The missing Arya-Sansa scene?

[#teamNightking]

17 minutes ago, darmody said:

Unless Sansa sent Brienne away so that Sansa couldn't order her to kill Arya. Like an alcoholic pouring booze down the drain?

It was my understanding she sent Brienne away so she would be unable to protect Arya if Sansa decided to "do something" to her. ?? 

6 hours ago, Tagganaro said:

I'm with you.  I don't get the negative reaction people are having to this arc.  I thought it was pretty good.  The tension was real and made perfect sense.  

I enjoyed this story line and am not ashamed to say so... Haha

[darmody]

23 hours ago, Smoke317 said:

Arya then gave Sansa the dagger as her last test/clue for Sansa after questioning her family loyalties. This season was just as much a trial of Sansa's loyalties as it was for Littlefinger.

Thusly testing Sansa would be the very definition of entrapment. Let's look at Arya's so-called test:

Show up at Winterhell and act like a psycho all season. (Not difficult, because you are a psycho.)

Show off the fact that you're the greatest sword fighter in Westeros somehow. 

Play Scooby-doo with Littlefinger and confront Sansa with evidence of something that's not really a crime but is genuine and might reflect poorly on her. 

Keep a bag-o-faces under your bed. 

Admit you went to the Harvard of assassin schools. (Though you didn't really learn how to assassination from them. Still, somehow you know how to assassinate anyone anytime, or so it would seem.) 

Threaten Sansa's life in as close to explicit terms as possible without actually being explicit.

Mention stealing her face and wearing her clothes. Only previously disloyal people find that suspicious!

 

 

My oh my, how could Sansa possibly get the idea Arya's a threat, unless she's not Team Jon, Ride or Die? 

Admittedly, that could reasonably have been Arya's plan, because she's a psycho who doesn't know how to relate to people on levels other than throat-slitting, duel-winning, and human pie-baking. 

[darmody]

18 hours ago, Cron said:

So, why weren't we shown those critical scenes?  Dramatic effect. So we, the audience, would be left in suspense, wondering what was really going on rather than being spoon-fed the whole thing in a linear fashion that was not suspenseful.

But I'm still in suspense. When did Arya/Sansa find out? Was their squabbling real or a put-on? If a put-on, when did they start putting it on? (Ans why did they do it when Littledfininger probably couldn't hear or see them?) Was Arya testing Sansa and Sansa figured out later? Did Bran break it to the girls or just Sansa, and did they or just Sansa go to him, or did he bring it up out of the blue? Why did he not tell them earlier, if it wasn't a put-on?

I don't know, because the show didn't tell me. The suspense is compounded by the fact that they won't tell me when the show comes back in five years or whenever. 

[darmody]

17 hours ago, #teamNightking said:

You know, after thinking about it.... Wasn't Sansa marrying Ramsey a huge betrayal to the Starks? I mean...the Boltons betrayed the Starks...sided with the Lannisters and were complicit in the red wedding. Roose killed Robb! Her mother died there! Then she married Roose's son. WTF. If Arya had a reason to be pissed and want revenge, there it is. The only reason Sansa would do such a thing is personal ambition. 

Sansa also betrayed Jon by keeping the existence of the Vale army--Littlefinger's Vale army--from him. As a result (and a result of Jon's stupidity), almost the entire Snow/Stark/Wildling army was wiped out. This doesn't appear to be a secret, and everyone's fine with it for no reason. 

Arya has more than enough reason to doubt Sansa's loyalty. Probably the best way to test it isn't to confront her directly and sound like a psycho. 

[Gaz0680]

2 hours ago, darmody said:

Yes, brilliant Sansa obviously would get the hint. Because what's a bag of faces and threatening to kill someone, cut off their face, and steal their personality (and pretty dresses!) compared to the symbolism of handing them a dagger?

Sansa totally got the message, too, because she didn't talk to Little finger like she was considering killing her sister, didn't brood over the idea of killing her sister on the ramparts (that's her thinking place), and didn't go to her omniscient brother for advice offscreen because she was thinking of killing her sister before she killed her first. 

