Who will win Game of Thrones’ Battle of Winterfell? I asked 3 military experts.

I’m very excited for the Great War in the upcoming third episode of Game of Thrones’ final season. Very excited.

So excited, in fact, that I can’t wait for the episode to air. As a student of warfare, a national security reporter, and a big fan of the show, I’ve been war-gaming the fight in my head ever since the most recent episode ended with both forces facing off and ready to fight.

There’s already wild speculation and commentary about what may happen. Will the Night King even show up? Will the White Walkers overrun Winterfell’s defenders? Why is Theon protecting Bran? And why are people burrowing down in the crypt — which is full of dead people the Night King could reanimate?

So I called three warfare experts who watch Game of Thrones and are just as anxious about the Great War as I am: the University of Pennsylvania’s Michael Horowitz, George Washington University professor and combat veteran Asha Castleberry, and World War Z author and Modern War Institute fellow Max Brooks.

It’s difficult to war-game a battle unlike any we’ve ever seen, let alone one not based in reality. But I think we covered a lot of ground and potentially answered a lot of questions.

And if the group is anything close to right, the fight will be brutal — and Winterfell is likely to fall.

A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for content and clarity, follows.

Alex Ward

Episode two, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” ended with both sides facing each other on the main battlefield. What do we expect the first move of the Great War to be?

Michael Horowitz

I would expect, given that the army of the dead has numerical superiority and given the way the White Walkers fight, that they have the ability essentially to charge on all fronts. They’re not worried about loss of life. That’s kind of their thing.

Alex Ward

Can we kind of assume a complete mauling of the living forces out on the battlefield, then?

Asha Castleberry

The dead will ultimately win this battle, but it’s going to take some time. It won’t be a rapid offensive. I will acknowledge here that the humans in fact do have some good fighters, and dragonglass, of course, which they will use ably against the White Walkers.

It won’t be rapid, but I think ultimately the White Walkers will take out Winterfell’s defenders and there will be a high casualty rate, forcing those left to flee south.

Michael Horowitz

But remember: We know from the history of the Unsullied that 3,000 of them defended a city in Essos from an attack by 50,000 Dothraki. If the Unsullied are as good as history would suggest in an open battle, then they should be able to hold off the Army of the Dead for a while.

Max Brooks

I have a personal friendship with George R.R. Martin, and I met him at a convention before Game of Thrones even went on the air. George said something that has guided my prediction of every episode, where he said, “To me, my characters always make bad choices.”

I guarantee you not everybody will make good choices on the defense side. Just as things are going to be going well and we’re going to be like, “Yay!” somebody is going to mess up. That’s going to move the story forward and we’re going to be grabbing our TVs and going, “No! No! Why did you do that?” That’s going to happen.

Courtesy of HBO.

Alex Ward

So where do we think that mistake is most likely to happen?

Michael Horowitz

Depending on the situation, Daenerys deploying her two dragons on the battlefield could easily go wrong. It’s hard to anticipate how, but that could backfire and have the effect that Max is suggesting.

Asha Castleberry

Personal relationships matter here, too. Animosity among the living could become more of a problem than the actual threat.

Most of them will be unified as a result of, okay, the White Walker problem is real, but then there’ll be a couple of people where they’re more active targeting each other versus the Night King’s forces.

Max Brooks

I suspect at some point, things will be going well and they may give way to panic, which I doubt, as much as they may also give way to arrogance where somebody will charge into battle and accidentally break ranks. The line will fracture because someone is charging into glory.

Asha Castleberry

I agree. I also feel like there might be a possible miscalculation when it comes to Bran. He’s saying right now, “Hey, the Night King wants me because he wants to erase all the memories.” If they go along with putting him out there as bait, it may go poorly and hurt Winterfell’s defenders over time.

Max Brooks

Remember that the dead also recruit the living when they kill them. Somebody may end up going up against their best friend and not being able to kill them or just hesitating for a minute. That hesitation could lead to their death, and the line breaks.

Alex Ward

A broken line would then mean that the army of the dead goes into Winterfell. You can imagine at that point that they go into the crypts.

This is controversial already, as there are already a bunch of dead people laid to rest there. It just seems like the White Walkers will have a field day.

Michael Horowitz

There are two things I think we know about the crypts. One is they have thousands of years of Stark corpses in there; Winterfell stood for a couple thousand years in the mythology of the show. The second is that there are secret ways out of Winterfell that Stark kings had designed just for when the castle might fall. That also could mean there are secret ways into Winterfell.

