The Bard of Banefort

Funny and interesting video about Season 8 (NSFW). I personally love the idea of Dark Dany, but this is still an interesting alternative.

Weirdly enough, Mushroom’s claim that Daemon deflowered Alicent in the Rogue Prince was something I found completely believable, so I was surprised when it was removed in Fire & Blood. I think your suggested trajectory for Criston and Rhaenyra’s relationship makes the most sense, with them having an affair and Rhaenyra ending it to marry Laenor/keep her claim. That would make them both sympathetic. Her relationship with Harwin could start later, after it becomes clear that Laenor isn’t going to perform. The more complicated part is how they write Rhaenyra and Daemon’s relationship. It might be better for them to just leave it at flirting on the show, especially if they want us to sympathize with Daemon. Modern audiences aren’t going to be down with a guy seducing his teenage niece. What I’m most curious about is if Daemon will still have two wives before Rhaenyra. They could skip Rhea entirely, or they might not even include Laena and instead have Baela and Rhaena be Rhea’s kids.

Loved the first two episodes, but I hope that the success of Baby Yoda doesn't lead Lucasfilm to overplay the "guy takes in orphaned child" trope. That's basically what they're doing with Hunter and Omega.

I think Aegon's depiction will depend on whether the show wants us to pick a side, or whether they go all-in on Rhaenyra. If I had to guess, Aegon will be written as kind of a loser--a sulky, petulant d-bag. But if they want the audience to feel conflicted, then they'll have to give him some redeeming qualities; a lovable loser instead of a bratty one.

Daemon saw himself as Viserys’ heir before Aemma’s death in the books, too. If Aemma is still alive when the show starts, then this isn’t a departure from canon. I’m guessing they’ll make Alicent something of a femme fatale in the show, with Otto encouraging her to seduce Viserys, similar to how Littlefinger coaches Sansa in TWOW.

OMG they gave Corlys white dreads. Alicent’s costume is very reminiscent of Anne Boleyn, which I’m guessing was intentional. I’m glad they’re using a different style than the kimonos and death metal garb from GOT. I have a feeling Aemma is going to be in the show, only to die in the first few episodes. It’ll be interesting to see her, seeing as we don’t even get a description of how she looks in the books.

Some more comments from the showrunner about the final title card: https://www.cbr.com/falcon-and-winter-soldier-finale-change/ Personally, I would prefer if Bucky kept the Winter Soldier title and just transformed it into something new (sort of like Black Widow did), but I find the discourse around the name to be indicative that they maybe didn't think it all the way through. Until I see a better argument, I'm just going to assume it's a marketing thing. It's weird how a lot of the culture critics claiming that TFATWS is a critique of "US imperialism" (which if it is, it failed at miserably) are the same people who loudly proclaimed Killmonger to be the true hero of Black Panther due to his admonishment of isolationism. I realize that there's obviously a spectrum between the two, but it is striking how so few people seem to realize that these ideologies go hand-in-hand, and how quickly one leads to the other. I don't expect this to happen in the Marvel-verse, but if this was the real world, then within 5-10 years, huge swaths of people around the world would be accusing Wakanda of being a capitalist-imperialist empire, and we'd probably have a new cold war on our hands of some kind. But really, with all the focus on military culture in the Captain America franchise, it would be very interesting, and even poignant, to see an anti-hero/sympathetic villain who is a flat-out isolationist--someone who doesn't want to conquer or control the world, but detach from it.

So the showrunner just did an interview where he said that Bucky is not the Winter Soldier anymore, even though the show ends with "Captain America and the Winter Soldier." https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/falcon-and-winter-soldier-bucky-barnes-new-name-malcolm-spellman/ I dunno, guys. . . this is kind of reminding me of D&D a little, where what they would say in interviews didn't match what we saw on screen. I really feel like Marvel dropped the ball with this one.

It feels like a cliche to talk about the perils of men writing women these days, but the women on this show were so underwritten that I basically forgot about them until now. The closest thing we get to growth was Sam’s sister deciding not to sell her boat. Even Sharon’s big reveal was just that: a big reveal. The change happened before the show started. I saw someone theorize that this show was more of a “side quest,” so that people who only watch the movies won’t feel like they missed anything. Endgame ends with Sam having been named Cap and Bucky seemingly ready to move on with his life, and that’s where the show ends too.

Sam told him that his list was him “avenging, not amending.” So I took that to mean that him giving the book away was a sign that he wasn’t going to seek vengeance.

If they ever give Bucky his own show, helping the people on his list could be an interesting premise. Like he said, there are probably a dozen others after Yori who could benefit from it.

This was kind of retconned in Civil War by having him be mind controlled with code words.

The bank scene didn’t work for me because it ignores the privileges that celebrities are afforded. Just look at COVID: the rest of us were publicly shamed if we left the house, but celebs were still taking vacations and throwing parties. Once the banker started fanboying over Falcon, it became much less believable that he wouldn’t get the loan. By the way, have any of you seen Ingrid Goes West? Aside from just being a good movie, Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda) and Wyatt Russell (John Walker) play a married couple—Olsen is an Instagram influencer and Russell is her disgruntled husband : D

I watched two video reviews of this series (both only a little over 10 minutes) that I found interesting. The first one was by Cosmonaut Variety Hour (who is Black), and he did a good job analyzing why Karli doesn't really work as a main villain: The other is by The Critical Drinker, who's much more critical (hence his name). He did a lot of videos trashing GOT S8 which you guys would probably get a kick out of. I don't agree with everything he says, and you guys probably won't either, but it is a funny video. It also highlights what I was saying about how you really could nitpick this show as much as the Star Wars prequels.

I agree that we were supposed to infer that Sam’s family was denied the loan because of their race. That said, a poor person who isn’t Black who watched that scene would probably think, “Yeah, they never would have given me that loan either.” There’s this strange phenomenon among middle-to-upperclass white people where they don’t seem to realize that poor white people still exist, and if they do, they believe that these people are poor due to some moral failing of their own, and therefore deserve it. There was actually a study done about this not too long ago: https://www.google.com/amp/s/psmag.com/.amp/news/talking-about-white-privilege-can-reduce-liberal-sympathy-for-poor-white-people