This post demonstrates exactly how Dumb & Dumber ruined both Aryas and Sansa's characters this season.

The whole writing was just ridiculous.

Lets say Arya really did want Sansa dead in episode 6. She had caught Sansa red handed searching her room and they were alone. Arya was armed and is a skilled killer. Sansa is not. If the writers wanted it to look like Arya truly meant Sansa any harm, why didn't they just have Arya kill or at least cut her then and there??

The very idea that Sansa was thinking on the ramparts about having her own sister killed after Arya had just given her a weapon, hilt first, and left the room leaving Sansa very much alive and unharmed makes even less sense. If Sansa had had Arya killed then, it would have been murder, pure and simple, not self defence. Arya was not posing any immediate threat at all.

The very fact they even considered having it play out like that with Sansa wanting to kill Arya before deciding to go to Bran as per the cut scene from finale just shows how lost these show writers are and how they do not understand their characters they have spent seven seasons developing. 

[hallam]

2 hours ago, darmody said:

You're right in that it's obvious Bran and Sansa, at least, worked it out beforehand. You're wrong, because neither I nor many another viewer could figure out when, nor whether the entire stupid Arya/Sansa feud storyline was a put-on all along. Or if it wasn't, when exactly it ended, and who ended it. That's all left as clear as absolute darkness in the episode. 

He ended up with his throat slit. QED.

[John Meta]

2 hours ago, darmody said:

How on earth would Littlefinger use Brienne against Arya?

It doesn't matter, how; those machinations would be something only Littlefinger's manipulative mind would've been weaving. The point being that Littlefinger brought up the idea to use Brienne. The next scene, Sansa is sending Brienne away. So we go from Littlefinger "we can try to draw Brienne into this" to Sansa sending her away.

 

 

[SerJeremiahLouistark]

LF brought up Brienne to make it look like he wasn't trying to cause a rift but to be a peacemaker.  You can't just come out with your "I like to play a little game" conversation without laying some groundwork first.  

[Cron]

2 hours ago, darmody said:

But I'm still in suspense. When did Arya/Sansa find out? Was their squabbling real or a put-on? If a put-on, when did they start putting it on? (Ans why did they do it when Littledfininger probably couldn't hear or see them?) Was Arya testing Sansa and Sansa figured out later? Did Bran break it to the girls or just Sansa, and did they or just Sansa go to him, or did he bring it up out of the blue? Why did he not tell them earlier, if it wasn't a put-on?

Well, I think some of these questions will likely never be answered.  With only 6 episodes left, I highly doubt the show will devote time to explaining in great detail stuff that already happened and is done.  It may be dissatisfying, but I think that's that.

We don't know that LF could not see or hear Arya and Sansa in that conversation, though.  In fact, there was speculation among fans even before it was revealed that Sansa and Arya were working together that they "put on a show" in that scene so LF would believe he really had them at odds with each other.

2 hours ago, darmody said:

I don't know, because the show didn't tell me. The suspense is compounded by the fact that they won't tell me when the show comes back in five years or whenever. 

Well, I don't think it will be 5 years (maybe 18 months), but yeah, like I was just saying above, I agree that it is unlikely we will ever know all the details, especially since total screen time in Season 8 will be so precious and limited.  Some people like stuff like this, letting their imaginations fill in the blanks, but some people don't like it and want every question answered.  Personally, I'd rather have more information, not less, but it is what it is, and I've just got to accept that.  I consider it quite possible that even the WRITERS don't know all the answers to your questions in detail, so I think the information probably just isn't available anyway (maybe the showrunners could generally and vaguely describe what went on behind the scenes, but I highly doubt the writers bothered to write scenes out in detail that were never going to be filmed.  But hey, maybe I'm wrong.)

[darmody]

1 hour ago, Cron said:

We don't know that LF could not see or hear Arya and Sansa in that conversation, though.  In fact, there was speculation among fans even before it was revealed that Sansa and Arya were working together that they "put on a show" in that scene so LF would believe he really had them at odds with each other.

