GoT: Why Night King's Motivation Was Deliberately Stupid

Summary:

• The Night King is considered to be one of the most pointless Game of Thrones characters ever.
• He was supposed to be the manifestation of nature and death, but his persona was hollow.
• The mindless force of destruction was an antagonist in its own right and didn’t need a singular leader.

Many Game of Thrones fans have quarrels with the idea of the Night King. Even apart from this character being the show’s addition, he doesn’t feel right: where every other character has fears, desires, and motivations, the Night King has…nothing. But despite the popular belief, it’s not thanks to poor character design.

The Night King was deliberately created to have no real personality, and here’s why.

Why Was the Night King Designed Like This?

As you’re likely aware, the White Walkers from Game of Thrones are not exactly the same as the Others from A Song of Ice and Fire. While similar in many ways, they have a plethora of distinctions, and having an actual leader is one of them. George Martin didn’t create the Night King; he was merely the show’s special addition.

GRRM envisioned the Others as an unstoppable force of nature — climate change, namely. They were created by the Children of the Forest for one purpose only: getting rid of humans who endangered the Children. They were clearly sentient but still devoid of any ulterior motivations beyond what they were designed to do.

Game of Thrones simplified the concept by manifesting this looming threat into a singular character, the leader of the White Walkers — the Night King. Still, he needed to maintain the core attributes of the Others, and that he did. The Night King had no motivation other than the destruction of humankind and all living things.

So the seeming lack of character is not a design flaw: the Night King was a personification of inevitable death, of nature itself. He didn’t need motivation or a personal end goal as he was an unstoppable force manifested, not a human.

Why Did Fans Hate the Night King’s Design?

The White Walkers — or the Others — being a metaphor for climate change is a well-known fact, and the concept of an undead army has never needed a persona. So, why did Game of Thrones fans still hate the Night King as a character when it’s obvious that his design was deliberate and derived from George Martin’s vision?

This hate, sadly, is attributed to the very existence of the Night King. While his lack of personality is understandable and justified, he as a character isn’t. The showrunners made a poor choice of implementing the Night King into the narrative — and an even worse one of hyping him up as a protagonist throughout eight long seasons.

Game of Thrones fans who hadn’t read the books expected something substantial from the Night King, and they didn’t receive it since he was designed to be hollow. The book fans were annoyed by the Night King’s very existence since day one, and considering how far from the source material he was, they, too, hated him in general.

This is the case where, despite popular belief, it’s not the character design that’s wrong but the character’s implementation. The Night King’s notorious lack of personality was reasonably true to George Martin’s vision but his existence wasn’t.

There were only two ways to avoid the Night King being such a lackluster character: either giving him an actual personality and motivation (and thus completely defeating the point George Martin was trying to make) or not creating the leader of the White Walkers at all. Needless to say, the second option would have been more optimal.

What Do Fans Think About the Night King?

Some Game of Thrones fans saw the effect the showrunners were trying to achieve, too. But in their eyes, the execution was too poor to get anywhere close to that effect.

“It’s that he seems like just a weapon, not a force of anger or an entity we don’t understand or whatever else he could have been. That chilling feeling when he sees Jon at Hardhome and there is just no expression, that’s scary. Once it’s just that he’s a blank face, it’s just…meh,” Reddit user captainofpizza wrote.

Fans agree that if the desired effect was to show the pure terror of an unstoppable force going against humans, there was no point in inventing the Night King at all.

“Why even make 'The Night King' a character? <...> They spent half the show building up the mystery of what and who the Others are and what they want, but then just threw it out the window at the end. Why even bother? They could've just kept a leaderless, pure killing machine, hivemind thing,” The_Falcon_Knight pointed out.

Unfortunately, the Night King turned out to be a disappointment for most Game of Thrones fans even apart from his anticlimactic finale. He was unnecessary to the show, and everything he stood for would have been better achieved without him.