Winter’s coming on Game of Thrones and the White Walkers are looking for some cool new real estate. Maybe something not quite as cold as Westerosi winters get, a fixer upper to kick their feet up. Just south, they will find an iron chair that might fit. It won’t keep them warm but they might be entitled to it. It’s not a comfy chair by any stretch of the imagination, but it affords a great view and comes with fringe benefits. When you’re living on the fringe, any benefit helps.

Much has been said about the zombification of American entertainment. AMC’s The Walking Dead and the movies Shaun of the Dead and Zombielandtriggered a virus that wrought an entertainment zombie apocalypse, which now threatens to devour screens big and small. Good. For critics who say there are too many zombies in the movies and on TV, I say we need more zombies.

I like the White Walkers. They walk the walk without saying a word. I think the lure of the White Walkers, the little teasers the writers of Thrones throws at us, keeps me in there as much as the acting, nudity, and humor. I got some slack for cheering on the Red Wedding and I know I’m on record as rooting for the villain, the bad guy, the monster, but this isn’t the same as rooting for the zombies on The Walking Dead, the shark in Jaws, or the boogie down Bogie Men in March of the Wooden Soldiers, even though I do. I root for them because there is a mystery to those monsters. What does go on behind the gnarled faces and blood spittle lips? I never bought the whole thing in Bride of Frankenstein when the Creature says “we belong dead” and pulls the handy dandy self-destruct lever like that’s his predetermined end. Why? What did Frankenstein’s monster really do that he deserved to fry for? Who was he, Lepke? And King Kong. If you didn’t cry when that monkey died, if you saw it when you were a kid and your eyes stayed dry, there’s something wrong with you. Khal Drogo cried when King Kong died. Or was it Hitler who cried over the big ape? Either way you have to be a monster not to love the monster.

Are the White Walkers evil, really? What do we know about them? How do they treat their pets? Do they eat their pig’s feet one toe, I mean cloven hoof, at a time? White Walkers have been around forever and for all we know, they wrote the very first song. The First People talked about The White Walkers, behind their backs, in snarky terms and the White Walkers laid waste to the First People. Maybe the White Walkers had a point? Maybe the First People were assholes. They called themselves the First People for a kickoff. They must have been insufferable at parties. Their collective first noses up in the air, blowing first snot into second peoples’ eye brows, freezing, turning them white. I’m just saying: we don’t know much about the Walkers except for a mythology that predates dates.