Rant and Rave Without Repercussion End of The World Edition [Spoilers]

[darmody]

43 minutes ago, Andrés Garcia said:

I am so done with the show. I can't imagine why I should care about who ends up on the throne. The show has been telling me for many seasons that it doesn't matter and I agree. Also, while I'm on the topic, exactly why do we think that Cersei and her child would be bad rulers if there was peace? Are we meant to root against her mainly because she's been mean toward our favorite people in the first few seasons?

Did you somehow miss season six?

[Isildur's Mane]

So I watched it last night and have been thinking about it most of the day, here is my rant:

It was soooo dark! I know that this has been said multiple times on multiple platforms, but come on, if you're going to spend so much money on an episode, at least make it viewable.  

The dragons weren't used to their full potential. There was so much flying around and not doing much (looked great - nice visuals) but didnt make sense at times. Like when Viserion was attacking the other dragons with blue flame and neither of the others blew fire back. Or when wights started crawling on Drogon and he didn't burn them all. And there were times where Jon was just doing nothing. It annoyed me to no end that we got to see a lot of the dragons, but they werent much use. 

I didnt like how when the Night King gets to Bran, he waits and stares for ages. Its almost like the bad guys in TV and film have this unwritten law that they have to wait a certain amount of time to give any good guy a chance to step in and save the day.  And then, out of nowhere, here comes our saviour, the prophesied one, the one that is the song of ice and fire......... Arya Stark? 
Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of her scenes in this episode. Her fighting was great, even the pointless scenes in the library had some suspense. But a good epic fantasy is meant to have some foreshadowing (as well as twists and turns) but they are meant to follow through with the foreshadowing, not just add in a huge "twist" to be "unpredictable. 

I did like the little hand swap with the knife at the end... but wish they had chosen to do that some other way. Kill Cersei that way or someone else. 

I don't like how they have decided to make Jon Snow so useless. I'm not sure what he contributed to the battle at all tbh. Was there anything? I don't know why they resurrected him? What use does he have on the show?

They could have cut some of the dragons flying magestically around to show us ghost ripping just one wight apart. And apparently he survives (yay!) but how and why?

What was Bran doing? If it was just skin changing into ravens? How was that going to help? Why ? He was another one that wasn't used to his full potential. 

I don't like how the whole series has built up to Winter is Coming and that is, in itself, a foreshadowing to hard times and bad things to come... and its over in one episode.... It just doesn't sit well with me. All of Westeros should feel the Long Night to some extent. I don't mean that they will have wights show up in Dorne or anything... but don't just contain it to the North. It makes it seem almost trivial. The real fight should't be for the Iron Throne. And that's what I feel the show has done, by containing it to one episode. 

These were some likes I had. Because I did like some of it. 

From the bits I could see there was some nice cinematic sections.
I liked the dragons flying above the clouds.
I like some of Arya's fight scenes. (Even the bit leading up to the library and some of the library scenes themselves)
I liked the bit just before Theon died. 
I liked Lyanna's death
I liked how Grey Worm had to make the tough decision to sacrifice his men.
Visually, Arya killing the Night King looked good.

 

End Rant/ 

[darmody]

15 minutes ago, Runaway Penguin said:

 not bothered by the ice zombie arc being over. Depending on how the rest of the season goes - but do not forget for example Babylon 5 or Lord of the rings also did not finish with resolving the "Big Bad" conflict - in Babylon 5, there was the despotic regime on Earth to tackle, in LoTR you had the Scouring of the Shire. Did that diminish in any way way the importance of the "big climax"? So no, not bothered by that, really, though I expected a more complex ending (such as "temporary defeat" of the icicles, but not complete destruction).

Bear in mind how t.v. seasons differ from multi-volume novels. Hobbits having to fight when they got back to the Shire was falling action. Now we in the middle of the final season. You can't have your climax in episode three of a six-episode season. 

Which means the final three have to be biggerer. And what was bigger than the Army of the dead? Urine turning on Cersei and/or unleashing the kraken? Cleganebowl? Mopey Jon and Pissy Danny bickering like aunt and nephew over the throne?

[Runaway Penguin]

54 minutes ago, darmody said:

Bear in mind how t.v. seasons differ from multi-volume novels. Hobbits having to fight when they got back to the Shire was falling action. Now we in the middle of the final season. You can't have your climax in episode three of a six-episode season. 

Which means the final three have to be biggerer. And what was bigger than the Army of the dead? Urine turning on Cersei and/or unleashing the kraken? Cleganebowl? Mopey Jon and Pissy Danny bickering like aunt and nephew over the throne?

