Caligula_K3

This is pretty damn exciting news. I also still have high hopes for this series. And I'm just glad he's gotten it off his back, one way or another.

This was definitely true for me as well, and something I forgot to write about in my post. Tyrion (and Dinklage) was fantastic in this episode; a nice change of pace after a couple seasons of him generally being a frustrating character (not to mention ADWD Tyrion...).

It was a horse and she rode it out of the city and presumably dismounted. I give it an 8. There were some silly moments and the Bran as king twist didn't quite work for me simply because Bran has been such a useless, non-entity character in the past two seasons, though the basic idea is solid. The rushed pacing also skimmed over some important things; Sansa's "the north must be free" moment deserved more time and space than that. Overall, though, I'm very pleased. The finale worked thematically and emotionally for me; I teared up a few times, including at Drogon's discovery of Dany's death, Jon and Arya's goodbye, and Brienne writing in the White Book for Jaime. I thought Jon's ending was absolute genius; the secret fantasy prince exiled to the wall after being broken, but getting the freedom to discover and be who he really is. Arya's ending works for me, Sansa's does too (though again, I wish she'd had more to do this episode and season), and I enjoyed the ending Small Council scene. Compared to just about every TV show I've seen with a huge expansive cast and many plotlines (except the Wire), this was a well done and fitting ending. And something else... I've been following this series now for 15 years, basically through my teenage years and entire adult life. I am truly grateful to have some closure on this story. No, this season wasn't perfect, and I wish the White Walkers hadn't been such an anti-climax and some more questions had been explained relating to the weather, why the Others were invading, etc.... But it feels good to have an ending to this story. So, thank you sincerely to Dan and David, the other writers, the cast, the crew, and GRRM for delivering an ending, and in my opinion, a good ending.

I give it an 8. There were some silly moments and the Bran as king twist didn't quite work for me simply because Bran has been such a useless, non-entity character in the past two seasons, though the basic idea is solid. The rushed pacing also skimmed over some important things; Sansa's "the north must be free" moment deserved more time and space than that. Overall, though, I'm very pleased. The finale worked thematically and emotionally for me; I teared up a few times, including at Drogon's discovery of Dany's death, Jon and Arya's goodbye, and Brienne writing in the White Book for Jaime. I thought Jon's ending was absolute genius; the secret fantasy prince exiled to the wall after being broken, but getting the freedom to discover and be who he really is. Arya's ending works for me, Sansa's does too (though again, I wish she'd had more to do this episode and season), and I enjoyed the ending Small Council scene. Compared to just about every TV show I've seen with a huge expansive cast and many plotlines (except the Wire), this was a well done and fitting ending. And something else... I've been following this series now for 15 years, basically through my teenage years and entire adult life. I am truly grateful to have some closure on this story. No, this season wasn't perfect, and I wish the White Walkers hadn't been such an anti-climax and some more questions had been explained relating to the weather, why the Others were invading, etc.... But it feels good to have an ending to this story. So, thank you sincerely to Dan and David, the other writers, the cast, the crew, and GRRM for delivering an ending, and in my opinion, a good ending.

We can hope! And just to be clear, I wasn't referring to your comments on Dany for the nitpickiness comment; that is a fundamental moment in the show, and if it doesn't work for you, then there's definitely something big to discuss. It was more the "why does Tyrion ask Davos if he's still an excellent smuggler?" style of criticism that I was talking about there.

