Game of Thrones - Spoilers

[kdrcraig]

If I remember correctly, the dead don't wake up automatically once they die; they have to be revived by a White Walker. Jon has them burning the corpse to prevent that. Remember Hardhome? And Viserion didn't come back by himself; it was the Night King who brought him back.

I always thought they burned the bodies to prevent them from coming back on their own, I don't remember anyone ever saying a Walker had to bring them back but it's totally possible that they did. And that aligns with them figuring out that if you kill a Walker all the wights they created die too. I just don't remember them saying it.

[mfte]

reddit doing math to prove the travel times in the latest episode.

https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/co..._would_take_a/

Where did the Whitewalkers get those chains from? It would have been cool to instead see the Ice King jump in the water and then burst out of the ice on the zombified dragon.

[sweeterthan]

If the night king can throw a spear that far, why didn't he take out the rock island crew? They're standing there for days and he didn't toss the stick until a dragon shows up. And how did they hook those chains to the dragon underwater if none of them could cross the water when it wasn't quite frozen.

I agree that capturing one of them just seems like worse plan ever.

Spoiler: the next episode is called the dragon and the wolf. Bow chica bow wow


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[Jinsai]

I like your take @marodi , but wouldn't it be a more logical thing to try first before taking this crazy risk? It's a bit of a,... forgot the word for when it's not a plot hole but it's implausible to logically consider realistic... McLovin?

[Vertigo]

If the night king can throw a spear that far, why didn't he take out the rock island crew? They're standing there for days and he didn't toss the stick until a dragon shows up. And how did they hook those chains to the dragon underwater if none of them could cross the water when it wasn't quite frozen.

It was a trap. When Bran has his vision of the army, they're in the exact same spot - you can see the 'island' if you look closely. They didn't move on at all after that point. The Night King has some sort of ESP similar to Bran, so the whole thing seems calculated for him to get a dragon.

So why he never went spearfishing over the days of waiting - one, live bait is more useful than dead. Two, it looks like they only had three of those javelins; the other Walkers are carrying the ice swords we normally see them with. They were saving them for the dragons.

[sweeterthan]

It was a trap. When Bran has his vision of the army, they're in the exact same spot - you can see the 'island' if you look closely. They didn't move on at all after that point. The Night King has some sort of ESP similar to Bran, so the whole thing seems calculated for him to get a dragon.

So why he never went spearfishing over the days of waiting - one, live bait is more useful than dead. Two, it looks like they only had three of those javelins; the other Walkers are carrying the ice swords we normally see them with. They were saving them for the dragons.

After I posted this, I saw a still that shows night king and 4 others waiting. 3 have the ice javelins and 2 have swords. The night king setting a trap... I guess it didn't occur to me that he's as calculating as the others. I thought he just had an army of undead and they're mowing down everything in their way. Capturing the dragon is pretty deliberate. NK came to play.

[bobbie solo]

If the night king can throw a spear that far, why didn't he take out the rock island crew? They're standing there for days and he didn't toss the stick until a dragon shows up.

[bobbie solo]

It was a trap. When Bran has his vision of the army, they're in the exact same spot - you can see the 'island' if you look closely. They didn't move on at all after that point. The Night King has some sort of ESP similar to Bran, so the whole thing seems calculated for him to get a dragon.

The whole "Bran & The Night King are the same person" theory has been gaining alot of steam over the course of this season, partly b/c of things like what you wrote.

http://nerdist.com/bran-night-king-g...hrones-theory/

[M1ke]

The whole "Bran & The Night King are the same person" theory has been gaining alot of steam over the course of this season, partly b/c of things like what you wrote.

http://nerdist.com/bran-night-king-g...hrones-theory/

They do have a lot of similar facial features....I wonder if that might be why they changed actors.

[kdrcraig]

Hadn't heard of that theory before, makes a lot of sense.

[neorev]

Finale = 79 minutes and 43 seconds, mofos

[EndlessLoveless]

So correct me if I'm wrong, and I haven't read back in this thread but.... they only need to kill the Night King? The rest will drop. As they all have come from him, like a family tree. One target.

And no doubt it's bran in my mind.

[Vertigo]

Not on board with Bran being the Night King, personally. One pretty obvious hole to poke in the article's theory is that the pre-transformation Night King doesn't have the white eyes of a be-warged individual.

I do think the Night King might be an ancient member of the Stark family though, given the brown hair/eyes, facial features and seer powers. They've been a major house since that era.

