Of course, there’s a big hole in the grand unified theory of Game of Thrones as climate-change allegory, and that’s the temperature. The battle unfolds with the tension of a horror movie it’s not hard to see the wights as our most desperate and crazed selves, driven by disease or hunger or horror towards unspeakable acts of cruelty. They agree, and begin to leave for Westeros together-only to be savagely set upon by White Walkers and wights, who come with icy winds at their backs and move with the infected lurch of zombies. In it, Jon Snow ( Kit Harington) goes to the forlorn wilding refuge of Hardhome to convince the tribes to work with him, not against him. “Hardhome,” from the end of Season 5, was one of the biggest deviations from the text Benioff and Weiss attempted before Season 6, and reads like a direct metaphor for an icy kind of climate change. This feared phenomenon could be another Long Night, and it’s one that requires collective action within Westeros. Now the show has cast its attention toward the invading White Walkers, who are taking advantage of a long winter by marauding over the Wall and into the world of humans, converting the citizenry into ice zombies as they go. Weiss-has undercut nearly every route towards a narrative resolution, which has made it both engaging and maddening. Martin’s sprawling epic-as interpreted by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. The characters in the world of Westeros, like us, live in the shadow of a vast history formed by the actions of others. One of the ways in which Martin’s books, and HBO’s show, subverts expectations is by placing its action after the great events that defined their time-the Doom of Valyria, Robert’s Rebellion (and Rhaegar’s defeat at the Trident), the building of the Wall. The show’s referenced the Doom of Valyria as far back as Season 2, when it was first mentioned by the mysterious masked character Quaithe. Valyria used to be the capital of the world its Doom was as if the fall of Rome happened in a one-day conflagration. I would not be surprised if the TV show concluded without trying to explain or understand what is, essentially, one of its many, many footnotes like the story of Valyria-the ancient city whose terrible destruction permanently altered the world of Westeros. At this point, the show is just trying to end-to surmount the nearly impossible challenge left by Martin’s unfinished book series, and attempt to sew up the fight for control of Westeros in six supersize episodes. There are a lot of other lingering mysteries left in Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of George R.R. I hope that someday I find out what happened to Valyria.
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