How The Others Hinder Martin’s Progress on 'Winds of Winter'

A theory and storytelling analysis

Mar 01, 2023

There have been numerous attempts to explain why author George R.R. Martin still hasn’t finished The Winds of Winter, the sixth novel in his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF), despite having been at work on it for over a decade. Many think that Martin tends to occupy himself with a lot more projects nowadays than he used to due to his popularity having skyrocketed in the last decade and this is preventing him from focusing on Winds.

I, however, posit that the answer actually lies within the work itself. Namely, there are issues inherent to the narrative and storytelling of Winds (and by extension to ASOAIF as a whole) that are so difficult for Martin to overcome that he repeatedly takes on other projects to distract himself, engaging in a form of productive procrastination.

These issues stem from the fact that Winds has to deal with the story arc of the ‘Others,’ the mysterious supernatural beings that have been on the periphery of the series since it began. The storytelling logic of the series essentially demands that Martin bring their story into the foreground and begin demystifying them in the new book. But doing so may be incompatible with Martin’s approach towards writing magic, which he believes must always remain mysterious and relatively small-scale.

Trying to reconcile the demands of the story with his own creative methodology is thus significantly delaying the completion of the sixth novel.

To illustrate all this, I will outline the storytelling strategies and internal narrative logic of the novels, discuss how the story arc of the Others has been set up in the series thus far and then cite interviews with Martin as proof that he has to demystify and foreground them, despite this running counter to his usual modus operandi when it comes to magic elements. In the process, I will show how Game of Thrones, the television adaptation of the novels, had radically departed from Martin’s vision for the Others and so explain why it failed to live up to expectations.

Please note that throughout the article, I will use the term “White Walkers” interchangeably with “Others,” which is the primary term used by the novels in reference to the titular beings.

Contents

A Reactionary, Revisionist Fantasy Series

A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) is a work of epic postmodern fantasy.

What this means is that it is a self-aware, critical meta-text that is consciously setting up the conventions, traditions, tropes, myths, archetypes, and widely known clichés of classic fantasy narratives, only to subvert and/or deconstruct them. Its effect at least to some extent relies on readers being aware of what is being cited.

“...I’m a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school and they had a profound affect on me. I’d read other fantasy before, but none of them that I loved like Tolkien. And I, indeed, was not alone in that. The success that the Tolkien books had redefined modern fantasy.”

George R.R. Martin, Time Interview Part 2 by James Poniewozik, April 18 2011.

On the one hand, this entices fantasy readers with unexpected, and surprising narrative directions. On the other, it serves to critique the formulaic works that have made the tropes so recognizable. More specifically, we could view ASOIAF as George Martin’s reaction to Tolkien and the many imitators that emerged following the publication of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) in the 1950s, which became the paradigmatic epic fantasy series.*

*The first real Tolkien follow-ups, per Martin, were Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara, both published in the 70s. Their successes led to many more Tolkien imitators.

Cover Art of *A Game of Thrones (*2002 reissued edition). Image courtesy of Bantam Books/Penguin Random House.

Martin has been quite candid about his influences and his intention to create a work that distinguished itself from both LOTR and the many works that followed in its footsteps. Here is an excerpt from an extended interview he gave in 2011 about the works ASOIAF was meant to respond to, where he also discusses the influence of historical fiction on his series:

“And as a Tolkien fan, I sampled a lot of it. And hated a lot of it. It just seemed to me that they were imitating Tolkien without understanding Tolkien and they were imitating the worst things of Tolkien. I mean, I loved Tolkien but I don’t think he was perfect. So I did want to do something that replied not only to Tolkien, but to all of the Tolkien successors who had followed that.…
You know, they’ve got tassels and they’ve got lords and stuff like that, but they don’t really seem to grasp what it was like in the Middle Ages. And then you’d read the historical fiction which was much grittier and more realistic and really give you a sense of what it was like to live in castles or to be in a battle with swords and things like that. And I said what I want to do is combine some of the realism of historical fiction with some of the appeal of fantasy, the magic and the wonder that the best fantasy has.”

Source: Time Interview Part 2 by James Poniewozik, April 18 2011.

So, how exactly does the series accomplish all this? By combining conventional setup with postmodern resolution. As readers, we are initially lulled into a false sense of security. We are (mis)led to believe that we know where the story is going and how it will get there because we’ve seen it many times before. But then, the work knocks us out of our comfort zone with often surprising, shocking twists and turns, revealing its narrative to be quite different from what we initially expected.