Fans did that, yes, because it's tempting to rewrite the show or guess at secret meaning behind scenes so as to make the show make sense. (Like I myself have done by pretending the Night King intentionally set a trap to catch the dragon.) But it was unlikely Littlefinger could hear them in those scenes, and there definitely were times when he couldn't see them. Yet they acted out in silence the plot was that they were sneaking around and angry at eachother

Why? What does it buy them? Why would they want Littlefinger to have that information on them? Especially on Arya and her bag of faces. Revealing which on purpose would make her planetos' worst greatest secret assassin. 

They didn't even need to buy time, because they could've killed Littlefinger at any time for murdering their aunt and selling Sansa to the Boltons. 

If it was all one big ruse the show tricked us in an egregious matter for the sake of a parlor trick. And for the sake of keeping a once great now flaccid character around for another season. Not worth it. 

On the other hand, if it wasn't a trick and they really were at eachothers' throats, the show denigrated two characters--one formerly great, the other mostly a nonentity who was then dragged through Ramsey's mud and was on the road of improvement, but I don't think was ever going to be great anyway. But the show only cheated us for part of an episode, which is far from a hanging crime. Thus making it the lesser of two evils. 

[#teamNightking]

9 minutes ago, darmody said:

(Like I myself have done by pretending the Night King intentionally set a trap to catch the dragon.)

Whoa... Are you telling me he didn't set a trap? !! Wtf !!! But but .... Dammit 

Can we get different writers for season 8? 

[Cron]

23 minutes ago, darmody said:

Fans did that, yes, because it's tempting to rewrite the show or guess at secret meaning behind scenes so as to make the show make sense. (Like I myself have done by pretending the Night King intentionally set a trap to catch the dragon.) But it was unlikely Littlefinger could hear them in those scenes, and there definitely were times when he couldn't see them. Yet they acted out in silence the plot was that they were sneaking around and angry at eachother

Why? What does it buy them? Why would they want Littlefinger to have that information on them? Especially on Arya and her bag of faces. Revealing which on purpose would make her planetos' worst greatest secret assassin. 

They didn't even need to buy time, because they could've killed Littlefinger at any time for murdering their aunt and selling Sansa to the Boltons. 

If it was all one big ruse the show tricked us in an egregious matter for the sake of a parlor trick. And for the sake of keeping a once great now flaccid character around for another season. Not worth it. 

On the other hand, if it wasn't a trick and they really were at eachothers' throats, the show denigrated two characters--one formerly great, the other mostly a nonentity who was then dragged through Ramsey's mud and was on the road of improvement, but I don't think was ever going to be great anyway. But the show only cheated us for part of an episode, which is far from a hanging crime. Thus making it the lesser of two evils. 

Well, I hear you.  I really do.  I actually agree with a LOT of what you are writing there.

I myself have openly wondered why LF was still alive more than 30 minutes after Bran arrived at Winterfell. (While Bran would not have had reason to check on LF himself prior to arriving at WF, he WOULD check to see what had happened to all his relatives since he last saw them and that would include Ned and Sansa for sure, which would cause him to know who LF was and already know that LF was a bad guy even before Bran arrived at WF and met him in person.  CERTAINLY, Bran knew when he made the "Chaos is a ladder" comment to LF.  Why was LF alive even 10 minutes after that?)

Here's the best I can say:  I believe the writers did what they did to manufacture drama, and to give Arya, Sansa and Bran something to occupy their time while other characters were elsewhere doing, arguably, far more important things.   Bran, Arya and Sansa had to do SOMETHING during Season 7.  They weren't just going to sit around doing nothing, so this is what we got.

HOWEVER, I still do believe I CAN reconcile it all, even if we never fully understand all the details, and it goes like this:  Bran looked into the future, and saw that this is the way it HAD to be in order to get the best outcome, even if the path did not always make sense to us.  This may not be satisfying to us, but it DOES resolve any seeming oddities or inconsistencies about the way things unfolded.

Because Bran can see "the" future, I assume he must be able to see "possible" futures, and my belief is that Bran checked possible futures, and decided that many of them ended badly, but THIS one ended well for the Starks and badly for LF, so this is the path that was taken.

