GoT Season 8 Episode 3 Review

4/10 Rating

*Spoiler Warning*

In this review I will try to focus more on analyzing the stupid choices the protagonists make, and not on the whole “Prince that was promised” prophesy or the controversy surrounding whether it was proper for Arya to be the one to kill the Night King, because as Melisandre said before “Prophesies are dangerous things.”

To start things off I want to bring up their use of and almost immediate annihilation of the Dothraki. The Dothraki are essentially a light cavalry unit, meaning the proper way to use Dothraki is to use hit and run tactics or as a chasing, flanking and ambushing force and their most effective weapon in their arsenal is their fear factor. The powers that be however, decided ignore all of this and send in by themselves against an army of a “hundred-thousand at least” undead that do not feel fear. They of course were annihilated instantly in a pointless and stupid way, talk about not knowing yourself. To be fair, it was a common tactic to send in your “Heavy” cavalry in first to break apart your enemies formation with your infantry trailing behind to take advantage of the chaos. However, as I stated earlier the Dothraki are “Light” cavalry, and they were sent in alone.

The second point I wish to bring up is their decision to station their troops outside the walls. Just why? The only things resembling siege weapons that the Night King had in his arsenal was the giant and his dragon, but they again decide to ignore their strengths and go for the suicidal approach. There was no reason to leave the tactical advantage of the walls behind to try and fight them out in the open. The biggest strength of the Whites, besides their invulnerability to common weaponry and numbers, is their unstoppable charge. If protagonists instead used the dry moat and the castle walls as a means of slowing and limiting the undead’s advance, Unsullied stationed on the walls could have easily picked them off, read what advice Miyamoto Musashi gives on fighting multiple enemies in his book, The Book Of Fire Rings.

Now the third and final point of stupidity I wish to focus on, is the protagonists decision to put all the people they are trying to protect in an enclosed room surrounded by corpses. Who the hell came up with that idea when they knew good and well that their enemy had the ability to raise the dead? I mean seriously did everyone just become stupid in this episode? Or is it just poor design on the development team?