This is perfectly demonstrated by the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones (AGOT), and its treatment of its ostensible central character, Ned Stark, who essentially embodies the trope of the knight in shining armor, a chivalrous individual that wants to do the morally right thing, who appears to epitomize honor and nobility.

After the mysterious death of Jon Arryn, the ‘hand’ of his old friend King Robert, Ned is invited to become the king’s new second-in-command. Fearing that Arryn may have been murdered, Ned takes the position to protect Robert, and sets out to uncover the truth behind how his predecessor died.

Given our preconceptions and our familiarity with conventional fantasy narratives, we might expect going into the story that a good man like Ned would come out victorious in his mission to solve the mystery of Arryn’s death, expose his murderers, protect his friend Robert’s life and then at some point later become the new king, ruling justly and bringing happiness and prosperity to the kingdom.*

*The novel even blatantly teases Ned’s apparent future in an early chapter, where he has to sit on the Iron Throne in lieu of King Robert, who is away, and listen to the demands of the people, with one of them mistakenly referring to him as “Your Grace.”

**Screencap**: Ned Stark (Sean Bean) sits on the Iron Throne in *Game of Thrones.* Image courtesy of HBO/Warner Bros. Discovery.

But AGOT is not a traditional fantasy work. One might say that is what Pulp Fiction was to the crime film, or what Pirates of the Caribbean was to the swashbuckler.

Though this becomes more evident in hindsight, it treats Ned’s strict moral code as not a strength, but a weakness. It shows that Ned is honorable to a fault, completely uncompromising in his desire to do the “good and noble thing,” a trait that keeps leading him to make the wrong decisions when dealing with the political intrigue of Westeros, a place where one has to know how to adapt and compromise, how to take advantage of knowledge and information, as well as commit acts that can be dishonorable and morally reprehensible yet ultimately necessary.*

*In one of my favorite scenes in the adaptation, Robert Baratheon aptly refers to Ned as an ‘honorable fool’ due to his inability to realize that assassinating the Targaryens is essentially the right decision, given the circumstances.

Though he uncovers the ‘secret’ of the Lannisters, he never actually solves Arryn’s death, and his stirring the hornet’s nest in King’s Landing only ends up getting Robert killed and bringing the Seven Kingdoms to the brink of a civil war.

In the end, Ned fails to accomplish much of anything he set out to do and his fate is, to me at least, an example of tragic irony: he finally agrees to compromise, sacrificing his honor to save his daughter Sansa, and cuts a deal with the Lannisters to admit to crimes he did not commit in exchange for mercy… only for the new king Joffrey to renege on his deal and have Ned executed.

Ned’s tragic death is essentially a mission statement by the author. It declares to the audience that AGOT is not telling a traditional fantasy story, where a good noble knight defeats the ‘bad guys’ and a clear line exists between good and evil. Rather, it is telling a reactionary, revisionist story that deconstructs the romantic myths embodied by protagonists like Ned, and so repudiates the traditional line of thinking perpetuated by fantasy narratives that a good man always makes for a good king.

“I also want to respond—I’ve read a lot of history about feudal history and Roman history and so forth, about politics in those days. I follow contemporary politics. And you know, what strikes me is that these issues are horrid. And a lot of fantasy makes it seem simply: a good man will be a good king. Well, a good man is not always a good king. And a bad man is not always a bad king. You know, it’s much more complicated than that.”

George R.R. Martin, Time Interview Part 2 by James Poniewozik, April 18 2011.

“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple.”

George R.R. Martin, Rolling Stone interview by Mikal Gilmore, April 23 2014.

AGOT as a whole then shows us how the ASOIAF series works, how its narrative is constructed through the combination of traditional fantasy setups with postmodern resolutions, how it forges its own unique identity by reacting and responding to the works that came before it. It teaches us, if only on a subconscious level, the rules that govern the storytelling of ASOIAF, helps us understand the internal operating logic that it adheres to. And in doing so, it allows us to discern, which narrative directions or outcomes are true to its identity and which are not.

All this is important to keep in mind as we begin to discuss the White Walkers.

The Conventional Setup of the White Walkers

**Screencap**: An Other in the prologue sequence of *A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel Vol. 1.* In contrast to that of the TV series, this depiction is much closer to that of the novels. Image courtesy of Penguin Random House.

