The stage has been set for Game of Thrones’ final season, as a terribly divided Westeros faces an invasion by the White Walkers… but this won’t be the first time they’ve tried to eradicate humanity. Here’s everything we know about the first war between humans and the Walkers—and what it can tell us about the war to come next season.
Westeros Before the Long Night
It’s been over 8,000 years since the White Walkers stalked Westeros—thousands of years before Aegon Targaryen landed on its shores and claimed the region for his family. The Westeros we see in Game of Thrones was much different from the one that faced the Long Night all those years ago—a land where magic and strange creatures still existed in abundance. The White Walkers came to a Westeros that had spent the last two millennia in relative peace after the Children of the Forest and the First Men who’d landed in the region signed an agreement called the Pact, which saw the two societies live in harmony after the First Men’s arrival had led to the forests of the Children being cut down for wood. But the arrival of a long winter, one that spanned generations of Children and men alike, heralded a threat that nearly wiped both races out altogether.
In the books, the origins of the Others—the collective name for the wights and their undead armies, which could include everything from zombie humans to giant frost spiders—in the northernmost point of the land are still unknown. They could just be a natural entity found in the far frozen north, rarely encountered over the years because of the impossible hostile climate they live in, or they could be a tribe of First Men killed and resurrected by dark magics for some mysterious reason. Either way, the long winter—eventually referred to as the Long Night—allowed them to march further south into the lands occupied by the Children and the First Men, sacking their villages and turning the survivors into wights like themselves.
The Last Hero
When the Others first invaded the south, the Children and the First Men were outmatched by a relentless army that couldn’t die, but only grew stronger with every person they killed, and both societies were pushed further and further into the south of Westeros. Legends from the northern regions of current Westeros state that in the darkest days of the Long Night, the First Men discovered that wights could be killed by dragonglass, the weapon of choice coveted by the Children of the Forest. A figure known only as the Last Hero supposedly trekked through the White Walker-occupied regions to plead with the Children to lend their dragonglass weapons to beat back the Others, with all of his companions—down to his faithful dog—perishing over the course of the journey, until he reached the Children and gained their trust.
With the ability to fight back against the White Walkers, the alliance between the First Men and the Children pushed back the Others bit by bit. A group of men used the shared dragonglass to fight back against the Others alongside the Last Hero, becoming an early incarnation of the Night’s Watch. Eventually, the White Walker horde…
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