But the level of nitpickiness has risen to such a level that you can make these claims about any event in the story. Why did Ned tell Cersei he knew about the incest when he thinks she killed Jon Arryn and knows her much better than Dany knows Cersei? Why does Jon choose to ignore Ghost when he's freaking out before the assassination? Why does Jon Snow ask Tyrion who he is when he first meets him when he knows who Tyrion is? Unless we want our fiction to be a series of monologues where robotic characters explain to us their entirely 100% logical explanations at all times, then anything can be nitpicked apart to the degree that this season is. And I believe such nitpickiness, and the stark divide where everything is either a masterpiece or garbage, are just uninteresting ways to approach fiction. And to be clear, this is something I think has taken hold "nerd" fandom more broadly, not just Game of Thrones; I think it's a pity. The bells are there to make Dany's choice all the starker. That moment had been built to throughout the entire episode, and in my opinion, the past season. Emilia's acting says it all at that moment; she knows she has the choice to end it all there, and deal with the consequences of Aejon and failing to earn Westeros' love. Or she can give into her pain and inflict it on the queen she wants vengeance on, the people who she believes refused to follow her, and the city that destroyed her life. And she can rule with fear, all for the greater good. Again, you found this to be a big shock, but nobody I was watching with did; we were all expecting some variation on these events in this episode. I would have been surprised if Dany resisted her worst impulses at this point. Hell, even my Dad, who's as casual a show watcher as you can get, thought this was coming based on the buildup of the past episodes. What I was shocked by was the willingness of the writing and directing to show the brutality of Dany's choice; and again, I'm glad they did that, because it turns a character shift into a beautiful and horrifying statement of the themes of this series. But I think it's fair to say that we won't convince each other on this point. I hope you enjoy the finale more, and that we all get the books soon so we can see how GRRM handles it!

I think a major difference in our interpretation of the scene and the character (and the reason why we can humbly disagree) is that I don't think Dany has gone insane. I think that this is a part of her personality that's been there from the end of season 1, and season 2 at the least. You're right that her belief in vengeance, brutality, and achieving her destiny at any costs have been tempered by many positive qualities: empathy for the downtrodden and a willingness to listen to advisors who advocate for mercy are among them. Even in many of those moments, she's shown a certain cruelty and self-righteousness. Without her advisors, with her belief in her destiny as the last Targaryen destroyed by Jon, with her dragons and her friends dead, and with the realization that she is nothing to Westeros but a foreign conqueror even after fighting for its survival, it's very believable to me that she'd give in to her worst impulses; not because she's insane, but because she's angry and realizes that fear is the only thing she has going for her in Westeros. @Jewel Again, none of these are plot holes; the closest is the bells thing. I have to admit that I don't remember that line in season 2, but if it is there, it is as tiny of a plot hole as you can get, an inconsistency akin to Tyrion being able to do cartwheels in one chapter and never again, or arrows in ASoS being able to reach the top of the wall despite it being 800 feet high. Tyrion asking Davos if he's the greatest smuggler alive is a way of opening a conversation in a somewhat lighthearted way and hinting to the audience that Davos will be using his smuggling skills; it is not Tyrion forgetting that Davos is a smuggler. The point of Cersei's comment is that the Red Keep has never been captured with a full on assault; Tywin got in through betrayal. Dany does make it personal by destroying Cersei's entire legacy and city, and in any case, if you want to argue that she misunderstands another character, that's not a plot hole. Tyrion rats Varys out not just for committing treason but for undermining the stability of Dany's rule and inciting more violence, while Tyrion hopes to stabilize her rule and for as peaceful a solution as possible. Etc... By this logic, you can go through the entire series, books and show, and point to just about any piece of dialogue or event and call it a plot hole. Edit: And I'd say the fact that we've been called to empathize with Dany is exactly the point, and as true to the themes of this series as an ending can get. We empathize with her because we've seen her be a victim and be brutalized; it's empowering to see her rise to power. When she does brutal things, we tend to excuse it because she's a protagonist, we get her perspective and she seems to mean well, and the people she kills tend to follow a moral and legal code we find repugnant - slavery. Her conquests in Essos always led to the deaths of many innocent people; but we just didn't care as much. We excused it because her cause was noble. But now in King's Landing, we see what the real price of conquest and vengeance and wanting to achieve power is. And that in the end is what Dany has wanted since Season 2. I think it's brilliant, personally; all the more so because I don't think Dany is insane. Insanity is just a convenient lens for other characters to view her by, given what past Targaryens have been like.

