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The penultimate moment in Game of Thrones is when Arya kills the Night King — here’s how she got the upper hand. Game of Thrones is arguably one of the most successful shows that HBO had to offer during its eight-season run, which is why the final installment was a huge letdown to many. Since content from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series ran out at the end of season 5, showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff had to craft their own material to bring an ending to the series, which many found unsatisfactory. Despite this, the popularity surrounding Game of Thrones never dwindled, and the show has spawned a Golden Globe-winning spinoff, House of the Dragon, and has several more spinoffs coming down the pipeline.
Game of Thrones season 8 was full of many strange and controversial moments, and Arya killing the Night King was certainly one of them. Other weird choices were Jon killing Daenerys, Sansa and the Hound’s final meeting, and Bran taking the Iron Throne. Criticisms toward Game of Thrones season 8 were mainly directed toward how the show handled Daenerys’ arc, going from an empathetic ruler to a mad queen that sets her sights on burning down King’s Landing. All of that being said, the buildup to the Night King’s death was seasons long, and then Arya just swoops in and does the deed in a matter of seconds, with a lot of confusion surrounding how it actually happened. The Game of Thrones scripts, however, reveal exactly how Arya kills the Night King.
The Game Of Thrones Season 8 Scripts Explain How Arya Killed The Night King
The shock moment when Arya kills the Night King was arguably paying off a lot of elements of Game of Thrones‘ story. Prophetic lines like “what do we say to the God of Death” and killing “blue eyes” were retconned to refer to Arya’s destiny, while her killing attack used light-footedness learned during her time with the Faceless Men. The Catspaw Dagger she used was repeatedly flagged as important throughout the show (and still is in House of the Dragon), plus the knife-drop trick last seen in her spar with Brienne in season 7 all came together in the attack. Of course, fans were still left with questions. How did this fit with the Azor Ahai prophecy (it doesn’t really) and, perhaps more immediately, how exactly did Arya get a surprise jump on the towering Night King?
The Game of Thrones season 8 scripts have revealed how exactly Arya kills the Night King. In one of the biggest unpredictable twists in Game of Thrones season 8, the middle Stark daughter ended up being the one to defeat the White Walker leader at the climax of the dark and deadly “The Long Night.” Game of Thrones season 8’s making-of documentary, “The Last Watch”, has provided an answer (but the nature of prophecies will be debated for much longer). In a segment showing the cast script read, the directions for Arya killing the Night King — something that gets a big round of applause — is revealed, stating that Arya reached the iceman by jumping off a pile of dead wights:
“The Night King walks with methodical, terrifying calm. He stops before Bran and raises his sword to strike, but something is hurtling towards him out of the darkness. Arya. She vaults off a pile of dead wights, leaps at the Night King and she plunges the dagger through the Night King’s armor. The Night King shatters.”
What The Game Of Thrones Scripts Reveal About The Night Kings Death
In the episode where Arya kills the Night King, season 8, episode 3, “The Long Night”, Arya appears out of the mist to attack the Night King, with only a flutter of a White Walker’s hair to hint at her presence. The script makes the appearance a lot more spacially logical. While there are not a lot of White Walkers or wights bodies shown on the ground (although it’s hard to tell due to the episode’s lighting), she clearly used them to gain a height advantage. It’s a minor detail by itself but provides a bit more logic to the controversial Game of Thrones moment. It’s worth noting that this stage direction isn’t totally accurate to the Battle of Winterfell episode — it doesn’t include the Night King grabbing Arya or her knife-hand switch, suggesting that some aspects were altered by director Miguel Sapochnik during production. However, the corpse jump when Arya kills the Night King can still be assumed to be accurate to the intent.
The fact these questions are answered by the script says a lot about how the Arya twist was presented in Game of Thrones season 8, with writers David Benioff and D.B Weiss wanting her attack on the Night King to be as big a surprise as possible. They had her disappear for much of the episode’s latter half in the hope audiences would forget about her, and presumably the jump wasn’t shown to similarly play into the immediate shock. This has been a persistent criticism of season 8, but at least this answer shows smaller details were considered. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Game of Thrones‘ ending, including where Arya is heading when she travels “west of Westeros.” And, while the cast and crew are talking openly about how the final season came together, a resolution to those big dangling threads shouldn’t be expected until George R.R. Martin finishes the A Song of Ice & Fire books.
The Night Kings Death Was Poorly Handled
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When Arya kills the Night King in the Game of Thrones ending it came as quite a shock to audiences — which is what the moment was meant to do — but the surprise that it garnered is indicative of a much larger problem. Considering it was a moment built towards for all 8 seasons, Game of Thrones handled the Night King’s death poorly, leaving more questions than answers in its wake. Firstly, there’s the Azor Ahai prophecy, and House of the Dragon‘s the Prince That Was Promised prophecy. Arya Stark fits neither foretelling, making their importance in the context of the series nonexistent. To introduce both of these prophecies and then completely subvert expectations when Arya kills the Night King makes the buildup entirely pointless.
Truthfully, when Arya kills the Night King is a moment that was stolen from another Game of Thrones character entirely: Jon Snow. Jon Snow was set up to be the traditional fantasy hero of the series. He embodies both the Azor Ahai prophecy and the Prince that was Promised, given his Targaryen lineage. While Arya killing the Night King is a gratifying moment, seeing the potentially-world-ending foe meet his end was over and done so quickly that all the buildup became meaningless. Having Arya jump from a pile of dead wights to off the Night King with the Catspaw Dagger, subsequently killing him and all the other white walkers at the same time, felt far too easy when previous confrontations with the Night King were anything but. Game of Thrones season 8 was a disappointment to many, and the moment when Arya kills the Night King is one of many sticking points.
