‘Game Of Thrones’ Showrunner Agrees With Fans That The Battle Of Winterfell Episode Was Too Dark

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses Season 8 of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Please proceed with caution if you have not yet viewed all available episodes and wish to avoid spoilers.

There have been many criticisms regarding the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. From fans considering it a rushed season or the fact that modern-day items were left in the backgrounds of certain scenes, there has been plenty to complain about. One of the biggest complaints, though, centers around the massive Battle of Winterfell episode, which was hard to view thanks to the lack of lighting in the episode. Now, one of the show’s creators has agreed with fans that this episode should have been presented differently.

The Battle of Winterfell was billed as an epic episode in the final season of Game of Thrones. The North had gathered and were defending Winterfell from the onslaught of the Night King (Vladimír Furdík) and his army of White Walkers and wights. However, when the episode aired, the general consensus on Twitter was that they couldn’t work out what was going on. This was a result of the battle occurring at night as well as a general lack of lighting, which resulted in an episode that confused fans rather than thrilling them with an epic battle.

watching the battle of winterfell be like #GOT8 #battleofwinterfell pic.twitter.com/QK0jak6Hio

— Broke As Hell ?????? (@einobe10) April 29, 2019

According to CinemaBlend, Game of Thrones creator Dan Weiss also agrees with the fans when it comes to the Battle of Winterfell episode. At a recent Con of Thrones event, actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) revealed this detail regarding Weiss’ opinion of the episode.

“The critique of Episode 3 being too dark,” Coster-Waldau said.

“It was really dark… I actually spoke to [co-showrunner] Dan Weiss about this, because it really p*ssed him off as well. You’ve gotta believe me, they did everything they could to make this the most exciting action sequence ever made, put on film, TV, anything. So to wake up and see the Twitter or whatever talking about, ‘I can’t see it,’ seriously it was a surprise to everyone.”

As IGN points out, the director of Episode 3, Miguel Sapochnik, has previously explained his reasoning for producing such a dark episode.

“From a story standpoint it made sense that this was the last hope humanity has, the last beacon of light, and from the perspective of where we needed the story to go – which was to reach a surreal, chaotic climax – we needed an environment that was friendly to that,” Sapochnik said after the episode aired.

While it seems unlikely that anything will be done to rectify the episode now that Game of Thrones has concluded, many fans discovered that watching the episode in a darkened room helped. In addition, the episode’s lighting could also be improved by changing one’s television settings.

Season 8 was the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. The network is currently producing a prequel set in the same universe. However, no release date has yet been announced for this new series.