Season 8, Episode 3, ‘The Long Night’

“Game of Thrones” has several outstanding battles under its belt, and the director Miguel Sapochnik delivered some of the best, with “Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards.” But even with that impressive track record, I was a little afraid that Sunday night’s enormous (and enormously hyped) Battle of Winterfell might finally be the clash that was too epic for its own good, in terms of stakes (life vs. death), personnel (everyone we like) and length (the episode clocked in at 1:22).

Would we finally, in the grandest episode the show has ever attempted, get a fight that was just too large to render in a way that would both do justice to the conflict and also land with sufficient emotional impact?

Not today.

Sunday’s final clash was a masterpiece of tension and release, goose bumps and heartbreak, grandiosity and intimacy. It deftly mixed genres (horror, action, melodrama), shots and planes of action as it shifted from the chaos of the fighting in and around Winterfell, to the claustrophobic terror of the crypts, to the dragon dogfighting in the winter sky.

[Read our ultimate guide to “Game of Thrones.”]

Since C.G.I. became Hollywood’s default mode for depicting combat, onscreen battles have become progressively bigger, longer, more elaborate and, consequently, ever more fatiguing. Think of the hectic, numbing, city-destroying sequences that end every superhero movie. (I haven’t seen the new “Avengers,” so apologies to the Russo brothers if it managed to eschew that particular cliché.)