We literally get the mystical plot conclusion in EP3 that a lot of people called and we still have half a season dedicated to the feudal plot and people still bitch.

Some of you guys will never be happy.

 

Yeah, one of the pretty consistent themes in the books was that the Game of Thrones is something only nobles care about, while everyone else just gets screwed over in the process. One of my favorite little ironies in the books is when a peasant talks about the good old days when the Mad King ran things. Because ... well yeah, the mad king was a total dick to nobles and those in his immediate circle, but for the common peasants all they knew was things were stable and taxes were reasonable.

At least to me, it always seemed like the ultimate resolution would be that playing the Game of Thrones would just get everyone killed. The White Walkers would be the existential threat that made everyone finally realize this and put an end to all the stupid backstabbing that just gets people killed.

Instead, now it looks like the only point of it all was a distraction to weaken the good guy army and make the dragons a non-factor so Cersei can actually be a viable big bad. It's a big thematic dissonance, especially since Cersei's status as a threat relies on a lot of stupid contrivances as actions no longer having consequences.

 

I wanted to be entertained and I was.

I wanted to feel satisfied by the narrative and I wasn't.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

In my head, the obvious play would have been for the Walkers to win at Winterfell and drive Daenarys and co down south to King's Landing, which is put to siege since Cersei is gonna Cersei and psychotically refuses to back down even in the face of the army of zombies that just kicked the shit out of an army twice the size of her own and got its numbers boosted by their failure. That fight plays out with Jon and Daenarys carrying the day with their flying murder machines.

Then there's half an episode of frantic build-up and preparations before the Walkers arrive and they have the big climactic showdown over the course of the next episode and a half before finally killing the Night King, followed by a brief epilogue that establishes the beginning of the reconstruction.

Bam, plenty of room for spin-offs and sequels without taking a steaming dump on the central theme of the grand narrative.

 

I liked the essence of the episode but found the execution lacking. The cinematics and music were absurdly beautiful, but story-wise, little seemed to stick the landing imo. In my version of this episode, we keep the first half (except for the pointless dothraki suicide charge), then when the dead are punching out of their tombs in the crypts, one of the dead gets warged by Bran who saves Sansa+Tyrion in the nick of time, Tyrion has some kind of clever epiphany that saves the day involving the Night King, and he bravely leaves the crypts to plot with Melissandre, Arya, and the Hound in the castle. Jon battles the Night King during the final confrontation, is losing because he's tired and the Night King is superhuman, then Arya leaps in and slits the Night King's throat from behind wearing the face of an undead or something.

I don't mind Arya being the one to kill the Night King, but there should've been more. As it stands, it felt like a Deus ex Machina. No idea how the writers are going to deal with the blatant fact that Arya can easily go and assassinate Cersei now whenever.

A pattern I've been noticing with this season is that there's an overabundance of 'read between the lines' moments which makes everything feel shallow. "And blue eyes" --> "Arya go and kill the Night King specifically" --> "Arya is Azor Azhai (?)". Sure, it's a little clever in hindsight, but it lacks present impact. If you look at some of the megathread discussions on reddit, half the comments seem to be various 'Aha!' revelations. It's too many. Some things deserve to be given more importance than a vague significant look between two characters.

My main issue with this episode is that we have so many talented people together, and they've all been reduced to bodies. Except for Melissandre and maybe Dany and Jon with the dragons. Bran is shown warging off into ravens, which nothing resulted from (unless it happened off-screen). Varys and Tyrion sit there like eggs. Sam does what normal humans do, but I don't watch tv to watch normal humans do normal things. What was already a cool episode had the potential to be so much cooler. Winterfell is built on a hot spring, right? Zombies aren't very good with water/may be susceptible to boiling. Bran the Builder rising from the grave to dish out some magical pain. The unholy resurrection of Lyanna and Ned Stark.

Credit where it's due, I did really appreciate the realistic portrayal of impending zombie doom. The feeling of hopelessness was palpable. Theon's death scene was also great. His character has gone through so much development, and in the end, he got the acknowledgement he'd been craving and died a warrior's death. Though, I can't help but think it would've been a little better if Bran had indicated to Theon that he needed a distraction as Arya was stealthing towards them, and Theon decided to trust Bran and give his life up for that.

Saw a theory on reddit that said Melissandre sacrificed the dothraki forces to the Light Lord to keep everyone else alive. It's unlikely, but I've adopted it as my head canon. I'm not particularly bloodthirsty, but wtf no one died.

tl;dr Wasn't bad, but so much missed potential.

