Game of Thrones - Spoilers

[M1ke]

I have mixed feelings about it.

One of the things that I've always loved about GoT is that the story it's been telling has been different from the story of the "good guys" being put in peril and then pulling through with some last second heroics like we get from pretty much every other blockbuster out there. I walked into the episode not knowing if the "good guys" would be able to pull it off or not, and I was legitimately worried for them for the entire battle.

The final 3 episodes could have been the white walkers marching south to destroy Kings Landing after taking Winterfell and it would have been great television, and telling a different story than most TV/movies. Or that idea that someone posted about the Night's King going to King's Landing first, and the living winning the battle of winterfell that way.

And also, yeah, we're not going to get history on the Night's King now, which is disappointing. We'll probably never get an explanation for what the symbol he keeps leaving means. Or why he keeps giving John ominous looks across the battlefield rather than just killing him. Because now they he's dead, they have to deal with the Cersei problem after sustaining massive losses.

I really liked how I didn't know what was going to happen, so I was legitimately scared for everyone on the show. It was an emotional, exhausting episode, and I was literally in tears by the end of it. But I don't like how the final narrative was basically the same as every other blockbuster out there.

Stealing victory from the jaws of defeat has been done to death. I had hoped that Game of Thrones would do something different somehow. And it didn't really.

[marodi]

So the Big Bad is dead, yay! Evil with a capital E has left Westeros. There is no more need of a gigantic, magical Wall to protect the living. Yippee!

Doesn't that sound a bit wrong to you? When it comes to GoT, I'm in the habit of doubting everything.

Anyway, CNN has been posting reviews of every episode of this season and they are pretty good at pointing out the good, the bad and the what the fuck. Here's the link to last night's episode's review.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/enter...rnd/index.html

And only 5 characters death? That's a miracle! Unless... Where are Gilly and Little Sam?

[M1ke]

Yeah, there's lots of questions still to answer. This battle brought together a lot of characters who wouldn't associate with each other under most conditions.

What will Jamie do when Dany marches on King's Landing? Is Bronn actually going to try and kill Jamie or Tyrion? Who will sit on the Iron Throne when it's all done? How will Dany and Jon resolve the issues with Jon's parentage? Is Dany going to try and kill Bran and Sam for committing treason to try and deny Jon's parentage?

There's a lot of questions to answer, but honestly, after they killed the walkers I'm not sure if I care about the answers.

You just defeated the big bad to defend the living and now you're going to go back to killing the living? K, have fun with that.

I'm not going to stop watching, I'm just not feeling as excited about the last 3 episodes as I was at the start of the season. Hopefully there will be something coming that I'm missing that makes it more satisfying. Like you suggested, maybe the walkers aren't completely gone. Or maybe the children of the forest will make a new NK. I don't know, but I feel like if that's really the end of the white walkers that it's really disappointing. Especially with so many questions about them.

[Jinsai]

So the Big Bad is dead, yay! Evil with a capital E has left Westeros. There is no more need of a gigantic, magical Wall to protect the living. Yippee!

Doesn't that sound a bit wrong to you? When it comes to GoT, I'm in the habit of doubting everything.

Anyway, CNN has been posting reviews of every episode of this season and they are pretty good at pointing out the good, the bad and the what the fuck. Here's the link to last night's episode's review.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/enter...rnd/index.html

And only 5 characters death? That's a miracle! Unless... Where are Gilly and Little Sam?

I thought I saw Gilly get dragged away screaming...

and come on, could we have hoped for something more intense than that? I get it, "victory snatched from the jaws of defeat" is an overused trope but dammit it works. The "tiny window of hope/ Hail Mary" thing is done to death too, but it's still around cuz it's kinda rad... it's the way to resolve epic tension, and this is getting so goddamn epic. What better way (and I ask this honestly, not patronizingly) could this have been resolved?

Is the Night King gone @marodi? I'd say I'd expect the answer to be "yes" for at least the duration of this story. It'd be an insane (and frankly annoying) plot twist at this point if he came back.

