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[Poll] How would you rate episode 802?


How would you rate episode 802?  

287 members have voted

  1. 1. What's your rating from 1-10, with 10 being the highest/best?

    • 1
      8
    • 2
      7
    • 3
      7
    • 4
      13
    • 5
      17
    • 6
      23
    • 7
      37
    • 8
      66
    • 9
      60
    • 10
      49


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It's a generous five, for me. It gets a pass basically because of the scene of Brienne's knighting, with Pod singing Jenny's song.

But:

  • They've handled R+L=J terribly. The greatest revelation of the show, and it comes down to a couple of not particularly good short scenes in the crypt.
  • They have overdone the pessimism before the battle. If everyone thinks they are doomed, why do they fight instead of fleeing to the Iron Islands or Essos? No king would allow his commanders such level of defeatism. Having dragons and a full armory of obsidian weapons should serve to at least try to inspire some hope.
  • At the same time, this continuously stated conviction of the hopelessness of trying to win the battle is inconsistent with the characters focusing on discussions about the Northern independence or the inheritance of the Iron Throne.
  • Still no reaction to Jon riding a Dragon. No one thinks that it can make a difference in the upcoming decisive battle. It seems it's not a big deal. Just a convenient transport when you want to show your girlfriend your beautiful childhood playgrounds.
  • Grey Worm and Melisandre are one-sided tertiary characters that outlived their purpose once Dany reached Westeros and could interact with other protagonists. It's great that they keep them around as background. If they really feel there's a need to give them a small scene, so be it. But it shouldn't be one that undermines their very defining trait: their loyalty to Dany.
  • It's surprising how people keep making statements without any ground to support them. We see Jorah claims that "Tyrion makes mistakes as everyone, but he learns from them". How does he reach to that conclusion? He devised the strategy against the Lannisters, costing Dany her fleet, Dorne and Highgarden (and the lives of loyal allies). He hasn't planned any war strategy since. Then he decided that they had to capture a wight to convince Cersei. It costs Dany a dragon, to no gain. No other brilliant plan from Tyrion, so far. So.. how can Jorah say that he has learned?
Edited by The hairy bear
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An episode of "farewell" for some characters because I suppose we'll never see them again after the battle. 10/10 for all the heroes who chose to die fighting for the living instead of running away.
Excellent scene in the crypts (Jon and Daenerys). Short and to the point. I didn't expect Brienne to be made a knight by Jaime. That was an excellent scene too.

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Gave it a solid 3. Slow, underwhelming, and quite anticlimatic.

The Jenny of Oldstones' song and Tormund Giantsbane make this episode worth watching. Let that apart, there's nothing to relish, it's basically a filler.

I understand the "moving" statements, but I think those moving scenes could have been handled far better. Remember that "you would by my lady" scene between Arya & Gendry, back in season 3 ? Well, I recall it even more moving that this topless scene we had today.

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Honestly I kind of liked it if not for now having to wait another week to discover what happens next (arghhhhh.) Yes there was the usual stick of unfinished conversations which seems quite the thing in drama it seems and as long as they roll back round to it and don't pretend it never happened I can live with it. I don't see them not furthering the conversation between Jon and Dany, preferably more than two or three sentences.

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Better than last week, still far from great - 7/10

The issue is that we have too many characters that were developed for no purpose and now just have nothing to do - Varys, Missandei, Grey Worm. Even Lord Royce has been diminished to "My Lady" lines. I suppose we will thin the herd next week, so looking forward to see some of those gone.

I get the idea where this episode came. It is a deep calm before the storm. But the dialogues have been awful. That fireplace scene could have been gold and in some way, it was, but it lacked fluidity, it lacked true "this is it, people, our last act" moment. Knighting Brienne was OK, but it was a room full of characters going through something terrible. It should have been done much better.

As @The hairy bear said, the resolving of the greatest mystery and impact it has on characters has been done in less than two minutes. This was supposed to be THE question, the one that got them (producers) the job. And yet, it is not doing what is supposed to do.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum we have conversation between Dany and Sansa. Finally, people were talking to each other, not at each other. I understood both sides, they were presented nicely, overall, nice scene that truly showed the differences and similarities between the two, but also that major issue they have.

"Jenny of Oldstones" has been done nicely. Not as elegant as LOTR's moment, but it really kicked right where it should. 

Emotional highpoint - Sansa and Theon.

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10/10 -- I really liked this episode. Great.

