Season 8: News, Spoilers And Leaks

[Xemi]

5 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Before we had confirmation about Jon's parents, Martin said that both the readers and Jon would eventually learn who his mother is but that it wouldn't really matter much any longer by then.

All we're seeing is how that actually plays out. Martin deliberate took the whole "hidden prince who is the rightful king" motif duplicated in a million billion fantasy novels both great and derivative and broke its expectation. Of course he won't be king. That would be dumb and cheesy.

No he didn't. Why are you not providing the link to this? Because it's BS you made up, that's why.

[Lord_Ravenstone]

3 hours ago, longest night said:

Btw, could you imagine Jon not being king at the end of this shitshow? The entirety of Jon's and Bran's character arcs would be worth nothing. All the build up to him being the rightful heir? Nothing. They were already laughably robbed in the Long Night of their story arcs. 

Jon's heritage isn't there to build Jon up. It's there to destroy him. Jon is Aragorn turning into Frodo by the end. 

Bran is Frodo turning into Aragorn at the end.

This is also why GRRM focuses so much on Bran's self-pity since he plans to make Bran the most important person in Westeros by the end.

 

King Bran was foreshadowed in episode 1 season 1, guys.

[Nowy Tends]

4 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

That's not really a problem. The showrunners use book-only things in the background, 

They didn't about Valyrian steel. Tywin had to hire a smith from Volantis, just to have Ice melted and cast again in 2 blades. Even for that simple task a super specialist was required…

I think in the books VS need dragon fire AND blood magic. 

[Nowy Tends]

36 minutes ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

This is also why GRRM focuses so much on Bran's self-pity since he plans to make Bran the most important person in Westeros by the end.

 

King Bran was foreshadowed in episode 1 season 1, guys.

You don't have to be a king to be the most important person in Westeros. Jeoffrey and Tommen were king and weren't important.

Bran becoming king in the show doesn't make sense.

[tws1978]

Well, if it really ends as the leaks hints I´m not sure how will anyone ever be able to rewatch the show. Most of the main plots have turned pointless. Why watch Dany grow and go through her mistakes for 7 seasons, when it´s all turned to ash in the last three episodes? Why watch all the episode dealing with NK and behind the wall stuff, when it´s over in an episode? Especially the latter seasons are mostly build around either Jon and his fights or Dany and her dragons, most of else is just filler. But those are exactly the moments which will never have the same feel again. There is a very thin line between making the story daring and unpredictable and fully destroying it. We just saw it with the last Star Wars and I´m afraid it´s happening again live with GoT. It´s exactly how Emilia said. The lasting taste will not be good and there is no episode 9 to save the day.

[Targaryen Peas]

I guess that's also a problem with this kind of stories. 

When you build a complex story - and craft it to perfection till the end, forget D&D - how is it possible for the audience to still be surprised when reading/watching it again, since they invest a lot to follow it? On the other hand, a simpler story, can have a better re-everything potential.

I guess.

[Maia]

14 hours ago, Lady Anna said:

God I hate this. If Daenerys dies then I will accept no other death than her sacrificing herself in a heroic way (and not in a Nissa Nissa way which I don't  even believe is literal).

Ditto. But it is what it is. I am shocked that however Dany's death turns out, GRRM seems to be endorsing all those sexist jerks who claimed that the Iron Throne would never accept a woman in FaB. Nor is a female claimant getting ultimately shafted in any way a "subversion". Nor is an ambitious and powerful woman going mad, if GRRM's version has that element - not only is it a repugnant trope rooted in the conviction that women are constitutionally unable to handle power responsibly, but he already has Cersei, Lysa and even Cat doing so before her death. There were many ways to have Dany rule successfully and yet make it very bitter in the end. He managed it with Jaehaerys and Alysanne, why not with Dany? 

 

12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I think we can take as pretty much a given. Jon is partially Aegon, Cersei is partially Aegon, and nothing is left of the actual Dany-Jon story aside from them having a romantic relationship.

I am not even sure about that last. And I kinda wonder if show Dany doesn't have some of FAegon in her too. I mean, she is not particularly obssessed with the Iron Throne in ADwD, and by the time she gets to Westeros she'd already know  that she might not be the rightful heir and would have had time to come to terms with it. She actually wants to find family too. Neither does she expect the  people to immediately accept her as their ruler, as show Dany, and FAegon both do. Book Dany is familiar with suffering defeats and recovering from them as FAegon is not, etc.

