The climax of the Night King’s storyline from Game of Thrones was, like much of the rest of the conclusion of the show, not well received, but a few small changes could have saved his ending. After several seasons of hype, the Night King and his army came and went from Westeros with the audience learning little about who he was, what he wanted, or why he wanted it. The reasons why a villain with so much potential failed to live up to expectation has been explored time and again. Less investigated is what could have been. The elements were there in the story for the Night King to be the big bad that audiences wanted, and if showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had dug just a little deeper, these small changes could’ve made all the difference.
Throughout Game of Thrones, the Night King was portrayed less as a character and more as a force of nature. This was an intimidating place for the evil King to start but leaves little opportunity for growth. There is no reason the Night King could not have evolved into a more realized, emotional villain. The groundwork was laid down by the writers of the show in earlier seasons; all that was needed was to explore those ideas.
The Night King’s backstory was shrouded in mystery for much of the series until his origins came to light in the Game of Thrones season 6 episode "The Door." Through one of Bran’s visions, the audience learns that the Night King was once an ordinary man who was transformed into the horrible champion of the undead by the Children of the Forest. It is from this origin story that the Night King’s motivation and end goal could have been fully realized.
Why the Night King Wanted Bran Stark
The Night King appears to be singularly after Bran Stark from the moment Bran encounters him in one of his visions, but little is done to explain why. What Game of Thrones should have explored was that the Night King realized that Bran’s ability to not only see through time but interact with the past could have been used as a terrible weapon. The Night King’s goal had been to bring a long night that would swallow all the world, but with Bran Stark's power under his control, he could have brought about a long night that would have swallowed all of time.
It would not have taken much to add this storyline into Game of Thrones. The Battle of Winterfell could have ended with the Night King losing much of his force (including Jon slaying the Wight Dragon) but successfully kidnapping Bran and heading south. It is on this journey to the Aisle of Faces - the location of the original ceremony that transformed the Night King - that the Night King could have revealed his plan to Bran. Making the Night King a speaking character here would have gone a long way to making him more relatable and menacing. The need to rescue Bran and have a final showdown with the Night King also would have created an opportunity to further isolate Daenerys from Jon. If Jon, Arya, and the other Starks would have had to separate from Dany to fight the Night King while she continued to King’s Landing alone, this could have helped with the plausibility of her sudden descent into madness.
Not much else than that would have needed to change. Arya could still have delivered the killing blow to the Night King, and arriving late to the sacking of King’s Landing, Jon could still have seen that Dany needed to be stopped. In addition, the audience’s better understanding of the immense power Bran wielded would have made his ascent to the Iron Throne more palatable by Game of Thrones' end. In the end, these small changes could have gone a long way to make the Night King a more complete character. It's a missed opportunity made all the more frustrating by the fact that the groundwork for it was already there.