Either way, it seems like the most likely thing we’re going to see are reanimated Starks of one sort or another fighting.

Max Brooks

If the White Walkers start moving their way into the crypt, then Dany’s forces need to find a way to make the Night King want to retreat before it gets too bad.

The two things that come to mind are either unacceptable losses or the loss of the dragon, because that looks good on TV.

Alex Ward

Okay, let’s stick with the Night King. We know what he wants, sure, but he has commanders who can lead the battle and his fighters have undying — pun intended — loyalty to him.

Does he even need to show up at Winterfell to fight? Wouldn’t he be better off keeping his dragon safe and moving southward toward King’s Landing?

Michael Horowitz

I’ve been reasonably persuaded by the idea that the Night King might not even be at Winterfell, that he’s taking his undead dragon and headed for King’s Landing and that’s how Dany’s vision from season two of the charred throne room comes to pass.

We always assumed it was Dany on a dragon doing it, but it might not be. If the Night King lost his dragon, I’m sure he would retreat. It’s hard for me to imagine that occurring in this context, even though I think he almost certainly would.

If there’s an air-to-air battle between Viserion, Rhaegal, and Drogon, the army of the living is in pretty good shape given that Drogon is the biggest and they’re all the same age.

HBO

Asha Castleberry

I kind of felt that way, too, that the Night King would not be there because he knows that if they target him, he may lose command of his troops.

Michael Horowitz

Right. Why take the risk if you can win without showing up?

Max Brooks

I’m going to make another prediction. Just from a pure storytelling point of view, you don’t set up a rule to make the reader feel good unless you’re going to break it to increase the tension.

I’ve heard on numerous occasions, “The dead can’t swim, the dead can’t swim, we’re safe, we’ll retreat to the Iron Islands, the dead can’t swim.” They wouldn’t be saying that, I think, if they weren’t willing to show us later that they’re wrong, which then increases the tension. Because if you have a guarantee, that takes away some of the stomach acid.

If you go, “Worst-case scenario, we just retreat from Westeros, just give it to the dead and we’ll retreat to the Iron Islands,” or whatever, there has to be a moment where we realize, “Oh, my god, this is much worse than we thought.” I suspect that moment is coming.

Michael Horowitz

We saw at Hardhome that section of the White Walkers kind of run off the cliff and they couldn’t swim there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a universal rule.

But let’s suppose they can’t swim. If the living were going to retreat, there’s only so many people you can fly out by dragon. Say you’ve got two dragons and it’s 10 people per dragon. All right, you save 20 people. If you’re going to have anything left as you go south, you need a way to get a larger force out.

Alex Ward

Here’s what bothers me about the “Night King doesn’t show up at Winterfell and goes to King’s Landing instead” theory. If he does that, he’s leaving his entire force basically with no air cover. It would allow Dany’s dragons to burn everything.

Wouldn’t that be stupid to go zero dragons versus two?

Michael Horowitz

It’s a good point. I mean, look, he’s probably likely to show up. If the dead were going to pull that off, presumably they’d want to make the living think [the Night King’s undead] dragon is around to keep [the living dragons] off the battlefield as long as possible.

It seems like the army of the living’s strategy is actually to keep the dragons off the battlefield until they see the Night King. If they knew he wasn’t there, then they could attack like during the loot train battle.

Max Brooks

There’s also a larger fundamental issue. When we’re talking about the army of the living versus the army of the dead, that is also a metaphor for a democracy fighting a dictatorship.

In democracies, you have to be careful of conventional losses, the losses among your citizens. A dictator will be willing to sacrifice ad nauseam. A dictator will throw as many people into the fire as they can. The Night King doesn’t care if he sacrifices his entire army at Winterfell to win a victory at King’s Landing and recruit more dead later on. That’s a standard strategy.

Asha Castleberry

Yes. There’s more of a psychological control over these non-democratic armies versus democratic ones. The Night King doesn’t have to worry about a mutiny or a coup or a fractioning.

Max Brooks

By the way, I should mention that when I say democracy, I’m not talking about a democracy within the show. We’re talking about a monarchy versus a magical kingdom. There are more choices for the army of the living, even if it’s a cabal of a few people. It still is more choice than the absolute choice of the Night King.

Alex Ward

One thing I think we expect will happen is the struggle to protect Bran — he’s the key to this whole battle. The goal for the army of the living is to kill the Night King. The goal for the army of the dead is to kill Bran. We know the objectives for both.