In AGOT, the Others are introduced in the very first chapter, a prologue that depicts them as mysterious tall and pale-white beings with blue glowing eyes that can magically manipulate ice and resurrect the dead, transforming them into undead servants called ‘wights.’ Furthermore, it is explicitly shown that The Others are capable of communicating with one another, in a language unfamiliar to men that sounds like "the cracking of ice on a winter lake…"1

After the prologue ends, The Others make no further appearances in the AGOT, and so much information about them can only be gleaned from the stories and legends that characters recount through dialogue, or verbal exposition.

In this regard, the central source of information on them subsequently becomes the character of Old Nan, a servant of the Starks at Winterfell, who repeatedly tells stories to the young boy Bran Stark. In response to his desire for a scary story, Nan decides to tell him of The Others, whom she basically describes as an ancient race of evil supernatural beings that hate everything living and so wish to destroy all life.

Here is an excerpt from her tale:

“Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels… In that darkness, the Others came for the first time… They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children.”2

Nan’s stories seem to correspond to other stories or instances of verbal exposition that occur later in the series. In the third book especially, multiple claims about the Others are made by Melisandre, the magic-wielding priestess of the god R’hllor. In A Storm of Swords (ASOS), she repeatedly speaks of a dark unnamed god that is antithetical to hers, whom she calls the “Great Other,” the apparent creator/father of the Others.

She brings him up several times in conversations with Davos Seaworth. Several key quotes are worth excerpting.*

*Please note that in the following quotes, I will as usual embolden key words and passages. However, the original text sometimes uses italics.

“The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love…. Evil and good… Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war.”

George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords, Trade Paperback Edition (New York: Bantam Books, 2011, originally published 2000), 288.

“The war has been waged since time began, and before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand. On one side is R'hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Against him stands the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror. Ours is not a choice between Baratheon and Lannister, between Greyjoy and Stark. It is death we choose, or life. Darkness, or light.”

Ibid.

“These little wars are no more than a scuffle of children before what is to come. The one whose name may not be spoken is marshaling his power, Davos Seaworth, a power fell and evil and strong beyond measure. Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends. Unless true men find the courage to fight it.”

Ibid., 413-414.

R’hlor is essentially described here as the ASOIAF analog to the Judeo-Christian God, while the ‘Great Other’ is conversely painted as a Devil figure. In this context, the forces of ‘life’ or the ‘living’ are associated with good, light, and fire. On the contrary, the forces of ‘death’ are equated to evil, darkness, and ice. ‘Life’ and ‘death’ then are basically standins for ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ They exist within the same binary relationship. They are always in conflict, always at war.

Later, meeting Jon Snow at the Wall, Melisandre claims that the Unnamed God is the creator of the Others and/or their wights, stating that he “is the God of Night and Terror, Jon Snow, and these shapes in the snow are his creatures.” (868) After learning that an Other was killed by a dagger made of dragonglass, she exclaims: “Small wonder it is anathema to these cold children of the Other.” (885) These conversations explicitly establish The Others as forces created by the Great Other.

Altogether, this indicates that The Others are, by definition, the antithesis of the Living, the opposite enemy of Man. They are the personifications of Evil, the ‘demons’ created by the Ice Devil that has always sought to best the Fire God. They are the BAD GUYS who wish to destroy all good, all life, because that is what they are.

This, of course, fits the conventional setup of the fantasy genre, wherein clear-cut heroes are destined to save the world by defeating clear-cut villains. In this regard, we might say that the White Walkers essentially represent the ‘mooks’ of ASOIAF - the often personality-less, disposable soldier villains that provide the army of the Evil Overlord, a role in this case fulfilled by the Unnamed Dark God/Great Other.*

*Of course, the prototypical Evil Overlord is Sauron, and his prototypical mooks are the orcs.

And through the first five ASOIAF novels, this conventional setup has largely remained unchallenged. That is, we haven’t really seen much to indicate that what we’ve been led to believe or assume about the Others thus far is untrue.* The Others make very few appearances in the books, remaining mostly an off-screen presence. There has been no tangible evidence that the Others are not evil, no attempt to delve into who the they actually are or what they want.

*One could point to the fact that Melisandre herself repeatedly commits acts that seem to go against the notion that she and her Lord of Light represent absolute good.

And so, we are led to believe through the stories the main characters tell themselves and at least some of the events we see depicted from their perspectives that the novels are building towards a conventional fantasy resolution, wherein all the various factions of Westeros fighting for dominance would ultimately have to set aside their differences and unite against the common threat of the White Walkers, culminating in a big, apocalyptic battle that is supposed to pit the forces of good/life against the forces of evil/death, and decide the fate of mankind. After all, isn’t that what really matters, as opposed to all the fighting about politics and kingdoms?

