Game Of Thrones: 5 Characters Who Shouldn't Have Survived The Battle Of Winterfell
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(We included this shot to remind you EXACTLY HOW CLOSE THIS ONE CAME.)
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... where things started to go even more badly.
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It's not like Ser Brienne, at left, was doing much better.
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Does this seem like a group of people who'll live to drink Arbor Gold again someday? No, it does not.
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(But maybe not so much for her dying in agony face.)
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Though we are HERE for her battle face.
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(For context's sake: Everything beyond the pointy ledge is a bloodthirsty horde of the undead.)
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BRIENNE AND JAIME
We're grouping these two together because that's how they fought the entire episode: by each other's sides. It was touching, but we shudder to think how much more closely they would've come to dying if they hadn't had each other's backs. After they retreated into the castle, they sliced and diced a seemingly endless stream of wall-climbing wights.
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Even Brienne and Jaime look like they don't understand how they didn't perish under a pile of weapon-wielding zombies.
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Then Ser Jaime found himself backed against a courtyard wall...
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He shouldn't have been able to make it inside Wintefell. And when he somehow did, the walk across the courtyard should've ended him. After all, Frozen Viserion seemed to have him in his icy sights.
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Though the blue flame probably singed him, it never got him.
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JON
That brings us to the Possible Prince That Was Promised, who engaged in dragon-on-dragon warfare with the Night King and lived through a crash landing on Rhaegal before he found himself, all alone, in the middle of a field full of newly reanimated and highly bellicose dead folk.
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But not for lack of trying! And when Jon stood to face the beast head-on, it happened to be that Arya was taking out its master on the other side of the castle. Lucky bastard! (Yeah, yeah, we know.)
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... only to have to dodge roughly three gajillion wights inside (thank goodness for The Hound and Beric Dondarrion's well-timed rescue)...
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ARYA
The capable fighter got knocked in the head — hard — and then went tumbling down a roof...
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... and then there was this scary (and in an alternate universe, we're sure, fatal) moment before she saved Bran and literally everyone else at Winterfell.
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BRAN
Speaking of Arya's all-knowing brother, he was a literal sitting duck, er, raven, for the entire episode, with only the questionable talents of Theon Greyjoy and his men to protect him. And then, as if that weren't bad enough, Bran decided to warg out but didn't report back with helpful information about the Night King's whereabouts... or anything, really.
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See that shoulder in the foreground? That's the Night King's shoulder. If the leader of the evil undead had sauntered into that godswood just a wee bit more quickly, adios human history/memory (and everyone else).