Krishtotter

Agreed, it may be that the showrunners selected Bran because a TV show needs a familiar face. Although, we won't know for sure for a while. But the "theme" will be the same, as I noted in my above post. Someone, whether Bran or other, will fulfil the same purpose with the same fantasy-subverting, anti-Aragorn elevation to the throne. It must happen, because GRRM is not a quasi-fascist "divine ruler/chosen hero" theorist as most fantasy authors (unfortunately) tend to be, if accidentally. The end ruler will not be a "conquering hero" with a claim by inheritance.

Absolutely loved this final episode. I rated it 10/10. What a pity much of what had come before it was worse than rotten, and I rate a lot of it 1-3 out of 10. Especially episode 3 with its appalling termination of the Night King plot and episode 4, with its numerous plot holes and logical implausibilities. But I could tell that this was George RR Martin's ending to the series rather than D&D's. They merely executed his wishes. And they didn't "get there" particularly well but the there when reached was actually very good. Jon returns to the "real north" and becomes the new King-beyond-the-Wall of the Freefolk. That was where he always belonged, with his and Ygritte's people, the successor to Mance Rayder, side-by-side with his faithful pup Ghost. Sansa finally gains the independence of the North and becomes rightful Queen of a free kingdom, no longer under Southron dominance, as daughter of Ned and Catelyn Stark - and didn't she deserve it. After everything she and her family endured, she has more than vindicated the memory of her parents and ancestors. Her ancestor knelt to a Targaryen, whereas she bravely resisted the tyrant Queen and after her demise became the champion and leader of her people. That's my girl!!!! Arya, the girl who never wanted to be a "lady" and who learned at the end to forgo the cycle of vengeance that had driven her after her family's slaughter, becomes the Christopher Columbus of Westeros - the adventurer-in-chief, complete with her own hardy crew. And she doesn't marry Gendry, which is GREAT because she don't need no man. G'day captain Arya. Bran becoming King of the Six Kingdoms of Westeros (sans the Iron Throne) after an election by the nobility - I honestly thought, when I first reader the spoiler, that this was going to be absolute bollocks. Only it wasn't. In fact, it made perfect sense and fitted in with the overarching thematic agenda of the show and books, that no "divine right/born to rule" stock fantasy heroes like Aragorn (i.e. Dany or Jon Snow) win the throne but that a disabled boy, who would be a far better ruler because he actually has the requisite qualities and skills, is appointed to the role on the basis of merit rather than by inheritance. It's a great subversion of fantasy tropes, which typically exude an almost kind of "fascist" feel in supporting the claims of "destined" Chosen Ones. Real life isn't about "destiny" or assumed absolute right to rule, because there is no such thing. We make our own destinies. Very ASoIAF that surprising result. Dany, Dany, Dany....she ends exactly as I predicted and expected from the books: an idealistic, Robespierran anti-hero/villain with the best of intentions but the worst of methods and a grandiose self-righteous entitlement, messiah complex to go with her never-ending revolutionary world gospel of liberationist salvation through fire and blood. She could not have ended any other way and Jon did the underhand but ultimately noble, self-sacrificing act in saving millions of human beings in Westeros and around the world from her impending holocaust/final solution, by stabbing to death the woman he truly loved (the vulnerable girl at the beginning of the books and TV show, longing for her home with the red door) to take out the Dragon Queen dictator-in-the-making. It was beautifully acted by both Emilia and Kit. What a fantastic anti-hero/villain Daenerys was: it's extremely hard to depict a truly sympathetic villain and she is that ++++++. A lot more to say, about other characters (such as Tyrion) and the episode more generally but that will do for now. I thought it a very fitting end to the series as a whole and an oddly good finish to the ropiest season of television ever.

