So Did The Night King Simply Get Out Coached By Bran Stark? I'm Starting To Think So
As soon as last night’s episode ended, I felt absolutely disgusted and outraged by the lack of effort out of Bran Stark. I thought to myself that this little bastard doesn’t even deserve a championship ring for winning the Battle of Winterfell. You’ve got all these people out there dying, the Army of the Dead built up this massive lead, and buddy over here was just warging into ravens for seemingly no apparent reason. I get that he was telling the Night King to come find him and everything but he didn’t have to just be zonked out during the entire fight to do that. It just seemed like Bran Stark shelled up in one of the biggest game. He played 35 minutes and had 0 pts, 1 asst, and 0 rebounds. A truly horrific performance in the playoffs.
But then I got to thinking that maybe Bran Stark isn’t a player. Maybe he’s just the coach/GM of the North. Because the scouting report he had on the Night King was spot on. He knew that the Battle of Winterfell was going to be a game of runs. He knew that they were going to be trailing at some point during the game. And he also knew that the Night King would be coming for him. But maybe the most important thing of all? He knew that Arya needed that fucking dagger.
This is where it pays to know your opponent inside and out. Because Bran Stark knew that the Night King probably can’t be killed with dragonglass considering he was made by dragonglass in the first place by those little tree fuckers (obviously the Night King can’t be killed by dragon fire either). But all everybody kept focusing on as they were getting ready for the battle was dragonglass, dragonglass, dragonglass. Arya pretty much flooded her pants when she got that dragonglass spear made by Gendry. But that’s not going to work against the Night King. If Arya decided to try to dunk on the Night King with that dragonglass spear, she would have just gave him a little cut at best.
So Bran knew he needed to get some Valeryian Steel in her hands. Sure, it was used at first to kill Littlefinger but they could have just used anything for that. Instead, that was just creepy ass Bran doing a little scouting and game planning for last night. Way in advance, too.
That’s just incredible coaching and managerial skills out of Bran. The Night King came in thinking that just brute force was going to get the job done. That was his game plan from the very beginning and he didn’t make any sort of adjustments along the way. But Bran Stark took the time to learn his opponent. He realized what kind of changes his team needed to make schematically in order to get the win. He knew that they would probably lose a decent amount of people along the way, but it was his adjustments that made all the difference in that battle. The Night King got out coached, and now the White Walkers are playing golf while the final battle gets going in the South.
Sidenote: Game of Thrones really needs to rethink their playoff format. The Southern Conference playoffs were such a joke that Cersei basically just walked straight into the Finals. But the Northern Conference? That series went a full 7 games last night. It was an absolute gauntlet between the top 2 teams left in the tournament. Cersei is a 3-seed here and she just swept her way into the Finals. And now the North has to go into the Finals extremely banged up. They lost most of the Dothraki. They lost most of the Unsullied. At the very most it looks like they’re only bringing 2 very beat up dragons who will be on minute restrictions for this series. It just doesn’t seem right that Cersei basically got a bye to the Finals, but I guess we’ll see how the Rest vs Rust debate falls with her.
Sidenote #2: Samwell Tarly better be watching that final battle from a press box. Dude was a complete liability out there. Needs to be a healthy scratch.