[Spoilers] Episode 803 Discussion

[Ras1983]

What could have been... this guy does a great job of rewriting the story to make everything a lot more satisfying!

 

 

[hokie3457]

On ‎4‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 10:21 PM, Ras1983 said:

The biggest problem isn't that Arya killed the Night King, it's that the character of the Night King was under utilised and the resolution to his arc ended up being unfulfilling given the many years of build up. There was a lot of lore that could have been incorporated into the story ahead of him being killed by Arya at a later stage, with the victory having cost the main characters a lot more than it did.

For example, they could have had him win the battle of Winterfell and then either move onto KL (if he were totally focussed on destroying humanity) or the Isle of Faces (if he wanted to end his torment and reverse whatever the CotF did to him).

Or they could have had the 'green men' from the Isle of Faces show up at some point to help defeat the Night King after half of Westeros had been conquered.

Or the battle of Winterfell could have been a feint, with the Night King having sent the bulk of his army to KL.

Or the crypts in Winterfell could have been broken open, with the dead Starks going on a murderous rampage.

As it stands, years of build up have come to naught. The Night King appears to have been a silly tactician (remember, he had 8000 years to plan for this), Arya's character is going to have the legacy of having killed the Night King cheaply, and the whole White Walker threat ended up not being much of a threat to most of the realm.

And finally, the whole idea that the Night King's aim was to remove human memory by eliminating the three eyed beings is just, well, kind of small minded given the many other possibilities that the writers could have chosen.

 

I think things were going to the Night King's plan.  He had his full force of White Walkers with him, having kept them away from the main battle and "sacrificing" only the wights.  (remember if a White Walker is killed, all those he turned go down as well.  The strategy of saving them to act as a phalanx for the Night King was not that bad of an idea).  The Dothraki have been pretty much destroyed.  The Unsullied have suffered major losses.  The wights have over-run the walls of Winterfell.  The living dragons are riderless (and the dragon-fire failed to engulf him).  As a deterrent to Jon Snow, thousands and thousands of additional dead have been raised to keep him occupied (as well as having Viserion as a distraction).  The dead are rising in the crypt.  Theon is the last man standing in the weirwood.  Now is the time for the Night King to come and claim his final victory.  To do it himself--to give the coup de grace to the Three-Eyed-Raven.  All things are in place for him.  Except.  No One is there.  I absolutely loved this.  Arya with her years of training (ALL the training:  Winterfell; Kings Landing; on her escape from Kings Landing; Harrenhal; and finally Braavos) brought her to this moment.  That she slipped past the White Walkers with only a breath of wind stirring the hair of that one WW.  He looks briefly, but sees:  No One.

Yes.  His plan was going nicely.  His arrogance as well as No One brought him to his end.

....or did it????  Either way, for me this was perfect!!!!! 

 

[hokie3457]

On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 9:56 PM, divica said:

But the thing is that faceless men aren t super masters of weapons that kill people because their amazing weapon skills.

They use disguises, poisons, spying and things like that… Arya being a faceless men doesn t make her the best weapon's master in the world… It doesn t justify that she should be the one to kill the NK because she is an assassin and even less justifies her doing it the way she did.

As you said, it would make sense if arya was disguised and while the NK was fighting with several people she would sneak behind him and stab him. But we needed the other characters to do things that justified their story arcs so far! 

And I just can t see arya not having a major role in the battle of KL and at the same time don t want her to do anything special… It will just be meme material...

But Arya is more than a Faceless Man.  She is also proficient with weapons.  I've said this elsewhere, but Arya in Episoce 8.3 is the culmination of ALL her training.  Not just at Braavos.  Everything she has learned along the way. 

[House Cambodia]

4 minutes ago, hokie3457 said:

But Arya is more than a Faceless Man.  She is also proficient with weapons.  I've said this elsewhere, but Arya in Episoce 8.3 is the culmination of ALL her training.  Not just at Braavos.  Everything she has learned along the way. 

She demonstrated all that in the Battle of Winterfell. Her job is done - with a bunch of main characters queuing up to be the hero at KL, she can't be greedy and take the spoils again.

[divica]

6 minutes ago, hokie3457 said:

But Arya is more than a Faceless Man.  She is also proficient with weapons.  I've said this elsewhere, but Arya in Episoce 8.3 is the culmination of ALL her training.  Not just at Braavos.  Everything she has learned along the way. 

The culmination of all her training is a few moths with a weapons master learning the basics and a lot of riding...

I dont think anyone ever thought arya how to use a dagger for exemple… She was beaten several times witha  staff… And barely used a sword… Pod has been training much more than her!