Not fully satisfying.  Yes, I know.  But it's what we've got, and I'd rather believe this than believe they just slopped it together and flung it onto the t.v. screen for us to consume.

[UnViserion]

3 hours ago, hallam said:

He ended up with his throat slit. QED.

And now somebody has to try and wash that blood from that ancient stone floor.  

[Monster_Under_the_Bed]

40 minutes ago, Cron said:

Well, I hear you.  I really do.  I actually agree with a LOT of what you are writing there.

I myself have openly wondered why LF was still alive more than 30 minutes after Bran arrived at Winterfell. (While Bran would not have had reason to check on LF himself prior to arriving at WF, he WOULD check to see what had happened to all his relatives since he last saw them and that would include Ned and Sansa for sure, which would cause him to know who LF was and already know that LF was a bad guy even before Bran arrived at WF and met him in person.  CERTAINLY, Bran knew when he made the "Chaos is a ladder" comment to LF.  Why was LF alive even 10 minutes after that?)

This is what makes Bran a nonsensical character. He can't be in too many scenes because he would just reveal the true motivations of everyone involved and there would be no room for dramatic tension. Bringing him to WF was a mistake. He should have been kept away somewhere, perhaps occasionally communicating through visions/dreams in an ambiguous fashion. Either that or make his "loss of humanity" a lot more pronounced to the point where he is near catatonic and nearly incapable of communicating with people.

[Monster_Under_the_Bed]

3 hours ago, darmody said:

Fans did that, yes, because it's tempting to rewrite the show or guess at secret meaning behind scenes so as to make the show make sense. (Like I myself have done by pretending the Night King intentionally set a trap to catch the dragon.) But it was unlikely Littlefinger could hear them in those scenes, and there definitely were times when he couldn't see them. Yet they acted out in silence the plot was that they were sneaking around and angry at eachother

Why? What does it buy them? Why would they want Littlefinger to have that information on them? Especially on Arya and her bag of faces. Revealing which on purpose would make her planetos' worst greatest secret assassin. 

They didn't even need to buy time, because they could've killed Littlefinger at any time for murdering their aunt and selling Sansa to the Boltons.

It was such a clumsy story line with all the finesse of a direct-to-dvd cash grab production. We are supposed to assume that Arya and Sansa acted out a scene of conflict to entrap LF because he could presumably spy on them. Well, that's fine, but they still had to do their scheming at some point. How did they know that LF couldn't hear them then? None of this was even remotely touched upon in order to "build dramatic tension" at the expense of a coherent plot. 

It seems that the writers got confused at some point as to what the characters in the show should be aware of versus what the viewers could see. LFs crimes, obvious to the viewers, would not be obvious to any individual character within the show. An even more glaring example is Arya's psychotic behavior. Sansa has not seen her sister for many years, nearly half of Arya's life, so she can have no idea what kind of person her younger sibling has become. Everything that Arya does would make a reasonable person distrust her and fear her. Sansa actively seeks out LFs advice in regards to Arya and apparently she feeds him deceptive information so he eventually "compromises" himself. The problem here is that this type of trap would not reveal a traitor, but rather serve as a catch-all to ensnare any targeted person, even an honest one. Of course LF was not honest, but given the information he had access to, his advice actually made sense. What would Arya look like to an outsider with her deranged behavior?

Then we get to the public murder of LF. In a scene strangely evocative of the one where mad king Joffrey orders the killing of Ned Stark, Sansa accuses and orders execution of LF almost in one breath. Even Lannisters had the decency to put Tyrion on trial and offer him a chance to live by choosing trial by combat. If I thought that GoT could still produce good story lines, I would expect that the entire North would be in an uproar over such reckless behavior of the Stark sisters. After all, if they can publicly murder LF, then anyone can be next. But the characters in the show now know things that they could only find out by breaking the fourth wall and watching the entire series. Also, the whole idea of bad decisions having consequences has gone out the window, so I am not holding my breath.