There is also Stannis's vision of himself being consumed by the crown, which is very similar as well.

 

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In fact, we can strongly expect that Sansa's mistrust of Dany is actually mirroring Arianne's later behavior (because of Quentyn's and Viserys III's demise and her fears that Dany is going to oust her (and her child?) from power), and that Varys actually represent some people (possibly even dragonriders) in camp Dany starting to wonder whether Aegon would favor them more than Dany, etc.

Yes. IMHO, it is likely that Dany will be convinced to come and bail out FAegon, as Tyrion predicted when manipulating him, only to get shafted as a result and the show Sansa indeed got Arianne's plot material, while show Dany's coming to WF to help the ungrateful  North is the mix of book Stannis and her own book plot in the south. FAegon will ride one of her dragons and get showered with praise for it, etc.

Varys's motivations in the show make zero sense, because if he cared about the realm, he would have never seriously supported Viserys as a claimant. Viserys wasn't any better than Robert and  absolutely not worth the horrific civil wars, Dothraki invasions, etc. needed to give him even a sliver of a chance. Robert's profligacy with money wasn't  shown to have any particularly bad consequences for the people, since they short-circuited the Long Night and the Winter. Nobody who is not in the Riverlands seems to be starving or anything. So, if Varys cared so much about the realm, all he needed to do was make sure that the Lannister twins were caught in flagranti early on, with as many witnesses as possible.

Book Varys, of course, created FAegon*, so naturally he'd do his best to undermine and discredit Dany once they get her help and rivalry between the 2 develops. He was also the one who foiled Rhaegar's attempts to establish a regency in order to mitigate Aerys's madness and generally faned the disagreements between them, so yea... And now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense for Dany to execute Varys once she uncovers his numerous perfidies. Far from showing her as a tyrant madwoman, it would actually be an act of rare good sense .

*This is also why I have been convinced practically since I first read AGoT that Viserys was only ever a decoy and Varys and Illyrio always had another claimant up their sleeve. And why I couldn't disagree more that FAegon or somebody like him was a late addition. Euron was also signposted as somebody of future importance in ACoK already.

From what I have heard about the oldest outline with the infamous love triangle involving Arya, eeevil King Jaime, etc., Viserys may have been a reasonable pretender there, since in it Dany apparently murdered her Dothraki husband to avenge him. But in AGoT anybody who spent half an hour with him and had 2 neurons to rub together would have known that he had no prayer of winning and holding the Iron Throne, nor would it have been in any way beneficial for the realm if he somehow succeeded.

 

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In fact, I'd not be surprised if 'Mad Dany' is actually going to be 'Mad Aegon' in the books. The golden boy is not the hero of this story. A lot of people originally thought/wanted to believe he would die soon (a completely stupid idea, in my opinion, because the character would then have basically no purpose at all), and I often entertained the idea he would become the Plague King, harming his people by inadvertently bring the grey plague to Westeros. But there is also the chance that he is actually going to turn out to be manifestly unsuited to rule under a pressure, because he might have a rather large ego or develop one such now that he can be who he was raised to be. Add a lot of pressure to that and his star could rise and fall as quickly as Rhaenyra's did after she had taken KL.

I am 100% with you on this possibility, as I came to the same conclusion, but the fact remains that Dany's ultimate fate in the show must be somehow be similar to what GRRM had planned for her. So, presumably, she never reigns (to the vindication of all the bigots in all the ASOIAF books)  and dies violently and young.

 

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Don't take me wrong, I certainly can see cruel Dany in the books, and harsh Dany. But Westeros will need utterly ruthless and brutal people to get it through the War for the Dawn. And whoever went through that is not going to fault her for burning down KL and/or executing people. They will likely have to make much more severe decisions long before that - abandoning people to the Others for strategic reasons, being forced to condemn even more to certain death by cold and starvation because their limited supplies will be reserved for men who can actually fight the Others, etc. Not to mention all the blood sacrifices to R'hllor and Bran that are likely to come.