People have been actively predicting this turn as of season 7 episode 4 last season; many thought it would come much sooner. It's definitely been a possibility in the show since the middle of season 6, when she gave her speech to the Dothraki. After The Last Stark, it was all but certain. After that first scene with Varys and her dialogue with Tyrion and Jon this episode, I would have been deeply shocked if Dany's descent into darkness didn't happen. I can see this "shock" criticism with some aspects of the series' plot in the last two seasons, like the Littlefinger reveal at the end of last season. I can see criticisms of the pacing of Dany's descent. But her decision was built up and hinted at to a far greater extent than other "shocks" in this series, from Ned's beheading to the Red Wedding. @House CambodiaThis would be a plot hole if it was ever made clear that these were all the Dothraki at the siege of winterfell. But it wasn't. You can say that it's weak direction in episode 3 to not show the other Dothraki or many of the ones who survived the charge; but this is different than a plot hole, and not even really a good example of bad writing. It's an example of bad direction, or perhaps bad editing if they had the shots. Stuff like this is kind of why I feel that a lot of these critical buzzphrases have lost all meaning.

People throw out these buzzphrases like "plot holes" and "lazy writing" and they seem to have lost all meaning. There were no pIot holes in the last episode. I can apply the term lazy writing to anything and it will be meaningless. As for character assassination; I know that Dany's turn is controversial, as is Jaime's, and maybe you wish they'd gone another way or that these developments had more time, but a character acting in a way you don't want them to when they've shown these same traits throughout the story is not character assassination. But even if all these things were true; is this really what 1 writing looks like to you? Have you seen other TV? People complain about the dialogue on this show declining since they ran out of the books, and it is true that the dialogue is generally not as good as it used to be, but Jesus Christ, I watched Aquaman over the weekend and every third line was as bad as this show's dialogue at its very, very worst which we get once a season (bad pussy). And Aquaman's script does not deserve a 1 either.

Or to the insane expectations of the fanbase and the irrational anger and outrage produced by fandom culture. I'm sorry, even if somebody didn't like this episode, or thinks the script wasn't good, to rate an episode a 1 is to say that it's an abomination with no redeeming features: music, acting, plot, script, cinematography, direction, effects, etc... There is no way someone can in good faith argue that any of these elements were so bad they deserve a 1, let alone all of them. Much online fan criticism seems to believe that something has to be the best thing ever or the worst thing ever; god forbid there's anything in between.

I completely understand your perspective, which you've expressed very eloquently. If the showrunners were going to have the shortened episode run, giving less space for Dany to get to this point, it probably would have been wiser for them to frame the scene differently: have Dany rush for the red keep at first, get attacked by scared civilians/soldiers, and then turn her wrath on them. I think otherwise, as you say, it depends on your interpretation of Dany's character up to this point. I'm sure I've been influenced by her portrayal in the books in ways I can't articulate, but this decision did seem fitting to me in terms of her show character: from her treatment of the conquered in the Slave cities, to her speech to the Dothraki in season 6 after she burned down their leadership, to the brutal battle in episode 4 of season 7 , to the execution of the Tarlys afterwards, to her continued inclination to just attack King's Landing and deal with the fallout later. For me, Dany's worst impulses have always been there; they've often been tempered by her sense of justice, empathy for the downtrodden, and the advice of her advisors. For me, it worked that in this situation her worst impulses would win out; but I understand why it didn't for you. As for the sloppiness of some of the last two seasons, I'm slightly more sympathetic to D&D. They had to figure out an ending to this series and a path there in three years, while also , writing scripts, directing episodes, and overseeing the most complicated production in television history. If they just wanted to be done to work on Star Wars (though I'm sure they're exhausted), I doubt they'd have taken an extra year for Season 8; I think they want to do the ending justice. They've made mistakes along the way, but I can't blame them for that; the original author has taken eight years so far to just figure out just one stage in the story, part of which includes the climax from the last stage. Martin's ending too will either have to take four more books or get sloppy. I wish Seasons 7 and 8 had at least eight or nine episodes each to flesh out more of the story and characters' decisions, but I also understand why they don't; they have a limited budget, even though it's the largest budget in television history, the actors have gotten more expensive and get paid per episode, and they wanted to concentrate their resources on fewer episodes. I don't know if it was the right decision, even though the spectacle of an episode like The Bells outstrips for me what you get in high budget Marvel movies, but I can understand where some of the sloppiness comes from, and I don't blame them for it. For me, this hasn't been the best season of the show, but it's been pretty damn good, and much more satisfying than, say, Lost Season 6 or BSG Season 4.