By the way, I gave E1 only a 5/10 because everything was so hastened and I missed emotions. I couldn't savor the scenes, they just rushed by. Maybe I should have given it a 7/10 for the content, but I was disappointed directly afterwards and my emotional response is maybe the best indicator for how good an episode is. I watch it for emotions of all kind.

But E2 fulfilled my expectations! Full of emotions!

+ Jamie's trial, Brienne vouching for Jamie, later Jamie giving knighthood to Brienne, all their talking in the hall witht he fireplace... this time they took the necessary time to create emotions and let us savor them

+ Samwell and Jorah... so emotional, so great how they did this scene. Perfect. The short intro with Jorah/Lyanna was nice, too, and fit the characters.

+ Arya and Gendry... well done... in the forgerys Gendry still not taking her really serious, she demonstrating the knife throwing, he re-considering, all the flirtatious tension lying in the air.. Arya playing the faceless men's game with Gendy and detecting his lies and truth, wanting a night a desire and lust before her last day. Believable. Arya human and teenage-like again. I liked the eyes of Gendry when seeing her naked body with all the scars and realising she had done her fair share of fighting and surviving. These mixed emotions of lust and realisation. Well played.

+ Sansa and Daenerys having a talk. Well performed, they took enough time for the scene. Both getting closer, Sansa talking about Jon is loving Daenerys, then the smoldering conflict "What about the North?". I like it that Sansa is not just giving in to Daenerys' clever move, but holds her ground. Two strong women fighting for power. Sansa would be fine with only the North. The stakes are clear now. But they talked with each other, reasonably, moderate temperature, well executed.

+ Jamie and Bran.. "Things we do for love" what a great hidden announcement of Bran during the trial, but keeping silent about the meaning. later Jamie saying sorry and Bran accepting. 

+ Jon and Daenerys in the crypts... they build up the tension nicely with Jon avoiding Daenerys, avoiding touch or contact... Daenerys finally looking for him and finding him in the Crypts of Winterfell. Jon's revelation nicely done, straight-forward, but emotional, all the implications hanging in the air. Daenerys reaction very good, conflicting emotions well played. Perfect revelation scene for me.

+ cliffhanger scene with WW arriving ... E3 will have the battle.  A lot White walkers... more than expected. We know the Nightking has 100.000 wights but he has several dozens or more White Walkers, too. Wow, that'll be difficult.

In summary, E2 was drastically better than E1.

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56 minutes ago, Risto said:

As @The hairy bear said, the resolving of the greatest mystery and impact it has on characters has been done in less than two minutes. This was supposed to be THE question, the one that got them (producers) the job. And yet, it is not doing what is supposed to do.

Surely there are more important questions:

What does the NK want? How do the seasons and magic on Planetos actually work, anyway? How did Dany make those dragons? How did Mel birth demons? How does Mel live so long? What did Varys hear in the flames? Is Jon dead or alive - does he even breathe?

I find the whole Jon linage a rather minor thing - and actually kind of annoying because how could Rhaegar legally annul his marriage when he had already made kids with Obyrens sister? I thought the way Westerosi law worked was that you could not opt out of successful reproductive unions - especially those between members of great houses? Besides this, the Targs were invaders so what makes their claim to the Throne more valid than Roberts? Surely one of the main elements of the show and books is letting us see how broken medieval successions and secret babies really are as concepts?

Truly, if whether of not Jon deserves the Throne is the main crux of the story, in book or show, then its a waster of 5 (and counting) books and 8 seasons.

Edited by ummester
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This was für worst episode for me since "Beyond the Wall". 

They don't explain why the NK is behind Bran. Bran just states that he is the "Memory of the world". So what? If they kill everybody in Westeros, why is it important that a guy in a weelchair, who can not have offsprings must be killed? They are planing to kill everybody. That does not make any sense. Plus, he doesn't explain anything to them: who is the NK, who are the WW. Who the fuck he is. Until now, I thought there was no time to explain that. But now, they had a complete filler episode, with all the characters in one room. And they spend half a minute on the enemy, and 60 minutes on reunions again. 

5/10.

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5

Jon's parentage is being handled awfully. I guess Jaime's trial was adequate mostly, but I'm stumped why Brienne's vouching moves Sansa so much, I mean, she thinks Jon's love for Dany makes him biased but is she that oblivious to Brienne's affections for Jaime? Weird.

