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[Spoilers] Episode 803 Discussion


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21 minutes ago, longest night said:

The entirety of Bran and Jon's story arcs is built around the Others and fighting the Others. Jon's entire parentage is built around it, an entire war was started for Jon to exist so Rhaegar could bring in the prince that was promised. Jon had his entire story arc from joining the Night's Watch, to rising to Lord Commander, to king in the North... All to defeat the Others.

All of it was all thrown out the window to a character that had no relation, had no idea what the threat was.

That simply isn't true. what your upset about is the fact neither of them was the one to kill the NK. And that is the part people fail to understand. You don't have to be the one that kills the NK to be instrumental in allowing that to happen. It was a collective effort, need to stop being so fixated on who delivered the kill shot. 

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1 minute ago, Error-504 said:

That simply isn't true. what your upset about is the fact neither of them was the one to kill the NK. And that is the part people fail to understand. You don't have to be the one that kills the NK to be instrumental in allowing that to happen. It was a collective effort, need to stop being so fixated on who delivered the kill shot. 

You really sound like you don't understand story and character arc progression.

Edited by longest night
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A rather underwhelming episode.  Wasn't this one promoted as surpassing the Battle of Helm's Deep in LOTR: The Two Towers (the movie)?  For me, at least, it didn't come close.  It didn't come anywhere near the Battle of the Blackwater or even the Battle of Hardhome.

I could barely see what was going on; too much darkness and swirling snow.  Though I did like the shots of Rhaegal and Drogon up in the clouds; and Drogon (or was it Rhaegal) banking to blast the Night's King.

I do admit to a certain dislike of zombies; so nearly 90 minutes of zombies coming closer and closer to slaughtering everyone in Winterfell was not going to be a favorite battle of mine.  At least there were some nice moments with Sansa and Tyrion; despite Sansa's very inconsistent characterization (being brave enough to want to stay on the ramparts to 'protect her people' one minute and then saying despondently that she and the others hiding in the Crypts are "useless").  

The ending?  Not very believable, but at least Ding Dong The Nights King's Dead!  And, conveniently, so are the other Walkers and all the shrieking wight-zombies.  Good riddance.

The Dead:  Edd, Beric, Theon, Melisandre, Jorah, Lyanna, Grey Worm (I think), Viserion (again), most of the Dothraki and (?) the Unsullied, the pesky Walkers and Night's King as noted.  I knew poor Theon was a goner, but he achieved redemptive forgiveness and praise from Bran and went out like an Ironborn and a Stark.  I'm so glad that Ghost, Gilly and Little Sam, and Davos survived.  I thought there would be a higher death count.

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On that point I thought was strange how many make the connection that killing NK = TPTWP. Doesn't that rather make Arya the Light Bringer instead? If you look at all the gods involved in her progression you can sort of say she's been through many tamperings, fire water and all. Not sure about the heart stabbing part tho. In that sense TPTWP could be a number of people who had helped Arya collectively not just a single person.

Edited by DirePenguin
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24 minutes ago, Snormund said:

Ah, but you forget about Cersei’s magic ballistae!

The only way to have any story is for Cersei to kidnap either Jon or Danny. 

In the show I bet we will have a super silly plot about a small groups of people going inside kl to kill Cersei and her pal while the rest fight a battle in order to distract her armies 

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They killed the show last night. They took it from a 10 to a 6. It was almost like watching an entire different show to the past 6 seasons. Since day one the white walkers were meant to be the big end game of the show. From the first episode. 8 seasons of “winter is coming” produced a massive 9 year long flop. It was ridiculously bad writing. All the character development and plots over the past 6-7 seasons completely thrown out of the window. It’s almost like the producers got writers block and just decided to kill off the white walkers plot in a rushed way. What is the point of bran? Why did we suffer seasons of him? He was pointless. Why did the NK go to kill him? He was already winning and on the mainland. What was the point of ressurecting Jon Snow? Its laughable that for 9 years its been all about how winter was coming and going to destroy the human race and how the wall was keeping out death, and then this almighty death god cant even make it past winterfell against a bunch of rag tags, and an arya start teleports out of nowhere, while bran was completely surrounded by NK and his commanders, and an entire undead army, and still manages to kill the NK with a knife to the knee. It just shits on the whole 9 years of viewing this show. Literally anyone could have done That. Might as well have a maid trip over and spill boiling water on him and watch him melt it was that bizarre. What was the point of 9 years of build up just for the guy to not even make it past the first hurdle? There were far greater and more desperate feeling battles than last nights episode yet it was meant to be the big one. I never did like the white walker story line. It felt like a bad walking dead bit. Doesnt really fit in with the GoT world tbh. But last night ruined the show for me. They should have atleast have the NK win winterfell, the main characters retreat to kings landing, winter falls on kings landing as they all group together with cersei to kill the NK, losing most characters along the way, only for cersei to betray them at the very end etc.

now it will be predictable. Im guessing Jon snow will 100% die saving Dany, sansa sits on the throne, cersei is ousted but not killed, manages to run away and gives birth and tells the baby that it will grow up to reclaim the throne and ends on a cliffhanger somewhat.

