Games of Thrones Episode 3 Season 8 Review

Updated Mon four/29

Game of Thrones, Episode 803: "The Long Nighttime"
Original airdate: April 28, 2019 on HBO

Spoiler alarm: This page may contain descriptions of events in this and previous episodes. Lookout before reading.

For this concluding season of the HBO hit Game of Thrones, we are collecting reviews and impressions from professional TV writers for each individual episode, continuing with Dominicus'south extra-long "The Long Night," directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Check this site each Sunday night for reviews of the latest episode.

While we won't effort to assign an overall score to each episode, nosotros take grouped the reviews into rough categories based on critic enthusiasm, beginning with the most positive. Scores for individual reviews are displayed merely in those cases where a reviewer has specifically indicated a score. (Those scores have been converted to a 0-100 calibration when necessary to facilitate comparing.) "Recaps" are non included if they just discus the plot details and fail to assess the episode's quality in whatever mode. Click on whatever publication name to read the total review.

Extremely positive reviews

Dino-Ray Ramos
Borderline

Our patience was rewarded with an all-out brawl with some twists, turns and unfortunate casualties that accept left our jaws on the floor. ... [Benioff and Weiss] know what the fans want and they delivered with this characteristic-like episode that included one of the most epic battles in the history of TV.

100

David Crow
Den of Geek!

Equally thrilling as whatsoever episode of television always produced. ... "The Long Night" has the kind of existential dread of mass annihilation that is rarely seen on the small screen.

95

Laura Prudom
IGN

It delivered in ways we never could take expected. ... "The Long Night" is such a spectacular accomplishment in filmmaking - it certainly puts many of the MCU and DC motion-picture show universe's climactic battles to shame, and could hands exist measured against the intensity of the Captain's Deep sequence in Lord of the Rings: The Ii Towers - but I had to deduct points based on some of the contrivances of the plot.

100

Ed Cumming
The Independent

Game of Thrones season 8, episode 3 is a relentless hour and a half of boxing that feels like twenty minutes, a series of sumptuous visual set-pieces linked by moments of tenderness. ... It is epic, gritty, profoundly silly, surprisingly camp – especially the smirking Dark King, Darth Frosty himself – but in terms of spectacle, it is the equal of annihilation to come up out of Hollywood.

Jeremy Egner
The New York Times

Sun's final clash was a masterpiece of tension and release, goose bumps and heartbreak, grandiosity and intimacy. Information technology deftly mixed genres (horror, action, melodrama), shots and planes of action as it shifted from the anarchy of the fighting in and effectually Winterfell to the claustrophobic terror of the crypts to the dragon dogfighting in the winter sky. ... It wasn't flawless ... Just in the end, despite the scale of the clash and the endless hype we've been hearing virtually the 55 nights of shoots that went into filming it, et cetera, the Battle of Winterfell actually exceeded expectations.

Verne Gay
Newsday

Yeah, this was exhilarating and a spectacular technical achievement in its own correct.

ninety

Josh Jackson
Paste

We got more often than not what we all expected: en episode filled with battle scenes, the dead rising in the crypt and the Dark Rex dying in the end. When you lot boil it downwardly to "only when it looked like the boxing was lost, Arya saved them all," information technology does't sound quite so epic. Merely this episode did everything it was trying to do. I will proclaim it to be very good.

ninety

Shane Ryan
Paste

Did I enjoy it? I don't think so. It was a marvel, don't get me wrong, but I tin can't say I had fun, fifty-fifty though I absolutely couldn't look abroad. I don't even know the reply to the question of whether or not this was a "good" episode. I think so? The pure outrageous choreography of the whole thing, which manifestly took 55 days to shoot, certainly paid off in terms of pure spectacle. But was it great storytelling or just an exercise in provoking horror earlier a deus-ex-Arya reversed the narrative in a split second?

Sean T. Collins
Rolling Rock

Sequence by sequence, this affair was a marvel. Displaying a talent for combining the horror of state of war with the terror of zombie movies and slasher films, co-creators/co-writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss served up set piece after white-knuckle, seat-edge set piece. ... Yet, for this prove? An 80-minute battle in which zero A-list characters got killed, requite or take a Mormont here or a Greyjoy in that location, is a rare pulled punch, at a moment when information technology seemed safe — right, even — for the audience to wait a knockout.

100

Michael Deacon
The Telegraph

It was a remorseless, punishing onslaught, not just for the combatants, but for the viewer.

100

Paul Dailly
Idiot box Fanatic

There were and then many payoffs during this fourscore infinitesimal spectactular that it'southward hard to put into words how well it translated to the screen.

