clearly not just a mindless drone; he’s capable of making plans and thinking ahead. The question must have occurred to him.
Let’s see… the Children of the Forest created the Night King from a First Man to kill off humans in Westeros. I have to wonder if the Night King then said, OK, I have to do this thing for you, kill off all the humans, but you know what? I’m kind of pissed off at you stabbing me like that so I’m to kill off all of you, too. In fact, I’m so frickin’ pissed off now I’m just going to kill everything. I just want to watch the world [del]burn[/del] freeze.
The Children of the Forest were in a fight for their survival against humans, and they created a new monster to try to win that fight. Instead, the monster turned on everyone and got our of their control. The Night King is not a person; the Night King is a very advanced robot that is following its programming.
That’s an old, classic story. Jewish tradition tells tales of golems, artificial creatures made to serve a purpose, and in many stories the golems become troublesome. Those stories have inspired more “the creation gets outta control due to hubris” tales than I can count.
Revenge against the living? Upshot: he didn’t want to be this immortal undead dude and he’s just a bit sideways with the living as a result. Dunno if I can buy it–the actor’s just an actor, not a writer.
I think he’s just sick of being cold and he want’s to hang out in Dorne, but they put up this big wall at the border and nobody will give him a visa and they won’t say why. So, being immortal, he makes this big migration caravan of dead folks to overrun the border, and everyone on the other side of the wall freaks out and mobilizes their armies to stop them…
This might be tangential, but it feels relevant to me – I’m running through my dvds based on something I noticed in 8.01. It reminded me of a couple of scenes, which I’ve gone and spot-watched.
Starting with the most recent:
That scene is too close a mirror to the climax of 8.03 when Arya kills the Night King to be happenstance. They were designed to be similar. Now, whether that counts as mere foreshadowing that Arya will kill the Night King, or maybe something deeper, depends on how much weight you give to Sansa’s words to Arya back in 7.04 when she anticipated this very reunion between Arya and Jon: “When he sees you his heart will probably stop!”
I think this is a significant bit of purposeful writing, but I don’t want to get into fan speculation at the edge of the endgame. I’ll be watching how this develops though.
The line about height works in-scene because Arya has had quite the growth spurt since she last saw Jon. But if there is any possibility of a connection between Jon and the Night King in this scene, it also works as a sly 4th Wall comment on the actor change for the Night King. The original actor stood over 6’2" while the new actor (season 6 onward) is just shy of 6’.
That’s a very speculative “if” on my part, though.
