‘Game of Thrones’ season 8 recap – Episode 3: ‘The Long Night’

Winter is here: The final season of “Game of Thrones” is one of the most highly anticipated television events of the last decade. Follow our columnists as they explore students’ weekly reactions as an iconic era of pop culture comes to an end. Beware, spoilers lie ahead.

Game of Thrones’ longest, most expensive episode yet pulls out all the stops to deliver a battle fans will never forget.

The armies gathered at Winterfell are in for a long night, and this week’s episode makes great use of timing, stretching moments to build on the tension of battle.

While Winterfell’s army stands in darkness, prepared for battle, the Red Witch, Melisandre (Carice van Houten), returns and chants a spell to light the Dothraki’s swords on fire. The flaming swords quickly become the only things visible on screen as Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) leads the Dothraki on the first charge against the White Walkers. The Walkers completely overwhelm them, with swords extinguishing until the screen returned to the dark black of night. The entire battle, taking place throughout the night, is dominated by intense shots of fire and darkness. But the grim setting isn’t overwhelming, as the cinematography feels well-thought-out.

Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Jon (Kit Harington) join the battle atop her dragons to help the overwhelmed armies of Winterfell, abandoning their plan to hide nearby. Dragons haven’t failed the queen before, so it’s shocking here when the creatures only slows the army of Walkers. The battle was never going to be easy, but it’s clear early on that Winterfell has a difficult path to victory.

Over the army of the dead, a massive storm blows in, filling the sky with a white haze that combines with roaring flames to give the episode some much needed respite from darkness.

The change in setting provides the perfect light to watch Sam (John Bradley) hesitate on the battlefield and watch Edd (Ben Crompton) die as a result. Heroically, the Unsullied defend the retreat as long as they can. Inside, an anxious Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) chooses to return to the battlefield, escorting Melisandre to light the trenches. She struggles, but ignites the area moments before Walkers make it through – this will not be the episode’s last close call. Things happening at the last possible second is a theme in this episode, and anxiety runs high early on.

Seconds later, the Walkers manage to snuff out the trenches and quickly infiltrate Winterfell. Inside the castle, Arya (Maisie Williams) uses her new double-sided spear to cut through Walkers left and right. Arya dispatches Walkers more quickly than anyone else thus far, and it’s clear that she is one of the strongest fighters on the battlefield. Most importantly, she’s not just fighting to survive – she seems to be on a larger mission.

As Jon tries to attack the Night King, his foe predictably raises Winterfell’s dead, both from the army and those buried in the crypt, before walking away. Everyone but Jon saw this moment coming – last episode’s emphasis on the crypt’s safety made it clear this wasn’t true. The twist was expected, but its timing wasn’t.

Finally, the Walkers come for Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright). Theon (Alfie Allen) protects him, even charging at the Night King in a last-ditch effort but is killed instantly. This death was fitting, and one of the most predictable given the redemption arc he has been on this season, beginning with the rescue of his sister. Theon could only atone for his greatest mistakes by giving his all for Bran, whom he once betrayed. Bran forgives him before this fight even begins, and this exchange only heightens the scene’s emotional payoff.

The Night King walks over to Bran and begins to draw his sword. For the first moment in the episode, there is no foreseeable victory for Winterfell and the living. But a scream pierces the silence – it’s Arya, running at the Night King with her Valyrian steel dagger. In a crushing instant, he catches her in midair, choking her and grabbing her arm. With a practiced intensity, Arya drops the dagger, catches it with her other hand and stabs him – the same move she used against Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) last season. The callback provides some fun and manages to avoid being predictable. The Night King shatters and, all around Winterfell, the army of the dead dies with him.

Natalie Dybeck, a fourth-year communication student, thought the episode and its story were great, but the ending surprised her.

“It felt very sudden. Winter has been coming this whole time, and suddenly, they ended it,” Dybeck said. “I thought it was kind of cool how the show has been preparing Arya for this since the beginning.”

Matthew Schulze, a fourth-year chemical engineering student, hopes further episodes will explore the Night King’s motivations.

“I hope they explain somewhat who the Night King is and and why and how he was doing what he did,” Shulze said. “I would assume the dragons are going to destroy the fleet to start. Probably one of the dragons will die because (Cersei has) those ballistic crossbows that are going to try and shoot them down. I think Cersei is going to get deposed.”

