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r/asoiaf•
NothingWhenILived

(Spoilers Extended) Questions about The Others still unanswered by the show

EXTENDED

So we know where they came from and what they wanted. They were created by the children of the forest as a weapon against humans but they got out of control (fair enough) and they just wanted to kill everyone (really?).

But what we don't know is

  1. How were they defeated the first time? Especially seeing as they didn't do that by killing the Night King, and
  2. Why did they come back now? What's different this time?

A lot of stuff goes into this, where did Coldhands come from, what's up with the magic of the wall, what's the connection to dragons and the "awakening" of magic, etc. But these are the main two questions that the show did not adress at all.

I guess the best thing to come out of this season is that I'm a lot more excited to read TWOW again.

EDIT: Spelling

Posted May 29, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC · edited

3734
Ni_Go_Zero_Ichi•

Questions about the Others still unanswered by the show: all of them.

71
EveryFckngChicken•

This, unfortunately.

7
made-a-new-account•

We don’t know ANYTHING except Bran had to die

6
Shalaiyn•

He is like, the, Encyclopaedia Westerosica, after all.

5
ButtFart88•

NK doesn’t let his students source Branpedia CONFIRMED

2
Lurid-Jester•

Technically this doesn’t answer any questions either. The arguably show-only creation wanted Bran to die.

Any book analog to the NK may just want to be besties and share a better design for a wheel chair.

1
made-a-new-account•

Your comment JUST made me realize the Night King isn’t real... Fuck.. I’m sad. I hope the others have a leader(some probably don’t), but damn he was my favorite character in the show.

2
Lurid-Jester•

I hope they do too.

I also hope that they all don’t turn to piles of ice when someone kills that leader.

1
Lurid-Jester•

Yup. We know Jack shit about the Others beyond sparse physical descriptions and Old Nan’s tales.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

33
RaventreeThe maddest of them all•

But people have always been beyond the wall since the very beginning. Ygritte says as much, and you can also look to the 13th LC of the Nights Watch having to fight the King Beyond the Wall Joramun. For that there must have been tons of wildlings there just shortly after the Wall went up. I don't see why the WW would then just wait so much longer to get rid of everyone.

12
Fizzay•

Yeah, books portray them as a race of sentient creatures with a sort of beauty to them, show has them look like ugly monsters who are just a hivemind driven by instinct.

9
moving808sGet Hyperyuken!•

Could dragons have something to do with the truce? What’s the correlation between the truce and the time the dragons all died?

3
Ruin_In_The_Dark•

The war for the dawn ended in the age of hero's some time around 10,000 Before Conquest. The last dragon died 153 years after Aegons Conquest. The Others kill Weymar around 298 AC.

4
Lurid-Jester•

100%

The show runners faith in their viewership was so low they thought people would get confused by “The Others” and characters with similar names.

All they ended up doing was replacing one confusion with another.

White Walkers raising the dead as wights becomes

“Dem white walkers and deir army of whites!”

Or occasionally “Wight Walkers because they’re walking their pet wights”, though this one is effectively a unicorn.

1
StormHazel16136•

One theory I heard (been a while since I read the books so this may not be completely accurate) that part of the agreement men and the Others had was that the Others would be provided with male babies so they wouldn't die out as a race, and that over time, Craster became the only one left to honour this agreement. But Craster's dead now...so the Others may not be too happy about that if this theory is true.

1
thebsoftelevisionThe runt of the seven kingdoms•

How where they defeated the first time? Especially seeing as they didn't do that by killing the Night King

Tune into the next episode of Dragon Ball the upcoming prequel to find out!

Why did they come back now? What's different this time?

Plot, or as Weiss put it "Figure it out for yourself, not gonna say"

But seriously i don't think the showrunners know the answers to any of this, perhaps because Martin didn't tell them. Now that could be because Martin hasn't completely figured out what he wants the Others to be, either. Or maybe it doesn't matter why they came back now, they just did so they must be dealt with(not really Martin's style though).

14
RedditOfUnusualSize•

Perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I'm almost certain that Martin did tell them, and they just ignored it and did something dumber and simpler because they were convinced that the audience would never get what Martin was going for.

The Night King providing the face of the white walkers? With the auto-destruct button built into the white walkers? That's Borg Queen Mk. II, and lest anyone forget, the Borg Queen was also a direct consequence of producers meddling in the creative process, because they were convinced that a mass audience would never understand the Borg Collective.

6
thebsoftelevisionThe runt of the seven kingdoms•

Possible, they might have thought Martin's idea was too cuckoo. But then again, they made Bran king because Martin told them too

3
PratalMoxSer Not Appearing In This Film•

My theory, which is still kinda possible with what the show gave us, is that the Others hate the Children above all. They were taken by the Children, turned into monsters, and made to fight the Children's war.

