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This Game of Thrones Theory May Explain How the White Walkers Control the Army of the Dead

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Updated: | Originally published: ;

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones.

Jon Snow and company may have discovered that killing a White Walker also takes out every wight that it reanimated during their trek beyond the Wall, but the manner in which the Night King and his lieutenants control the army of the dead remains a mystery.

Once reanimated, the wights appear to be completely subject to the will of the Walkers. In fact, they seem to be transformed into killing machines with no thoughts of their own. However, humans who are resurrected by the Lord of Light — such as Jon and Beric Dondarrion — are relatively the same people they were before they died. So what’s the difference?

Luckily, Reddit user snowcappedmountain recently laid out a theory that may explain the contrast. Rather than actually restoring the life force of the dead, the Redditor speculates that Walkers simply “warg” into the minds of corpses in order to control their actions.

I believe that the White Walkers are basically all wargs, and that they control the army of the dead by warging into them. The [White Walkers] can do a special variation of warging that living wargs cannot due to them being ‘undead’ (I believe that [White Walkers] are at death’s threshold and are neither living nor dead). I think that because they are more on the dead side, it also disallows them to use their ability on living creatures (and living wargs could not go into the dead for the same reason). When a [White Walker] ‘raises’ the dead, they are not really resurrecting them. They are, in fact, only inhabiting their bodies. This would explain why wights still decompose, while truly resurrected characters like Jon and Beric do not, and still require normal living conditions after their resurrection. The Suicide Squad has noticed that once you kill a [White Walker], then their wights die out. And this makes sense as the [White Walkers’] minds are the only thing keeping wights going (kill a [White Walker], sever its link to the wights).

[White Walkers] must be very powerful wargs to be able to control legions of wights at a time. And it is something that we have seen done before. Bran has been able to warg into a group (murder?) of crows at the same time. The savageness or mindless aspect of the wights could be attributed to the [White Walkers] only needing for basic motor functions to be controlled (their purpose is to fight and kill after all).

The ability to stay conscious or active while warging appears to be an advance skill that they possess, but one that is not unique to them. Bran has been able to achieve this as well, when he warged into Hodor during the [White Walker] attack on the Cave of the Three-Eyed Raven, while remaining conscious in his vision. More powerful wargs would therefore be able to divide their minds into multiple hosts while remaining ‘awake.’

The Redditor went on to posit that the Night King may also possess the same greenseeing abilities that Bran does, which would explain why his army always seems to be in the right place at the right time.

I also believe that the Night King is both a warg and a greenseer. Him being a greenseer would explain how he is able to perceive Bran when he is in his visions. The [Night King] having greensight could make it that he knew that the Suicide Squad was going to cross the Wall and that he knew that there would be a dragon coming. His marching towards the wall would simply be him fulfilling one of his visions (also explains why he randomly has chains with him).

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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com