That is why I put in Babylon 5 as an example, because that was exactly what happened in Season 4 (the real end of the saga - Season 5 is basically filler added on top of it when the show after all got the funding). Mid season the Shadow War is concluded with the Big Bads kicked out of the galaxy... Rest of the season is involved with a conflict that is far smaller in scale and importance - but far more personal (Sheridan's forces toppling the Earth dictator). The final three do not necessarily be bigger in raw conflict size, but they should have great personal stakes. It is not "survival" anymore, it is "who gets to steer the future".

 

It worked in the Babylon. Maybe it will work here as well.

[Gendelsdottir]

Okay, I do my best to watch the show in terms of the show itself, and not judge it by how it squares up with deep book lore in aSoIaF, or how it looks by comparison with Star Wars or LotR or other works. Even so:

Foretellings and special powers aren't leading to the expected results? Fine! But don't bring up a cool thing (the Stark children have mental connections with their direwolves, woooo) and then drop it, never to be mentioned again. Address it somehow, in-show: "Well, that didn't work as expected. Why not? And what was Plan D-3 again?" Maybe Bran the 3ER is not a total fakeout, but I'm not getting my hopes too high.

Callbacks to previous episodes? Again, fine! But leave a little clue about what the people were saying & doing then that gives that moment such an important insight into what's happening now. I mean, besides the fact that they shared screen time back in S03-E05 or something.

Cinematography? Nice, as long as you can bloody see anything. That moment when Dany on Drogon and Jon on Rhaegal rise above the moonlit clouds - absolutely magical. "Wow," I thought. "I can actually tell which is which! Now, would the two of you kindly stop bludging on the blind side and get back in the game! Half your team is dead on the paddock and the opposition's lining up a goal kick for Golden Point - DO SOMETHING!!" Aren't dragons supposed to be fire made flesh? Couldn't they do a few wingflaps and disperse the fog? Burn the fallen before they get raised again? Those dragons are just dead to me now. Dead, I tell you.

Yeah, nah. What we see is all there is.

[Lord Varys]

8 hours ago, darmody said:

There were at least six magical characters: Danny (mother of dragons, unburnt), Jon (rose from the dead), Bran (wizard or something), the Red Witch (self-explanatory), Ghost (if you want to count him, and I do), and Beric (rose from the dead like 50 times, flaming sword). Couldn't any one of them had anything to do with it? The only thing magical about Arya was that she had a special dagger. 

Honestly, just because people have a certain ancestry or went through certain magical ritual doesn't necessarily give them the power to defeat ice demons. I mean, does anybody truly believe Jon or Dany are going to, more or less, singlehandedly defeat the Others? Dany isn't even a warrior, and with there being no Lich King in the books Jon cannot possibly personally slay all the Others even if it turned out he is going to put down a couple of them with his sword.

No chance, in my opinion, that any of the direwolves can seriously threaten the Others.

8 hours ago, darmody said:

(I've always wondered, is Brienne magical? How else to explain her upper-body strength given the complete absence of musculature on her upper body?)

Brienne seems to be some Targaryen descendant. I expect her to wield a burning Valyrian steel sword later in the story, too.

8 hours ago, darmody said:

There is prophecy in the show, by the way Melisandre mentions it. 

Sure, but Mel is a completely incoherent religious nut case. The show never properly established on what her ramblings are based on and she was clearly never making sense with anything she did with Stannis, so why should the viewer give a damn about what she says? She was either wrong and/or evil, not somebody to be trusted.

9 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Where in this ep is the fucking dialogue? Mel shows up, says nothing to the Dothraki dude, Mel and Grey worm exchange a look, no words, then she lights the trench on fire, Arya and Davos are on the wall watching things fall apart, not one fucking word to each other, Arya and the Hound, same no dialogue. This isn't' how people act, not even in the movies.  

There is no need for dialogue. Just look at those FACES. Don't the FACES tell the story much better than dialogue ever could.

By the way, didn't the faces and the overall 'acting' in the Jorah death scene very much imply that these two should start to kiss each other now ;-).

[Lady Fevre Dream]

12 hours ago, Leto Atreides said:

The battle was horrible as usual. I wish they had used experts to guide them into filming a plausible battle. None of it made sense or was logical.

The episode really dragged toward the end with the piano music. That was at least 10 wasted minutes.  It's like if they were trying to created memorable, heroic death scenes like Boromir in LOTR, but none of it felt earned.

