'Game of Thrones' fans in Singapore rave about epic Battle of Winterfell
If you haven’t watched episode three of Game of Thrones Season 8 yet, be warned that this article contains spoilers – so come back and read it after you’re done watching it!
SINGAPORE — The latest episode of Game of Thrones, which just aired on Monday (29 April), was an action-packed and very emotional one for fans of the show. The Night King’s army of undead finally clashed with humans in an epic battle that had been teased for seven seasons – and oof! The body count!
The Battle of Winterfell, on which the survival of all the humans of Westeros hinged on, took an almost one-and-a-half-hour long episode to unfold. At the last second when all seemed lost for the living, Arya pounced on the Night King from behind and KO’ed him with a manoeuvre that will go down in TV history as one of the most shocking villain kills.
The Long Night has become the most-tweeted-about episode of television ever, with 7.8 million tweets as of Tuesday. The second most-tweeted-about episode is also from GoT – the season eight premiere, with over 5 million tweets. This tells us a lot about the huge global impact of the most watched TV series in history – and people in Singapore were excited as hell at this momentous episode too.
Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore spoke to some fans of the show and they could not stop praising Episode 3.
Darren Beck, 34, a PR consultant, said the episode left him “shell-shocked”. “The suspense was great, the characters were great, great writing by the show runners, (David) Benioff and (Dan) Weiss. I couldn’t have asked for a better episode,” said Beck.
“This episode has to win the Emmy,” Beck added. “If not, we will riot like the zombies of the White Walkers.”
Although the lead characters of Game of Thrones survived (so far), the numerous deaths dotted throughout the episode hit home for viewers.
For Ria Herman, 30, a casino pit manager, the demise of the child-Lady Lyanna of House Mormont stood out. The 13-year-old spitfire was crushed by a zombie giant upon sacrificing herself to destroy the monster. “Her last act of driving her sword through the giant’s eye was just so heroic,” said Herman.
Beck mourned most for Ser Jorah Mormont, who died protecting the Dragon Queen Daenerys from attacking wights. “Everything he’s done for Daenerys has been out of pure love, even though it was unrequited,” said Beck. “He went out like the hero he was meant to be, and I think he would have no regrets dying for his queen, and for the love of his life.”
And of course, everyone had a lot to say about the shock reveal that the character who defeats the Night King is Arya Stark, who has transformed from a helpless girl to a formidable fighter.
“The most epic moment is when Arya comes in at the last minute and assassinates the Night King,” said Herman. “That was just brilliant! I did not see that coming.”
Vasanth Seshadri, a creative director at an advertising agency, said that the decision to make Arya the character who kills the all-powerful archvillain caught everyone by surprise.
“It’s been a red herring because we’ve always been led to believe that Arya has a lot of human enemies like Cersei and Joffrey. Her (kill) list was entirely human,” said Seshadri. “It was leading up to either Jon or Dany, or Bran who is now the Three-Eyed Raven, killing the Night King. When someone who doesn’t even have a history with the Night King came out and killed him, it was completely out of left field and it stunned everybody.”
Although viewers around the world had gripes about certain aspects of the Battle of Winterfell, such as poor visibility of dark nighttime scenes and the questionable battle strategies of the actors involved, one couldn’t deny that the episode made for fantastic television.
“It’s seven seasons in the making,” said Beck. “The payoff was absolutely orgasmic. All the emotional spectrum was basically tapped into for this whole entire episode. And it’s a masterpiece.”
