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Books vs Show: How much difference?


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How much difference do you think there will be between the books' and the show's finales? Martin once claimed that even though the books and the show follows different paths, their endgames will be same. Is it still the case, or shall we expect different winners on throne?

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Hmm, the very end result? I think there may be some general similarities. Such as the Others are destroyed (but I think that is going to be the main final battle in the books, not against whomever is on the IT that fight will be an afterthought). I think Jon, Sansa, Tyrion and Dany are all going to end roughly the same. I don't see how Arya's character arc in the books follows the one on the show, I think it is way off. Same with Bran to a point. Cersei I think is dead before this point, like dies in Winds.

All minor characters I think will be vastly different.

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I am not a praying man, but I am praying it will be one of those night and day scenarios. In fact I am sure of it, as long as the books actually are finished at some point. GRRM comments be damned, I am sure he had aboslutely no idea how utterly D&D would butcher the ending of Others f.ex. including but not limited to ignoring thousands of pages of careful build up.

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The whole fake Aegon arc will turn out to have a bearing on the plot as a whole. I think Jon is actually born on Dragonstone (born in salt) and is brought back to life on his funeral pyre (born in fire) and that there will be a lot of blood magic involved and that light bringer will be the key to killing the Night King.

That said, I think it will still be Arya who deals the mortal blow, quite possibly because Jon is dead by that point.

The dynastic wars will be a lot messier with fAegon and Euron all taking chunks of territory before Cersei and Euron form an alliance. But Stannis will still burn Shireen and it will come down to Cersei vs everyone else and Jamie will be the one to kill her.

The wall will fall to the horn of winter and there will be a final battle with the NK at Winterfell but the final final showdown will be with Cersei and Danny and Jon and Jamie will throttle Cersei to death to stop the mob tearing her apart.

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I suspect that the show has one final twist to pull off before this is all over, which is to portray the end scenario that Martin told them about. The reason I think it will be a twist is that the top-level narratives are so different at this stage that I feel that the ending will have to deal with something that was once common to both; Robert's Rebellion, relationship of WW to a known character, etc.

As incompetent as D & D often are, they described the endgame as one of the "holy shit" moments that Martin told them about; something like "and then so-and-so was on the throne" doesn't seem to fit that bill.

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Why would you give the ending away to your books before you sell them?

makes no sense unless he has actually given up on finishing them. I think if they get done they'll be different, some similarities but different mostly.

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There will be a lot of differences on how they kill people and how make things, but in the end everything will be the same in terms of result. I would say the differences I hate so far is;

 

How long Balon Greyjoy actually survived, while he essentially died even before Robb Stark, and Greatjon Umber and Robb heard Balon's death from a sailor iirc, in the show not only Balon outlives them all he even says ''WotFK they call it, and the other four is dead''. :D 

Edmure's fault was not stalling the Mountain, it was stalling Tywin, which resulted as Lannister forces taking back the KL from Stannis by joining forces with the Tyrell forces. 

Kevan Lannister's and Pycelle's death is very different, and Dorne's Targaryen plot also looks important as well, not sure how they will handle it the books.

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10 minutes ago, chatty83 said:

Why would you give the ending away to your books before you sell them?

A simple but pertinent question; I agree this is a strange scenario.

Ever since Martin said the endings would be similar, it always suggested to me that the 'end' of this story is not necessarily the simple conclusions to the POV arcs, but something more overarching and ambiguous.

Although, full disclosure, this thought is 50% logic and 50% hope :unsure:

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2 hours ago, Chris is my name said:

A simple but pertinent question; I agree this is a strange scenario.

Ever since Martin said the endings would be similar, it always suggested to me that the 'end' of this story is not necessarily the simple conclusions to the POV arcs, but something more overarching and ambiguous.

Although, full disclosure, this thought is 50% logic and 50% hope :unsure:

This is exactly what I am hoping for. And to be honest I am quite confident in it, as long as there actually will be books to read in the first place.

The ending could be "the Others did attack but humans survived and then - dawn".

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The man's already taken 8 years to give us another book. Don't encourage him to toss out the manuscript and start over!