[darmody]

18 minutes ago, Monster_Under_the_Bed said:

It seems that the writers got confused at some point as to what the characters in the show should be aware of versus what the viewers could see. LFs crimes, obvious to the viewers, would not be obvious to any individual character within the show. An even more glaring example is Arya's psychotic behavior. Sansa has not seen her sister for many years, nearly half of Arya's life, so she can have no idea what kind of person her younger sibling has become. Everything that Arya does would make a reasonable person distrust her and fear her. Sansa actively seeks out LFs advice in regards to Arya and apparently she feeds him deceptive information so he eventually "compromises" himself. The problem here is that this type of trap would not reveal a traitor, but rather serve as a catch-all to ensnare any targeted person, even an honest one. Of course LF was not honest, but given the information he was given, his advice actually made sense. What would Arya look like to an outsider with her deranged behavior?

Let's say it wasn't a ruse, and Arya truly did suspect Sansa's loyalty. Well, she has good reason, in my opinion. Because Sansa voluntarily married a Bolton for no reason and betrayed Jon by withholding vital military intelligence. 

What damning information do they have Arya confront Sansa with? Some raven-mail with an innocent explanation. Okay, that's what ties Littlefinger into the story. But she doesn't proceed to confront Sansa with her actual disloyalty. Instead, she talks about dresses and junk. 

Also, instead of observing Sansa and passing judgement, or just letting the other responsible people in on her shortcomings, or confronting her as a normal sister might, she acts like a psycho. Which is understandable, if the show were presenting her as a budding serial killer or messed-up kid with PTSD. But it's more like she's a righteous badass who needs to learn how to hide her bag of human faces better. 

 

Can we talk about Littlefinger's plan, by the way. I understand siddling up to Sansa by getting rid of people who might come between them or target him. But why go after her sister first? After you've seen her badass all over the courtyard. And considering she's protected by the world's second-best swordsman. (The best being Arya.) Maybe he's heard Jon and Arya were like peas and carrots, though I'm not sure he has access to any intelligence whatsoever anymore, except that which he can scrounge up from leaning against walls while smirking. He was present in King's Landing to learn Sansa and Arya didn't get along. But come on. 

They are sisters, even if one is a psycho and the other pretends to be sneaky and a bit evil when the mood strikes her. After a two-season hiatus from scheming, how about you start smaller than tricking family members into wanting to kill eachother.

[Zapho]

8 hours ago, Cron said:

Well, I hear you.  I really do.  I actually agree with a LOT of what you are writing there.

I myself have openly wondered why LF was still alive more than 30 minutes after Bran arrived at Winterfell. (While Bran would not have had reason to check on LF himself prior to arriving at WF, he WOULD check to see what had happened to all his relatives since he last saw them and that would include Ned and Sansa for sure, which would cause him to know who LF was and already know that LF was a bad guy even before Bran arrived at WF and met him in person.  CERTAINLY, Bran knew when he made the "Chaos is a ladder" comment to LF.  Why was LF alive even 10 minutes after that?)

Here's the best I can say:  I believe the writers did what they did to manufacture drama, and to give Arya, Sansa and Bran something to occupy their time while other characters were elsewhere doing, arguably, far more important things.   Bran, Arya and Sansa had to do SOMETHING during Season 7.  They weren't just going to sit around doing nothing, so this is what we got.

HOWEVER, I still do believe I CAN reconcile it all, even if we never fully understand all the details, and it goes like this:  Bran looked into the future, and saw that this is the way it HAD to be in order to get the best outcome, even if the path did not always make sense to us.  This may not be satisfying to us, but it DOES resolve any seeming oddities or inconsistencies about the way things unfolded.

Because Bran can see "the" future, I assume he must be able to see "possible" futures, and my belief is that Bran checked possible futures, and decided that many of them ended badly, but THIS one ended well for the Starks and badly for LF, so this is the path that was taken.

Not fully satisfying.  Yes, I know.  But it's what we've got, and I'd rather believe this than believe they just slopped it together and flung it onto the t.v. screen for us to consume.