Not a valid criticism imo. Big swathes of the episode were dire but Dany's characterisation is consistent with her character arc in the books and show, where she has long been becoming an idealistic dictator capable of brutality in the name of utopian aims and the pursuit of her narrow-minded life agenda for the throne. Her end-state is the one GRRM intended. D&D haven't got there particularly well in places but they can't be blamed for the way GRRM wrote her and many have understood her, including myself. I think a lot of undue hate is coming from Dany fans, who are 'burnt' that their girl is turning out the way Dany critics have long predicted. One reviewer, for instance, writing in the Telegraph fumed that "Daenerys goes from messiah to antichrist in a single bound". That's grossly unfair - I, among many other people, have been warning that she evidenced deeply worrying signs for ages! It is consistent and not inconsistent with her character, and is indeed the logical outcome of the way GRRM wrote her.

I rated this episode a 6 because it was really a "tale of two halves": the first segment of the episode was actually very good (deserving of the "8" that 33 posters decided to give it) whilst the second segment was badder than bad, literally without a single redeeming quality (and hence worthy of the inglorious "1" that 35 of our fellow posters decided to give it). On Rotten Tomatoes and IMBD, it is apparent that no episode of GoT has divided its audience more than this one. Partly, this has to do with justifiable outrage at the narrative idiocy of the preceding episode and its hamfisted anticlimax in terms of what was supposed to be 'the Great War' since season 1, and partly on the merits of this episode itself (when viewed as a single unit without considering the context from last episode). When the episode opened, I initially thought, "ok, after the unremitting disaster and logic by-pass that was episode 3, after which I almost abandoned the show entirely because of its premature termination of the NK/White Walker plot without any real meaningful pay-off, this is actually back to old-style GoT". The Good I liked the 'wake', with the long-panning shots over the pyres of the dead, which I thought was delicately handled and appropriately reverential. The 'drinking' scenes reminded me of those screened in RoK in LoTR after the Battle of Helms Deep and again, there was some decent characterisation here, as we saw Dany becoming jealous of, and paranoid about, the respect given naturally to Jon in the North, which is supposed to be one of her Seven Kingdoms. This evidently dented Dany's composure, because she has both a lesser claim to the throne than he does by primogeniture and evokes much less devotion from any but her freed slaves and Dothraki hordes back in Essos. Her discussion with Jon was good and revealing about her true aims: her 'love' for him is entirely subordinate to gaining the throne. I enjoyed the machiavellian, skull-skulduggery scenes involving Sansa and Daenerys, Sansa and Tyrion, and Tyrion and Varys. Finally, we have oodles of old-fashioned GoT intrigue and the growing coup d'etat amongst Dany's advisors, as they rightly discern what I've been saying all along - that she is an idealistic, revolutionary Robespierran-dictator in the making, who is potentially capable of inflicting a holocaust to implement her vision of a utopia under her singular rule, when cleansed of all tyrants and traitors - and respond differently to the revelation of Jon's birthright and greater claim. The Bad The episode was incredibly rushed at the end. It started with Brienne's characterisation in this episode - one sex scene with Jaime and she ends up a sobbing wreck pleading with him not to leave for Kings Landing. Something about that doesn't ring quite true for me. Then, we had the 'intrusion' of that extremely silly scene where Bronn just 'appears' from the shadows in the middle of heavily fortified Winterfell - as if he is the great stealth-ninja there ever was! That was shit, frankly. After that, the story suddenly and unevenly changes out of nowhere: Euron - freaking Euron, a pirate! - manages to do what no one save the Night King, even in the middle of last season's huge Goldroad Battle, unilaterally take out Rhaegal. It just happens without any narrative build-up - as if the D&D just thought, "this'll shock 'em". In the books, Euron has a special kind of horn that he harvested from the ruins of Old Valyria, which can be used to "bind" and control dragons. In his book role as "dragonbinder", Euron would indeed be the most formidable enemy of Dany's dragons and potentially be able to kill them - but the TV series never introduced this crucial weapon and so Euron's random deus ex machina felling of Rhaegal is completely illogical within the scope of the show. We then 'teleport' to Kings Landing from Dragonstone, where Dany's army and advisors soon turn up and are treated to that god awful scene where Missandei is killed for shock-value and Tyrion attempts to parley with Cersei by appealing to her innate goodness and love for her children (I mean, really?). The Round-up In light of the foregoing, it does not surprise me that some professional reviewers online have opined that, "the bulk of [episode 4] was filled with the sort of palace intrigue and character dynamics that made the show" great in its heyday and that it was returning to its "machiavellian best", whilst others have complained that "this episode was one of the biggest disappointments of the season so far" and that it was unremittingly atrocious. In truth, both are right - this episode showcased the best and worst of what GoT has become since season 4.