This was the episode’s most shocking moment. Considering that there are still three episodes remaining and one of the show’s central conflicts has seemingly been resolved, it’s clear the creators don’t plan on withholding the satisfaction that viewers have long awaited. Granted, this creative choice will give the show time to truly explore the battle against Cersei for the throne. But nonetheless, it surprised viewers, perhaps not in good ways.

A quick resolution also limits the episodes’ emotional payoff. Had Winterfell’s army been forced to retreat further South, the later victory would truly have felt like getting payback for the dead, including Jorah and Melisandre, who die in the episode’s final moments. But since the entire conflict is wrapped up in one battle, it also allows for the writers to make every moment significant. Overall, the choice was successful. It was completely unexpected and simultaneously delivered a satisfying conclusion.

Given that the Night King seemed to have no true motivation beyond simply killing all humans, it makes sense the show would end this conflict early to focus on its more human storytelling elements.

UCLA men’s soccer hires Ryan Jorden as program’s next head coach

The Bruins have found their replacement.

UCLA men’s soccer has hired Ryan Jorden to be the program’s next coach, Athletic Director Dan Guerrero announced Monday afternoon. Jorden spent the last five seasons with Pacific, taking it to the NCAA tournament in each of the last three years.

“Ryan Jorden’s time has come,” Guerrero said. “He brings with him to Westwood the knowledge of what it takes to establish a consistent winning culture and a great respect for the UCLA soccer brand.”

Jorden’s hiring comes just over a month after former coach Jorge Salcedo’s resignation from the program March 21 amid the nationwide athletics admissions scandal.

[Related: UCLA Athletics announces resignation of men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo]

Jorden was hired to lead Pacific in its first season back in Division I since 1986. Pacific finished a combined 4-30-1 in 2014 and 2015 – Jorden’s first two seasons in Stockton, California – but improved to 38-13-6 from 2016 to 2018.

Pacific finished with identical 13-4-2 records in 2016 and 2017, losing to Stanford in the second round of the NCAA tournament in both seasons.

While with Pacific, Jorden also coached defender Tristan Blackmon and midfielder Camden Riley, who were taken in the 2018 and 2019 MLS SuperDrafts, respectively.

Jorden started his coaching career as an assistant coach at Oregon State before spending seven seasons at his alma mater, Westmont. He took his first head coaching job at Cal Baptist, leading the Lancers to the postseason in each of his five years with the team.

Cal Baptist won back-to-back National Christian College Athletic Association championships under Jorden, and the coach also won the NCCAA Coach of the Year award in both of those seasons.

Guerrero added that Jorden’s high level of technical sports science knowledge made him an attractive candidate for the position with UCLA. Jorden completed his master’s degree at Oregon State in 2000 before earning a doctorate in sport and exercise science with an emphasis in biomechanics from Northern Colorado in 2010.

UCLA has not won a national championship since 2002, despite reeling in multiple top-ranked recruiting classes during Salcedo’s tenure.

“I am truly passionate about the student-athlete experience and look forward to bringing this commitment to UCLA,” Jorden said. “The tradition and history of success at UCLA is unparalleled, and I am thrilled to get started in Westwood.”

Organization to make news app with bias rating system, offer different perspectives

Current and former UCLA students are developing a mobile news platform focused on informing readers about the possible bias in news.

MDL GRND is an organization that aims to keep millennials informed on current events while presenting news from all sides of the political spectrum. The platform will feature articles from various news organizations of different political leanings.

Selim Baysal, a co-founder of MDL GRND and a UCLA alumnus, said he and the other MDL GRND founders were inspired to start the organization in December 2017 because they felt biased reporting was politically dividing the country.

“The idea is we want to get people informed, and not only on perspectives that they already know but different perspectives,” Baysal said. “We want to give you unbiased news.”

Baysal said the idea for MDL GRND spurred from a 2017 campus event, when Steve Forbes, the chairman and editor in chief of Forbes magazine and a supporter of President Donald Trump, gave a speech at UCLA. Baysal said the turnout at the event made him realize the conservative community at UCLA was much larger than he originally thought. He said he thinks it is important to hear their perspectives as well.

“I was shocked to see so many (Make America Great Again) hats because I didn’t know there were that many conservatives at UCLA,” Baysal said. “I became aware of how our culture has allowed echo chambers to exist and be blind to the fact that other people exist.”

MDL GRND is currently developing an objectivity rating system, in which a computer algorithm assigns authors a bias score based on readers’ votes on the bias of a particular article. App users are also assigned a score based on their voting behavior and how other users assess the bias of their comments, Baysal said.