Isaac Hempstead-Wright did 2 interviews where he talked about his character's capabilities, problems and motivations. They might help explain the issue:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/game-of-thrones-season-7-isaac-hempstead-wright-interview.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/arts/television/game-of-thrones-bran-interview-isaac-hempstead-wright.html?mcubz=3

I think it comes down to Bran not really being Bran anymore, he is the 3ER, so he has other priorities. That he doesn't know everything makes sense too, he has access, but he has to look it up. This makes him a lot less powerful and not all Deus ex Machina plot-device level imo. He has to ask the right questions, which is not that easy. Especially since he doesn't have the experience of the previous 3ER.

[Cron]

7 hours ago, Monster_Under_the_Bed said:

This is what makes Bran a nonsensical character. He can't be in too many scenes because he would just reveal the true motivations of everyone involved and there would be no room for dramatic tension. Bringing him to WF was a mistake. He should have been kept away somewhere, perhaps occasionally communicating through visions/dreams in an ambiguous fashion. Either that or make his "loss of humanity" a lot more pronounced to the point where he is near catatonic and nearly incapable of communicating with people.

Interesting suggestions about how Bran should have been used.

Yeah, I've seen this in fiction many, many times.  Writers create characters that are super-powerful and super-cool, but they are so powerful that it disrupts the normal flow of the story, or WOULD disrupt the normal flow of the story, if only the character used his or her power in ways that most people would if they had those powers.

The superhero t.v. show "Heroes" a few years back is a great example. That show was awesome for the first season or two, but then multiple characters became SO powerful that it seemed like I was asking myself once every 5 minutes "Uhhh...why didn't he just use his powers to do THIS?  Or why didn't he just use his powers to do THAT?"

I love Superman movies, but he's the same way. So powerful that I'm almost constantly asking why he didn't just solve a problem using one of his many superpowers.  Or, his conflicts with his opponents become outrageously unrealistic, because in truth, they would be like gnats to him.  (The recent Batman vs. Superman movie was a great example.  Sure, Batman had kryptonite, but Superman is so much more powerful that the fight was absurd.  You could cut Superman's powers by 99% and he would still mop the floor with Batman in seconds, especially using his superspeed.  Batman would have no chance, the fight would be literally over before Batman could even blink an eye)

Actually, the dragons in GoT reached that point a year or so ago, too.  After I saw how they annihilated the "Masters" in Slaver's Bay, I knew they would be nerfed once they went to Westeros, and sure enough, they have been.  At the Field of Fire 2, Dany went into battle with only one instead of all three. Why?  Cuz if she had taken all three, it would have been even MORE lopsided than it actually was.

Then up north, I really don't think we saw the dragons unload against the undead anywhere NEAR as much as they could have.  Why?  Cuz the dragons have become so powerful that if Dany REALLY unleashed them the battle would be no contest.

And yeah, Bran is now kind of at that point, too.  The writers have to nerf him, cuz if they don't he's the instant trump card in almost every situation.  Consider this.  When Jon and Dany arrive in Winterfell, Bran SHOULD immediately tell them that Cersei was lying and will betray them, right?  Immediately.   Bran:  "Hey, Jon, great to see you, I've got two really important things to tell you.  One you're heir to the Iron Throne and Dany is not, cuz your parents were Rhaegar and Lyanna.  Two, Cersei was lying to you and is planning to betray you." (Because.it is VERY reasonable to assume that Bran routinely uses his powers to monitor very important events in Westeros, definitely including ones that involve his family members.  In fact, Bran would be a fool to NOT be routinely using his powers in that way.)  But I'm guessing it won't happen like that, cuz if it does it will instantly defuse the entire sub-plot of Cersei betraying Jon and Dany.