Really feels like they're drawing blatantly from Peter Jackson's Helms Depp in a lot of places, and not in a general movie set-up way, but literally lifting stuff from it. Half the characters here feel utterly useless and long past any purpose - Jorah, Varys, Missandei, Grey Worm, Royce, Beric - and other important relationships, like The Hound and Sansa, just show how badly they managed them in the past. I feel like they're relying to heavily on "Remember when?" type scenes.  Honestly, though, if morale is so low and everyone thinks death is a certainty why is there not attempted desertions? 

Bran is the Night King's true enemy, apparently, with no notion how he learned this and how he responded to that information. Let's use him as bait! Nobody cares about Jon Snow riding Rhaegal, and there was no build-up or bonding to him riding Rhaegal either. Nothing is built up in a worthwhile, invested manner. Things just happen. Things just get revealed. It's all so indifferent.  I'm not even sure what they're doing with Obsidian. Is it even effective against wights? It's quite a frail substance in the book; Sam's dagger shatters when it strikes Small Paul's chainmail. 

Still, I like that we get to see lots of Others on screen for the first time since Craster said he had over 90 sons. 

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I kinda liked it! I mean if we removed all the scenes involving Arya and all the scenes involving Greyworm and Missandei and all the scenes involving Daenerys and Sansa, we would get a rather solid episode. 

But we can’t, so we’ve gotta work with what we have. Jaime’s trial was well acted (mostly by Jaime) but terribly written, so it fell rather short of my expectations. No mention of the mad king’s Being mad? No mention that Jaime was sitting in his own shit for a full year as Robb Stark’s prisoner so it’s not like the Lannisters were the only people who wronged their enemy in the war? Ugh.

The part where they attempted to reinforce the fact that tyrion is clever... was probably more painful than attempting to convince the audience that Sansa is the smartest person in the world or that Jon and Daenerys are in love. Ugh. 

Daenerys trying to bond with Sansa was not badly written but so terribly acted it made me cringe. And wow, we complain that Emilia Clarke can’t act, well put her in a scene with Sophie Turner and she becomes Emmy worthy. The wonders of relativity. In all seriousness both of them were weak. 

I liked that Jaime talked to Brienne and Bran and Tyrion, Jaime is at this point the only person in the entire setting who thinks and acts like a human being and has relevant conversations with other human beings. It’s rather ironic though that the Lannister brothers are the only people who have any interest in what’s going on with Bran. Jon is preoccupied with Daenerys, Sansa with her power and position, Arya  with being the sociopath she is. 

Of alllllll the long awaited family reunions, the warmest, truest reunion happened between the Night’s Watch crew. And Theon and Sansa were great too, mainly thanks to Alfie Allen and Emilia Clarke’s fuming in the background, but sure it’s nice to have Sophie Turner stand/sit in scenes and look obnoxious. 

Arya needs to die. Every word that comes out of her mouth, every movement that comes out of her muscles is pure hard cringe. That sex scenes was the most disturbing thing I’ve seen on Thrones since 30 year old Natalie Dormer went to bed with Tommen. 

The scene with the supporting characters around the fire was the best thing we’ve got since season 4. This happens when you remove the Starks and Daenerys from the stage. God it was sooo good. So game of thrones, such great acting, such lovely ending to Brienne’s story. It was just pure gold. 

The Jorah/Lyanna Mormont thing was weird but necessary, I truly hope Lyanna dies next episode. John Bradley is great but Sam’s giving away his family sword makes no narrative sense. Jon should be giving his goddamn sword to Jorah. 

The socio-political scenes are completely unnecessary and narratively ridiculous, but at least we didn’t get too many of them. 

What else was there? I loved that there was no Cersei. What a breath of fresh air! It is amazing.

People need to die. There are so many characters they can’t even fit around the battle plan table, it’s ridiculous. Like I could like ten people from the top of my head who need to be gone next episode, Pod, Brienne/Davos, Varys, GreyWorm/Missandei, Hound/Gendry, Beric, Edd, Gilly/Lyanna Mormont, Theon/Tormund, Arya/Sansa. Just kill them, kill them all! 

Did anything else happened? Right, Daenerys found out she’s been shagging her brother’s son, but she is more worried about her birthright. Well I suppose we’ll see how Kit Harington stays true to his word compared to someone taller. 

But all in all I enjoyed this episode, they did a fairly good job building tension, they didn’t quite manage to copy LoTr in a quality fashion but that’s usually the case when you try to copy from a classic. The apocalyptic atmosphere was mostly in place, incorporating a song (not from Ed Sheeran) brought back the happy memories of previous, better seasons, the scene without all the Starks and Daenerys was a delight. 