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I enjoyed the episode, I can say that much. Well, except that HBO lagged so badly that the picture quality was somewhere south of the intro movie to Age of Empires 1. Especially the scenes with fire in them made my screen a blur of swirling pixels. I guess that's what high traffic does to a streaming service.

It feels like it didn't quite deliver on all it teased, however. Characters were dying left and right throughout the entire episodes (wonder if somebody will do a count to see how many deaths we see on screen?), yet the named ones keep avoiding it. How many times did we see Jaime and Brienne fall under the zombie horde only to emerge just fine? Okay, it was sad to see Lyanna fall, and Jorah and Theon too, but it feels like they're killing characters in order of inverse importance. 

As expected, the battle tactics made little sense, although I guess budget plays a large part. The Dothraki charge in particular was a great waste of the most effective soldiers they had. The dead can only move at running speed, and they have no weapons and thus no projectiles. Mounted archers with hit-and-run tactics could have felled them by the thousands without suffering a single casualty, although they would be hemmed by logistics (fire arrows on horseback would be tricky, and obsidian arrows would deplete their stock pretty rapidly). But archery as a whole was pretty under-utilized too, we saw Theon and his men fell hundreds of wights with them in the Godswood, so one would think a couple of volleys from the defenders would have torn large chunks out of the dead army. Then again, it probably would have torn big chunks out of the budget too.

It was also "interesting" to see how downplayed the effectiveness of fire against wights was here. Every other depiction of the wights in the series have shown them light up like a tinderbox when set fire to. This was seen as recently as Episode 1 this season, where the dead Umber child and the corpses around him go up in flames within seconds of being poked with a burning sword. Yet here, the dead seem to extinguish the burning trench by jumping into the flames. Had the show been consistent, they would only have fed the flames. Then again, budget.

I was a little disappointed with Bran. What did he do except sit there? Okay, they were using him as bait, but not in a very spectacular way. Likewise, the Night King went down like a wuzz. Heck, had he just marched his army around Winterfell, or just waited a few more months for his attack so the good guys had starved a little (he had already waited for thousands of years, and it's not like the heroes' preparations made much difference), he would have won pretty effortlessly. But no, he goes down in the first open battle he enters.

Dramaturgically, this felt like a season finale, and it has the side effect of not making me that excited for the next episode. The dead are dealt with, whatever happens next feels more like a clean-up job than the end-game. As The Hound so fittingly said, "We're fighting death", and they've won now. The remaining resistance is a horny pirate, the queen of bad decisions, an inept Maester, a sellsword army and a single wight in armour. The good guys still have dragons, who decimated battlefields last season, and Arya the perfect assassin. The baddies are at a pretty overwhelming disadvantage here, I feel that the remaining obstacles for the heroes will be quite contrived, so that effective non-threats can be made to look dangerous.

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24 minutes ago, JackSnowOfHouseBolton said:

They killed the show last night. They took it from a 10 to a 6. It was almost like watching an entire different show to the past 6 seasons. Since day one the white walkers were meant to be the big end game of the show. From the first episode. 8 seasons of “winter is coming” produced a massive 9 year long flop. It was ridiculously bad writing. All the character development and plots over the past 6-7 seasons completely thrown out of the window. It’s almost like the producers got writers block and just decided to kill off the white walkers plot in a rushed way. What is the point of bran? Why did we suffer seasons of him? He was pointless. Why did the NK go to kill him? He was already winning and on the mainland. What was the point of ressurecting Jon Snow? Its laughable that for 9 years its been all about how winter was coming and going to destroy the human race and how the wall was keeping out death, and then this almighty death god cant even make it past winterfell against a bunch of rag tags, and an arya start teleports out of nowhere, while bran was completely surrounded by NK and his commanders, and an entire undead army, and still manages to kill the NK with a knife to the knee. It just shits on the whole 9 years of viewing this show. Literally anyone could have done That. Might as well have a maid trip over and spill boiling water on him and watch him melt it was that bizarre. What was the point of 9 years of build up just for the guy to not even make it past the first hurdle? There were far greater and more desperate feeling battles than last nights episode yet it was meant to be the big one. I never did like the white walker story line. It felt like a bad walking dead bit. Doesnt really fit in with the GoT world tbh. But last night ruined the show for me. They should have atleast have the NK win winterfell, the main characters retreat to kings landing, winter falls on kings landing as they all group together with cersei to kill the NK, losing most characters along the way, only for cersei to betray them at the very end etc.

now it will be predictable. Im guessing Jon snow will 100% die saving Dany, sansa sits on the throne, cersei is ousted but not killed, manages to run away and gives birth and tells the baby that it will grow up to reclaim the throne and ends on a cliffhanger somewhat.