It's a wasted opportunity that Cogman, who "gets" GRRM's creation a million times over D&D, wasn't given the chance of being showrunner to conclude the series. His script last week was so greatly superior to this one by D&D, it's almost painful to watch them in succession. Amazon have been fortunate to have nabbed Cogman, even though we still don't know which shows he's working for them on.

Its not that I think she should have been on a battlefield. It's that my respect for her as a person has dropped after seeing her semi-plot-stirring behind the scenes, at a safe remove, while the person she's directing her snipes against (a person I seriously don't like btw but fair is fair) is risking her neck for her home, while she isn't.

It just boggles my mind that the Night King... A huge magical wall of ice built to defend the Seven Kingdoms from him. And he can't even win one bloody battle against the living. Death, literal death, comes for them and hardly anyone dies. I just can't fathom that.

Agreed, she was a sniping coward in this episode. Only thinking about her feud with Daenerys and personal safety. Grossly irritating when Dany was risking her neck and losing her main advisor. And I say that as a long-standing critic of Dany.

I'm happy, actually, with Arya being the princess that was promised. I just don't like how they handled it, by killing the Night King off so early and making his entire arc feel like a waste of time. Same with Melisandre. I'm just like, "that's it. All that. And that's it?"

Because it makes his entire plot feel redundant. To me at least anyway.

Personally, I feel a bit empty and dissatisfied right now. I haven't even looked at the preview for episode 4, and I'm not terribly sure I'm interested given that I don't have a clue what 8 seasons of this White Walker drivel was all about, if the endgame is just back to medieval politics. They might as well have just chosen one story or the other if they aren't coming together as a seamless whole. What is going on?

If you compare it with the defeat of Sauron in LoTR, whether in the prologue by Isildur or at the end of Return of the King, those scenes were far more tense, impactful and haunting in my opinion.

I know...mundane and boring.

One thing I do know... The dialogue last episode was way better. Battle or no battle, it was obvious that Cogman wrote the last script and that D&D wrote this one. Painfully obvious. And since they are writing the remaining scripts, I'm not overly confident. Indeed, at this hour I don't really know what the whole thing is about. A supernatural evil threatening Westeros for centuries and emphasised since both book 1, and season 1 of the show, just gone? And the remaining plot is back to politics after a short, high fantasy interlude, but this time without the big evil menace in the background to put their petty quarrelling into perspective? Wasn't that, like...kind of the point of ASOIAF and the double-pronged Other/White Walker threat matched up against the internecine, self-harming dynastic squabbling while Rome burns? The way their approaching this seems awfully disjointed rather than holistic, unless I'm misunderstanding where they intend to go. The Night King turned out not to be even a poor man's Sauron. And to have far less interesting motives (or none at all) than him as well.

Ah, right - thanks! I had thought it was Rhaegal at the end. My mistake.

I thought it was Rhaegal at the end? Perhaps it was Drogon, I couldn't really see it well.