An interesting theory that popped up a week ago suggested he's the progenitor of House Stark (either the Brandon Stark credited with building the Wall, or his direct ancestor). It's probably too convoluted to be entirely accurate but does make some very interesting points, particularly in explaining the northern customs "he who passes the sentence should swing the sword" and the Guest Right.

[theimage13]

They do have a lot of similar facial features....I wonder if that might be why they changed actors.

This show has had more re-casts than anything I can think of. I think it's more scheduling and availability than anything else. Not commenting at all on the Bran/King theory; just that the actor change is almost certainly irrelevant to the plot.

[elevenism]

re: bran being the night king.
this is something that i've personally thought was the case ever since bran tensed up at the same moment that the thing was being plunged into the night king's chest.
i can't believe i'm seeing other people pick this up as a "theory" and seeing, still others, saying how stupid it is. i guess a lot of people got the same idea that i did.

I will say this though: even if i'm wrong about bran being the night king, i think it's going to be SOMETHING along those lines with bran.
He can travel through time (RT heard him. Hodor saw him.)
And then what's his fucking name said that "bran is the 'only thing that matters.'"

So, okay, i will admit that it's very possible that Bran is NOT the night king, but however it plays out, bran and his supernatural abilities will play a MASSIVE fucking part in the final eight hours

[Vertigo]

I'll be very happy if the rest of Bran's story just consists of making people incredibly uncomfortable. "Cersei, you looked beautiful that day, walking through King's Landing. I'm so sorry it had to end that way, dripping with excrement."

[theimage13]

Guys, guys, guys. You're all being incredibly thick. The Bran story is obvious, and no one has even HINTED at it here.

You know why he does the "you looked beautiful" thing. I mean, the real reason? He's just fishing for compliments. He wants a "thanks, you're looking good yourself". That's all.

Please, for the love of god, someone just compliment the whiny little teen so we can move on to mourning Tormund.

[neorev]

That was a pretty crazy finale.

[marodi]

Well, shit just got real.

[Harry Seaward]

good lord

[Conan The Barbarian]

Now we have to wait two years

[Piko]

This might be the best season to date. What a finale...

[implanted_microchip]

In exchange for a dragon that is seemingly all the Night's King needed to destroy the Wall and bring the army of the dead to the world, the brightest minds and tacticians in Westeros gained Jaime Lannister as a squad mate

Fair trade

[Jinsai]

Now we have to wait two years

NO. NOOOOOOOOOOO. It's not FAIR! You cannot leave me hanging like this!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

FUCK THAT/THIS/ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGH

Two years, where I need my stories, and Trump is President?

[theimage13]

I've been feeling this way a long time because of Dany's entire storyline, and now with the wall, it's pretty much confirmed my take on this....

The dragons are lazy and a shame.

"What the fuck is he talking about??" you're asking yourself.

Here's the thing: the whole series is amazingly complex. GRRM has created this massive world with tons of characters, puzzles and riddles to solve, backstabbing, scheming, plotting, etc. There are so many moving pieces and so much going on; it's what makes the series special. So to just go "Oh, Dany's in charge cuz her dragons can burn shit" and "haha now the dead are here cuz their dragon broke the wall", it just feels so lazy and anticlimactic to me. Thousands and thousands of pages full of intricate detail and the overall takeaway is "because dragons". It just feels too simple; like everything else that was linked together is now just background to one piece of brute force. I mean...not that I'm comparing the depth of these two series, but imagine if freakin' Harry Potter just stumbled upon the Elder Wand one day and knocked off Voldemort in one shot.

I'll probably get facepalmed for this post, but so be it. From a visual perspective, the whole "dragon SMASH" thing is pretty cool. Major, major credit to all involved in the VFX departments on this show; they've done an amazing job with it. But from a story perspective...it feels thin.

[Vertigo]

Spoiler: I'm just so glad that Littlefinger got in one more "I loved your mother" for the road. It's basically his catchphrase, if you smell what the pimp is cooking.

(And Arya was the last living Stark he hadn't said it to, I think, so that's some nice closure there)

[Bachy]

I couldn't help but be reminded of this scene during the fight with Theon:

[marodi]

Who was the star of last night's show? Ned Stark was. He can be proud of his pack.

Spoilers ahead!




Loved:

-The Hound and Brienne's reunion. And how those two forces of nature agreed to stay out of the way of little Creepy Arya.

-Ser Bronn of the Fucking Blackwater and Tyrion's reunion: those two are made for each other.

-COCK!