"You are the blood of the dragon. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. 'Fire and Blood,”' Daenerys told the swaying grass." - ADWD This decision about Dany's character 100% ultimately stems from Martin, and is very fitting, given the themes of the show and books. We can argue over how well it's executed in the show (I think very well, given that many people have been predicting this based on Dany's actions in the show), but if the intention is to get a Red Wedding shock, it's a shock given by Martin. If it's a betrayal of the character, which I don't think it is, it's a betrayal by him. In my opinion, it's a brilliant way of flipping our view of the protagonists as the "good guys," giving us a Red Wedding perpetrated by them, and showing that in wars of vengeance, nobody is the good guy. And you can go back through the series, both books and show, and see many moments that presage this.

The implication of that Arya scene was definitely not that everyone in King's Landing is dead; the survivors have abandoned the streets and gone into hiding, and many have died. For all your complaints about "idiotic writing" and military strategy (I'm sure you're just as critical of Martin when he has knights ride horses across bridges of boats and has every siege except by the most cowardly commanders begin with an assault or has brilliant commanders fail to use scouts), this is how brutal sieges worked, at least in the ancient world; massive casualties and enslavement to discourage the survivors from taking up arms again and to encourage other cities and powers to surrender without the need to fight. Brutality and plundering also served as incentives for soldiers. The brutality of these sieges could often be criticized, but they continued to happen. As for the rest; I buy Dany's transition. It's been built up throughout the whole series. In the moment, an extra episode would have probably helped with the pacing of the immediate decision; but the show gives you plenty of reasons for why her snap happens, from her destiny as the last Targaryen being a lie, losing or distrusting all her advisors and friends, receiving little support in Westeros when she sacrificed her armies and dragons to save the continent from the undead, etc... If she makes the decision to rule with fear, it's for understandable and pretty well established reasons, and her brutal treatment of King's Landing is exactly how a ruler rules through fear. It's a brilliant ending for her, and works well in the show, regardless of what happens in the last book of the series when it's published in 40 years.

? It's possible for the show to falter on one part of its ending, but succeed on another. I thought episode 3 was good but disappointing. This episode I found great.

I loved this episode. It was an incredible choice to not give us the triumphant climactic battle; to turn this into a horrible, tragic, awful siege and slaughterhouse, in which there are no good guys. The episode completely nailed the themes of the series; this is 100% Martin's ending, done great justice by D&D and Sapochnik (whose directing was masterful). Even the moments of triumph, like Cleganebowl's ending, are tinged with sadness and regret. I give it a 9/10; I take off a point because Dany's transition to this level of murderous tyrant could have used another episode to marinate, and because even though I loved Jamie and Cersei's ending, there was a way of getting there that showed off both sides of Jamie's character. Even having a few lines of extra dialogue with Tyrion, with both brothers aiming to stop their respective queens from enacting bloodshed, would have helped. Overall though, this was a masterpiece, and pretty much everything that makes this series so special distilled into one episode. A nice corrective after the White Walkers stuff petered out.

