Why Season 8 of 'Game of Thrones' will feel a lot like Marvel's 'Infinity War'
During the lumbering late seasons of “Game of Thrones,” there are so many important characters that each person’s plot line creeps along at five-minute increments at a time. At times, I found myself begging for progress and wishing they’d dedicate whole episodes to advance characters, one by one, to avoid the truncated narrative. Finally, in season seven, relief arrives. Some of the characters unite, most notably John Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. And a part of what makes that union so special is that choppy and, at times, disruptive storytelling method.
No scene is more overwhelming star-studded than the moment Tyrion Lannister, John and Dany appeal to Cersei about the White Walkers by showing her one of the Wights. The scene screams at itself: “I can’t believe all these important people are here at the same time.” (Maybe that was just me.)
Well, in season eight, we’re going to get even more of that.
“There’s one scene where there’s so many together it feels like you’re watching a superhero movie,” director David Nutter told EW on March 4.
It’s funny Nutter should bring up superhero movies. Because that’s what the final episodes of season seven began to feel like: the Marvel movies. Instead of separating storylines into separate movies like Marvel, “Game of Thrones” mingled those stories in an episodic fashion. (Obviously, that’s the difference between movies and TV.) But there are striking similarities in the story arcs of these two universes. A huge number of powerful characters that start separated or get separated and, slowly, they come together against a common enemy.
Yes, there’s discontent in the process. The Starks fight the Lannisters. Captain America fights Tony Stark. But ultimately, these smaller conflicts are meaningless against the greater enemy. For the superheroes, that’s Thanos. In the “Game of Thones” universe, that’s the White Walkers.
So in season seven, we got a taste of what this assembly might look like. Jon, the Hound, Jorah, Tormund, Gendry, Beric, Thoros travelled beyond the wall to fight the wights, much like The Avengers assembled to fight Loki or Ultron in the early Avengers movies. These are small battles building to the significant one. In the case of The Avengers movies, it built to “Infinity War,” touted (and then memed) to be the most ambitious crossover event in history. (It wasn’t.) That movie assembled the almost all of the Marvel universe, which they’d been building for years: The Avengers, Dr. Strange and company, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the people of Wakanda, including the Black Panther. There were a handful of scenes that oozed star power, that made it feel like each character was too big to fit on the screen. Then they’d blow something up and you’d forget about it.
Season eight of “Game of Thrones” should feel the same way. The Battle of Winterfell is sure to include some of the most badass fighters in the GOT universe, just like the Wakanda Battle. And at the snap of the Night King’s fingers, we may also see a great number of those important characters die.
We’re due for a heart-breaking death in “Game of Thrones,” aren’t we? The show made a reputation for ruthlessly ending Eddart Stark, along with a handful of his family members. Yet George R.R. Martin and the show-runners have dodged killing their beloved characters. Even in “Beyond the Wall,” when the seven fighters attempt an impossible mission, they lose just Thoros, the least important of the party, and one of Dany’s dragons (and not the biggest one, Drogon). In fact, the dragon’s death may be the biggest death in the last few seasons.
No doubt, we’ll see some of our favorite characters fall in season eight. Perhaps like Infinity War, there will also be some promise that the dead characters will rise again. Of course, in GOT, they’ll rise again as Wights. That’s one of the many ways that these two universes diverge: one is uncharacteristically dark for fantasy (in GOT) and one can be predictable in tying the plot into a neat bow with a relatively happy ending (in Marvel). With Game of Thrones, total loss is possible and irreversible.