That's where I expected the things to go too, but now I am somewhat worried that GRRM is going to chicken out on it, to a degree. He is running out of time to give this part of the story neccessary space. If TWoW had come out 4 years ago, he still might have been able to write an 8th book, if required, but now, not so much, even if TWoW comes out tomorrow, which it won't. Martin also never mastered the art of advancing the timeline at a decent clip or inserting time-gaps, so that I fully expect the series to finish only 5 or so years in-world after it began, at best, with, hopefully Winter still in full swing and maybe an epilogue a few decades into the future.

I'd also be incredibly disappointed if the Others don't make it into the Riverlands at the very least and if the problems of refugees, starvation, etc. are going to be swept under the carpet like in the show. The impact on Westeros and northern parts of Essos should be similar to that of the Black Death in the 13th century on England, for this whole plot element to be satisfying. I really, really hope that GRRM doesn't succumb to LOTRitis and have the whole thing over in less than a year...

My preferred headcanon is that the Long Night can't actually be stopped, only survived, and the Others must be prevented from making it perpetual or something. Also, that the "Night" itself only takes place for a few months/a year during the 10-year-long Winter, or maybe just means the lack of direct sunlight/twilight during the day hours, but the legends exaggerated it.

 

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The idea that the people defeating the Others would bicker in this childish fashion is literally completely unthinkable.

Here, I disagree. People are going to squabble and try to one-up each other even at the brink of annihilation. All part of the "heart in conflict, etc. But I would expect something like WW2 level of cooperation between the survivors.

 

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That I cannot really see, even more since I cannot *really* see Jon coming back to the mortal sphere again. He is not going to come back unchanged from death. Not in the books. So ultimate death/sacrifice to defeat the Others or at least a retreat from the human sphere very likely stands at the end of his arc.

The leaks seem to suggest something compatible with this, too. In fact, I think that in the books Jon never leaves the NW and that they have no reason to think that the Others are gone forever once it is all done. Also, if he is raised by Melisandre or UnCat, he should have flaming blood like Beric.

 

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And the whole three headed dragon stuff makes it pretty much impossible for me to assume either of them is going to be a mere sacrifice to empower another character.

I don't know about that. It now looks very likely that Euron, instead of the show's NK is indeed going to get one of the dragons and do something horrible with it, as well as with his dark magic. Dany's struggles with him in the show could very well be based on her book arc, only in the books he is a terrifying sorcerer and a worthy adversary, who might be in league with the Others or working for them unwittingly.

 

9 hours ago, Red Dragon10 said:

Huh?  Why would bells "break" Daenerys?  I'm confused. 

Maybe she got a bit of yet another cut character's plot? Because there is a guy in the books for whom the sound of the bells _is_ a massive trigger and who spent 18 or so years regretting his lack of ruthlessness at the crucial moment...

[House Cambodia]

34 minutes ago, Targaryen Peas said:

I guess that's also a problem with this kind of stories. 

When you build a complex story - and craft it to perfection till the end, forget D&D - how is it possible for the audience to still be surprised when reading/watching it again, since they invest a lot to follow it? On the other hand, a simpler story, can have a better re-everything potential.

I guess.

2

Oh, you absolutely can and ASOIAF is a perfect example (as you say, just forget the TV show!). I can even sympathise with GRRM taking 8 years and counting to get tWOW out. The thing is, the books' narrative has the surface level that we all get. When you re-read them you know Ned's beheading, the Red Wedding etc are coming and there's no surprise re. events. However, your appreciation of the books deepens when, with the help of AWOIAF (written by the creators of this site) and numerous blogs by intense fans, you start to find the deeper layers - the mythology, the creation/prehistory hints, the magic, the Children, the background histories of great families, the symbolism of the swords, the prophecies and much more.

[Nowy Tends]

This "bells" thing is bizarre… if someone should be scared by bells, it's Cersei!  Shame! Ding! Shame! Dong!

[tws1978]

20 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

Oh, you absolutely can and ASOIAF is a perfect example (as you say, just forget the TV show!). I can even sympathise with GRRM taking 8 years and counting to get tWOW out. The thing is, the books' narrative has the surface level that we all get. When you re-read them you know Ned's beheading, the Red Wedding etc are coming and there's no surprise re. events. However, your appreciation of the books deepens when, with the help of AWOIAF (written by the creators of this site) and numerous blogs by intense fans, you start to find the deeper layers - the mythology, the creation/prehistory hints, the magic, the Children, the background histories of great families, the symbolism of the swords, the prophecies and much more.

