Just hear me out.
Do you watch Game Of Thrones at your house? That TV show everyone talks about? Are you at least familiar with it? O.K, good, many of us here at AAM are familiar with it, too. Let’s talk about it for a second:
So Game Of Thrones (GOT) is picking up steam in its final season, and last week’s episode made very clear that this week’s episode is going to be friggin’ action-packed. Almost everybody is now at Winterfell, waiting for the Night King and his army of the dead ice zombies (they’re clearly zombies, lets just call them zombies) to show up and start wrecking stuff, and right at the end of the episode they arrive. And you just know it’s gonna be wild. It's the Battle of Winterfell. The show’s producers put a lot of effort and money into these battle scenes, and they turn out very entertaining spectacles.
So I think this next episode is gonna be pretty good!
What’s more, there will likely be some emotional heft to all of the fightin’ as this may be the last time we see some beloved GOT characters. Think about it; this isn’t a show that is squeamish about killing off important characters, let alone the secondary ones, and there’s a battle coming up and this is the last season, so … yeah! I bet a few characters like Beric are definitely gonna die soon.
I also bet he’ll turn his sword setting to “fire” before he checks out, though, and it’ll be cool. That fire sword is cool.
But! What If we could avoid all of these upcoming Game Of Thrones deaths?
I gotta talk about this for a second; what if the characters had actually prepared a legitimate battle plan for the upcoming ice-zombie fight?
Because the plan they came up with last week is kinda terrible. They just slap some ideas together, don’t account for everything, and as a result a lot of people are about to get aced. It’s really a GOT nerd outrage. Here, lemme explain.
SPOILERS! SPOILERS AHEAD!
So everybody gets together over a big table to lay out the strategy. What do they have to work with?
Welllll, they’ve got a few swords made from Valyrian steel (some moron wrote about Valyrian steel on this very blog a while back, it was dumb) and a lot of weapons made from the dragonglass mined from the caves below Dragonstone. Those dragonglass weapons will kill the zombies and the White Walkers who command them, so mining that stuff was a good idea. Plus, remember, it was a big part of the initial meeting between Jon Snow and Daenerys back in Season 7. Dragonstone is the seat of House Targaryen and so Jon needed the Khaleesi’s blessing to dig underneath it.
Gathering the crucial resources and make the weapons needed to fight off the ice zombies: It’s good to plan ahead!
So now the war against the zombies is here, and its first major battle is about to begin. And it comes time for the combined forces of Westeros (besides Cersei biding her time on the Iron Throne down in Kings Landing) to decide how to deploy themselves against the superior numbers of undead … and look at this nonsense they come up with:
- Have Bran post up in the Godswood with a guard of Ironborn led by Theon (who is almost certainly gonna die)
- Bank on the Night King going straight for Bran because he’s got the Night King’s mark on him
- Everybody else holds off the ice-zombie army while someone gets a good shot at the exposed Night King, because Jon’s pretty sure the zombie army will scatter if they kill him
And that's the whole plan.
Now I’ll admit it’s sounds audacious and dramatic. But that is a bad plan. It’s a bad plan, man!
No strategizing? No specific troop deployments? Where are they gonna put Beric and his flaming sword? What about Jorah, who just landed Heartsbane after Sam Tarly gave it to him? Jorah’s gonna put in serious work with that Valyrian blade in this battle. They should be thinking about these things. These fools are acting like the Night King is playing checkers when the dude is clearly playing chess.
And what about the dragons!? How can they barely address the dragons!? The incredibly rare and violent flying lizards that only a select few can actually tame? There are only three (probably, maybe) dragons currently in this whole world, and two of them are right now at Winterfell because they belong to Daenerys: Drogon and Rhaegal.
Those dragons are a huge deal. They’re the GOT equivalent of nuclear weapons, incredibly hard to come by and valuable to their owners. What are they gonna be doing on the battlefield?
Even more important, where’s the other one gonna be? The other dragon, Viserion, used to be Dany’s too – but the Night King, the friggin’ jerk, killed and reanimated him in Season 7. In the context of this war, the Night King gaining an undead dragon is among the most important developments; He uses it to burn a hole through the giant, magic Wall and invade the Seven Kingdoms!
It’s really a huge moment. And if you think about it, it’s the end of a series of events set in motion by what amounts to intellectual property (IP) theft.
IP theft by Chinese entities against American targets is currently at issue in the U.S.-China trade talks. In fact, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) just put out a report placing China on a IP theft "priority watch list" and told reporters the Trump administration would consider more Section 301 tariffs if its IP concerns weren't addressed by Beijing. The timing is interesting; while China's mention in this annual report is nothing new, could this release and the administration's tough talk affect the ongoing talks?
We'll see what comes of a U.S. delegation's trip to Beijing next week for more negotiations. Anyway, I'm not suggesting Daenerys Targaryen the First of Her Name – Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains – should call off the Bran-is-the-bait plan to instead raise tariffs on the Night King. That'd be pretty boring television. I'm just saying she raised those dragons. She put in the blood, sweat and tears to bring them up. They're kinda her kids, but that totally amounts to a copyright.
No matter how you look at it, the dragons don't get much time during the battle planning. And just going with this Bran Plan and keeping your fingers crossed is probably gonna get somebody like Ser Brienne of Tarth killed when a zombified ice dragon shows up instead. Just saying.
So look, everybody knows that Xena: Warrior Princess is the ultimate fantasy show. But Xena is a high bar to clear, and GOT is pretty great on its own.
Still, I gotta ask: How did these characters get this far in these wars if these are the war plans the come up with?
Well, they're always drinking. Maybe that's why they make so many questionable decisions.