For 8,000 years, the Wall has protected northerners and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms from ancient threats – threats that manifest themselves in undead armies and White Walkers capable of downing a 747-sized dragon with a single blow.
Indeed, the Wall has been a sky-scraping cornerstone of HBO’s Game of Thrones saga from the off, though on Sunday’s season 7 finale, “The Dragon and the Wolf,” viewers watched in amazement (read: horror) as that towering fortification crumbled into a million pieces. Granted, it was only a portion of the Wall – Eastwatch, to be specific – that fell, but the ramifications of the Night King and his army marching into Westeros cannot be overstated.
That’s something showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff touched on in the aftermath of Sunday’s super-sized finale (via Screen Rant), which set a new viewership record for Thrones with 16.5 million. It is, however, worth bearing in mind that that figure accounts for HBO’s replays and streaming.
Wary that season 7’s final moments would feel too familiar, David Benioff noted that “The Dragon and the Wolf” is a deliberate parallel to the ending of last year’s triumphant finale, “The Winds of Winter.”
We tried to contrast the various season endings so they don’t feel too similar. So last season we had a pretty triumphant ending with Dany finally sailing west towards Westeros… This one is definitely more horrific. For many years now we’ve known this would be the ending of the penultimate season. The Wall’s kept these things out for 8000 years. There’s no real reason why it can’t keep doing that unless something puts a hole in the wall. There’s one thing on the board from the beginning that is now big enough to do that, and that’s a dragon. They just start to suggest itself as a logical way forward.
Finally, the showrunner confirmed that bringing the Wall down has been on the cards for years, and it was only a matter of time before the Night King was able to breach Westeros’ last line of defense.
We write ‘and then the wall comes tumbling down’ and it’s really easy to type those words. It’s really hard for them to make it look good. It needed to be a thing you go out of the season on.
Game of Thrones‘ penultimate season came to an end on Sunday, August 27th, and it’s fair to say that the show’s impassioned community is still reeling. Filming on the eighth and final season isn’t expected to get underway until October, and though it’ll only last six episodes in total, there have been rumblings that HBO will choose to unleash Thrones‘ last hurrah in 2019 before spearheading one (or more?) successor series.