But the internal storytelling logic of ASOIAF points to a different direction.

Dark Lords and Postmodern Resolutions

**Screencap:** Sauron, the archetypal Dark Lord, as depicted in the LOTR movies. Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The simple fact is that thus far there has been no Postmodern Resolution to the White Walker arc. And the rules that Martin had established for ASOAIF effectively dictate that this must occur for the series to remain true to itself. This indicates that much of what we think we know of the Others thus far is a MISLEAD, that a BIG REVEAL about the Others that fundamentally alters our understanding of them should arrive at some point in the future.

It is safe to conclude that the Postmodern Resolution of the White Walker story should begin, if not play out in full, in the unreleased Winds of Winter.

Though we cannot say for certain what it entails, I would argue that we can make a pretty reasonable conjecture by taking into account George Martin’s attitude towards the classic fantasy tropes that the Walkers have so far invoked over the course of the first five novels. This requires looking at what the author has said in interviews about how Tolkien and Tolkien imitators have approached the subject of ‘good vs. evil’ and the ‘Dark Lord’ (his term for the ‘evil overlord’) narrative convention.

Around the time ASOS was published in 2000, Martin claimed that he didn’t think that the battle between good and evil was all that interesting:

“...to some extent, I was writing in reaction to other fantasies. It's always the question of the good vs. evil. Tolkien started it and did it quite masterfully, but others who followed didn't do as well. I think the battle between good and evil is certainly a valid one, but I think that the battle is much more interesting in real life than in fantasy. I am particularly irritated by fantasy where you can always tell the bad guys because they are ugly and wear black.”

Source: Interview by Wayne McLaurin, SF Site, November 2000.

In a 2005 interview, he discusses Dark Lords in connection with the need for multiple viewpoints and morally ambiguous characterization:

“I'm attracted to 'gray' characters, characters who are not what they seem, characters who change. I think that's the most interesting part of fiction, and a lot of fantasy doesn't have that. Too many characters are black and white, and everybody's fighting a Dark Lord. I just wasn't interested in writing that kind of thing. Having multiple viewpoints is crucial to the grayness of the characters. You have to be able to see the struggle from both sides because real human beings in a war have all these processes of self-justification, telling ourselves why what we're doing is the right thing. Nobody except in a cartoon says, 'I'm the Dark Lord, and now I'm going out to do Evil Things.' We are the Gray Lords!

Source: Locus Magazine - Nov 2005

Six years later, Martin would provide what is perhaps the best summation of his perspective on the issue of Dark Lords in an interview for Assignment X:

“In some sense, every writer is in a dialogue with all other writers, and fantasists are in a dialogue with other fantasists. Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien – he’s been a huge influence on me and his LORD OF THE RINGS is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy – there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, good versus evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon… We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys.’”

Later on, he also reiterates his perspective on the battle of ‘good and evil,’ stating:

“It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts… We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that…”

Source: Interview by Abbie Bernstein, Assignment X - June 19, 2011

And in 2014, Martin also discussed how incongruous the concept of a ‘battle between good and evil’ is with the reality of war, which ASOIAF was clearly meaning to reflect.

“The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that's become the template. I'm not sure that it's a good template, though.
The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that. World War I is much more typical of the wars of history than World War II – the kind of war you look back afterward and say, "What the hell were we fighting for?….”

Source: Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone interview, April 23 2014.

So, what does this all tell us?

For one thing, Martin clearly rejects the traditional dichotomy between good and evil inherent to conventional Tolkien-esque heroic and epic fantasy. He does not believe in absolutely good or absolutely evil beings, but in morally ambiguous, multi-dimensional characters. For another, Martin in part seeks to define his work against Tolkien and Tolkien imitators, to distinguish it from them. Where such works aim to paint their characters in broad strokes, crafting stories of heroes going up against dark lords and their dark armies, ASOIAF aims to largely present a complex, morally ambiguous conflict with multiple valid sides and viewpoints.

Consequently, a traditionally evil Dark Lord in the vein of Sauron simply has no place within the more grounded and historically verisimilar world of ASOIAF. Neither do the legions of evil Orc-like mooks. This means the Others must represent a response to the Dark Lord and evil mook conventions perpetuated throughout fantasy fiction by Tolkien imitators. They are meant to subvert the tropes, rather than fulfill them.