[hokie3457]

16 minutes ago, divica said:

The culmination of all her training is a few moths with a weapons master learning the basics and a lot of riding...

I dont think anyone ever thought arya how to use a dagger for exemple… She was beaten several times witha  staff… And barely used a sword… Pod has been training much more than her!

"you just stick them with the pointy end...."

[TNTW]

Rewatching. What the heck happened with all the dead that were in room with Milasandre and the Hound? Did they not rise with the rest of the dead? Not all of them could have been already dead wights. So many questions still.

[kevinbgwrites]

I posted this in its own thread, but with the series done its become so glaring how poorly handled Bran and the NK's arc were:

I think the following elements would have been absolutely essential to make the whole Bran/NK arc not fall flat:

1. Since the NK is just a killing machine, play into that hard and make him act like it. Maybe another flashback or some way for just a trickle of lore to establish that. More importantly- Have him be absolutely merciless, no wights standing around in a circle when they could be swarming Bran, or him approaching in slow mo, and no wights meandering around libraries. The dead should be the same unstoppable wave that we see in hardhome.

2. More of a cost to the war. First of all the armies should actually be depleted as opposed to replenishing after the fight and it being casually addressed. People should die when they are put in the in the "eight wights on you at a time" circumstances of the characters in episode 3. Winterfell should have certainly been lost with a desperate retreat needing to be made, perhaps during which the characters we see die in the episode sacrifice themself to make it happen. Mel could even do something like a final fire spell that makes an immense firewall that is so powerful she dies, but stalls the army enough for some to escape. The hidden tunnels in the crypts could be used as an escape for the cast members not in the battle proper. They even set this up with the ice creeping down to winterfell in the episodes intro, which is a great idea to have continue to spread as the army advances.

3. Sensical conclusion- If you want Arya to kill the NK, get there in a logical way, not just wind whipping a White Walker's hair as she teleports past the host of the undead. Also in general have everything be sensical, as opposed to meaningless death charges. Have the army of the living go into the battle with a truly thought out plan and lose in spite of it not because of it, solidifying the NK as a formidable opponent. Hell, if the struggle is as traumatizing as it should be, it would actually be the perfect setup for Dany to start losing it.

4. Very importantly have bran play a role- A BIG one- The show explicitly states in earlier seasons Brans training and ascension to the raven is key in the battle against the NK, not to be an info dump. He needs a powerful ability thats a big problem for the NK and necessitates going after him. As it is it just makes no sense why he'd even care about going after him in person as opposed to just letting his horde or generals kill him. If they did build it up in a way that presents a believable reason for him to want to do it personally, it would still make sense for the area to be totally secured- Again, if he is being presented as the embodiment of evil and a borderline machinelike engine of death it doesn't mesh with nonsense decisions. 

Again there needs to be a damn good reason for the NK to want to get Bran beyond being the memories of mankind. Imagine if when Bran said "I'm going now" any of the following happened:

1. He Wargs into one of those White Walker generals standing in a row on the backline and it kills the general next to it, killing a portion of the army while also turning the undead under its control against the rest of the undead army until it's killed. This would be a huge problem for the NK and necessitate killing him extremely quickly.

2. Bran Wargs Viserion, throwing the NK off his back. Viserion then either needs to have control mentally wrested back to the NK, or be put down by the NK.

3. I like option 1 more, but if there was some build up leading to the fight of Bran doing "something" during episodes 1 and 2, when he wargs in episode 3, suddenly it would be revealed Bran was actually gathering all manner of animals into an army which crashes into the AoTD.

Again giving him something game changing not only makes the NK wanting him dead very badly makes sense, but is a great payoff to his extremely long arc that sadly doesn't have payoff in what we actually got.

[Rast-afari]

After watching it again l noticed that after the Dothraki get decimated causing Dany to enter the battle, Jon does also, but attempts to go after the White Walkers who were on horseback in the rear. That's actually a good strategy which should have been discussed in their war council. Take out the generals and that will eliminate a chunk of Wights. Unfortunately the Night King summons a storm which forces Jon away.

[Ras1983]

On 5/21/2019 at 11:44 PM, kevinbgwrites said:

I posted this in its own thread, but with the series done its become so glaring how poorly handled Bran and the NK's arc were:

I think the following elements would have been absolutely essential to make the whole Bran/NK arc not fall flat:

1. Since the NK is just a killing machine, play into that hard and make him act like it. Maybe another flashback or some way for just a trickle of lore to establish that. More importantly- Have him be absolutely merciless, no wights standing around in a circle when they could be swarming Bran, or him approaching in slow mo, and no wights meandering around libraries. The dead should be the same unstoppable wave that we see in hardhome.