100

Hillary Kelly
Vulture

Game of Thrones abandoned itself five minutes into this episode, and I mean that in the best manner possible.

Positive reviews

Spencer Kornhaber
The Atlantic

I'm satisfied, but my eyes need a residuum. No one predicted this twist: HBO spent millions of dollars on weeks of muddied stunt work only to take some production assistant drape Lady Olenna's delicate muslin veils over the cameras. ... [But the] visual variability helped make "The Long Night" one of Thrones's few front-to-dorsum riveting episodes. ... It must be said, though, that much of the episode'due south tension was leap up with nonsense worth yelling at the screen about.

75

Alex McLevy
A.5. Club

Honestly, a lot of what this episode did right had more to do with the scenes that surrounded the enormous melee than those hyper-edited clashes of swords. ... The blurry camerawork (quite literally at times) and rapid-fire editing meant that exchanges of blows that should have been viscerally thrilling were ofttimes dirty, good for capturing the mood simply not much fun to picket.

75

Myles McNutt
A.V. Society

["Experts" review for people who have read the books] To be honest I didn't really take any problem seeing things or following the action, and I do think that in that location's a scale to this thing (particularly in the landscape shots) that often took my breath away. Merely now that my jiff is back, I'thousand struck by how much "The Long Night" seems repetitive every bit it replays in my head while writing, and how the end result revealed that outside of the characters who died, Arya, and those directly involved with Arya, in that location was a existent lack of attention to character as the battle progressed, which lost itself in immersing us in chaos and failed to make that chaos every bit meaningful as it needed to be.

Todd Gilchrist
Birth. Movies. Death.

It's not that seeing a character we dear continue to live is dissatisfying. Information technology's that protecting him or her through implausible circumstances - like a long-lost relative who swoops in on a equus caballus, and then stays backside to nobly cede himself - frustrates the tone and our general sense of the show. ... Nevertheless, the episode had some tremendously tense sequences, and some really, really terrific character moments.

Mark Perigard
Boston Herald

My biggest complaint near this episode: It was so damn dark. It was difficult to see who was doing what. ... The Battle of the Bastards will even so remain my top "Game" war sequence, if just because every scrap of that crawly work was visible onscreen.

80

Huw Saunders
Cultured Vultures

The chief criticism to be made of 'The Long Night' is cypher to exercise with the episode itself, just rather what it represents for the wider plot. The white walkers were e'er, always framed as the main antagonists, with the squabbling over the Atomic number 26 Throne being a distraction. ... What I can't help but take from the war against the dead beingness wrapped up quite so soon, is the idea that the Nighttime King simply hasn't tested too as a villain as Cersei has.

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James White
Empire

While a sustained serving of slashing, stabbing, charging and killing could have rendered the viewer numb, the GOT team fended that off past zigging and zagging all over the place and changing upward the tone for several dissimilar sections. ... Were one or two of the concluding-second saves a tad convenient? Sure, merely the drama was more than enough to make upward for that.

James Hibberd
Amusement Weekly

A hugely suspenseful and intense 82 minutes of action and thrills. ... This was TV's virtually relentless and mammoth boxing ever, a super-sized series of setpieces that never wore out its welcome and generated constant dread and nerve-wracking suspense.

Eammon Jacobs
Flickering Myth

The Battle of Winterfell is a visual care for for fans, mixing the epic battle genre with the terrifying zombie horror of the Wights.

83

Liz Shannon Miller
IndieWire

However, while in that location was literally no moment of the episode that wasn't devoted to the battle, what'due south fascinating about "The Long Night" is how it seems to take its time with the action, to some degree. It'southward inappreciably a roller coaster ride, but that's really why this might be one of the improve battle-focused episodes of "Game of Thrones" to engagement; information technology makes every moment of dread feel truly lived-in, lets each character vanquish scattered betwixt the battles sink in.

Rob Bricken
io9

Somehow, this incredibly major episode doesn't experience quite as satisfying every bit information technology should. ... But remainder bodacious, I was on the edge of my seat just like the rest of you for the entirety of "The Long Dark," completely absorbed by the battle on the screen.

Anna Leszkiewicz
The New Statesman

Last night's episode was an excruciating practise in audience torture – all episode, our favourite characters were dangled over the precipice of certain expiry. Fighting on the front lines, Sam, Brienne, Jaime, Dany, and Jon were seconds away from a grim end every time they appeared on screen. But inexplicably, and despite all this build upward, none of the fundamental characters died. Some volition no dubiety see this as a cheap, audience-pleasing cop-out.

