WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 8 of Game of Thrones.

After two episodes of buildup at the start of Game of Thrones eighth and final season, the White Walkers and their Army of Dead have finally arrived at Winterfell, and the battle is joined between the living and the undead in earnest. As anticipated, the epic Battle of Winterfell is the most ambitious one in the series to date, taking up the vast majority of the episode. Several surprising characters meeting their untimely end by the conclusion of the episode.

Jorah Mormont leads the Dothraki into a mass cavalry charge at the unseen enemy, only to be utterly annihilated as the White Walkers summon a blizzard to strike the castle. Following the obliteration of their cavalry, the defenders are hit by a wall of undead warriors resulting in heavy losses from the outset as many characters that have been present in the fantasy series since its first season are killed in defense of Winterfell.

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The first named character seen dying on-screen is Dolorous Edd, a loyal member of the Night's Watch who is stabbed to death trying to rally Samwell Tarly as they hold the line just outside the castle walls. Overwhelmed, the decimated defenders regroup and retreat to within Winterfell to continue the fight. The walls are soon breached, with Lyanna Mormont sacrificing herself to kill an undead giant as it lays waste to the castle courtyard. As the undead overrun the halls of Winterfell, Arya Stark is nearly ambushed only to be saved by Beric Dondarrion who is mortally wounded saving her life.

As the White Walkers make their way into the castle itself, predictions that the Night King would raise the dead within the castle crypts prove true as dead interred in the catacombs burst from their tombs. While chaos spreads under the castle, Theon Greyjoy makes good on his promise to defend Bran Stark to his final breath in the Godswood. Assured by Bran that he is in fact a good man after his betrayal of the Starks at the beginning of the series, Theon redeems himself by charging the Night King and stabbed with his own spear.

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Easily the most surprising death of the Battle of Winterfell is that of the Night King himself. As the leader of the White Walkers prepares to personally execute Bran, Arya makes her grand reentry into the battle, leading from the treetops to stab the Night King in the heart with a Valryian steel blade in the heart. Stabbed with the very metal that the Children of the Forest had used to create him at the Godswood centuries ago, the Night King instantly bursts into ice shards along with his fellow White Walkers while the Army of the Dead and undead dragon Viserion falls, never to rise again.

While victory in the face of overwhelming odds of defeat has been secured as the sun rises on a new day over the battered castle, two more characters succumb to their final fates. Jorah, who had ended the battle mortally wounded by Daenerys' side, enduring lethal wounds from several wight warriors, passes away by his distraught Khaleesi. And Melisandre, who had predicted her own death before dawn, walks alone across the battlefield removing her amulet to show her true form as an old woman before dying herself.

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The Battle of Winterfell has come and gone and, while most of the main cast has survived to inevitably fight another day, many characters have paid for this bloody victory with their lives. And while the undead threat may have been quashed, Cersei Lannister has assembled an army more than capable of finishing off the weakened defenders as Game of Thrones moves to its final stretch of episodes.

Airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO, Game of Thrones stars Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister, Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark, Maisie Williams as Arya Stark and Kit Harington as Jon Snow.