Game of Thrones: The Long Night

Each Monday, I will post on the Season 8 Game of Thrones episode that premiered on HBO the night before. Each post will be in three parts: a synopsis of the selected episode; the hidden (or not-so-hidden) motifs; and how it all relates to the field of psychiatry (e.g. Jungian archetype).

Synopsis

"The Long Night" is the third episode of the 8th season of Game of Thrones (and the 70th overall). From Wikipedia:

“The Living Army meets the Army of the Dead on the battlefield, but are quickly overwhelmed by the dead's superior numbers. Jon and Daenerys, astride Drogon and Rhaegal, engage the Night King, who is riding Viserion. The dead breach the fire wall and attack Winterfell castle. Jon knocks the Night King off Viserion and onto the ground where Daenerys has Drogon burn him. The king is immune to dragon fire and raises the slain Winterfell defenders as his fighters. The dead in the crypts are raised and begin attacking the sheltering civilians. The Night King arrives at the Godswood for Bran and kills Theon, who is protecting him. Arya disguises herself with the face of a White Walker and then ambushes and kills the Night King with her Valyrian steel dagger, causing him and, consequently, the Army of the Dead to physically disintegrate. Melisandre, her purpose served, wanders off into the snow and dies.”

Motifs

Since they no longer figure prominently in the future of Westeros, let’s focus on George R. R. Martin’s Army of the Dead which is composed of wights—reanimated corpses raised from the dead by White Walkers to act as their minions. While confirmed in an interview that he made wights as skeletons as an homage to Jason and the Argonauts (1963) (1), Alex Graves’ Army of the Dead more resembles Sam Raimi’s Army of the Dead Darkness. The eponymous mob from Raimi’s third installment of the Evil Dead franchise battles Ash Williams for the book of the dead (Necronomicon Ex-Mortis).

How it relates to the field of psychiatry

Jon Snow and Ash Williams personify the Jungian hero archetype—one who pursues a great quest to realize his destiny. The character arcs from the respective franchises follow Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth: 12 stages beginning in the ordinary world, transcending to the special world, and then returning to the ordinary world after resolving an ordeal (2). I think it’s also ironic that Campbell’s compendium is titled “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” which both contrasts with and alludes to the Faceless Men.

Game of Thrones and the Evil Dead franchise parallel other movies depicting the hero archetype including Donnie Darko (2001). Darko, a movie about a first-break psychosis, introduces The Philosophy of Time Travel—a manuscript “to be used as a simple guide in a time of great danger” (e.g. universe to implode). The guide defines the necessary elements and “players” for time travel such as the “manipulated dead.” Hence the parallel (pun intended) between Darko and Sam Raimi’s mythos, including The Evil Dead 2, a film that eerily follows The Philosophy of Time Travel depicting Ash (living receiver) battling the evil/manipulated dead after reciting passages from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (artifact). His doing so ultimately results in his traveling back in time to the Middle Ages to battle the Army of Darkness.

In the second episode of season 8, Jon learns of his destiny when Samwell tells him about his Targaryen lineage (learned from books in the Citadel library). While there’s no doubt this scripture will impact who lays claim to the Iron Throne, it remains to be seen if it will rival the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis. I may find myself sitting here in three weeks posting how the 6th and final episode follows The Philosophy of Time Travel and how Game of Thrones ends with a vortex that transports Jon Snow back in time (when he walks along the beach on Stony Shore where finds the bust of the Statue of Liberty!).