The Stallion that Mounts the World is going to conquer Westeros any day now... After all, it was prophecied. The prince who was promised prophecy has always been much vaguer in the show than the books. Even so, I doubt we'll ever be getting an answer in either medium about who exactly it is and their intended role. If their intended role is made clear, maybe it's to unify most of humanity against the White Walkers. And many characters in the books fit the description of a potential prince... on purpose, I argue, because the point is going to be that there's nobody who exactly fits this prophecy. And nobody, at the least, is actually going to be revealed to be Azor Azai and get a magical sword after killing their lover. I agree that I wish Jon, Dany, and especially Bran had done more in the battle. Bran especially; his role in the plot needs to be justified more than Dany and Jon, who have already done important things, like gathered allies for the battle, discovered how to kill white walkers, secured obsidian for their army, used dragons, etc... They will also have important things to do in the political endgame of the show, with Jon being the heir to the throne, Dany wanting to take it, etc... Where I really disagree with you is that a character's arc has no point if they don't have some climactic battle with their enemy. Sure, this is a way of resolving a character's arc; deaths in fiction can be satisfying and cathartic when they are killed by someone who they've wronged or had many interactions with before. In ASoIaF, the Tickler and Arya comes to mind, as does Tywin and Tyrion. But, fiction is a varied thing, and GRRM for one has recognized quite correctly that it quickly gets boring if all deaths can be seen from twenty miles away, like a checklist. And so, Drogo is killed by a wound he gets anonymously in the battle and turned into a lifeless zombie by a witch we met a chapter earlier; Joffrey is killed by Olenna Tyrell, not Tyrion or Sansa, whom he spent two books tormenting. You might as well ask what was the point of all the scenes of Joffrey torturing Sansa if she doesn't get to kill him or have a sword fight with him. Similarly, there's no reason why Arya's arc needs to be exclusively about king's landing assassinations; it in fact became clearly not completely about that last season, when she chose to abandon her quest for vengeance to return home and be with her family. And from a narrative standpoint, it makes complete sense that the Night King would avoid fighting Jon, whom he's seen kill a white walker, but not be on the lookout for a sneaky assassin. But again, the execution left something to be desired.

My thoughts on the episode, now that I've had a few days to digest. In the moment, it was a terrifying and suspenseful episode. Yes, some of the military tactics were dumb, but either for effect, like the Dothraki charge with the flaming swords going out, or due to budget, like the trebuchets getting destroyed, or both. There are many great sequences and moments in the episode, from the beautiful shot of the dragons above the clouds, or the entire Arya in the walls of Winterfell sequence, or Theon's death. A day after the episode, though, it all feels a bit weightless. This is partially because the white walkers are taken out way earlier than I expected them to be, before they've reached the south of Westeros. This is partially because very few major characters die, especially given the number of shots of them all on the verge of being overwhelmed by wights. And this is also because the end of the episode doesn't do a great job of making you feel like you're reaching a climax. On the one hand, it seems to be; the shift in the score to piano, the somber mood after that great sequence where Jon and the Night King face off and all the dead rise, Jon rushing past his friends because he knows what the true battle is, the white walkers finally coming into Winterfell, the dead rising in the crypts. All of these things make you feel like shit's about to get real... but aside from Theon's death, it isn't. Jon plays hide and seek with a dragon; Tyrion and Sansa get a great scene in the crypts, but otherwise nothing happens; the white walkers play honour guard; our heroes stand against the same wall for twenty minutes looking like they're about to be overwhelmed by wights; Bran does nothing but take some ravens for a joyride. I get what they were going for: they want you to feel all is lost right before the sudden twist of Arya jumping out of nowhere. But the shift doesn't really work because it doesn't feel like any of the major characters are doing anything important. Just to be clear, I think that Arya being the one to kill the Night King is a great twist and a very nice way to justify her character arc. I'm not sure why fans of this series, who generally praise it and GRRM for its subversion of tropes and his clear theme that prophecies and myths are not to be trusted, are upset that Jon didn't turn out to be the stereotypical fantasy hero who not only has the secret royal bloodline but ALSO solves everything with his flaming sword. The problem, I think, is mainly with the way it's shot, edited, and what the main characters are doing the moment the Night King loses. If the Night King was going to lose in this episode, it would always feel anti-climactic; but it's worth seriously considering that this is where GRRM is going to end the long night as well, at Winterfell. But more character deaths, more climactic actions, whether Jon/Brienne/Jaime fighting white walkers or Dany fighting her undead dragon or shots of Arya closing in or Bran doing anything, would have done wonders to make this feel like a climax. I'm still kind of in shock that the Long Night ended so quickly; I'll reserve judgment on whether or not it's the right decision until I see the rest of the season. On the one hand, it doesn't seem to fit thematically - syke, winter wasn't coming and playing petty politics until the end is the best idea, unless you live in the north - on the other hand, it really does, since human conflicts have been at the heart of the show and the novels for the majority of their runs. Overall, I give it a B, which is maybe not what you want for your somewhat climactic episode, but isn't as terrible as some are saying either. Here's hoping the rest of the season is more of a home run.

