S8E02 update #2 – memory (Patreon)

I changed my mind about the white walkers = forgetting thing. I reckon it actually fits really well with the broader themes of ASOIAF and GRRM's work. How does this sound? –

Bran says that the Night King wants to “erase this world” and bring “An endless night”. He wants to kill Bran because as the magic three-eyed raven, Bran is the world’s memory. Sam says that memory is what makes us human, and forgetting is death. Game of Thrones author George Martin is a romantic, a melancholy hippie – he’s been writing for decades about lost loves, songs and ghosts – all different echoes of the past. And that shines through in Game of Thrones. The story is about all vengeance [Arya] and grief [Catelyn] and loyalty [Brienne] and guilt [Theon], Those feelings are what make us human, and they're rooted in memories of loss and love. That's why the north remembers, why the Starks treasure the crypts of their dead, why Ned Stark and Rhaegar are still important characters even though they’re long dead. Memory makes us human, so it makes sense that the ultimate evil in this story is a metaphor for forgetting our humanity.

That said, it's all very bloody abstract. Shouldn't the Night King have a more specific motivation? There are all these hints in the books about ancient pacts, secret bloodlines, promised princes, and the show has as many spooky spirals as a Junji Ito strip [too obscure a reference]. Surely that’ll lead up to some to some big revelation about the white walkers – whether a pact or sacrifice or, hell, even a time-travel thing with Bran.

And some further speculation:

Bran says the Night King has tried to kill many other three-eyed ravens – we saw him kill the last three-eyed raven in Season 6 – and it did look like a personal grudge by the Night King. Remember, the Night King was created by the children of the forest, and he seems to hate them for creating him. In the books, it’s said that when the children die, they become part of the magic of the weirwoods. So by destroying the weirwoods and the three-eyed raven, the Night King could be deleting their souls, wiping their backup. He might even be achieving permadeath for himself – the Night King has been around for some eight thousand years – maybe destroying the three-eyed raven will free his own soul. That’s all just guesswork though – the Night King doesn’t exist in the books. Maybe we’ll learn more in the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel show.

So the challenge now is to express this concisely in the video 🙂