 

Actually they killed it last season, especially last season, when John and Tyrion along with Brans vision led with their choices to the destruction of the wall just for the show runners to say that there was no other way for the night king to pass that wall...unless he could get a dragon. From there on all logic fails since from heroes they are turned to zeroes. Plus best plan seemed to be Cersei’s; have a cup of wine and let them be...let them be... 

ok so they opened the door of hell now they made up for it somehow (after all it wasn’t Cersei’s mistake) was it, why should she fight it? 

If someone follows the logic of the show up to the battle last night, and wants to exaggerate it can say that apparently Cersei ‘s apathy was the best tactic all along.

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7 hours ago, greensleeves said:

If TPTWP was about killing the night king then... yeah, guess so!

Honestly, I'm happy for it to be anyone except Jon (because Rhaegar Targaryen was a trash person who doesn't deserve to have any of his actions even slightly justified)

Wasn't getting hammer-chested and his family slaughtered enough?

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4 hours ago, alienarea said:

When the Night King died, all those he raised died as well.

Jon Snow was raised by Melisandre, and she died. Shouldn't he have died then, too?

Does Jon look like a zombie to you? He was brought back to life. He is not a pile of bones animated by ice magic. 

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Something is troubling me about this. Cercei. That bitch gets away with everything!

 
 
 
 

Cercei and the south NEVER have to deal with the night king and army of the dead! WTF? Cercei just gets to keep on being Cercei and the North became the wall without magic ice. 

Now we return you to the dreary battle over who rules the 7 kingdoms with Daenerys's army wiped out.

I'm still unraveling my emotions from this episode. There was a lot in there. Milesandre got to expire. She just reached her end of life and poof. Davos didn't get to kill her. I wonder if it gratified him to watch her die? Or does he have a come to the fire god moment and realize she died when she served her purpose?

Edited by Stark_in_Winterfell
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7 hours ago, bran stark overdrive said:

Beric's great mission was to save Azor Ahai Reborn during the War for the Dawn - seems like a pretty fitting and noble end for a R'hllor worshipper.

Arya is in no way AzorAhai reborn.

D&D just threw all the foreshadowing, lore and prophecy out the window.

She didn't forge lightbringer, no sacrifice, no Nissa Nissa, no dog, no 13 companions, so on...

Arya has had terrible season arcs for the last 2seasons. They just did it because they wanted to please some fans despite it ruining all the previous seasons set up.

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6 hours ago, DirePenguin said:

On that point I thought was strange how many make the connection that killing NK = TPTWP. Doesn't that rather make Arya the Light Bringer instead? If you look at all the gods involved in her progression you can sort of say she's been through many tamperings, fire water and all. Not sure about the heart stabbing part tho. In that sense TPTWP could be a number of people who had helped Arya collectively not just a single person.

I tend to agree with this idea you are developing about this not being one person. Indeed the surviving Stark children have a combined purpose working together. Arya didn't kill the NK by herself. She was almost killed but Bran was able to kill the NK bc Arya tried. I like this symphony. [Correction, I was wrong. I had to watch in slowmo to see what happened. Arya dropped the dagger into her other hand and stabbed him, her trade-mark, last resort-move.]  I liked it anyway , but I LOVE  that Arya was the one to kill the NK with her bad ass moves. She is my favorite character anyway, but now I can worship her. A girl serves the many faced god greatly.

The wolf pack. Nymeria lives because she returned to the pack. I was sure Ghost was going to die. I think his status is unknown at the moment. But Ghost is alone, unless he bonds with the dragon and starts riding one. Or worse, it turns into a Shrek movie. 

Edited by Stark_in_Winterfell
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2 minutes ago, Ser Yorick Ampersand said:

Arya is in no way AzorAhai reborn.

D&D just threw all the foreshadowing, lore and prophecy out the window.

She didn't forge lightbringer, no sacrifice, no Nissa Nissa, no dog, no 13 companions, so on...

Arya has had terrible season arcs for the last 2seasons. They just did it because they wanted to please some fans despite it ruining all the previous seasons set up.

Agreed. We once again have things happen not because it makes sense in the story but to please external agendas... 

And the prince that was promised prophecy is a thing in the show. Mel talked about it with Danny last season... 

Guess it was less important than subvert people's expectations

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