I liked the episode, and am insanely shocked that the Others are gone in episode 3. I'll post more thoughts tomorrow once I've digested it more, but for now all I'll say is that I find the meltdown of the "lorecrafting" fans of the series kind of hilarious. There never was an actual Azor Ahai in the show, and there probably never will be in the books. It's almost like GRRM has primed us from book one to remember that prophecies and myths don't always come true...

This was a lovely and emotionally draining episode with so many beautiful moments. I loved the Night's Watch together again, Brienne being knighted, Jaime and Tyrion's reunion, Davos and the little girl, and everything with Tormund. I also found Sansa and Theon meeting again to be surprisingly moving. The episode (in conjunction with the last, but this was stronger) does a beautiful job of making us be deeply invested in these characters and their journeys and histories... before, without a doubt, many of them die next episode. I can only imagine that in the future, watching episodes 2-3 of this season together will be pretty much a necessity. I am so hyped but scared for next week in the best possible way. I'll have to see how it stands on rewatch, but this episode is right now among the best of the show for me.

This is true, but there is also an expectation that if you're highborn and captured in battle, you won't be immediately executed just for fighting against the winning side. This is praised by many characters as one of Robert's virtues. Even Stannis, the most rigid man in the seven kingdoms, will take "traitors" prisoner and attempt to get them to join his side.

And house Tyrell betrayed Cersei. You can always in circles with these kind of arguments, because one of the major themes of the series is that this world's system of feudalistic honour is nearly entirely bullshit or impossible to maintain. When your liege lord and your king go to war against each other, to whom do you owe your loyalty? When you're in the kingsguard but your king is planning to burn down the city and kill your family, to whom do you owe your loyalty?

It's absolutely a concept with currency - for the highborn, and even occasionally for the lowborn. There have been tons of POWs taken throughout the course of the series, from Jaime Lannister to the men Arya frees at Harrenhal. Tyrion advocates for the position that they should take the Tarlys prisoner, so clearly the concept has currency. @RhaegoTheUnborn I don't think it's hard to explain. People aren't robots. They feel things when family members die, even shitty family members.

This is also true. The Tarlys haven't actively betrayed Dany; they fought on opposing sides of a civil war for understandable reasons. Dany didn't force Jon Snow to bend the knee or die when they first met each other even though his "crimes" are ultimately similar.

Everyone thought that Robb's decision was dumb though. In just about every way possible. As for the Tarlys, their situation is more complicated. Yes, they're traitors to House Tyrell... who are traitors to Cersei, who is the person actually on the iron throne. It's Stannis' and Jaime's dilemma all over again. And from the perspective of a noble in Westeros, Cersei is evil (if you believe that she is responsible for blowing up the sept, since the official line is that Dany did it)... But Dany is the daughter of an equally evil king, leading Dothraki and with the potential to nuke Westeros. From the Tarlys' perspective, there are no good choices here.

How is it shitty for Sam to feel some sadness over his father's and especially his brother's death? Yes, his father was awful to Sam; people with abusive parents still often have complicated feelings for their families, and few react to the death of a father with "yippee!" Especially people as sensitive as Sam. And you can see through his acting in the scene that while the death of his father made him somewhat sad, it was the death of his decent brother that made him angry. I also don't see how refusing to bend the knee right after a battle where you've just watched all your men be horribly burned to death is indicative of someone not being deserving of taking the black. Like, the Night's Watch accepts the cruellest of criminals in the best of times; at this moment, Dany knows that this is not the best of times, and that the Wall needs capable leaders and warriors. People like the Tarlys are the best possible Night's Watch recruits.