-Tyrion and Cercei's reunion: now that was intense.

-Dany loves to make an entry.

-The dead going right at Cercei

-Everything about Littlefinger

-"What happened to you beyond the Wall?"
"I became the 3 Eyed Raven"
Unimpressed "Oh".

-The face Tyrion made when he saw Jon Snow go into Dany's chamber. He is still sorting out his feelings about that.

-Aegon Targaryen, legitimate heir to the Iron Throne; how about that? Wait until Dany learns about it.

-Ser Jaime the Honorable.

-The Wall! The Wall!!!

-It's useless to kick someone in the balls in they don't have any.

Nitpicks (it's not GoT without them)

-How did Sansa learn about Littlefinger's schemes? Lemme guess: Bran "I see it all". How convenient.

-Jon and Dany. *yawns*

-Wasn't the Wall built so it could stop the menace frond beyond? Why the rush to form an army to fight the White Walkers in they were not supposed to be able to pass the Wall? It's not as if that Wall was at risk of coming down, right? And magic was preventing the dead to pass anyway (which is why Uncle Benjen could not come back), right? RIGHT? And no one South of the Wall knew that the Night King has gotten himself a cool blue fire breathing undead dragon, right?

-Tormund and Beric are still alive since they were clearly on the part of the Wall that remain standing (they were watching the rest of it go down). #Briemundforever.

-We came *this close* to the Clegane Bowl.

I need to watch this again and again.

[koz-ivan]

-Wasn't the Wall built so it could stop the menace frond beyond? Why the rush to form an army to fight the White Walkers in they were not supposed to be able to pass the Wall? It's not as if that Wall was at risk of coming down, right? And magic was preventing the dead to pass anyway (which is why Uncle Benjen could not come back), right? RIGHT? And no one South of the Wall knew that the Night King has gotten himself a cool blue fire breathing undead dragon, right?

As far back as season 1 / book 1 there have been mentions that the Night's Watch wasn't at the strength required to hold the wall. This season the castle @ Eastwatch was essentially undefended until the Wildlings took up residence there.

Jon and others are / were firmly of the belief that the wall wasn't going to hold on it's own - hence the need to rally forces and allies, though as you point out in true grrm-ian fashion the good guys experience blowback on truly horrific levels.

That being said, this does somewhat echo the maesters of a few weeks back when Sam was told that the whitewalkers weren't as big of a threat as he assumed them to be.

----

in all the finale did a pretty good job getting things re-arranged for the final season.

it had everything we could reasonably hope for, great interactions, good setup for next season, some good action / effects stuff.

I do take some issue with the show version of Cersei, which seems to oscillate between - very rational, very cold, calculating *or* just batshit nuts (from the books she seems more consistently crazy, but fortunate) alas.

----

This season obviously wasn't the greatest, the various interactions were mostly great, the big splashy action pieces were great, however the overall plot and arc was a bit wibbly wobbly at best.

I didn't hate the "kidnap a zombie" plot though perhaps it could have borrowed a line from Argo - "this is the best bad idea we have..."

[Vertigo]

-Wasn't the Wall built so it could stop the menace frond beyond? Why the rush to form an army to fight the White Walkers in they were not supposed to be able to pass the Wall? It's not as if that Wall was at risk of coming down, right? And magic was preventing the dead to pass anyway (which is why Uncle Benjen could not come back), right? RIGHT? And no one South of the Wall knew that the Night King has gotten himself a cool blue fire breathing undead dragon, right?

A few points on the Wall.

• Nobody in the Seven Kingdoms (except maybe Bran) knows for sure whether there's any magical protection in the Wall.
• Any magic wards the Wall might once have contained may have been nullified anyway when Bran passed through wearing the Night King's mark (remember what happened at the Three-Eyed Raven's werewood tree). But regardless, the Wall apparently never had any magic to protect it against wights - we see them taken through the Wall and reanimate on the other side. So even if the White Walkers themselves couldn't get through, they could still send the world's largest army over, around or through it.
• The wights are fairly co-ordinated, so it's plausible that they might eventually have attacked the Wall using mammoths, giants and battering rams in a similar manner to how the Wildlings did. Or simply walked around it over the sea ice that's likely to eventually form. If the Wall could stop them on its own, there would never have been a need for a Night's Watch.

One way or another, the army of the dead was eventually going to reach the Seven Kingdoms. What nobody realised is that the Night King had anticipated the dragons arriving, and was seemingly waiting for a chance to add them to the army before launching the invasion.