Chebyshov

Testing copy and pasted spoiler tags. Something's screwy A Season 5 casting leak shows that the following characters will appear next year:

I give it a 7, though I'm a harsh grader. -1 point for the laughable (literally) wight attack -1 point for BR's design...he's now my mental image for Ser Grandfather -1 point for Tyrion killing out of self-defense (plus a few smaller nitpicks around this story line) -1 point for no LS +1 point for Brienne vs. the Hound...passed all my expectations, so it counts as extra credit.

Oh agreed http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ZBMj6uhs--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/18xhyiknurz56jpg.jpg

There's really no appropriate place to post this, but Sam and Gilly seem to be dating IRL. I think my brain exploded from the cute: http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/152015/Game-Of-Thrones-Are-Gilly-And-Samwell-Dating-In-Real-Life

Who's going to become the titular leader of the Wildlings before Jon lets them through the Wall then?

WHO GAVE THE ORDER?!

Well, I'll withhold concern until more casting details are leaked. But if they do end up doing this, then I guess it shouldn't be that surprising. GreatJon is still alive, so we at least would have a vaguely familiar face. And they did mush the Vale Lords together into 3 people. But you'd think they'd keep the most important one? Manderly had such a distinct personality, and all the White Harbor stuff was really cool. I'm hoping the person is wrong, but only time will tell.

Source? I know he's given a slew of podcast interviews, but do you know where this came from?

All the other penultimates had some sort of resolution, as far as episodic narrative goes. We find out the sword swings through Ned's neck. We see Tywin & the Tyrells save the day. We see Robb, Talisa, and Cat murdered. We jump out of our seats because it's like, "well what happens next!?" Not because the story is incomplete.

Oh lord, the Ironborn weren't afraid of the dogs, that was just kind of their "well this just got not worth it" moment. Theon bit Yara ffs. This was obviusly a lost cause. D&D were trying to create buy-in to her character, so that we understand what compells her next year for the kingsmoot, which I think will be left in. And it does belong in next season, so I'm not sure why we need them next episode.

Jon's climax for the season finale should have been him becoming LC. Now that will either be rushed or pushed to next season. So in that respect, it deviated from the books. They tried to fit something into E09 that should have been earlier in the season, because they wanted a large, fabulous battle for the penultimate. Which is why they combined two fronts of the battle. If they were true to the pacing of the books, they would have repelled the Thenn-attack, dealt with Ygritte's death there. Then dealt with the siege. My point is that if you're going to mush that together to make a Helm's Deep episode, then you better also include Gandalf's arrival. It just fell a bit flat without it.

Epic half-battle. They didn't finish it, did they? There were definitely cool aspects to it, but it was an incomplete story. If they wanted to break it up so that the interpersonal stuff could shine through, then they shouldn't have lumped the attacks together in the first place. They wanted an extravaganza for Episode 9, but for it to be effective we either needed the complete battle, or pairing down some of the ridiculous visuals so that the poignant deaths (Ygritte) could actually have time to breathe. IMO they should have split this up into 3 battles like in the books, had it span a few episodes, and move the Viper vs. the Mountain to E09. My only guess as to why they didn't do that is that had the duel been in E09, maybe too many people would have predicted Oberyn to lose. I liked so much about this episode, but it just felt so incomplete that it fell flat. I think this will be kinder on re-watch, especially when I can go directly into E10, but I'm kind of getting sick of needing that mentality about this show.

I think I'm going to duck out until the vitriol settles down. I'm hardly a Stannis fan, but he got shafted. His moment will have lost its effectiveness and be overshadowed by next week's shocks. Not to mention, we were given an incomplete narrative tonight, with the second half of it shoved into an already crammed episode next week. Maybe they can pull it off, but people gleefully calling Stannis fans "butt-hurt" are ignoring some glaring issues.

My thoughts too

The finale will be 65 minutes

The problem for me isn't that there won't be any Stannis looking heroic...the problem is that this was a bad call just in terms of narrative. Now this story has to cut into an already packed episode to conclude the plot of something that should have been finished. It felt like a sudden, oddly disjointed episode. But maybe it's just because we know what happens so that frames how we would want to see episodes done?

It's making me concerned, because that was already a packed episode even assuming the battle was over. Guess no LC election until next season?

Yeah exactly. But it felt like a tease of an episode. It moved very quickly

Remember when we were happy that Stephen Dillane wasn't in the opening credits?

What was even the point of that. How the heck are they going to fit everything in next week? gah what.

Wow.

Ahh! The watchers in the wall soundtrack