**Screencap:** A White Walker in the *Game of Thrones* S2 finale. Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery.

It follows that the postmodern resolution of White Walker storyline must establish that, contrary to what readers have been led to believe earlier, the White Walkers are NOT personifications of evil and/or death but rather a race of beings with their own point of view, their own specific motives and goals, wants and desires.

This requires demystifying The White Walkers and developing them as concrete, understandable, possibly empathetic characters, in the process undermining the negative perceptions of them built up by the main protagonists and disproving the numerous myths and stories that have been told about them.* This means explaining who they are, what they want, and why they want it.

*The specific details can differ, of course. For instance, what if The Others in reality were just another faction, another group seeking to influence the power balance of Westeros? What if they have no interest in eradicating all life, but simply achieving a specific objective, such as settling a long-held historical grievance? What if they wish to take back some territory that they believe rightfully belongs to them and are willing to even cut deals and make alliances with some of the current inhabitants of the Seven Kingdoms to get it? What if they simply wish to migrate South, past the Wall, due to the changing climate in their home territory?

It’s important to keep in mind that the books have so far given readers little firsthand information about the Walkers. The stories and tales the main characters recount about The Others represent what they think and believe, and not what they actually know to be true.* And if the story told thus far by ASOIAF has proven anything, it’s that myths and legends shouldn’t always be trusted, as they can distort, if not completely supplant the historical reality.

*Certainly, some of the things we’ve actually seen, especially in the prologue, seem to corrobo-rate claims about The Others, such as the fact that they command the undead. Yet, we don’t really have any conclusive evidence to confirm that they hate everything that lives or feed human flesh to their wights. I wouldn’t be surprised if the White Walkers don’t really even have a god called “The Great Other.” Perhaps, they don’t even have a lord or king. Even if they did, then it would likely be a Gray Lord, as opposed to a Dark Lord.

In my opinion, Martin intends to ultimately show that, despite possessing supernatural powers, the Others are still very human-like, that the legends and myths taught about them were exaggerations and fabrications meant to justify fear and hatred of a race that the ‘natives’ of Westeros could not or did not wish to understand. The very usage of the term “Others” suggests this direction, as “other” is a term in sociology that refers to the idea of defining the ‘self’ through difference from another being, such as on racial or ethnic grounds.

From all this, it logically follows that in the end there will be no apocalyptic battle between the forces of life/good and death/evil. For sure, some kind of battle between the Others and the natives of Westeros is bound to take place. But whatever happens, it seems all but assured that we shall not get something akin to “Tarmon Gai’don” in Wheel of Time, or “The Last Battle” in Chronicles of Narnia.

The stakes have to be more personal and down-to-Earth. Otherwise, Martin would be contradicting the internal storytelling logic and coherence of ASOIAF as a whole. He would not be responding to Tolkien but imitating him. He’d be adhering to conventio-nal fantasy rather than postmodern revisionist fantasy. And he would be failing the challenges that he’d set up for himself by tackling these tropes in the first place.

All this is perfectly illustrated by the way that the White Walker story arc was ultimately resolved in its television adaptation.

Adaptation Failure

When Game of Thrones premiered in 2011, it closely followed the source material, establishing itself as an epic postmodern fantasy show that reacted to the tropes and conventions of traditional fantasy works by combining familiar narrative setups with postmodern resolutions. And though it could certainly deviate from the source material, it nonetheless ascribed to what was basically the same internal storytelling logic, allowing for an overall consistency of vision. That is, until its final season.

You see, as the series progressed, it burned through its source material at a rate that exceeded George Martin’s writing speed. As a result, the show’s sixth and seventh seasons ended up bringing the show to a conclusion, even as their corresponding novels had not yet been completed, meaning the producers had to resolve the White Walker arc (not to mention all other arcs) long before Martin himself did. But rather than deliver a postmodern resolution to the Walker storyline promised by the storytelling of the show’s early years, Benioff and Weiss made the choice to fully embrace and promote the very tropes Thrones had set out to undermine.

**Screencap:** Fire cannot kill a Dark Lord. Image courtesy of HBO/Warner Bros. Discovery.

Sure, they explained the Walkers’ origins in a brief flashback partway through S6. But they never made any effort to develop them as characters, nor allowed them to become more than abstract threats in physical form.