 

The Dothraki suicide charge was so weird not only from a tactical standpoint, but also from a pacing standpoint. I had anticipated Melisandre showing up and doing some cool fire magic... but having it right at the beginning of the episode, and immediately proved pointless, was just bad writing. Emotionally, you can't open a story with a moment of salvation. It just doesn't work. Like @Newcomb said, it's like they had certain scenes in mind and couldn't figure out where to put them so just jammed them all together.

Melisandre turning up and raining down fire should have been around 2/3 into the episode, a moment of brief positivity before the Night King unleashes his most powerful weapons to bring about the point of utmost despair. She should have needed to sacrifice herself (and maybe others) to do it, and it should have granted the defenders a genuine reprieve rather than being pointless.

 

So, I've decided how to feel about it. The military shit was trash as usual, but that can be hand-waived away since the good-guys are fighting against an undying enemy that is merged with berserkers with +10 strength and +10 inflict dismay combined with the Big Boss that can continuously replenish its forces ... ....

It was a spectacular bit of television. I liked the effects, I liked the cinematography and aesthetics (I didn't have any visual problems re. my television)...

I loved it from an entertainment standpoint; it was spectacular to watch, but from a narrative sense (from Game of Thrones' set standards), there was some goofy shit. (CTRL-C : CTRL-V) that prior sentence and you have basically the past two seasons. It's a shame to compare the prior seasons from when they had source material, but Jesus HF Christ, I still love it and will re-watch.

But if you ask me in a few years what my favorite still from the series is, it will probably be the scene where Dany and Jon have flown above the storm on the dancing pair of Drogon and Rhaegal, backlit by moonlight just before diving back into hell. I love that scene so fucking much.

 

After having spent the previous five minutes shouting "fly up!" at the TV, my reaction to that scene was unfortunately less "it's beautiful" and more "fucking finally!"

 

Someone linked this article on /r/asoiaf: https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/4...nes-season-8-consequences-jon-sam-arya-cersei

And after thinking about it a bit I think it explains why so many people felt disappointed with the episode.

This was their last chance to inflict consequences for faffing about these past couple of seasons. Every time there was a sideplot that people disliked, or someone acted in a underhanded or self serving way, at the back of your mind there was a little "Your gonna pay for that when the White Walkers come".

 

I suspect it's from a behind the scenes video, but D&D are being quoted that Arya killing the Night King is their choice because Jon was too obvious. Considering that the NK himself is probably their creation too, the book Others appear to not have a central figure that controls everything, a very little of the TV Show resolution's of the Great War is going to happen the books.

 

They made a spectacle of Jon, Jaime, Brienne, and Jorah having those swords and for ultimately no reason. It's upsetting to think we were deprived of a scene with them against the White Walkers with the Night King's music in the background.

 

They actually had a somehow good excuse to base the battle tactic around the main characters fighting the White Walkers, if they wanted something like that. It was presented that killing them destroys a part of the army they command. The goal, while waiting for the NK, could be to get them involved in the battle and then have warriors with the Valyrian steel kill as many as possible. It would give a small win for the living and weaken the zombie masses attacking the castle before the NK appears and hits them twice as hard.

 

I think a lot of the problems with the episode all stem from a single decision: the decision to try to maximise the sense in which defeat is inevitable by having the defenders be little more than bodies in the way of a constant onslaught.

This approach gets you a single thing: a sense of inevitable doom right from the start, which is relentless throughout the episode.

Unfortunately, it costs you your ability to have character moments, emotional ups and downs, strategy etc. And, once the inevitable doom is lifted via the death of the Night King, looking back the episode seems kinda empty.

IF half the main characters had died before the Night King was killed, then that relentless onslaught would have been good for something. The feeling of doom would have had weight independent of whether the Night King wins or loses because we would lose so many favourites along the way. But since no one really important died, the relentless onslaught now takes on the character of a fake out.

 

It's pretty much as you say and the problem is that with three more episodes they couldn't kill that many characters because these more important have yet to reach their resolutions. If it was the final battle, they wouldn't need to worry about that.

 

A lot of the characters had already reached a conclusive point in their character arcs where it would be feasible to have them removed from the plot however.

Tormund, Brienne, Samwell, Varys, Gilly, Missandei, Gendry and Grey Worm don't realistically have anything to give to the story at this point. Even more controversial deaths like that of those who still have some plot potential like Davos, Tyrion, Sansa could've been feasible. Unless the ending is a complete bait-and-switch from GRRM's promise of a bittersweet ending, this would've been the optimal point in the season for a lot of characters to die off.

 

I only got to watch the new episode yesterday, and a lot has already been said but I still want to write down my thoughts to get them out of my head.