I'm in the bizarre position of not knowing where, or how, to rate it. On the one hand, a very cinematic battle sequence. On the other hand, it lagged somewhat in places. The Night King was just taken out by Arya. And his entire army collapsed LoTR-style. Midway through the season. And Dany lost both Drogon and her main advisor. And Melisandre has completed her mission...so just drops dead. WTF!? I feel kind of weird about what I just watched and need some time to process. I can't for the life of me understand how a decades worth of foreshadowing of the Army of the Dead concludes with them being vanquished in one episode mid-season. The seeming entire purpose of one half of the plot over? Just the battle for the throne left? And what now of Bran with his omniscient skills as the Three-Eyed Raven?

Actually, from the very first post in that thread, I referred to Daenerys as "Robespierran-style" and have always said that he is the best historical personage with which to compare her. I invite you to go back and check. Here's the proof from my OP: Robespierre was my first and main comparative example from real world history. And I remain convinced that she is like him. The others all followed in Robespierre's wake, as instigators of idealistic state terror and dictatorship in the name of the betterment of the people, but he set the precedent - and with perfectly noble and pure intentions too, just like Dany. An originally liberal, humanitarian French Revolutionary and slavery abolitionist who ended up as a dictator and perpetrator of mass execution in a reign of terror in which he became ever more paranoid about plots to his rule and increasingly egotistical to boot, is not a bad comparison for Dany imo. I honestly see her heading this way and I think that many are blindsided by her Robespierre-style 'progressive' qualities like promising to break the dynastic wheel, abolishing the slave trade and what-not. If that kind of tragic moral regression into tyranny can happen in 18th century republican France in the context of a liberal, democratic revolution - born of the Enlightenment philosophy and Scientific Revolution - against an absolute monarchy: are you telling me it can't happen to an idealistic military conqueror in a medieval, feudalistic world, like Dany? You have not given me any reasons to doubt her similarity to Robespierre - a flawed, uncompromising, narrow-minded and almost schizophrenically paranoid moral idealist with a black-and-white (manichaen) view of human nature and absolute power at their disposal, who is both ready and willing to use terror (Robespierre said: "Terror is nothing other than swift, severe, indomitable justice – it flows, then, from virtue") as a means of pursuing what Robespierre called "the despotism of liberty against tyranny", or as Dany calls it "breaking the wheel".

Even Cersei won the Tarlys and other Westerosi lords over to her cause by playing upon their fears of foreign conquest and whipping up their patriotism. She utilises soft machiavellian power, as well as brutality. There was a clear attempt at convincing oratory and reasoned argumentation in that court scene last season where the Reach lords all attended, and she appealed for them to join with her against the Targareyn conqueror who feeds noblemen from Essos to her dragons. But all Dany ever does, in contrast, is declare she is the Queen and demand that others show her both deference and obeisance. She never justifies the reasons 'why' they ought to serve her or appeals to them as free-thinking individuals in their own right, by persuasive arguments. If you don't bend the knee, then your condemned to being burned alive. Her character is not that dissimilar now to Cersei and, indeed, arguably is starting to become more disturbing and scary, for instance by explicitly threatening Sansa - "dragons eat whatever they like", "if she can't respect me" - the 'sister' of her lover. I'm beginning to think that Cersei had a point when she made that propaganda appeal, Army of the Dead on the March notwithstanding. Cersei is cruel, sadistic and a tyrant of low cunning and guile. But Dany is becoming something even more frightening, precisely because she is arrogantly convinced of her own irreproachable rightness and the inherent wrongness of anyone who questions her. Cersei is the devil you know - a machiavellian queen who makes little effort to hide the fact that her tactics are brutal and self-serving. Dany, however, cloaks her reprehensible crimes behind a veneer of righteous indignation and moral superiority.

It's hard to know if they are fomenting artificial conflict and writing it as ‘mad queen’ v ‘rightful heir’ like they did with the Stark sisters and Littlefinger last year, or if the simmering conflict is genuine. Personally, I think there have been enough signs throughout the show and books that Dany is heading towards tyranny, such that I'm not entirely sure this time if it is a bluff or in fact a double bluff. If Dany were a real person, though, her personality would disturb me at this stage.