Now we have to resolve palace theater, and all I want is Cersei to die badly. Call me a horrible person. I want some shadenfreude here.

[Mantra]

I felt like that ending was the most righteous, satisfying fan service a show has ever done. It was just so fucking badass that Arya was the one, so I can pretty much forgive everything just because I was so into that ending.

But yeah, the rest of the episode was a mixed bag to me. I feel like the GOT writers long ago lost their stomach for the kind of harsh realism that dominated the first four or so seasons. In the old days, they were killing off main characters left and right, because they were fully committed to this approach of having logical consequences within a fantasy setting. Real life isn't some fairy tale where somehow the right people always manage to survive even the most dire of situations, with the possible exception of one or two tragic deaths along the way that almost serve as token sacrifices along the inevitable path to victory. A lesser show would have never killed off Ned, or chopped off Jamie's hand, or had the red wedding. It was cool how GOT was almost like an anti-epic, where it didn't matter if Rob Stark seemed like a special character destined for greatness. He fucked up, so he got butchered by that petty old geezer, because life is harsh man.

But these days GOT has gone soft. They keep giving their main characters the most miraculous escapes, it's absurd. Like last season when Bronn shoved Jamie out of the way of Dany's dragon at the very last second. That was like something out of some 90s adventure cable movie. Dumbest shit ever. So yeah, it's kind of absurd that so many of those main characters survived the battle last night. They kept showing these shots of Brienne and Sam and Jamie and the Hound somehow fending off hordes and hordes of ice zombies like they were fucking Marvel heroes, and yet meanwhile all the rank and file soldiers were getting massacred like they were nothing. It's just way too safe for what I expect from this show.

But whatever, I can look past all that, cause they had Arya kill the night king, so I'm a happy camper.

[Wretchedest]

I think that's a payoff. It makes the show watchable. When it was all torture and rape this show was garbage. There was no reason for it to be that way.


The night king was by far the shows least interesting conflict, a character fundamentally incapable of dimension. The how's best tensions are always in the nuan e of politics and I terpersonal relationships, so getting rid of him and focusing on the conflict with Circe is the right thing to do, if possible later than it should have happened

[Jinsai]

I didn't mind the lack of dimension/personality to the threat of the Night King... it was at least a metaphor for existential dread, something nameless and cancerous but faceless and with only a destructive intent.

On a larger scale, I thought the point was more of a reference to what threatens us, like climate change etc... so it's weird to feel like it was quickly wiped out of the story... but...

[zecho]

I don't know what you guys were expecting, but this episode was a huge let down for me. Apparently the Night King, after being hyped up as the ultimate threat to Westeros, is so weak that he and his army are defeated in their very first battle, and he specifically loses in his very first fight. This episode was like Lost levels of unsatisfying, maybe even worse.

Who is the Prince That Was Promised? What was the Night King's motivation? What was the point of all that dragon glass if only Jon, Arya, and Theon were gonna fight White Walkers? What was the point of all the White Walkers aside from the Night King if they never fight? Why was Brann so useless in fulfilling his purpose as the Three-Eyed Raven? Did a ragtag army with no plan really just beat the undead on their very first try? Why did the other White Walkers die when the Night King was killed? Why were they built up as the ultimate threat to Westeros since the first episode if they weren't even enough of a threat to beat an unprepared enemy in their very first battle? Is the Night King still supposed to seem threatening even after we know that he loses his only fight against a young girl? What was the purpose of that symbol the undead kept drawing? How did Sam survive when he did absolutely no fighting and was overpowered like, seven times on screen? How did the wight dragon burn through the outer wall but is unable to burn through a broken three foot wall when Jon is right on the other side? Why did Brann warg into a group of ravens in the middle of battle for no reason? Did they seriously make fucking Cersei the final boss? This is all bullshit and the writers know it.