2. More of a cost to the war. First of all the armies should actually be depleted as opposed to replenishing after the fight and it being casually addressed. People should die when they are put in the in the "eight wights on you at a time" circumstances of the characters in episode 3. Winterfell should have certainly been lost with a desperate retreat needing to be made, perhaps during which the characters we see die in the episode sacrifice themself to make it happen. Mel could even do something like a final fire spell that makes an immense firewall that is so powerful she dies, but stalls the army enough for some to escape. The hidden tunnels in the crypts could be used as an escape for the cast members not in the battle proper. They even set this up with the ice creeping down to winterfell in the episodes intro, which is a great idea to have continue to spread as the army advances.

3. Sensical conclusion- If you want Arya to kill the NK, get there in a logical way, not just wind whipping a White Walker's hair as she teleports past the host of the undead. Also in general have everything be sensical, as opposed to meaningless death charges. Have the army of the living go into the battle with a truly thought out plan and lose in spite of it not because of it, solidifying the NK as a formidable opponent. Hell, if the struggle is as traumatizing as it should be, it would actually be the perfect setup for Dany to start losing it.

4. Very importantly have bran play a role- A BIG one- The show explicitly states in earlier seasons Brans training and ascension to the raven is key in the battle against the NK, not to be an info dump. He needs a powerful ability thats a big problem for the NK and necessitates going after him. As it is it just makes no sense why he'd even care about going after him in person as opposed to just letting his horde or generals kill him. If they did build it up in a way that presents a believable reason for him to want to do it personally, it would still make sense for the area to be totally secured- Again, if he is being presented as the embodiment of evil and a borderline machinelike engine of death it doesn't mesh with nonsense decisions. 

Again there needs to be a damn good reason for the NK to want to get Bran beyond being the memories of mankind. Imagine if when Bran said "I'm going now" any of the following happened:

1. He Wargs into one of those White Walker generals standing in a row on the backline and it kills the general next to it, killing a portion of the army while also turning the undead under its control against the rest of the undead army until it's killed. This would be a huge problem for the NK and necessitate killing him extremely quickly.

2. Bran Wargs Viserion, throwing the NK off his back. Viserion then either needs to have control mentally wrested back to the NK, or be put down by the NK.

3. I like option 1 more, but if there was some build up leading to the fight of Bran doing "something" during episodes 1 and 2, when he wargs in episode 3, suddenly it would be revealed Bran was actually gathering all manner of animals into an army which crashes into the AoTD.

Again giving him something game changing not only makes the NK wanting him dead very badly makes sense, but is a great payoff to his extremely long arc that sadly doesn't have payoff in what we actually got.

Bro, your points have too much story-telling logic to make it into D&D's sphere of thinking. The problem is they are good at adapting (which is why the first 5 seasons were good) but terrible at writing (running out of source material was a big problem).

The pathetic way the NK's arc was resolved has to surely go down in story telling history as one of the worst plot endings. Hopefully GRRM has something better planned in the books.

[Virgil Stark]

Alright, so, Has anyone played Bard's Tale 3, the Thief of Fate?! I did when I was a wee lad. It was published in 1988, before the books were written 3 years later.

I've felt for a long time (since reading the books, well before the TV show even aired) that Arya would be, essentially, the Thief of Fate, the titular hero of Bard's Tale 3, killing the worst person in the Game of Thrones universe, whomever that turns out to be. When Beric and Sandor and Gendry and the lot formed a sort of D&D party, I felt even more strongly about this eventuality.

Here's an excerpt of the hint book from Bard's Tale 3, 1988, in which the thief is named "Nadya" (hmm....Arya....Nadya...):

"When the party finally met Tarjan, he was in reach of neither sword nor spell. The party couldn't get through the endless line of creatures that the Evil One summoned from the bowels of Hell. But to the side of the fray, Nadya slipped off into the shadows. Arbo didn't have time to wonder if she was alive or not. He cast spell after spell until the corpses formed a wall around the party."

Nadya kills Tarjan, of course. It's a cleaner kill in the hint book, but, when I played the game, it played out more like in the show, because my thief %$@*ed it up at first try and had to go again.

Anyways, I spent the whole episode waiting for that bit, and when it came, and the walls of corpses were everywhere, and Arya came flying out of the shadows, I was too excited to remember anything else about the episode.

I mean, it's the conclusion of the metaphysical war of ice and fire. What comes next is the quelling of the fire incarnate before it destroys the world.

[GOTSeriesfan]

Arya's slaying of the Night King will always be badass!