Ellen Gray
Philadelphia Inquirer

With 3 episodes to become, I'm not entirely sure what does matter to Game of Thrones, which appears to have dispatched with the existential threat and is set to head back to the competition to see who'll be in charge of Westeros. Which is fine -- it's called Game of Thrones, afterward all -- just I guess I thought preventing the world from being overrun past the icy expressionless this might require more than than i battle. Certainly more than one young woman. Not that the one battle and one young adult female weren't plenty. I'm exhausted just thinking virtually what went into this episode that I could barely come across and so much of.

Anne Cohen
Refinery29

The lighting in this episode was uncommonly cute, highlighting shadows and light in an intricate dance of snow and burn down. The trouble is that it too fabricated information technology very difficult to see.

Mike Hogan
Vanity Fair

Sure, there's plenty to quibble with. Just let's get-go by acknowledging that it's rare, exciting, and pretty absurd to see a group of professionals at the summit of their game take a swing this large and more than or less connect.

Daniel D'Addario
Variety

In its exuberantly nihilistic willingness to push past the point of viewer discomfort — building from a starting point of extreme intensity to an exhausted, burnt-out stagger towards the finish line — the episode stands in every bit the ultimate representative of ane of the ways "Game of Thrones" has seen itself, as the staging-footing for ultra-violent action whose stakes are the fate of the earth. Just that's not the only "Thrones" that exists. And, indeed, at that place are to exist three more than episodes of some other serial, one in which the serial'south most existentially pressing question, the fate of the earth in the confront of the encroaching Night King, has been settled. ... That'southward why what may be the passing of ane "Thrones" era is as exciting as it is — more exciting, certainly, than much of an episode that tended to spare whatever top-billed grapheme, preserving the ensemble only reducing the stakes as the viewer got wise to what was going on.

Mixed/so-so reviews

Lenika Cruz
The Atlantic

I think "The Long Dark" is an episode Thrones fans volition argue about forever. ... "The Long Night" left me with mixed feelings that leaned toward disappointment and some confusion. On the one hand, I'm very open to the evidence getting back to the former power plays by people who don't but want to annihilate the whole world. On the other hand, I'k securely skeptical about how good the plotting and dialogue will be if Thrones fully goes that road.

David Sims
The Atlantic

The Night King is a real diameter. ... I'thousand glad the story tin brand its way southward again, where the sunday shines and the action is a petty easier to follow.

60

Stephen Kelly
BBC

The direction and cutting makes events frenzied, scrappy and yes, due to the lack of lighting, difficult to follow – a clever visual articulation of how this fight would really experience. This is an beauteous artistic option in theory, but after a while it starts to translate as tiresome, incomprehensible noise.

Andrew Bloom
Consequence of Sound

"The Long Night" can't help merely feel like something of a disappointment. It would be hard, if non impossible, for a confrontation the serial has been hyping up since its very kickoff episode to ever fully live up to expectations. And yet, even judged on its own terms, the long-gestating Battle for Winterfell is hard to follow, occasionally even impossible to discern, and ends the most existential threat the series has built upwards over the grade of its run with a "i good hit kills them all" solution that feels more than a little cheap.

Barry Hertz
The Globe and Mail

A ridiculously intense, enormously roughshod, delightfully captivating and kinda-sorta-sorry-but-it's-true frustrating creation. ... Sun night's episode was a powerhouse of a thing, a vicious and delirious ride. Simply it was not without its many moments of, "Um, what?"

James Poniewozik
The New York Times

in a battle whose length and phantasmagoria befit a prog-stone double album, information technology reduced a climax eight years in the making to an inky, ill-defined scrum of beards and bones. ... "The Long Night" did its talking through image. Likewise often, what information technology had to say was mumblemurmurmumble. Only there were besides images that admittedly sang. And those were scenes that used the darkness to a purpose — non every bit a shroud, merely every bit a physical presence. ... The battle began with life vanishing into the pitiless night; it ended with life desperately leaping out of information technology. It's too bad we couldn't come across more of what transpired in between.

Christopher Hooton
NME

The production design, choreography and VFX was, of form, terrific, simply done a disservice past dizzying editing, insufficient lighting and never-ending and so much fire. I get it, war is disorientating and if y'all're in the centre of it you probably have no idea what is going on and who is friend or foe, but as viewer I didn't feel immersed in the activity but rather a confused spectator. ... HBO flung a trebuchet full of money at this episode, and however it somehow didn't inspire the awe of 'Hardhome' or the 'Battle of the Bastards', or fifty-fifty Daenerys's attack on the loot train in 'The Spoils of State of war'.