Apparently Cersei was right in not considering the White Walkers a real threat, since after marching south for eight fucking years they were killed and accomplished absolutely nothing as soon as they got passed the Wall. I could keep going, but I think you guys get my point. The writing on this show dropped in quality an incredible amount the second they caught up to GRRM's books, and this episode proves that they really just don't have it in them to do anything other than adapt what he's already written. I don't know that there's anything they can do to give this show the ending that the first four seasons deserved at this point. They've fucked it all up way too much.

[Mantra]

Is the Night King gone @marodi? I'd say I'd expect the answer to be "yes" for at least the duration of this story. It'd be an insane (and frankly annoying) plot twist at this point if he came back.

I can see it now: the camera slowly zooms in on a patch of dirt...suddenly, the night king's icy fist comes punching up out of the ground!!

[ricardo]

How did Arya manage to reach the NK so easily? I knew she was a good fighter and has her own business with magic and all that. But still... That was just stupid IMO. She's just too overpowered at this point. Drunk Cersei or that Greyjoy prick don't stand a chance against her.

The episode was too dark, way too dark. I could barely see what was going on in some scenes.

It's funny because episode 2 could almost be classified as filler as it was just characters hanging out basically. And it was much more enjoyable. Maybe it's because I could see them. Brienne is just so awesome. Super-powered Arya, GoT's own Rey/Captain Marvel, on the other hand (go on, facepalm this, I know you want it, I know it's your biggest desire right now. Go on, I don't mind).

This episode felt a lot like the last american Godzilla movie. The best parts were barely visible. Hopefully they saved so much money from this episode that the next battle will be insanely huge, colorful and cinematic.

[Wretchedest]

We can't a t like it didn't happen without effort. Unlikely alliances had to be formed, lota of people died.... The Night King prepped for years but... So did everyone else. They had a plan with a singular goal of getting him I to a vulnerable position.

He's always been the most boring part of the show. Zombies are boring. Everything has fucking zombies. They're not interesting. Circe is interesting. Jamie, no longer comitted to fighting zom ies with the Stark's, that's Interesting.

If the night kind dies, so does his entire army... So if he didn't die in this episode, that's really kind of plot armor, right? Like even as far as he went without taking an arrow to the face just seems unlikely. And that's why a magic zombie army is boring. They can't just kill Circei and win the north, there's a lot of shit to hash out even then. Those villains have nuance. I'll take it.

[Jinsai]

How did Arya manage to reach the NK so easily?

She's a super Jedi... this is the best payoff for her training side plot. She can skip around in shadows and change faces... I'm very ok with that part.

[zecho]

We can't a t like it didn't happen without effort. Unlikely alliances had to be formed, lota of people died.... The Night King prepped for years but... So did everyone else. They had a plan with a singular goal of getting him I to a vulnerable position.

He's always been the most boring part of the show. Zombies are boring. Everything has fucking zombies. They're not interesting. Circe is interesting. Jamie, no longer comitted to fighting zom ies with the Stark's, that's Interesting.

If the night kind dies, so does his entire army... So if he didn't die in this episode, that's really kind of plot armor, right? Like even as far as he went without taking an arrow to the face just seems unlikely. And that's why a magic zombie army is boring. They can't just kill Circei and win the north, there's a lot of shit to hash out even then. Those villains have nuance. I'll take it.

Just because you don't like zombies and want more political characters doesn't justify the build up over the past eight years for nothing. The overarching theme of the show was the hubris of Westeros ignoring the dead to play a political game that ultimately won't matter when the true danger arrives. The fact that they threw that out the window, ignoring all prophecies and lore development, is the problem, not that the Night King is dead. The fact that Brann's story and the prophecies, and the visions, and the magic is all ultimately meaningless is the problem. They could have added more depth to the White Walkers and given you want you want as well. But they didn't, they just made half the series up to this point meaningless, the same way they did with Dorn. If it was gonna turn out this way from the beginning, the Wall plotline, Brann's plotline, Mellisandra's plotline, the Wildlings plotline, the Brothers without Banners plotline, the God of Light plotline, the Children of the Forest plotline, and any other plot I'm missing outside of Cersei's political games didn't even need to be in the show. They could have had all the character deaths and motivations without creating a magical destiny plot that ultimately falls apart. The fact that they switched all of the themes of the show last night is the problem. It feels like all the stuff that was supposed to be brought full circle was just ended half way.