Doruk Karinca, a co-founder of MDL GRND and a fourth-year computer science and engineering student, said features like the bias rating system will assist the organization in its efforts to give users information from different perspectives.

“We will use these two major tools to establish a middle ground and battle bias,” Karinca said. “We will bring both sides together to have healthy and constructive arguments.”

Bhargavi Bhatt, a MDL GRND team member and third-year economics student, said she believes MDL GRND is the first organization of its kind.

“We have done research on different research sites and we haven’t really found anything like our platform,” Bhatt said. “We aim to gather views from different perspectives and readers can make decisions themselves, which gives them an outlet from biased news.”

In addition to political news, MDL GRND will cover science and technology, society and culture and world news.

Bhatt said the company wants to keep millennials up-to-date on current issues that affect their generation.

“What drives me every day is just hope for our generation. There is a lot of mistrust and doubt with a lot of media today,” Bhatt said. “What we consider is lacking in today’s media climate, we are trying to alleviate and create in our own application.”

Baysal said in the future, MDL GRND hopes to take its efforts beyond its news application by hosting events on college campuses and facilitating in-person dialogue about the importance of being open to different perspectives.

“We want to create and open people’s minds outside of the digital realm,” Baysal said.

Karinca said although he believes completely unbiased news may not be realistic, MDL GRND hopes it will encourage users to not take news at face value and instead dig deeper to uncover biases in articles.

“There is no way to have zero bias,” Karinca said. “The measure of our success would be users having the ability to see bias through the tools provided by MDL GRND and ultimately see what’s behind the curtain.”

On-campus organization documents, shares experiences of international students

Andrea Ng received a message from a girl she hadn’t spoken to since middle school after a student group shared Ng’s experience of having to develop a Californian accent when she first moved to the United States.

“She talked about how she has literally almost the exact same experience (as me), but in Australia,” said Ng, a fourth-year psychology student.

Ng’s story was featured by Second Impressions at UCLA, a student group that showcases the lives of international students through interviews and photographs posted on its Facebook page. It was founded in 2017 by Pallavi Samodia, an alumna who graduated in 2018.

Samodia said she was inspired to start a chapter of Second Impressions at UCLA after hearing about its work at college campuses nationwide.

Samodia said she liked how the style of Second Impressions resembles that of “Humans of New York,” a project that showcases the experiences of everyday New York residents but has since branched out across the world. She added she wanted to use that style to help domestic students understand the challenges international students face as well as to show international students they are not alone in their struggles.

“With ‘Humans of New York,’ I often feel like when you see the picture, you often think, ‘Look at these people, look at their clothes, they’re probably from a very good family and everything,’” Samodia said. “But when you read the story that went along with it you go, ‘Wow, I would never think that this person went through this kind of shit.’”

Samodia, who moved from India to attend UCLA, said she wished she had known when she first started college that other international students were also affected by issues such as homesickness and adjusting to a new culture.

“The thing about homesickness – people you want to call the most who can share your struggles, you cannot. And so with more and more people during this interview process, I was like, ‘I wish I would have known all these people before,’” she said. “I wish I would have met them and realized, ‘Okay, someone else was feeling the same way as I did.’”

Gwyneth Sue Ern Teo, the director of Second Impressions and a fourth-year business economics student, said the group looks for international students to feature by letting students fill out a Google form on the group’s Facebook page.

Teo said the group then interviews the students and lets them tell any stories they want to share.

Peggy Wong, an editor and board member at Second Impressions and a fourth-year communication student, said every person the team meets has a different story, and she tries to showcase parts of their lives that most UCLA students may not be familiar with.

“It’s more than about just the international students (while they’re) at UCLA,” she said. “We ask a lot about what’s going on in the country. … It’s more in-depth questions.”

After the interview, the student meets with one of Second Impressions’ photographers for a picture and then approves the final draft so the student can ensure they have not accidentally shared any sensitive information, Teo said.

Teo said Second Impressions then posts the completed profile on its Facebook page. She said the whole process usually takes about one to two weeks.

Ng said being contacted by her friend after so long made her realize her experiences were more universal than she had originally thought.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not alone. The people that I know, personally, are also affected by this problem, or have similar experiences than I do,’” she said. “I think that’s very important.”

Wong said she thinks Second Impressions provides a platform for readers to make personal connections with international students.

