Jump to content

(spoilers) Skeletons without blue eyes?


The Fourth Head

Recommended Posts

What happened to the blue eyes of the wights during Brans sequence? In that sequence, every dead body had black pits where the blue eyes would be.



I thought every wight had blue eyes?



I know logically, it can be argued that these bodies had been dead longer, and therefore, no longer had any eyes, but the same argument doesn't apply in the book. In the book all the dead have blue eyes regardless of their state of rot, even the long dead buried ones who attack Bran. Their eyes were blue too. There is no disclaimer anywhere that suggests some have blue eyes and some just have black pits. The blue eyes are a result of magical power- not just a tint dependent on various states of rot.



So is this a mistake on behalf of the show? If so, it's a pretty big one.



Here's why; I always felt the blue eyes represented the power that was controlling them- a power based on ice. Without the blue eyes, what's controlling them? The only exception to this rule is Coldhands. In the book, his eyes were black, and he was almost certainly controlled by Bloodraven, meaning black eyes were synonymous with COTF controlling reanimated corpses and this led to the idea that blue eyes were a clue that those corpses were controlled by another force- presumably the Great Other whereas black eyes were a clue that a body was controlled by the COTF. Ego- they are not one and the same.



So this detail on the show is very confusing because it totally messes with how I interpret the attack.



With the absence of blue eyes, It sways how I interpret:



1) the shot of the wight rising from the snow with the weirwood tree looming behind and above it, as if it was somehow the one behind the resurrected corpse.


2) the way Leaf (?) baldly told Meera to come in or die- like it was maybe a set up.


3) the highly controlled choreography of the sequence. Only Joyen is targeted (the one who had now served his purpose with his visions to get them there) Meera fights them only to defend Joyen- putting her in peril, and the wights only turn on Hodor when Bran wargs Hodor and tries to prevent the wights killing Joyen. Only then, do the wights then try another tack by threatening Bran in order to get Hodor away from saving Jojen, but crucially, they are not allowed to harm Bran because it's at exactly that moment that Leaf puts in her appearance, saving Brans life when noone else could.



It really made me badly question whether the wights buried in the snow weren't just some of the same bones we saw Bran crawling through in the cave, and were really just a device used by the COTF to get Bran to trust them despite the creepiness of the cave, and to never want to leave?



Jojen dying fits that perfectly because as I say, he has served his purpose. His final purpose (in the show universe) is to sell the peril of the wights and the way the others have all been saved by the COTF. Bran is now left with a halfwit he can warg, a girl he can...ahem, and his direwolf. So this deviation seems to worsen my suspicions about the COTF's methods.



Now maybe I'm reading way too much into it. It could simply be an oversight by the show, or they decided it didn't look right, or a deliberate attempt to fuel suspicion that the COTF aren't to be trusted?


Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

It was the idea of Alex Graves, who called D&D and asked them if it was okay for him to do this scene instead of the usual wight scene.



It's a shame, considering Alex Graves is an excellent director (episode 2 of season 4!) but really has a lack of respect for the source material. Not everything is D&D's fault, guys.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure the skeletons from this scene are actually white walkers at all. White walkers aren't defeated easily and I doubt they could have put up as much as a resistance as they did before they got help from the children. White walkers have more flesh on them, blue eyes and seem a lot more zombie like than skeleton


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Better question would be why bother burning the bodies when they can come back as bones anyway? The answer to this one is the same as for the OP though.

Perhaps a little technical but cooked or baked or burnt bones are not the same chemically as raw bones. Perhaps that's good enough. Sufficient digestion will also remove wightiness

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My guess is that the reasoning of the producer was something like "these wights are ancient, it will be cool to make them skeletons to show the difference."



Other than that, they are pretty much the same as in the book. Including the fact that they can't pass the cave entrance.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

I liked it - it was over the top! Frisky coordinated skeletons are more fun than clumsy rotting corpses. I saw it as a tip of the hat to Harryhausen. The firebombs were great as it wasn't entirely clear to me how a Leaf managed to set the wights on fire. I really loved Tim in the Holy Grail and I expected Meera to say: you're a busy person... It was supposed to be, and was, a serious scene-I guess I might have liked it partly because it was different from the book in a fun way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're spending time wondering why such a small detail is so important then spend just a bit more time thinking how it might be explained? Even if it's a mistake because they just forgot about it, it doesn't have to mean that it can't make sense.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

What happened to the blue eyes of the wights during Brans sequence? In that sequence, every dead body had black pits where the blue eyes would be.

I thought every wight had blue eyes?

First remember, this is Fantasy, it ma be 'Fantasy Moderate' but still Fantasy.

They were wights in the book, I thought that was kind of boring , since we had since wights before, so they kind of hyped it show.

The 'guardians' of the entrance were a new invention of the Others , and that was fine with me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're spending time wondering why such a small detail is so important then spend just a bit more time thinking how it might be explained? Even if it's a mistake because they just forgot about it, it doesn't have to mean that it can't make sense.

And I'm sure if Tyrion can fly next season, the audience could also come up with an explanation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What was he?

Well, he said he was dead when talking about his blackened hands. He's not a classic ASOIAF wight. He could be a different kind of wight with a dash of lich. Not a revenant or zombie. He might be a djinn, especially with the human flesh eating. He might be a lich owned by BR running undead ravens. Or we have a new word for a reanimated dead guy who can think and act independently but is reanimated in order to perform a specific mission.

What do you think? I'm not into the fantasy genre at all and if GRRM hadn't wowed me with SF I would be very late to this party.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, he said he was dead when talking about his blackened hands. He's not a classic ASOIAF wight. He could be a different kind of wight with a dash of lich. Not a revenant or zombie. He might be a djinn, especially with the human flesh eating. He might be a lich owned by BR running undead ravens. Or we have a new word for a reanimated dead guy who can think and act independently but is reanimated in order to perform a specific mission.

What do you think? I'm not into the fantasy genre at all and if GRRM hadn't wowed me with SF I would be very late to this party.

I think physically, he is identical to the wights that try and kill Mormont.

As to why he has a 'personality'? Unsure, maybe he was a warg, and he was able to warg out at death, and then warg back into reassume 'command'? I don't favour the Bloodraven control, I feel he is his own thing. It may be that Coldhands has to struggle with control over his own body, or maybe that body wasn't even his original? Maybe Benjen warged into it when he died...maybe.

He seems allied with Bloodraven, but not too closely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

The Bran skeletons (and possibly the fireballs) are the only bad elements I have noticed in this otherwise excellent show.



How did the skeletons screech when they didn't have lungs? Only thing I can think of is someone wanted to do a CG homage to Jason and the Argonauts - but it just didn't fit with the rest of the show's tone.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...