I don´t think this is the same. When Ned was executed the story was just beginning and GRRM made sure it´s interesting enough for readers to stay. And Rob was never an POV character. What´s happening with GoT in season 8 is like if Jon was never resurrected after his death in ADWD. Some people would for sure argue at nauseum it´s realistic and sometimes the possible heroes ends this way, but most would still feel cheated. I never expected Dany to win the IT or even survive, but I did expext her story to have some purpose. And the same is true for Jon.

[House Cambodia]

2 minutes ago, tws1978 said:

When Ned was executed the story was just beginning and GRRM made sure it´s interesting enough for readers to stay. And Rob was never an POV character.

Just talking about the books (having given up on show S08), my point is Ned and Rob's stories can be read once and that's it. However, there are tons of rich details embedded in ASOIAF that you might gloss over the first time as your focus is plot-driven, but on a re-read they become fascinating.

[TNTW]

5 hours ago, Kaguya said:

I swear to God if they go for this shitty ending 

I looked up this person's other "leaks", they were completely off the mark, so I doubt this is legit. 

[TNTW]

8 hours ago, bloodsteel bitterraven said:

Ok, thanks.  That's what I thought.  It's unfortunate that these fleakers have better ideas than D&D

Yep lol. I now also think the guy is full of it, but he's still more entertaining than what the show is actually going with.

[Sir Hedge of Hog]

24 minutes ago, tws1978 said:

I don´t think this is the same. When Ned was executed the story was just beginning and GRRM made sure it´s interesting enough for readers to stay. And Rob was never an POV character. What´s happening with GoT in season 8 is like if Jon was never resurrected after his death in ADWD. Some people would for sure argue at nauseum it´s realistic and sometimes the possible heroes ends this way, but most would still feel cheated. I never expected Dany to win the IT or even survive, but I did expext her story to have some purpose. And the same is true for Jon.

yes the purpose of going 'mad' and jon potentially going to betray dany - how can these be successful conclusions to their story arcs?

[Sir Hedge of Hog]

3 hours ago, Lord_Ravenstone said:

Jon's heritage isn't there to build Jon up. It's there to destroy him. Jon is Aragorn turning into Frodo by the end. 

Bran is Frodo turning into Aragorn at the end.

This is also why GRRM focuses so much on Bran's self-pity since he plans to make Bran the most important person in Westeros by the end.

 

King Bran was foreshadowed in episode 1 season 1, guys.

this unfortuantly makes a lot of sense, jons reveal to destroy dany but also himself - but that aint bittersweet. I think too much has been made of this word. good explainer, but it sucks.

[Westerosi]

2 hours ago, tws1978 said:

Well, if it really ends as the leaks hints I´m not sure how will anyone ever be able to rewatch the show. Most of the main plots have turned pointless. Why watch Dany grow and go through her mistakes for 7 seasons, when it´s all turned to ash in the last three episodes? Why watch all the episode dealing with NK and behind the wall stuff, when it´s over in an episode? Especially the latter seasons are mostly build around either Jon and his fights or Dany and her dragons, most of else is just filler. But those are exactly the moments which will never have the same feel again. There is a very thin line between making the story daring and unpredictable and fully destroying it. We just saw it with the last Star Wars and I´m afraid it´s happening again live with GoT. It´s exactly how Emilia said. The lasting taste will not be good and there is no episode 9 to save the day.

Wholeheartedly agreed! If they were going to trash everything and make it nonsensical, it leaves a sour taste in mouth. I don’t think I would be rewatching this again. I also normally would have given the prequels a chance but now I am so sure about them either...

[TNTW]

10 hours ago, divica said:

Nicest leaks I have seen.

 

Omg, I want this to be true. So 99.9% it's not. 

[House Cambodia]

32 minutes ago, TNTW said:

Omg, I want this to be true. So 99.9% it's not. 

 

Yeah, like it. Dany doesn't go mad, but she's blinkin' furious

[Leticia Stark]

Wouldn't make more sense If It was Cersei who would freak out hearing the bells considering her SHAME parade?

I don't know why I even try to find any sense in all this mess.

[House Cambodia]

13 minutes ago, Leticia Stark said:

Wouldn't make more sense If It was Cersei who would freak out hearing the bells considering her SHAME parade?

I don't know why I even try to find any sense in all this mess.

There are bells and bells. I forget, does the Daenerys one refer to the House of the Undying, or what?