The 3 seconds of ghost in the background was pathetic. Better leave him out entirely.

all in all, I’m giving it 7/10 - turns out there’s no .5 option when voting. 

Edited by RhaenysBee
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4 minutes ago, ummester said:

Surely there are more important questions:

What does the NK want? How do the seasons and magic on Planetos actually work, anyway? How did Dany make those dragons? How did Mel birth demons? How does Mel live so long? What did Varys hear in the flames? Is Jon dead or alive - does he even breathe?

I find the whole Jon linage a rather minor thing - and actually kind of annoying because how could Rhaegar legally annul his marriage when he had already made kids with Obyrens sister? I thought the way Westerosi law worked was that you could not opt out of successful reproductive unions - especially those between members of great houses? Besides this, the Targs were invaders so what makes their claim to the Throne more valid than Roberts? Surely one of the main elements of the show and books is letting us see how broken medieval successions and secret babies really are as concepts?

Truly, if whether of not Jon deserves the Throne is the main crux of the story, in book or show, then its a waster of 5 (and counting) books and 8 seasons.

According to interviews B&W claim the Night King represents death, he was made to bring death, and that's his purpose. So this may literally be all they'll give us about The Others. Hilariously, they once said the NK is more interesting a villain than Sauron because of his complicated past and not just an evil dark lord. Except... Sauron's an actual character, with actual aims and personality. The NK is an icy Terminator. Yeesh. 

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1 hour ago, Risto said:

The issue is that we have too many characters that were developed for no purpose

I don't see that issue. The side characters had her fare share of importance and now they are just background. Where's the problem? That's the way it is. All protagonists are in Winterfell, so the minor characters become less important before the battle. Maybe they have more valuable scenes later. We will see. 

I like the short Grey Worm/Missandei scene and I very mich appreciated the Davos/Gilly scene. The later was so heart-warming and it was nice to spend some seconds on commoners and children. Yes, background, but emotional. 

1 hour ago, Risto said:

Even Lord Royce has been diminished to "My Lady" lines.

He was never really important. He is background yes. I have no problems with guys like Royce being background. Every movie has butlers, gardeners or the like being background. To the contrary, it's fine that we even know the names and histories of such minor roles. That's a great bonus, not a malus.

1 hour ago, loverofcats said:

An episode of "farewell" for some characters because I suppose we'll never see them again after the battle. 10/10 for all the heroes who chose to die fighting for the living instead of running away.

I agree, some of them might be farewell scenes. Sad, but true. Nice to have some minutes with all our beloved characters after all. Nothing to moan about.

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Just now, Kajjo said:

I don't see that issue. The side characters had her fare share of importance and now they are just background. Where's the problem? That's the way it is. All protagonists are in Winterfell, so the minor characters become less important before the battle. Maybe they have more valuable scenes later. We will see. 

I like the short Grey Worm/Missandei scene and I very mich appreciated the Davos/Gilly scene. The later was so heart-warming and it was nice to spend some seconds on commoners and children. Yes, background, but emotional. 

The problem is that they don't know what to do them. Lord Royce is basically a prop next to Sansa. GreyWorm and Missandei had one talk about "we don't belong here" Bunch of these characters are not moving forward and many of them are being stunts - Brienne in Episode 1, Varys in Episode 2.

Overall, I feel that it should have been done much better. 

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Just now, Risto said:

The problem is that they don't know what to do them.

Why is that a problem? We have enough main characters to develop the story, so we have some overpaid, beloved side-charactersa floating around. Yes, it's a pity we dont have 12 episode in season 8. We could see much more emotional scenes. 

1 minute ago, Risto said:

I feel that it should have been done much better. 

How so? Sorting them out before? 

Where is the problem mit known side characters in the background? I love it that we even know the background somehow, like Royce or Varys. Is OK.

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2 hours ago, loverofcats said:

An episode of "farewell" for some characters because I suppose we'll never see them again after the battle. 10/10 for all the heroes who chose to die fighting for the living instead of running away.
Excellent scene in the crypts (Jon and Daenerys). Short and to the point. I didn't expect Brienne to be made a knight by Jaime. That was an excellent scene too.

Yep, it was clearly a goodbye episode right down to them sitting around a fire, getting drunk one last time, reminiscing about the good ole days when they were all enemies. Sigh. Everything was too drawn out before, now it's rushed.

Edited by Stark_in_Winterfell
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