Metro Column: “Hardhome” changes the books for the better
This week in our ongoing column for Metro, WiC writes about the fantastic battle scene that took up the last half of “Hardhome.” This isn’t the first time the series has featured huge battle scenes. The Battle of Blackwater remains a touchstone for the show, and last season’s Battle of Castle Black featured some exciting set pieces. Even among stiff competition, the Battle of Hardhome distinguished itself, first by adding White Walkers and wights to the mix, and second by spending an untold amount of money and time to do them justice.
Executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss have taken some heat this year for straying too far from the books. Indeed, the Battle of Hardhome was largely an invention of theirs, but now that we’re seen it, it’s clear that something like this needed to happen. The White Walkers are supposedly the biggest threat to Westeros out there—bigger than Daenerys and her dragons, and much bigger than inter-house conflicts—but they’ve been hanging out on the sidelines of the story, rarely if ever showing themselves. That’s allowed them to maintain an eerie mystique, but they can only stay offscreen for so long before viewers grow impatient, or forget about them all together.
In the A Song of Ice and Fire books, the White Walkers are still mostly absent, although it stands to reason that we’ll see more of them in The Winds of Winter. Benioff and Weiss’ decision to bring them to the foreground in “Hardhome” was a smart one—it reminded us of what’s truly at stake in this series, and allowed the producers to get very creative thinking up all the horrifying ways an army of the dead could assault the living. “Hardhome” didn’t just feature one of the most exciting battle scenes in the series’ history; it represented the most successful change made to the books to date. As the show prepares to head into truly uncharted territory in Season 6, that’s encouraging.
On top of that, the non-Hardhome parts of “Hardhome” were pretty compelling as well. Feel free to read more of our thoughts over at Metro, as we barrel toward the Season 5 finale.
Spoiler Alert!
Please take care to tag spoilers in your comments by wrapping them with <spoiler></spoiler>. Spoilers in comments are hidden by a gray overlay. To reveal, simply hover or tap on the text!