Jacob Hall
Slashfilm

Hither is it is. The biggest battle in Game of Thrones history. And it was a huge letdown. But does the failure of large action mean "The Long Dark" itself was a total failure? Not necessarily. Because nestled in that murky ball were scenes of sublime beauty, unforgettable misery, and triumph that has been years in the making. ... Ultimately, the episode's attempts to create chaos result in actual, unwatchable chaos, xc minutes of goggle box that are bizarrely incompetent for a series that has otherwise been so magnificently shot for well-nigh a decade. ... When the chaos takes a intermission, "The Long Night" is actually a damn solid episode of Game of Thrones painfully stretched effectually a lousy battle.

Judy Berman
Time

In 1 sense, "The Long Nighttime" succeeded: It looked gorgeous. ... Yet for a feature-length action sequence that Game of Thrones has been foreshadowing since the series premiere, it felt strangely anticlimactic.... Season 8 has at present essentially spent three of its last episodes on fan service ... That isn't just lazy, predictable writing; it's a betrayal of what made George R.R. Martin's epic so great.

Kelly Lawler
USA Today

At that place was beauty and brilliance in "The Long Dark," from the fire motif to Sansa and Tyrion's moments to its infrequent score. But it was too disappointing. The scenes were often and then dark that it was impossible to see the action unless it happened to include burn down (thanks a bunch, Drogon and Melisandre). The editing was sloppy at times, and it was hard to tell who was where and how they got at that place. And despite the high death count, most of our major characters still made it out alive, an casuistic outcome considering the enemy.

Caroline Framke
Variety

The show spent so long disarming its viewers and protagonists alike that the state of war between the living and the expressionless was the ultimate conflict that ending it halfway through the flavour is equally jarring every bit information technology is anticlimactic. ... This, plus the fact that not a single major decease in "The Long Night" was at all narratively shocking, shows how much "Game of Thrones" has lost its handle on raising the stakes like it one time did and so well.

Todd VanDerWerff
Phonation

Information technology's filled with thrilling moments, last-second heroics, and characters escaping expiry by the skin of their teeth. It'south also frequently completely incomprehensible. ... It also creates a situation where Game of Thrones essentially has to reboot itself with three episodes left in its run. ... I was enraptured by long swathes of it, frustrated by other long swathes of it, and securely confused by certain parts.

Negative reviews

Michael Rougeau
GameSpot

Game of Thrones has never been straightforward--until now. ... The battle with the dead is over, the Nighttime King is defeated, and the forces of the living are victorious. And it happened in the to the lowest degree inventive, well-nigh predictable style imaginable. ... In that location'south no catharsis or payoff in anything that happened in "The Long Night."

Scott Meslow
GQ

And maybe Game of Thrones was just too good at setting the bar that high—considering human being, is "The Long Night" a letdown. ... The White Walkers take e'er been unquestionably evil, which is the same affair as beingness unquestionably tedious. And in the face of that evil, every graphic symbol nosotros care about has become unquestionably practiced, which is the same thing as being unquestionably boring. ... After almost 70 episodes of buildup: Is that all there is?

Michael Walsh
Nerdist

If you have invested in the history and lore behind the story, information technology was an anti-climactic end that didn't invert fantasy tropes in classic George R.R. Martin style. ... Arya killing the Night King was amazing to behold, only it felt somewhat hollow without payoff to the story's history.

Alan Sepinwall
Rolling Stone

The early portions of the episode were a visual nightmare. ... If the war with the army of the dead was just meant as misdirection for the real terminal fight, then the to the lowest degree it could take given us was better spectacle than most of what "The Long Night" had to offer.

Emma Stefansky
Thrillist

There were lots of cool moments -- Beric Dondarrion's heroic death and the dragon dogfight in a higher place the clouds were highlights -- but the end result felt weirdly defective. ... It'due south frustrating to be bored by big-upkeep dragons and undead armies and cryptic prophetic sayings, but the true threat, even after all the lore building and theorizing that went into building up this huge event in our minds, was never the Nighttime King.

Alyssa Rosenberg
The Washington Post

The evidence seemed both to lose its fashion artistically and to abandon the moral and narrative nervus that made information technology a genuine phenomenon. ... At the moment when "Game of Thrones" seemed poised to plunge its characters into the issue of the episode's title, it stuck united states visually and intellectually in the dark instead. ... I love "Game of Thrones"; more than any other work of art, George R.R. Martin's novels and the television set adaptation of them have defined my career equally a critic. But "The Long Dark" was a powerful, late-in-the-game case of how its showrunners and directors have too ofttimes mistaken the show's weakest qualities for its strongest.

What do you call up?

What did you lot think of Sunday's episode? Let us know in the comments department below.

< Read reviews for the previous episode (Season 8, Episode ii)

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Source: https://www.metacritic.com/feature/game-of-thrones-review-season-8-episode-3