In April 2019, Game of Thrones’ Vladimir Furdik gave his biggest interview ever. Mere days after his character, The Night King, met his maker in the season 8 episode “The Long Night,” the stunt performer turned primary villain sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for a debrief. After a few warm-up questions, the interviewer asked something more significant: “Did [the show’s creators] tell you much about the character — his motivations, his goals?”

Furdik responded bluntly:

“No, they didn’t give me [much]. There were a couple of discussions with the directors, but nothing particular about what he was supposed to do. They built the Night King step by step. It’s something like how you put a plant in the ground, and you’re waiting to see how the plant [turns out].”

Furdik’s words sum up not just the Night King’s trajectory across Game of Thrones, but the show’s entire final season. It often felt like showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were making up the story episode by episode with no overarching plan — especially after they blew past George R.R. Martin’s original, unfinished book series and began to chart their own course toward an ending. And the Night King is perhaps the most egregious example — an embarrassing, unforced blunder I’m still mad about seven years later.

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