First of all, the battle was epic, intense and huge. Props to the crew and actors for filming what's probably the biggest battle scene in TV history. Yes, it was pretty dark in some places, but at the same time that was alright because it fit nicely with the "Long Night".

However, while I'm normally someone that just sits back and enjoys what I'm watching, some parts of the battle were just so dumb and illogical that that was impossible, and the more I think about it now, the less happy I am with it. Dany and Jon spend most of the fight doing absolutely nothing, even though the Dragons are the best weapon they have against the wights. Why were the Dothraki the first line of attack, even though they had no weapons that were useful against the dead (at least until Melissandre mysteriously appeared)?. What's the point of resurrecting the dead Stark if absolutely nothing comes out of it, no one comes to any harm and we don't even see a fight in the Crypts? Why does Lyanna Mormont play such an important role, even though she only brought like fifty soldiers to the fight (and part of what made GoT so good at the start was the realism, and she might be one of the most unrealistic characters I've seen in a long time)? What was the point of literally all main characters spending last episode talking about how they're all going to die, and yet everyone important (except for Theon who's not really a MC) survives, and not even because they pull some kind of unexpected trick but just because they're lucky?

And, most importantly: What the fuck was the point of Bran's entire plot? He did absolutely nothing during the entire battle, we didn't even get any revelations about the Night King or the White Walkers. Instead, the Night King apparently wants to kill Bran because he can look into the past, but why the hell does that matter? What was Bran's journey and transformation into the Three Eyes Raven for? If it's just to reveal the truth about Jon, that's probably the most disappointing thing I've ever seen on TV.

I'm actually fine with Arya killing the Night King, though the how left much to be desired. Where did she come from? Could they've just hired an Assassin to infiltrate the White Walkers, kill the Night King and be done with it?

Also, the entire White Walker plot was supposed to affect the entire world, and yet there was no "Long Night", the only battle of the entire war took place in Winterfell, and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, Essos etc remain completely unaffected.

That the conflict with Cersei will take place after the defeat of the Night King is actually a good idea, I think, because that shows that people don't change even after facing such an overwhelming threat. They still fight for their own good, and the nobles still try to use the situation for their own advantage. But at the same time: Why the fuck is Cersei even still alive? Why do the houses of the South follow her, even though she's done nothing to gain any sort of loyalty? And now she's supposed to have this massive army, but that came pretty much out of nowhere. Suddenly bringing in a bunch of mercenaries from a different continent is just lazy. Also, Cersei doesn't really feel like a satisfying opponent anymore, because it's literally just her against the entire rest of the main characters.

Okay, that's it for my rant, much of it has been said before, but I needed to get it out of my head. Not sure when I'm going to watch the next episode because right now, I'm really not looking forward to it.

 

What a pile of shit.

Someone needs to teach the showrunners that shock value is not, in and of itself, necessarily a good thing. The expected outcome, well-executed with just a little bit of complication and some tiny twists to keep things interesting is usually better than a ham-fisted attempt at subverting expectations.

I feel like Game of Thrones got caught up too much in its own hype of being "the show with the sick twists" where "anyone can die, just like that". The twists and unexpected deaths in the early seasons and the books are due to the ruthless logic the world operates on - Ned dies because he is too honorable in a place where he needs political savvy, Robb dies because he is young, reckless, and overconfident from his victories and spurns his allies, Jon because his insistence on doing the right thing runs afoul of his oaths to the Watch, etc. It subverts traditional fantasy by grounding itself in reality - heroes in a world where things aren't that simple (but also villains whose positions of power let them find success until they learn that their ruthless actions can have consequences for them too) - but this has been misinterpreted and transformed into "Game of Thrones is the show with the crazy twist moments for all the reaction videos on youtube." Arya ninja'ing the Night King feels like a decision made out of a desire for a shocking, unexpected twist by a fan favorite to save the day at the last moment, and comes at the expense of characters for whom the conflict with the Night King was much more thematically appropriate. (Seriously, Jon did basically nothing the entire battle, the whole dragon duel could have happened without him.)

The low death count feels kind of cheap, as many have mentioned. Not only does the big looming threat get eliminated this quickly, but he fails to even take any major characters with him. I'm honestly much more concerned about the remaining major characters now because it is exactly like this "shocking twist" attitude to have Cersei take a lot more people down than the NK. I wouldn't be surprised if Arya dies in the upcoming fight because what's more shocking than the Night Kingkiller dying to mere Cersei and such things.

I'm interested enough to want to see what happens with the rest of the show, but I'm not really invested any more.