Game Of Thrones: How The Battle Of Winterfell Should Have Gone

Yep, I’d have ice spiders and I’ll tell you why right. Zombies aren’t horrifying anymore. They’ve been done to un-death in TV, films, books, games, we’ve seen them 1000 times and to get the horror of this army across it can’t merely be merely legions of reanimated corpses. We need to see something we’ve never seen before, and ice spiders are petrifying.

A good chunk of our troops inside are understandably terrified and turn to run, but get met by the regular undead coming over the rest of the walls. The fighting breaks out in full back inside winter fell and this is where I’d majorly deviate from the episode itself.

Over the next few scenes of fighting I’d have Lyanna, Tormund and Brienne all die in the same sequence. This is the turning point in the episode where you need to get across the idea that the heroes can actually lose, where you finally do away with this idea of plot armour. I’d do it unsentimentally as well, no tearful moments as you’ve had that with Jorah, just killed, bang, move on, you can process the grief in the next episode.

Panic sets in and you get Sam running to the crypts begging them to open the door. He confesses that he’s a coward and he couldn’t save Edd and he belongs here. I’d also have the exact same Arya, Beric and The Hound scene except, obviously when they get into that room, Melisandre isn’t there.

Beric dies, again saving Arya and except this time he begs her for the release of death. He asks her to shut “these brown eyes forever”. She obliges, but once she does, she remembers what the Red Woman said to her. She said the same thing to me, that I’d shut eyes forever. Eyes of brown, eyes of blue… and she just looks at the Hound.

Now from here, we get back to Jon and the Night King except I’d have Drogon arrive to overpower Viserion independently of Dany. This gives the dragon’s a bit of agency they didn’t otherwise have and had and means we can get to the exact scene where the Night King survives the dragon fire without Daenerys. I’d have Jon be the one to do that.