Game Of Thrones Season 8 Breakdown: What 'The Long Night' REALLY Means

4. Now The Last War Begins

Cersei has now been absent for two whole episodes, which was always the right thing to do when the issue of the battle with the Night King was at hand, but now that that has been prematurely ended entirely, she's about to step back into the limelight. And whether the show care to say it explicitly or not, what they've just done with her by killing the Night King so early is to say "you think he was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet, baby..."

There is a lot of story still left to tell in this, the Last War (as Dany calls it in the episode 4 trailer), but there has to be some concern that the final fight is a little unmatched, given the size of the Golden Company. But this war will be different to the one with the Night King. For a start, it has a far more malicious, devious enemy at the head of it (the Night King was evil, but he was one dimensional and singular in his agenda, Cersei is a snake with seven heads).

It's interesting that we're going to get quite so much focus on this part of the War - a whole half-season in fact - but it's not entirely unwelcome, even if it might have just messed up the expected (and desired) format of the rest of the season. And the added time might actually suggest there's something else coming...