So, they slaughtered the Children. But they're still shackled to their will, bound by magic to carry out their commands. The Others are bound by the last command of the Children, kill all the humans. A compulsion, nested in their minds, driving them to kill. I doubt they object to this for moral reason, I doubt they have any love or hatred for humanity, they probably think we're beneath them, but I think their objection is more that, even thousands of years later they are still bound to the will of their masters.

Breaking this magic would be their primary goal. Their target would be the remaining Children and the Last Greenseer. Kill them, and the spell might be broken. Or maybe by killing the Last Greenseer, the Others will claim the world's memory, and with it, a means of breaking their curse.

I don't think the Others being free would be a super great thing for humanity, like I said, they probably don't really care about us and are willing to commit wholesale slaughter if they believe that will further their own goals. That's if the curse even can be broken, maybe the Others are chasing an unobtainable goal.

As an additional bit of tinfoil, I don't think the Others are just transformed Humans. I think the Others existed in some form before the Children, as spirits of Ice, largely separate from the physical world. The Children just used Human bodies as vessels to manifest and chain these spirits.

12
mickeywayne•

They basically just said a big fuck you to all magical underpinning, except the fact dragons existed and Melisandre was a necklace hacked old lady.

9
RaventreeThe maddest of them all•

It honestly raised more questions than it answered with the exception of their creation story. The most glaring issue is WHY on earth the COTF created the Night King to kill the Three Eyed Raven, who up to this point has been seen as some kind of mixture of leader, high priest, and possible avatar of their god(s).

7
aphidman•

I don't think that's the case. I think it's a case of their creations getting out of control and taking their purpose to kill man far and beyond the Children's original conception - to help defeat the First Men in their losing war against them.

4
RaventreeThe maddest of them all•

That's what Bran's actor has said: the Night King was programmed to kill the 3ER from the moment of his creation. Ergo that was (at least part of) the reason for his creation. He could simply be wrong, but I don't see why that would be the case. Might be the 3ER had decided to allow leniency for mankind and Leaf's crew didn't want to, so they tried to kill him as well only to repent when the NK turned on them all.

3
aphidman•

Well, I dunno, the Children of the Forest explained so much in Season 6 did they not?

1
RaventreeThe maddest of them all•

Leaf says to Bran that they created the NK/White Walkers because they were being slaughtered and the heart trees cut down, and that this was committed by "men". Ok, we knew this much - the First Men were fighting the COTF when they came over and destroyed a lot of heart tree weirwoods.

Then after the Long Night episode Bran's actor says actually the Night King was programmed to come for his (3ER's) head from the moment of his creation.

Why the hell would they create the Night King to target the being that we have thus far considered their leader, high priest or avatar of god? Its like if the USA during WWII just dropped a nuke on Washington DC instead of Hiroshima.

Either IHW is wrong/misinformed or there's something we don't know about the 3ER that caused them to do this.

3
LeaveOnYourLight•

They purposefully omitted the answers to questions about The Others so they could save it for/get people to watch the forthcoming prequel.

3
FrAx88•

We don't know so much, or better anything at all (considering that the motivation that the show give us was clearly fake).

Furthermore, until recently I had always thought that the first long night had ended as you say with a pact, and without an effective defeat of the NK (or of strangers in general). But, and I repeat, we have always considered the others to be the main danger, when in reality in a perspective closer to reality, they are only a very powerful tool, but a tool. So nothing prevents that during the first long night they managed to defeat them, and then the children of the forest / 3ER recreated them for purposes that still elude us (but which, with the confirmation that Bran will also be king in the books, seem obvious to me this point). I mean, if today I went to destroy all the nuclear bombs in the world, but left intact the programs to rebuild them, the people able to do it, the necessary materials, could we say that the threat actually disappeared? I do not think so

1
SLY_STAR•

What's been bugging me is why they were taking infant boys. They even showed this in the TV series. In the TV series, the Night King (if I recall correctly) personally converted one of Craster's boys into an Other.

I get that this is how they ostensibly create more White Walkers. But does the infant have to grow up then? And why only boys? Why don't they just convert a fully grown adult who is immediately ready to fight? Or is there more to this?

I'm guessing that the Others can't reproduce. So they were happy to let Craster live and be a baby factory so they could have a steady supply of infant conversions. But still... what is that all about? It's not like the TV series completely ignored this. They fully showed the sacrifices made and even showed the conversion of an infant.

There's so much mystery here and I'm sort of glad the TV series ignored most of it and instead just turned them into "the Walking Dead" style mindless zombies so they couldn't spoil/muck up the backstory of the Others.

1
ndtp124•

The books haven't given us a lot on them either. Since hardhome happens off screen it's not clear just how much of a threat they are.

1