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Game of Thrones: The Problem With The Night King's Season 8 Plan
The Night King wanted to kill Bran Stark, aka the Three-Eyed Raven, in Game of Thrones, but that plan leaves more questions than it offers answers. The Night King became one Game of Thrones’ most mysterious figures after his season 4 introduction. A departure from the books (where the Others have no such leader), the ruler of the White Walkers sought to wipe out the entire world.
Bran and the Night King first crossed paths in a vision during Game of Thrones season 6, episode 5, "The Door". There, the Night King placed his mark upon Bran, and later came to the Three-Eyed Raven’s tree, killing Bran’s master and leaving the Stark orphan as the new Raven. Bran escaped, but the Night King continued his path towards Westeros, breaking through the Wall at the end of season 7. In season 8, it was revealed just what he desired: the Night King wanted to kill Bran, thus eliminating the world’s memory.
The logic, spoken by Bran and supported by Sam (ostensibly Game of Thrones’ two wisest figures by this point), is that by killing Bran, or rather, the Three-Eyed Raven, you can erase the world because you’ve destroyed the true, living memory of it. The problem with this is that there’s little to evidence what killing Bran specifically would achieve, or conversely how the Night King would fail if everyone but the Three-Eyed Raven were to die. With the roughly defined argument presented in Game of Thrones, it would suggest that the Night King only needs to kill Bran - the humans will follow, sure, but he has to be the starting point; without killing him, it doesn’t matter. But why?
If Bran, or the Three-Eyed Raven, were to be killed and the line of them ended, what would actually change for Westeros? Unless every human was killed - in which case Bran’s death ceases to stand out as special - then there’d still be ways of history being learned. After all, the history of Westeros, from the First Men and Long Night to Aegon the Conqueror and the Dance of Dragons, has endured. Where was the Three-Eyed Raven in that? Presumably beyond the Wall, in a tree, thought at best to be a mythical figure in stories, of thought of at all. It’s hard to see where the importance of Bran in particular to the Night King factors in.
The same goes if you flip it around; were the Night King to miss out on killing Bran, but wiped out the rest of humanity, then again Bran’s memories don’t really matter. The Night King can only succeed if he kills everyone including Bran, since his larger goal is to wipe out humanity. That itself is an understandable plan: if you view the Night King (and beyond him, the rest of the White Walkers) as the literal embodiment of death, then it makes sense. Death comes for everyone, so the Night King doing this fits.
The problem is Game of Thrones whittled it down to a more personal battle of the Night King vs. Bran/Three-Eyed Raven, but never fully explained why. There may well be more to that story: the Night King’s previous with the Raven, for instance, which could tie all the way back to his creation by the Children of the Forest. Similarly, there might be something that the Three-Eyes Raven can do that is hitherto unknown. But neither was fleshed out or explained. With that, the idea of the Night King wanting to kill Bran to erase the world’s memory, when he wants to kill everyone else anyway, doesn’t really make sense.