Instead, they turned the Walkers into exactly what they had been meant to react against - soldiers of darkness and death that followed the will of a Dark Lord figure exclusive to the series called “The Night King,” whose motive boils down to a desire to bring forth an ‘endless night’ and ‘erase the world’ along with its memory.*

* Is it a coincidence Martin stopped writing for the series after S4, when the show first introduced the Night King? I think not.

Fittingly, unlike the Others of the books, the Walkers of the series never speak, as though they’re incapable of communicating. The series instead implies that they have a kind-of hive mind, with every single Walker (and in turn every single undead they create) being an extension of their silent leader. The producers have even admitted that the lack of dialogue was an intentional choice to avoid giving the Night King any actual characterization and so diminishing his archetypal power. As they put it in an interview, when asked about the difficulty of writing a silent antagonist:

“We don’t think of The Night King as a villain as much as Death… He’s not really human anymore. Evil comes when you have a choice between that and good, and you choose the wrong way. The Night King doesn’t have a choice; he was created in that way, and that’s what he is. In some ways, he’s just Death, coming for everyone in the story, and for all of us. In some ways, it’s appropriate he doesn’t speak. What’s Death going to say? Anything would diminish him. He’s just a force of destruction. I don’t think we’ve ever been tempted to write dialogue for The Night King. Anything he said would be anticlimactic.”

Source: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss Interview ‘Game Of Thrones’ Final Seasons – Deadline (2016)

The moment I read this interview, I knew the White Walker arc would be a letdown because the producers made clear they were intent on keeping them as unknowable and mythic as possible.* This, coupled with how they had already rendered the Walkers even more enigmatic than the novels by removing their language, was a sign that they were not going to subvert the traditional setup established in the early seasons and their corresponding books.

*Notably, the writers here attempt to separate the Night King (and thus the other Walkers) from associations with ‘evil,’ as though death and evil should not be seen as the same thing. This, if you ask me, is a rather disingenuous, surface-level distinction. The fact is that the series draws on the same tropes in its depiction of the King and the other Walkers as other fantasy works have for their evil overlords and their mooks. Thus, in the context of the series, ‘evil’ and ‘death’ are essentially interchangeable. Never mind the fact that the early novels, in setting up the Others, have drawn direct connections between ‘death’ and ‘evil.’

Unsurprisingly, the climactic episode of the Walker Arc, “The Long Night” has been almost universally regarded as a disappointment. In it, the forces of life and fire (good) led by the series’ established main protagonists have to face off in a final grand battle for the fate of mankind against the forces of death and ice (evil) as represented by the Walkers and their armies of wights.

In a manner that recalls the defeat of Sauron in the prologue of the Lord of the Rings movies, just as it seems the Night King is about to claim victory, he is dispatched at the very last moment through a character managing to strike his weak point. His death sets off a chain reaction that leads to all the other Walkers shattering and their respective wights dying, fulfilling the trope of the decapitated army and completely removing the Walkers from any further involvement in the plot of the series. (Their ultimate impact was largely negligible btw.)

Even if you were not aware of the show’s identity as a postmodern, reactionary epic fantasy, you’d likely still come away from ‘The Long Night’ feeling something was missing, that something was off. You’d sense that the show had done something that is not true to its identity. This is because after years of conventional fantasy narrative setup, the show simply delivered a conventional fantasy resolution. Adhering to established popular fantasy tropes rather than subverting them directly contradicted its internal logic and disrupted its unity.

All this evinces that the resolution of the White Walker Arc in the series constitutes a radical departure from Martin’s vision for the novels. Instead of subverting Tolkien, Game of Thrones gave us a pale imitation of Tolkien, a generic outcome that was completely incongruous with the narrative framework of its source material. *

*By contrast, the same season handled the Daenerys storyline in a manner that was consistent with the show’s identity and its internal logic, suggesting that Martin is planning something similar in the final novel of ASOIAF. The show’s execution was heavily flawed, with the Daenerys arc being very rushed. But schematically, it fits the postmodern resolution model.

So, overall, we might say Martin has a planned resolution for the Others that is substantially different from that of the TV series. Nonetheless, successfully executing this resolution presents a considerable challenge because of how he approaches magic.

The Double Bind or Martin’s View of Magic

Over the years, Martin has repeatedly spoken about his methodology when it comes to writing magic in his fantasy series. For instance, in 2011 he has said that when it comes to magic, he actually follows in Tolkien’s footsteps, in the sense that he prefers for his narrative to be relatively ‘low’ on magic, so as to not have it overwhelm the story. This, he believes, helps the story maintain a certain amount of realism.