 

Yeah, I remember continually looking at the clock, the last 10 to 15 minutes, trying to figure out HOW they were going to save the day, because in spite of it all, including weird music, it was obvious something would 'surprise' us with a 'SHOCK AND AWE'  Hell, I was more certain the more time ticked, I just didn't really see Arya as The Flying Squirrel being the one to end it.  But I was clock watching the whole time, because it was hard to watch anything else anyway. 

[LokisRaider]

6 hours ago, RoyalNobody said:

I am hoping and praying the next book comes out soon. It'll be heartbreaking if our only closure is expected to come from this clusterfuck of a show. 

What happened to the Azor Ahai myth?

And dragon's fire wont kill the night king but dragon glass (frozen fire) will? 

I really hope that this is all D&D and nothing from GRRM because this just lacks any sort of intelligence at all.

Watch the after the episode, I think D&D do a great job of showing how bad they are when it comes to writing the story. And because of this they have to rely on explaining why things happen in interviews instead of letting the story work itself out on screen. 

Benioff - "We knew it had to be Valyrian steel to the exact spot where the child of the forest put the dragonglass blade to create the Night King and he is uncreated by the Valyrian steel" 

Good thing they were able to show the viewer this is what needed to be done. Good thing Arya knew that there was only one place to stab the Night King to win. Good thing she knew he would defend against her first attack that would have done nothing by stabbing him in the shoulder for her to do her cool knife trick and stab him in the one spot that would kill him.

Oh wait, no one was informed about any of that in this show. Arya got lucky. She was lucky she was able to run through a castle swarming with the undead (again happening off screen so we get a surprise attack out of thin air) that prevented every other character from moving from the spots they were in. She was lucky to run at break neck speeds through a crowded Godswood and not have a single WhiteWalker or wight notice her (oh wait we had that one scene where she was in a giant room with tons of cover and 6 wights and she wasn't noticed so same thing as a heavily crowded open area with rows of undead 5-8 deep shoulder to shoulder with no room to maneuver past with out bumping into them right?). And she was lucky to stab the Night King in the one spot that would kill him with no knowledge this would work. 

I honestly don't care that Arya got the final blow, I care that there was nothing to back up how she did it except "wouldn't this be cool if Arya did it?"

[Corvinus85]

One last rant on this, and I'll have another callback to something from season 1 - Old Nan's words, pretty much taken word for word from the book:

"Thousands of a years ago, there came a night that lasted a generation. Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts. And women smothered their babies, rather than see them starve, and wept, and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks... In that darkness, the White Walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders, big as hounds."

The White Walkers clearly got lazy the second time.

[kissdbyfire]

12 minutes ago, LokisRaider said:

I honestly don't care that Arya got the final blow, I care that there was nothing to back up how she did it except "wouldn't this be cool if Arya did it?"

Exactly that. 

[BlackLightning]

4 minutes ago, LokisRaider said:

Watch the after the episode, I think D&D do a great job of showing how bad they are when it comes to writing the story. And because of this they have to rely on explaining why things happen in interviews instead of letting the story work itself out on screen. 

Benioff - "We knew it had to be Valyrian steel to the exact spot where the child of the forest put the dragonglass blade to create the Night King and he is uncreated by the Valyrian steel" 

Good thing they were able to show the viewer this is what needed to be done. Good thing Arya knew that there was only one place to stab the Night King to win. Good thing she knew he would defend against her first attack that would have done nothing by stabbing him in the shoulder for her to do her cool knife trick and stab him in the one spot that would kill him.

Oh wait, no one was informed about any of that in this show. Arya got lucky. She was lucky she was able to run through a castle swarming with the undead (again happening off screen so we get a surprise attack out of thin air) that prevented every other character from moving from the spots they were in. She was lucky to run at break neck speeds through a crowded Godswood and not have a single WhiteWalker or wight notice her (oh wait we had that one scene where she was in a giant room with tons of cover and 6 wights and she wasn't noticed so same thing as a heavily crowded open area with rows of undead 5-8 deep shoulder to shoulder with no room to maneuver past with out bumping into them right?). And she was lucky to stab the Night King in the one spot that would kill him with no knowledge this would work. 

I honestly don't care that Arya got the final blow, I care that there was nothing to back up how she did it except "wouldn't this be cool if Arya did it?"

Exactly.

I too had no real problem with Arya killing the Night King. I actually predicted it last year that Arya is being specifically trained for one particular mission. There might not be a Night King or a similarly specific figurehead in the books but the Others are the antithesis of the Faceless Men and their beliefs. Once the Faceless Men catch on, they are going to want this problem dealt with some immediacy. Who better than Arya Stark?