So here’s where I get confused: If protecting Bran is paramount, why the hell are you putting Theon on him? You have Arya or Brienne, who are much better fighters. It just seems like a very weak move by the living to protect their greatest asset with lowly Theon.

Michael Horowitz

I think the idea is that Dany and Jon Snow would come in with the dragons to save Bran if necessary.

Theon, pun I guess intended, is sort of a dead man walking at this point, from a plot perspective. Presume he’s a goner. When Theon and the Ironborn go down, I suspect that the plans of the living are going to go awry and he’s most likely going to die helping Bran escape.

I think an interesting question is how, though. It’s not like you can put the wheelchair on a dragon. Fighting your way back to the interior of Winterfell from the godswood, at least based on the maps we’ve seen of Winterfell, seems very difficult.

Courtesy of HBO

Asha Castleberry

It’s definitely a risky decision to put Bran out there as bait because there are still a lot of unknowns about his situation. Bran has such a connection with a Night King. You saw the red marks on his arms. If the Night King really wants Bran, okay, what happens after that?

The Night King is still going to go and take out more humans. It’s definitely risky. Then there’s this really extreme speculation on whether Bran is actually the Night King. There are a lot of different situations where it can go in different directions.

Alex Ward

Look, from a storytelling perspective, Theon is obviously a goner. If you are still doing the military planning, you just don’t put Theon there. I get that the army of the living is the weaker force and so they’re going to have to accept risk in certain places. But that just seems such an unnecessary one, seeing as the living have so many more skilled fighters than Theon, and Bran is their most valuable asset.

Michael Horowitz

We also don’t really know where Arya will be. She’s not traditionally an open-battle fighter. She’s probably better suited to something like a Bran mission than something like an outside-the-walls mission. We see her running through the crypts in the preview, but, yeah, I don’t know. It’s a legitimate question.

Max Brooks

Game of Thrones is a show of twists and turns. In all military thinking, no plan survives contact with the enemy. There’s going to be something coming out of the blue that we’re all going to say, “Oh, my god! I could have never seen that coming!” That’s why we all love George R.R. Martin.

Michael Horowitz

So what do you think will happen?

Max Brooks

Here’s my prediction: The living will win, Jon and Daenerys are going to stand tall before the Iron Throne, and then the people are going to say, “Thank you, it’s time to step down, we’re going to have a democracy and we’re going to melt the Iron Throne down into ballot boxes.” That’s what I’d like to see.

Alex Ward

What an epic troll that would be.

Asha Castleberry

I think somebody is going to defeat the White Walkers and someone is going to defeat Cersei, but I think Winterfell is about to burn and they’re headed south or elsewhere.

And if they have to fight the dead again, [rallying] the [people of the] south is going to be even more difficult because many of them don’t really deal with the winter season and some of them don’t believe in the dead.

Michael Horowitz

Yeah, I think the army of the dead will win this battle but lose the war. I think we will end this episode with the army of the dead potentially either in control of Winterfell or sort of owning the burning hulk of Winterfell. If the Night King is there, I suspect we will see some sort of moment where the Night King may be looking at Jon Snow in the distance and raises everybody up to join his force.

Max Brooks

That’s probably going to happen just because you have to keep building the tension. If you win this battle and you’ve still got a few episodes to go, what do you do? Go turn on Cersei and end your squabbling civil war? That’s not the same tension as the world [being] in danger of an army of ice zombies. You have to end with that.

Asha Castleberry

Right, which means in the south, Jon and Dany’s forces have to figure out a way to work with Cersei and the others. They’re going to be able to build a better perspective on how to fight the dead and build some sort of advantage.

Michael Horowitz

It won’t surprise me at all if it turns out wildfire is what saves the day as the White Walkers invade King’s Landing. It’s a powerful weapon that Cersei has successfully used before, and she could do it again.

Max Brooks

It’s extremely unclear to me why they’re not using wildfire at Winterfell to begin with. Tyrion destroyed an entire navy with it earlier in the show!

But either way, you know who doesn’t care who wins the battle of the living versus the Dead? “Micah the butcher’s boy,” because he didn’t get a chance to vote, because he died in the beginning because he accidentally insulted a monarch and there were no courts and no judges and nobody to speak for him because there was no free press. That’s why monarchies suck.

Michael Horowitz

Just wait until he rises to fight with the army of the dead if they march south.

Max Brooks

You know, he’d be right to do so because what did a monarchy ever do for him? There is no such thing as a good king.

Alex Ward

And with that rousing support for democratic politics, let’s wait and see what happens during the Great War — and find out if we’re right.

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