The Dorne Ultimatum

There have been three outstanding episodes in this series, with this being one of them. Brilliant. Cersei is an absolute maniac.

The Hound and The Mountain made this an 8/10.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkO7CISXEAAX3Ty.jpg

I gave it 9/10. There were an awful lot of elements that I liked. The last 20 minutes were near-perfection, and almost as good as Hardhome. Genuine tension and some brilliant story-telling (which after Dorne, we shouldn't take for granted any longer), and the Hodor revelation was incredibly moving. Bran's encounter with the Night's King was brilliantly done, and the Winterfell flashback to the "Hodorization" of Wyllis was brilliant, quite simply. Fascinating also to see the "birth" of the White Walkers... very much reminded me of Prometheus, with the Engineers creating the Xenomorphs as a weapon that they couldn't control. I also enjoyed Dany and Jorah's moment, whilst Kinvara's meeting with Varys and Tyrion was also executed to perfection, without heading into High Sparrow-esque monotonous soliloquies as we've seen in previous episodes. That being said, it wasn't perfect - the Littlefinger scene wasn't brilliant, and I was disappointed by the Kingsmoot, but only from the moment Euron arrived, which surprised me, as I thought I'd love the character on screen. The re-birth with the quasi-Damphair was done brilliantly, but the bit about Yara, Theon, and the old "twenty good men" adage stealing a whole fleet, and Euron saying he's going to build 1000 ships... not anytime soon, mate. And as much as I loved Arya's storyline, it's starting to drag. At first, the play idea was excellent, but it really dragged on for too long - there needs to be some kind of resolution in Braavos, and soon! This series has had a lot of stick, but for me, we're only five episodes in and it is already p*ssing over Season 2 and Season 5.

Totally agreed. Getting rather boring now, isn't it?

Some very very poor elements in this episode - let's not even talk about what happened in Dorne. The scenes at Castle Black were wonderfully executed, however, as was the continued Theon redemption arc. As an opening episode it did exactly what it needed to do, and checked in with most of the major players. 7/10.

Glad someone has mentioned this. Thought they got him spot on, though I expected him to have a bigger helmet or a hood covering his head - can't these folks realise he looks a little bit dead?! But in truth excellently done.

People saying "I'm done with this show". Okay. Quit bitching then. People need to accept that both the books are going to get from the end of ADWD (Point A) to the end of ADOS (Point Z), but how they get from A to Z is going to be different between show and book. Sometimes there will be a massive degree of deviation; other times it will be a true adaptation. But what I excited about is we essentially get two different (to a slight degree) stories from this point onwards. That excites me. I'm a book reader and some of the changes have bewildered me. Some of the changes have been brilliant and make for a better, more coherent narrative than what GRRM has produced. People are saying "George would never do this to a character" - this is the man who had a child pushed from a window inside eight chapters because he saw two twins having a go on each other; he then killed the main good guy off at the end of the first book; wiped out the rest of the "good" family three quarters of the way through book three; around about the same time as everyone's new favourite character was getting his mind blown and the supposed most powerful character in the entire series was proving he did not, in fact, shit gold. People shouldn't be surprised with what has happened and what will happen. It's amazing the leaps and bounds that fans cling to when they don't want something be true. Until the last two books come out, we'll never be able to know what GRRM would or would not do.

Tyrion and Dany was great by itself... but I have to admit I wasn't expecting that at Hardhome. I expected something of a Free Folk insurrection and a battle between Jon/Tormund's loyal wildlings and those who want revenge for the battle at the Wall - never expected for the army of the dead to turn up and kick ass that like. Spectacular TV. I can't think of a better episode since Blackwater.

Davos and Tyrion owned this episode.

Another n00b on this forum but a long-time admirer of the site. More importantly a long-time ASOIAF fan.