“Magic is a particular — I mean, my fantasy is quite low magic compared to the majority of it out there. And in that sense, I was following Tolkien’s footsteps because if you actually look at Lord of the Rings as I did when I was writing this, [Middle Earth is] a very magical world in a sense, it’s a world of wonders and marvels and so forth, but there’s very little onstage magic. Minor stuff. Even the…. big powerful one ring, all we ever see it do is make people invisible.”

Source: Time Interview Part 2 by James Poniewozik, April 18 2011.

In a 2017 interview, he offered a more elaborate explanation of his take on magic, claiming that he wishes to use magic sparingly to keep it unknown and mysterious. He makes clear that he fears overusing it, as this would lead to the story losing its sense of realism, and completely demystifying it, as this would make it too familiar and take away its power or appeal.

“Fantasy needs magic in it, but I try to control the magic very strictly. You can have too much magic in fantasy very easily, and then it overwhelms everything and you lose all sense of realism. And I try to keep the magic magical — something mysterious and dark and dangerous, and something never completely understood. I don’t want to go down the route of having magic schools and classes where, if you say these six words, something will reliably happen. Magic doesn’t work that way. Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. And perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand.”

Source: Aug 2017 ‘Fantasy needs magic’ An interview with George R. R. Martin — Meduza

In a 2018 conversation with John Hodgman, Martin provides arguably the best explanation of his methodology and provides a clear example of how overusing magic can break the realism or plausibility of a story by bringing up how a wizard could destroy an entire army of normal men, rendering armies useless.

“I think fantasy must contain magic. Magic, sorcery, whatever you wanna call it. But it has to be handled very very carefully. I mean it’s like salt in a stew, you know? Add a little salt and mix your stew or whatever, it tastes better. You add too much salt and that’s all you can taste is the salt and it overwhelms… So, magic is - it’s the hardest thing to write in some ways. The dragons, and the other things, the spells… I try to handle those very carefully and dance around them, even with a character like Melisandre…
I think there’s a lot of fantasy out there that overdoes the magic and they don’t really think about the effect that magic would have on a society as a whole. Because if you really do have wizards who can wipe out an entire army of a hundred thousand people by reciting a spell and waving your wand, why would that world even… why would the Lords assemble an army of a hundred thousand people? It seems stupid… So, you have to… be pretty careful about those things.” (1:28-3:00)

He reiterates these points in a 2022 interview, where he discusses how he doesn’t devise magic systems as magic in a fantasy work can literally lose its ‘magic’ and become a faux science.

“And I know here I’m an outlier, cuz I think most of fantasy writers, contemporary fantasy writers would disagree with me, but I never wanted to devise a magic system, as it’s called. A lot of fantasy writers, you know, are very proud of their magic systems they devised. To my mind, magic and sorcery, it’s not part of the natural world. It’s supernatural, it’s unnatural, it’s dangerous. And if you make it so systematic that, okay, if you take the eyes of a newt and the balls of a bat and the blood of a virgin and mixed them together you’ll get… A love potion. Then you’ve just, you’ve taken the magic out of magic and you’ve made it science, but you’ve made it fake science that doesn’t really work. And I’m not interested in that.”

Source: History of Westeros - Aug 18 2022

Evidently then, Martin’s approach to magic has remained consistent throughout all the years he’s been writing ASOAIF, meaning it should directly inform the writing of Winds. All this leads me to believe that Martin has found himself in a double bind when it comes to the Others. For his latest novel to remain wholesome, unified, and true to the series’ internal storytelling logic, Martin must demystify the White Walkers, who are by definition magic beings.

This means he has to bring them into the foreground of the plot, thereby increasing the presence of magic in the story and placing a much greater emphasis on it, as it is intrinsic to their identity. But this directly conflicts with his desire to ‘keep the magic magical,’ as well as to keep it relatively small-scale, for fear that it might overwhelm everything else in the story and potentially negate its sense of realism.

The result is an internal contradiction that has, if not stumped him, then at least considerably slowed down his progress. Successfully resolving it requires striking a very, very delicate balance between exposure and enigma. Martin needs to provide The Others with just enough narrative real estate, characterization and demystifica-tion so as to remain true to the logic of ASOIAF, yet not so much that the Others take over the story or completely lose their mystique. He has to make the magic more prominent and familiar than ever before. But not too prominent or too familiar.