Guardian review in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/aug/21/game-of-thrones-the-best-show-on-tv-just-became-the-silliest I completely agree with this reviewer. There appears to be a growing, near-unanimous consensus that the Rubicon of silliness has been crossed this season. D&D are doing a great disservice to the story, reducing a once complex, character-driven, internally coherent fantasy political drama to mere popcorn spectacle. I still find the show fun but I'm also incensed by how predictable and silly it has become.

I deliberated between giving it a 5 or 6. I opted ultimately for 5 based upon visuals, Emilia Clarke's surprisingly improved acting capability in her scene with Jon and the fun dialogue between Tormund et al. On visuals alone, I couldn't rank it below 5 since a good deal of work has obviously gone into it and the finished product looks good. But the illogical nature of the plot, the general silliness, the time lapses...it was all just so insulting to the intelligence of the viewer. The only parts that I liked were the opening dialogue scenes between the brotherhood (genuinely funny) and somewhat surprisingly the final Jon-Dany scene. Emilia Clarke conveys grief and vulnerability far better than she does strength. I felt like we got something of the "old" Dany from season 1 back again. There was something quite touching about her budding romance with Mr Snow...Emilia Clarke is a beautiful cryer. Apart from that and the visuals, not much to commend. I think (with the exception of episodes 3 and 4) that they've butchered this whole season. This is not GoT as I remember it. I still enjoy the show but more for spectacle now as opposed to the complex drama I used to watch in earlier seasons. Once upon a time, GoT was this incredible hybrid show: a "fantasy political drama", "the Sopranos in Middle Earth". I still enjoy watching it but really, what has happened to the finely-crafted political drama dimension of the plot? I'm no hater of fantasy (obviously), and I appreciate that the in-built logic of the story from GRRM has always been building towards a "high fantasy" climax involving the Army of the Dead and Dragons...but still, I just feel that a certain degree of substance is lacking now. The show used to get the balance between high fantasy/politics just right when it followed ASOIAF and even, I would say, up until the end of Season 6. When I look back at Season 1, I realise that the additions and changes D&D made actually improved the source material for TV. It's a very different medium from the novel and sometimes great books make bad TV. So changes are necessary. With that in mind, I'm beginning to think that the lack of GRRM material - while obviously a serious problem - is not the sole reason for the decline in the quality of the plot. It really must be the rushed manner in which they are trying to complete this thing. The earlier seasons are testimony to the fact that D&D could write decently with GRRM's narrative as the "bulking mechanism". Even in the absence of that bulk, they shouldn't be making the shoddy mistakes that they are making.

I'm certainly not trying to be smug. I am simply disappointed with the quality of this episode compared to last week's instalment - which I rated 10 and thoroughly enjoyed watching. I liked the episode before that one as well, the "Queen's Justice". But imho, something has really gone awry with this one. I just didn't find it terribly well-written or well-put together.

You're right, overall it was a terrible episode. I think that I was the person who made the comment last time around about "8/10" but I'm with you 100% on this. The character interactions were largely contrived for reasons of economy (i.e quantity over quality, packing in as many plot points as possible at the cost of decent storytelling) and invariably a bit one-dimensional, the plot proceeded at breakneck speed such that it left no time for realism or nuance, the "catch a Wight for Cersei" arc was incomprehensible at best and simply illogical at worst - not so much in terms of the conception of the idea itself (which could have been workable in theory) but the clumsy, implausible circumstances which led to its fruition and the formation of the "A-team" etc. Very disappointing. The big "re-unions" came across as somewhat rushed and artificial. And I say that as a viewer who loved episode 4 and thought it made great TV. This time around, I do indeed question how any person of sound mind could have ranked it a 10 based purely upon its artistic merits or rather lack thereof.

The most disturbing prospect would be that there is no other way to tell the story precisely because GRRM actually originated the "Wight Hunt" narrative himself, in some form, in his broad plot-points to D&D.