jentario

After watching it again, the only thing I feel is missing is that part from the books where the Mountain accidentally hacks at bystanders when rushing at Oberyn. But yeah, it was great! I take back the non-personal thing. And I agree Emilia nailed Dany

The Sons of the Harpy kill Missandei's brother in the books. They might kill Grey Worm instead!

And there was definitely poison on his spear, for those worrying about it. David Benioff said so in the Inside the Episode.

Ran, the scene was far from forgettable. That is really unfair. It's not as good as the book- true, but my Unsullied friends all around are saying it was really really good and that they still see the image in their heads of his head exploding. Take the goggles off for a moment... It really wasn't THAT bad. It's probably the show's best fight scene yet. Could have been better, but could have been a whole lot worse.

Hmm. I missed it? No way!

I think it was a great episode, though I expected more. The pre-duel scenes were clearly cut down- the preview shows Ellaria saying "You're going to fight THAT?", which probably follows with Oberyn saying "I'm going to kill that." I am sad that they cut that from the show, it was a cool line. Another missed opportunity was having the Mountain chop apart the squire... Aside from that the fight was really good. It felt a bit impersonal (where in the books it was all about Oberyn) which is a shame but it was still epic and awesome and Pedro said his lines from the book and the end was equally gruesome as the book. Moat Cailin was perfect thanks to Alfie Allen, he is just a great actor. The lack of a Victarion mention is noted, and I think this is very bad news to Greyjoy fans (though not a solid confirmation). I actually liked the Sansa stuff. It's an interesting, albeit different direction from the books. I want to know where it's going and if it will line up with the books or go to a completely different place. That said, we won't know until TWOW comes out since D&D have run out of material here. Sophie aced it, and the rest of them were also great. I think Arya's scene was hilarious and I am pretty certain that they will follow up on it with Littlefinger. The trailers show the Hound clashing swords in the Vale, and we haven't seen that yet (also Rory teased the biggest battle he's ever done in a later episode). So my guess is Littlefinger sends men to get Arya, the Hound kills them and Arya leaves him for dead. I was expecting the fight to be here, tbh... A bit disappointing (but not nearly as disappointing as the Rorge "fight scene"). On to the beetle scene... I agree it was too long, and didn't really hit the intended mark. I would have preferred a scene between Oberyn and Tyrion where they talk about poison. Too little Oberyn in this episode... Then there's the Jon scenes which everyone's avoiding for some reason. They were great! The attack on Mole's town was nice, Gilly and Ygritte were cool. The follow up conversation between Jon's entorouge was good. I kind of wish the episode would have set up the battle better, though. Grey Worm and Missandei was great and I think I know where they are headed with this. Playing the long game. The Dany and Jorah scene was really well acted, so it's a plus too. Visually, this was a great episode all around, but there are a few disappointments here and there that I listed. Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that the ratings on this site are purely from a reader perspective. This does not reflect the true quality of the show since we know where it's going and think we know where it's supposed to be going. Only the Unsullied can give it a fair, untainted grade. I would give it an 8, but I gave it a 10 to help against other reviews that were way too harsh to be honest. Our scores will always be harsher than the truth, because the books will always be better... I am now hoping for a bombastic last two episodes. Two straight tens is the least I will take from D&D! lol

I enjoyed it, but not as much as I hoped to. I just thought that making Bran narrowly miss meeting Jon again is quite stupid, and carrying Locke all this way to just die like that was also weird. They could have had him fight Brienne before the end of the season, but they decided to do this... I agree with Ran for once. It was a closed circle, and it had some cool moments (Jon vs Karl for instance) but I would much rather have it lead somewhere. For instance, if Jon actually met Bran. Or if Locke figured out through Bran about Rickon and set off on another hunt. And in general, I would much rather have Coldhands save Bran than Jon and his company. It seemed like this was being built as a truly great deviation, but it served for nothing really. I guess it did build Jon as a leader, though. And gave Bran and Jojen a chance to be badass. But it does feel completely redundant now, which I feel could have been avoided. EDIT: I feel like having both Jon and Bran involved in the Craster's Keep arc was a big mistake. They should have gone to either, and built it up that way with no silly near miss. Either Bran gets caught and is saved by Coldhands, or Jon attacks and everything is the same minus Locke and Bran. And even having these two take part in this storyline could have been done better if the fact that they are both there would have had more bearing than giving Bran a choice to not call out for Jon. It's too Queenscrowny for my taste. At the very least, they shouldn't have involved Locke in it- which was definitely entirely pointless (any mutineer could have taken Bran and run off with him only to die at Hodor's hands). EDIT2: I was actually really looking forward to this deviation, and I am definitely not what one would call a purist.

I don't think it's fair to rate a season based on the average of all its episodes. Sometimes a season can be greater (or worse) than the sum of its parts. In my opinion, season 2 was greater than the sum of its parts (and so will season 4 in the end), while season 3 was weaker than the sum of its parts (too many slow episodes). It would be much better to judge seasons in another rating poll once the season is over. Also, I think season 4's first half was stronger than the others (even though I thought the scene at Craster's ended up being- disappointingly- completely pointless and of course the Sept scene was a big issue). If Breaker of Chains wouldn't have mucked things up, I'm sure the ratings would agree with me.

Is anyone going to ConQuest? GRRM is doing a reading there...