Arya is special. There's a reason why she -- not just any rich girl but a daughter of a lord paramount and the descendant of kings -- is a water dancer, a skinchanger and a Faceless Men in the books. There's a reason why she is the only POV to appear in every single book. There's a reason why she's our lens into the plight of the commoners.

If Melisandre is right and there is a Great Other, Arya has to face him. Arya's arc has always been about the answer to the question, "What do we say the god of death?" How many times has Arya said, thought or expressed behavior that said "Not today." The girl has always been defying authority and tradition, fighting The Man in the scrappiest way possible, fleeing from anything oppressive. She has to face at least one of the Others in battle.

[Coffeewiththegods]

Considering how easy the NK was taken out. They should’ve took a page out of Cersei’s book. Have everyone retreat South, leave Cersei to take out the dead and then just swoop in and get rid of her after.

[BlackLightning]

2 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

One last rant on this, and I'll have another callback to something from season 1 - Old Nan's words, pretty much taken word for word from the book:

"Thousands of a years ago, there came a night that lasted a generation. Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts. And women smothered their babies, rather than see them starve, and wept, and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks... In that darkness, the White Walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders, big as hounds..."

The White Walkers clearly got lazy the second time.

It makes me sad to see that never happen on screen.

[divica]

4 minutes ago, Coffeewiththegods said:

Considering how easy the NK was taken out. They should’ve took a page out of Cersei’s book. Have everyone retreat South, leave Cersei to take out the dead and then just swoop in and get rid of her after.

They can just let arya loose in KL. She will deal with cersei...

[Lady Fevre Dream]

5 hours ago, Ser Drewy said:

The Onion, ha: https://entertainment.theonion.com/game-of-thrones-actors-reveal-reading-script-for-zomb-1834388057

Hahahahaha, that is perfection.  MY NIK might be our real chance at finding out anything about this, too. 

Thanks for the link, needed the laugh. 

[Saturno]

Imagine if instead of having Beric killed for nothing the script placed him, Hound, Arya and Mel in the vicinity of the godswood where they could see the Night King aproaching Bran and Arya actually required their help to reach the main villain. Beric (and maybe Mel) could die as the price for distracting the Night King so Arya could then realistically attack him, even using the same footage and the same stab trick.

But setup and payoff are obviously undervalued when compared to shock value and unexpected surprise, right?

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, Saturno said:

Imagine if instead of having Beric killed for nothing the script placed him, Hound, Arya and Mel in the vicinity of the godswood where they could see the Night King aproaching Bran and Arya actually required their help to reach the main villain. Beric (and maybe Mel) could die as the price for distracting the Night King so Arya could then realistically attack him, even using the same footage and the same stab trick.

But setup and payoff are obviously undervalued when compared to shock value and unexpected surprise, right?

Almost anything, with any amount of set up or foreshadowing would have been better than the ninja tomboy coming out of nowhere and killing the NK, and there ends the story that has been building for thousands of years, and the showrunners even made a point that  he had to be killed in the same way/same place as when he was originally turned [of course none of that is communicated in the show and Arya had no way to know any of that either] so humanity saved by pure dumb luck and death cult training.  Okay then.

[TNTW]

I liked the episode, but man, some stupid stuff in there too. I liked the action, the music, the dragons. Had no problem with Arya getting the kill, or how she did it. But there were still a lot of headscratchers and disappointments. Just to name several:

What did Bran discover while warging? Sure seemed to know how it was going to end, judging by his reaction to NK. Hoping we find out next episode.

How on earth did Ghost survive? Where was he the whole time?

Why didn't Jon and Dany just burn the woods where the dead and WW were hanging out?

Why didn't they use up all the burning balls first, before sacrificing the Dothraki?

What was Davos doing for 99% of the episode?

Jorah's last words.... Really? I'm hurt? Come on, that was lame.

[Dolorous Gabe]

I almost laughed when Mel was gently strolling to light up the barricade in flames whilst people were dying to protect her.

The wights move too fast so to create tension they put it in slow-mo and have her walk like it's an actual stroll in a park on a pleasant summer's day 

[Lady Fevre Dream]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

Almost anything, with any amount of set up or foreshadowing would have been better than the ninja tomboy coming out of nowhere and killing the NK, and there ends the story that has been building for thousands of years, and the showrunners even made a point that  he had to be killed in the same way/same place as when he was originally turned [of course none of that is communicated in the show and Arya had no way to know any of that either] so humanity saved by pure dumb luck and death cult training.  Okay then.

Their Inside Their Own Circle Jerk has really turned into nothing but.........hey, let me tell you why all these nonsensical things happened on screen.  It really is beyond bizarre.  They have embraced our siggie line, full throttle.