I'm glad that people like you who prefer the politics of the show and never cared about the dead plotline still have something to look forward to, but there's no denying that changing the direction of the show in the last season without tying up all of the threads they started is a poor climax to the story that literally started the show.

[Jinsai]

@zecho, you're talking about what "should have happened" like it was destiny... I'm not going to be upset if "the prophecy" is dropped, or whatever. After all, it's what life's like more or less: a bunch of events that may or may not seem connected, but often wind up delivering red herrings.

Just like how Rob's never going to teach young Eddard Stark to ride horses...

[Wretchedest]

The night Kings death IS the culmination of bran and Aryas arcs though. They didn't defeat him in the course of one night. They defeated him over the course of years of hard work. It's the payoff of all those plotlines and character arcs. I think it's bizarre to act like this character died in a vacuum. Tons of shit built up to this which is bizarrely all the shit that you are descir ing as meaningless.

Your talking about this wrapping up with three episodes to go as though they aren't supposed to tie literally everything up I this period of time

[Mantra]

The overarching theme of the show was the hubris of Westeros ignoring the dead to play a political game that ultimately won't matter when the true danger arrives. The fact that they threw that out the window, ignoring all prophecies and lore development, is the problem, not that the Night King is dead.

Yeah I feel like you hit the nail on the head with this.

I always imagined that they'd do something sort of like: second to last season is a war for the iron throne, and final season is an epic war with the white walkers. Or something like that. I'm really not wanting to go down some road of "Well here's what MY plan would have been if *I* was a big successful filmmaker instead some internet loser."

I'm just trying to think through why it is that, even though I'm enjoying myself, something feels slightly off about the large scale pacing and plotting of this whole show. I'm looking forward to the time when this is all over and enough time has gone by that I can look back at the whole thing with a bit more objectivity. I have a feeling that I'll end up feeling that they fucked up a little bit on the pacing, taking it too slow in the early seasons and then getting way too rushed at the end. It still blows me away that all these crucial final stories are only getting six episodes, and yet they devoted an entire season to Dany just wasting time in that dumb desert city in season two. They probably needed to move things just a little faster in the early seasons so that they wouldn't have to rush the end. Either that or they should have gone for one more season. Maybe then the big apocalyptic showdown with the white walkers wouldn't have felt like it concluded just as it was getting started.

[Jord]

It's funny because episode 2 could almost be classified as filler as it was just characters hanging out basically. And it was much more enjoyable.

Weird. but I have been saying this! I've had a different opinion that my girlfriend and her sisters and a couple of other friends. Maybe I was expecting too much from this episode? I thought it was a giant cop out that Arya killed the NK - this big baddie with his army that's been coming for a few seasons now just walks in and gets killed like that? How Jaime, Brienne & everyone survived just like that out there? They mentioned there'd be a few moments on par with the red wedding this season but that has yet to happen.

Again maybe I was expecting too much this episode, and I'm forgetting there's still three episodes left to wrap the other stuff up. I am desperate to know what's going to happen between John & Daenerys!

[chuckrh]

arya rocks!

[sweeterthan]

It’s not game of death. It’s game of thrones. The night king was never a real contender for the throne. It’s been set up from episode one that Arya would be the one to kill him. She sneaks up on Jon at the tree in the first episode. Bran gave her the dagger last season. it was her the whole time.

[OSLIN]

I'm glad that people like you who prefer the politics of the show and never cared about the dead plotline still have something to look forward to, but there's no denying that changing the direction of the show in the last season without tying up all of the threads they started is a poor climax to the story that literally started the show.

