[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for “Game of Thrones” Season 8, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks.”]By this point, last week’s pivotal “Game of Thrones” battle has been dissected and retread a thousand times over.
The episode’s stats were internet-wide talking points before the thing even aired, with “55 days of night shoots” being rattled off like part of a prophecy discovered in some volume at the Citadel.
But now that the smoke and narratively convenient ice clouds have cleared on “The Long Night,” what remains is a pair of bookending episodes that, at their best, show what the series can do when freed from the weight of having to artificially move everyone in place for one final showdown.
Not every character- or plot-based story decision feels earned, but at least the rapid momentum toward the series’ end has kept the eyes of “Game of Thrones” somewhat on the present, however volatile and fatal it may be.
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