“That’s why we’re called Second Impressions,” Wong said. “There are a lot of us, so we just pass by each other, and we usually just have that … one first impression of international students. (This organization) gives us a way to provide a different perspective.”

Ng said she thinks Second Impressions can combat stereotypes domestic students may have about international students.

“(People) don’t really ask really about your experiences, and things you’ve gone through here,” she said. “And if they don’t ask, a common perception is just that you’re, for lack of better word, like a cash cow for the university.”

Teo said the organization plans to open an exhibition in Kerckhoff Hall to display some of its profiles from May 5 to May 11. She added it is also working on building its own website.

Being part of Second Impressions has allowed her to appreciate UCLA’s diverse population, Teo said.

“You can get very caught up in a lot of the goals you want to achieve at UCLA personally … and not appreciate the beauty of the different perspectives people around you have to offer,” she said.

State senate bill revives possibility for abortion medication at public universities

The Ashe Center may offer students medical abortions starting January 2023 if a California senate bill passes.

Senate Bill 24 was introduced in December 2018 by Democratic State Sen. Connie Leyva, who represents District 20. It would require all University of California and California State University schools to provide students access to medical abortions at campus health facilities. The bill has passed through the California Senate Health Committee and the Education Committee.

Medical abortions are already covered by the UC Student Health Insurance Plan but are not currently offered at any UC campuses. Schools within the CSU system do not provide their students university-specific health insurance.

According to the UCLA Health website, medical abortions are performed in the first nine weeks of pregnancy. At UCLA medical centers, they involve the prescription of mifepristone, which blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone and causes the lining of the uterus to shed, and misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions, according to the website. UCLA Health describes the process as “safe and effective” and states there are no known long-term risks from the procedure.

Rachel Lee, a professor of English and gender studies and the director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, said medical abortions are more efficient and less invasive than surgical abortions.

“It is a difficult decision, and it should not be made harder by making it more stigmatizing through an artificial limit on the technologies that are available,” Lee said.

Sophia McMurry, co-director of the Bruin Consent Coalition and a third-year philosophy student, said although students can access medical abortions off campus at centers run by UCLA Health, the bill would still help students at other UC campuses that may not have off-campus medical centers nearby. She added it could also relieve some of the stress felt by students seeking abortions.

“Everyone knows where the (Ashe Center) is, they might know the nurses and the practitioners that are there,” she said. “So I think it’s more about creating an environment that’s really open and comforting and respectful.”

This is not the first time a bill like this has arrived in Sacramento. The first bill, Senate Bill 320, passed through both houses of the legislature in August but was vetoed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in September.

Students from campus organizations such as justCARE: Campus Action for Reproductive Equity, the Reproductive Health Interest Group and the Bruin Consent Coalition all said they have advocated for the passage of SB 24.

Ally Power, a graduate student in epidemiology and a member of the RHIG, said she has high hopes the current bill will become law because the previous bill, SB 320, was approved by the legislature in August. She added she was also hopeful because after Brown vetoed SB 320, then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle he would have signed it into law had he been governor.

Brown refused to sign the bill in September citing evidence UC and CSU students have access to abortion clinics within five to seven miles of their campuses.

A study published by UC San Francisco showed Californian students may have to travel around an hour to get off-campus medical abortion treatments, Power said. She added that time commitment could interfere with students’ academic performances, especially if they come from low-income backgrounds.

“It can require students to miss class or miss school,” she said. “It affects your academic success. It affects well-being … (and) if there’s not access to reliable transportation, or not a flexible work schedule, then it’s impeding their ability to access the care that they have decided they want.”

Lee said low-income students also might not have access to comprehensive information regarding sexual health and reproductive choice, and that SB 24 would help these students become more aware of the resources available to them by making abortions a more viable option on campus.

The UC has not taken a position on the bill, said UC spokesperson Sarah McBride.

McMurry said easy access to abortion services is necessary to allow women to exercise their constitutional rights.

“What it comes down to is, again, being able to exercise bodily autonomy,” she said. “Okay, it’s about getting to choose, ‘Yeah, what’s inside my body?’”

Power said she thinks a majority of Californians support SB 24. She added she thinks if students were more aware of the bill they would be more active in advocating for its passage.

She said she and members of other campus women’s health advocacy organizations hope to travel to Sacramento in June to lobby for the bill.

“Once someone has talked with their clinician and decided that this is something that they want to do, then, personally, I feel it should be available on campus for them to do that,” Power said.