Tend to agree with most of this, the motto of the show was basically Winter is Coming and it came and went out with a resounding thud. I guess Arya's new nickname is Global Warming (wacha wacha). I didn't mind her getting the kill, I just think a lot of the plot was forced early due to a short season arc. Every main character survived in the tens of thousands that lost their lives. It's almost lazy writing to an extent. They should have killed off Bran and let Arya jump in a little too late. Then let her deal with the grief of being a second too late. Gives the moment a little more depth and gives the NK some sort of purpose.

We will see where this goes. Was hoping Arya would be the one to take down the mountain, but I have a feeling the Hound will be taking himself and the mountain out Rocky 2 style. Cersai is gonna retain the throne and people are gonna hate it. It's fun to sit and theorize. Enjoying the season thus far, just think it would have benefited with a few more episodes, I may think differently in hindsight but from what I've seen so far I don't want it to end. Next week will be them gathering whatever troops they have left. Then the penultimate episode will be Westeros battle and then the finale. Seems like too much story with not enough episodes. We shall see.

[neorev]

I thought it was great. That is all. Thanks for your time.

[marodi]

I can see it now: the camera slowly zooms in on a patch of dirt...suddenly, the night king's icy fist comes punching up out of the ground!!

No, no! The Night King's soul/spirit/essence/whatever was transferred into Bran during their epic stare down!

Seriously though, the NK was many thousands year old so this battle was not his first rodeo. He was created by the Children of the Forest as a weapon in their war against the First Men but he turned on them, forcing the Children and the Men into an alliance to fight him and the White Walkers. Bran explained his goal in episode 2: the NK wants to kill the 3ER so the memory of men is erased, therefore sending the world into an endless night.

In other words: the NK was Ultron.

And in retrospect, all the signs that Arya was destined to pull an Éowyn were there.

When Dany burned all the wights around Jon, I was wondering if she was also trying to test out his resistance to fire; him being a Targaryen and all. But do you who who proved to be fire resistant? The Night King.

As for the inconsistencies and the lacks in the narrative, I put all the blame on Martin. He must have given the showrunners the very basics of where his story was going (who killed the NK, who ends up on the Iron Throne) but he must have kept the rest for himself. Bastard.
@Jinsai I think I saw that about Gilly too. I still hope she made it.

But good news: apparently, people with bionic eyes saw Ghost very much alive in next week's episode's preview.

Also: if they both make it alive in the end, I totally see Sansa and Tyrion ending up together.

[Mantra]

Man, that was a fucking GREAT episode.

[sweeterthan]

Man, that was a fucking GREAT episode.

All I can say is daaaaaayuuuuuuum.


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[Mr. Blaileen]

The first half of the episode was me thinking ‘This is bullshit. Don’t. Caaaaare’

Then the second half started.

Crazy shit.

[Mantra]

The first half was fun. So many great jokes and interesting interactions between characters. Loved the scene of Dany watching the room and noticing how everyone is acting different towards each other (and even more specifically with Jon) than with her. Also this ...

Jon: "Vomiting is not celebrating."
Tormund: Yes it is."

[chuckrh]

song for jamie

[MrLobster]

[Boots]

I honestly tried to get into this show and and I watched until the end of Season 5. I just found that there were way too many characters to keep track of. Too many kings, queens, lords, cities, and peoples. The supernatural element only added to the confusion-- for me anyway.

At first I thought the iron throne was just a contest between Daenarys and the Lannisters/Baratheons. Then came along Stannis and the Boultons. I could never figure out if Winterfell was its own kingdom or how King's Landing controlled everyone else. Did they ever mention the names of all the kingdoms? Also, I heard that Arya came out of nowhere and killed the Night King. How was that even possible and why HER?

[sweeterthan]

The first half of the episode was me thinking ‘This is bullshit. Don’t. Caaaaare’

Then the second half started.

Crazy shit.

I loved the first half but I’m sappy like that. My husband was definitely like this would never happen in the books” about Jamie and Brienne.


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