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As the entire Night's Watch prepared for the big battle in S04E09, they seemed to have prepared quite well. Given that Gilly was aware of the wildlings south of the wall (as was everyone else since news of the wildling attack / takeover came through even before Gilly returned), how is it possible that they were caught off-guard when the wildlings attacked?

It seemed like everyone was quite surprised by the attack "from the inside". It was well known they had climbed and crossed the wall since Jon was part of that. So, why the big surprise?

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  • Some people really just downvote because they are bored, for no proper reason whatsoever. Tons of legitimate questions on here, just like mine.
    – SquareCat
    Apr 24, 2021 at 22:49
  • I edited your question to be less wordy and more to the point. If I had to guess I'd say you got the downvote for being either unclear in your question and/or too opinionated throughout and not coming off as objective. Just a guess though..!
    – Charles
    Apr 27, 2021 at 1:54

1 Answer 1

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They weren't, I'm not sure where do you take that they were surprised by the attack from the south.

Before the battle begins we see them reinforcing the southern door and they are also aware that the force attacking from the south is much smaller (Sam mentions to Pip before the battle that the attacking force from the south is much smaller so they are lucky to be manning the southern wall instead while trying to calm him).

The only face of "surprise" comes from Allister Thorne when Janos Slynt shouts to him "they are attacking the southern gate" right before the attack from the north starts and his response isn't a "what?" like if he was surprised that they weren't expecting the attack at all, but a "now?" because he was surprised that the southern attack began before the northern attack. They were probably expecting the southern attack to begin after the northern attack begins so that Allister was up in the wall while it started for troop morale reasons and then going down before the southern attack begins so that he could be present there for troop morale reasons too (we even see he had a small speech ready for the brothers at the bottom before the melee starts).

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