Struggles, Pressures, and Procrastinations

I can only assume that finding this balance has been a titanic struggle for Martin, especially given his recent admission that he has found it difficult to write from the perspective of the character Bran Stark, precisely because Bran was directly involved with magic. As he put it:

“And I had a very hard time to… a struggle with writing from Bran. Because Bran, of all the characters, was the one who was most involved in magic. And I think magic in fantasy, sorcery, the supernatural - all of these things have to be handled with a great deal of care, or they can overwhelm the story. So… I rewrote some of those Bran chapters over and over again. And I’m still struggling with the new ones that are in The Winds of Winter, but hopefully we’re, we’re getting there.”

Source: George R. R. Martin Answers Fan Questions

Imagine how difficult and stressful it must be then for Martin to write a book, where the magic elements are continuously gaining a greater presence, where in addition to Bran, Melisandre and other established magic wielders, he has to deal with or at least begin dealing with a whole race of supernatural beings that is now coming out of the shadows and into the spotlight. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the demands of storytelling may necessitate Martin to introduce a White Walker viewpoint character in Winds. If so, he would likely struggle writing for such an inherently supernatural character even moreso than he would for Bran.

“Well, I don’t want to give too much away, but you’re definitely going to see more of The Others in The Winds of Winter.”

George R.R. Martin, interview by Josh Roberts in Smarter Travel, April 1, 2012.

Make no mistake. The sixth book, as its title indicates, has finally arrived at the point where Winter has come. After all the stalling and teasing of the previous novels, Martin has to move the story of the Others forward in a significant way and potentially deliver answers to some of the BIG mysteries surrounding them.*

*All genre serials with long-running mysteries and mythologies reach this point sooner or later. You can keep piling on enigmas or introducing new narrative complications in order to sustain the intrigue in your story for a while. But eventually, you have to sit down and actually deal with the mytharc stuff, for better or worse.

““There are a lot of dark chapters right now in the book that I’m writing,” Martin said. “It is called The Winds of Winter, and I’ve been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. Winter is the time when things die, and cold and ice and darkness fill the world, so this is not going to be the happy feel-good that people may be hoping for. Some of the characters [are] in very dark places.””

George RR Martin on Winds of Winter: Things are getting worse | EW.com , EW, December 6, 2016.

Martin is obviously aware the series is at a crucial turning point now, one that could make or break it. He knows he cannot put off dealing with the more ‘fantastic,’ if you will, elements of his epic story any longer. And being a perfectionist, he doesn’t want to mess it up… especially after Game of Thrones had royally bungled the Walker arc.*

*Even if Martin were at some point willing to entertain a formulaic, Tolkien-esque resolution to the Walkers, which I doubt, there’s no way he would go in this direction following the backlash to “The Long Night.” In fact, I’d be willing to bet Martin outright HATES how Benioff and Weiss resolved things, so if a postmodern resolution in the books wasn’t guaranteed before, it is now.

All the issues he’s now facing with magic in general and the Walkers in particular are also likely compounded by various factors or pressures, such as:

the pressure to deliver his novel after numerous delays and broken promises
the pressure of massive and continuously growing fan expectations
the pressure of being a world-renowned, constantly scrutinized celebrity author thanks to the success of Thrones
the pressure to compress several books-worth of characters and plotlines into a single volume after having to split up a previous super-sized novel into two volumes due to its immense scope

“The most pressure I felt was a few years ago when I was desperately trying to stay ahead of the show. There was a point when the show was coming out in April and my editors said if I could finish the book by December they’d rush it out. And the pressure I felt that fall was the greatest pressure I’ve ever felt and then at a certain point it became apparent I’m not going to finish it by then. I don’t only want to finish it, I want to make it as good as I possibly can.”

George R.R. Martin, Entertainment Weekly, July 15 2019.

But putting these factors aside, his slow progress on Winds is ultimately attributable to the fact that he set up tremendous, potentially insurmountable challenges for himself in an attempt to subvert some of the biggest tropes of epic fantasy.

I hope that in the next couple of years he either manages to reconcile his methodology with the demands of his story, or alternately embraces the idea that his methodology must change. Perhaps there is no point trying to keep the magic elements contained or mysterious any longer. Perhaps the only way to get to A Dream of Spring is to let them take center stage and become familiar.

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Also, let me know what you think.

Does it sound plausible that Martin’s approach to magic is clashing with the demands of his storytelling? Do the White Walkers have to be demystified for the story to remain true to itself? Or will Martin indeed pursue a conventional fantasy resolution to the Others in the books, much as the television series did?

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