Masterful Suspense in 'Game of Thrones'

The Game of Thrones writers aren’t perfect. They’ve had some mistakes in the past. However, I was re-watching the season seven finale, and, I have to say, it was masterful. There are little things that work beautifully. There’s Sansa saying that the lone wolf dies but the pack survives right before we see Jon Snow make his questionable relationship decision with Daenerys. It’s not too blatant, but it implies that maybe Jon will find himself outside the family circle. I’d like to see that.

The thing that really got me was that ending: the Night King riding in on the newly resurrected Viserion. What got me is the way that I’ve watched this scene a few times, and it still gives me shivers. I obviously know the dragon swooping down and shooting wild blue fire at the Wall is coming. Still, I get chills just thinking about it.

The reason for this is the nature of the suspense built for this scene. What I mean by this is that you can only surprise someone once. When I watch Spiderman: Homecoming (SPOILER ALERT), it doesn’t give me the same reaction I had when I first watched it to see that the Vulture is actually the father of Peter’s love interest. It’s a great twist, and one of the few in the past few years that took a lot of people by surprise, but it only affects you once.

This isn’t so with undead Viserion’s arrival, which can be watched with the same amount of tension every time. What makes it so effective is that the writers aren’t building tension by making us ask, “Oh boy, what’s about to happen?” but “Oh, I know it’s coming, come on, come on, come on.” We know what’s about to happen, but the suspense is in finally seeing such an awesome moment brought to life.

Benioff and Weiss understood when writing the ice dragon that we knew it was coming. People were predicting it the moment the dragons hatched. As the show went on, more people were saying that one of the dragons just had to turn into an undead ice dragon at some point. The two writers aren’t stupid. They knew they couldn’t surprise us with something we’d been guessing at for years. Still, they had to make the appearance of such an incredible spectacle something to be tense and excitedly nervous about. This is why the scene is shot the way it is.

In the penultimate episode, the last shot is of the Night King bringing Viserion back to life. In a lesser writer’s hands, we wouldn’t be shown this so blatantly. They might show the Night King looking at the hole in the ice where Viserion’s body fell through the water and merely imply the resurrection would happen. They would think they were hinting at something special that would surprise the audience. Because we’d known for years that one of the dragons just had to die, the writers didn’t waste our time and try to make it look like we’d never guess the dragon was coming. They know we’re smarter than that.

The ending scene of Viserion opening an icy blue eye puts the audience on a high. We have to wait through the entirety of the next episode, the finale, in order to get the payoff. The title of the episode is “Eastwatch,” which is a section of the Wall. That alone tells us what the ending will be. Though Viserion is never explicitly mentioned until those last ten minutes, the viewer is already ecstatic. We know that the dragon is going to obliterate the Wall, the structure that has stood since the beginning of time. It’ll be awesome, show me the dragon already.

The payoff is excellent. Even after a whammy reveal that Jon Snow is the true heir to the Iron Throne, the return to the Wall at Eastwatch is the highlight of the episode. There’s some throwaway dialogue between Tormund and Beric, two characters who we love but aren’t exactly the A-list roster, and then the dialogue stops. There’s no real dialogue after this scene, besides screaming of course, and that also helps the scene. Words aren’t needed when the White Walkers slowly seep through the trees and out into the open. They gather in front of the wall and just stand there, looking up. The creepy White Walker theme music builds, and it’s so tense. We know that the dragon is coming, but the characters don’t. They’re looking down at the ice zombies, and all you can think while watching is, This is it, this is where it happens.

The music cuts and there’s only silence. Suddenly, a broken screech cuts the tension. The look on our favorite wildling Tormund’s face shows how much destruction we’re about to watch. Faster than any of the dragon action seen before, Viserion shoots across the sky and breathes blue flames at the Wall, destroying chunks of it. The Night King, the White Walker who created all of the ice zombies, is calmly on his back. It’s nightmarish. What follows is an ending sequence of Viserion tearing down the wall that has stood since the first episode. There are no real words spoken, and the final shot isn’t focused on a specific character. Instead, it’s of the Night King riding Viserion while flying over the immense army of White Walkers.

Anyone who has watched this over and over can tell you that it’s chilling to witness. The army of White Walkers march forward, stop for the dragon to let them through, and then immediately pick up their journey as if the Wall is just a minor inconvenience. What the writers understood in laying out this sequence is that the suspense and tension aren’t in the unknown. They know the tension is from seven years of great storytelling culminating in the finale of the penultimate series for their show. We probably could have guessed the Wall would fall back in the first three seasons. The White Walkers had to be a threat, and the only way that would happen is if they get the chance to come South where our main characters are. Everything major that happens in this scene has been anticipated and practically confirmed in fans’ minds. By making the White Walkers treat the Wall like a simple obstacle, it snaps the tension that had built for years. The wildlings came close to breaching the Wall a few seasons back, but otherwise, it’s been damn near impenetrable.

And Viserion is another key factor in this scene, of course. He isn’t simply teased as a threat in the future, but his entrance shows the full strength he’s capable of. He’s clearly faster than before, faster than Daenerys’ two remaining dragons. His fire is blue and seemingly more powerful than before, absolutely toppling the Wall in record time. For being the smallest of the three dragons, Viserion has become the scariest. I think he’ll end up killing Rhaegal, Dany’s green dragon, when the White Walkers fight our main characters again. The writers give us everything Viserion has to offer right from the start. Because of this, we have a brilliant scene that delivers on everything promised where the audience feels suspense for all the right reasons.