[Cron]

4 minutes ago, Zapho said:

Isaac Hempstead-Wright did 2 interviews where he talked about his character's capabilities, problems and motivations. They might help explain the issue:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/game-of-thrones-season-7-isaac-hempstead-wright-interview.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/arts/television/game-of-thrones-bran-interview-isaac-hempstead-wright.html?mcubz=3

I think it comes down to Bran not really being Bran anymore, he is the 3ER, so he has other priorities. That he doesn't know everything makes sense too, he has access, but he has to look it up. This makes him a lot less powerful and not all Deus ex Machina plot-device level imo. He has to ask the right questions, which is not that easy. Especially since he doesn't have the experience of the previous 3ER.

Yes, I agree that it seems clear Bran does not already automatically know "everything," but rather, he has access to all information.

But here's the thing:  It is EXTREMELY reasonable to assume that Bran routinely uses his powers to monitor and review events of great importance to (a) Westeros as a whole, and/or (b) his family, past and present (indeed, note that there's a lot of overlap between those two categories, too).  In fact, we KNOW he does.  Bran KNEW stuff about Arya and Sansa, he revealed them, ergo, he's been watching them.  He knew the "Chaos is a ladder" stuff (and other related stuff about LF), too.

We are not talking here about whether Bran automatically knows the daily activities of every human being in Westeros, including what each one had for lunch and what they are planning to have for breakfast tomorrow.  We are talking about major events, relating to major players (who are often related to Bran by blood), and as such it is very reasonable to assume he has already "asked the right question" regarding EVERYTHING that we (the audience) know, and very likely a whole lot more on top of that. 

In fact, I just gave one easy example in a prior post.  Bran already knows Cersei is planning to betray Jon and Dany, right?  He must.  My goodness, it is inconceivable to me that he was not monitoring all of those events very closely including all the players and what they said to each other in private, including the part of Tyrion's conversation with Cersei that we were NOT shown, and Jaime's conversation with Cersei in which she told Jaime she is not going to honor her word.

There's quite a bit of talk on these boards right now about whether Tyrion made some deal with Cersei that involves the betrayal of Jon and Dany.  Okay, well, if Tyrion DID, that will be exposed by Bran within seconds of Jon and Dany arriving at Winterfell, right?  

How could Bran NOT consider all of this stuff important enough to monitor, especially in light of the facts that those events are critically important to the future of Westeros, AND involve one of his close family members (Jon)?

And whatever secret game Varys has been playing for many years should be exposed immediately when Jon, Dany and their entourage arrive in Winterfell, right?

And we could go on and on and on.  If something was important enough for the show to put on-screen for US to see, we should be able to safely assume that Bran already knows it all, plus a whole lot more. 

[Zapho]

On 1.9.2017 at 4:09 PM, Cron said:

And we could go on and on and on.  If something was important enough for the show to put on-screen for US to see, we should be able to safely assume that Bran already knows it all, plus a whole lot more. 

Not necessarily. Bran can't watch everything all the time. And he doesn't have any means we know of to distinguish between important things and unimportant things. Other than common sense or experience. Which he didn't gain a ton of hiding in the cave.

Somebody on youtube suggested that Bran working together with Sam will be the way to 'unleash' Bran's super powers in a meaningful way. Cause Bran is like the internet without Google. Sam could be Google for him, using the knowledge he gained to mentor Bran in asking the right questions. The comparison isn't that fitting (Google doesn't tell you to ask the right questions either) but I liked it anyway. Bran's problem at the moment is that he has access to too much information and is still struggling to learn how to filter it.

For example: He might have seen that Littlefinger was the one to put the knife to Ned Stark's throat, because he probably examined what happened to Ned prior to his execution. Littlefinger was helping Ned, then betrayed him. And then he protected and tutored Sansa. Bran doesn't see into LF's head, he had to reserve judgement on his motivations as long as LF stayed as an ally in Winterfell. Everybody distrusted LF, but he was also the one who convinced the Knights of the Vale to help Jon - on Sansa's request. LF's betrayal of Ned wasn't enough to convict him at this point because LF could have claimed that he did it to protect Sansa and Arya when it became clear to him that Ned was lost. 

Bran might not have thought to examine his mother's relationship with his aunt Lysa too closely, especially in regard to LF. This was the really condemning part in the end. He needed some of the information Sansa must have provided him with before the showdown in order to look in the right direction.