But seriously, GRRM's said many times that the TV and the books are going to end broadly the same way, and that only secondary characters' story lines will significantly diverge from what he's writing. I'm sure whatever he gives us will be more nuanced and probably have a lot better dialogue, but I'm not expecting huge differences.

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18 minutes ago, Anthony Pirtle said:

But seriously, GRRM's said many times that the TV and the books are going to end broadly the same way, and that only secondary characters' story lines will significantly diverge from what he's writing.

I think there is a chance that D&D could have changed some stuff and didn't inform GRRM about it after whenever they'd held council: Which I'm basing it on last season's Dany's pregnancy arc. which they abandoned this season, something like that could have a huge difference in the ending & I could expect these 2 idiots to make the ending "sadder" than it was intended by GRRM, cos of shock value & surprise deaths and whatnot. And by the time the books' end comes(if ever) they could just say we wanted there to be two different versions, we did it for the sake of book readers etc. and these troubled waters will be calmed by 2036 anyway.

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I think the King’s Landing stuff might be on point though I don’t see Cersei being the chief instigator but Euron instead since this seems to be his bang in the books. He’s a lot more demented in the books, charming and cunning whereas as crazy as Cersei is she’s a bit too petty and spiteful to be this evil mastermind. I also suspect Daenerys will face the dilemma on whether she should burn King’s Landing in order to win her war quickly. Whether this will be to take the crown from Euron or Aegon (as in Rhaegar’s son with Elia) is the question. Either way it might herald the end of the second dance of dragons.

It’s only the white walker fight I think will be different primarily because you get the sense from the way D&D talk they had to come up with an end themselves. They only decided 3 years ago who’d kill NK and last year it sounded like they were the ones who decided a dead dragon would bring down the Wall.

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I hope that Martin is actually done Winds of Winter, and its being held for after the Series is done.

If that's the case, he may have at least some of the final book done, and there is some hope it will get written.

If Martin needs another Year or more to finalize the next book, the chances of him ever finishing the last one are very close to zero.

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I don't think GRRM knew exactly how much D&D would screw up the ending to his story.

Not only is there a giant Aegon-and-Dorne-shaped plot hole, there is a lot of magic in the books that plays an important role and will play an even bigger role. And the situation with the Others is looking to be very complex (I'm not sure that they are the evil we think they are) 

Even the Throne itself is completely different.

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12 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

I don't think GRRM knew exactly how much D&D would screw up the ending to his story.

Not only is there a giant Aegon-and-Dorne-shaped plot hole, there is a lot of magic in the books that plays an important role and will play an even bigger role. And the situation with the Others is looking to be very complex (I'm not sure that they are the evil we think they are) 

Even the Throne itself is completely different.

Oh dear, another person who is so certain they know GRRM's ending that they are certain D&D are getting it wrong.

I am pretty sure that we are going to end up with a choice for Jon between the iron throne and Cersei killing Arya. The Missandei death pretty much tells us that is coming up. Danny faced that test and so Jon will. 

Once you work that out. It becomes pretty clear where GoT is really headed and it looks totally consistent with GRRM's subversion of the tropes. It becomes clear that Arya is the one to kill the NK in the books as well because the end point is the choice between Jon's family and the throne. And he picks his family.

The fAegon plot is missing because book Jon is going to turn out to look Targarean, not Stark after the glamor is removed and fAegon is going to look Stark. And that is something GRRM can do in the books but would not work in the show.

The main thing I think we are missing is that we will find out that the Red God is also pretty evil.

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3 minutes ago, hallam said:

The fAegon plot is missing because book Jon is going to turn out to look Targarean, not Stark after the glamor is removed and fAegon is going to look Stark.

What glamour? Why would fAegon look Stark? Wut?

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34 minutes ago, Quillon said:

What glamour? Why would fAegon look Stark? Wut?

If you look at the plot lines that are left out of the show, they are fAegon, the Mance glamour, the whole Lightbringer saga and the Ashara subplot. I think they are all related.

Another important difference is we don't get the prophecy of born in salt and fire.

Drawing them all together, I think R+L might equal J but R+J might as well. Born in salt tells us that Jon has to be born on Dragonstone. So Lyanna is protecting him at the ToJ.

I think that Lyanna dies from the blood magic used to create the glamor that switches the looks of Jon and fAegon who is actually the bastard of Brandon and Ashara. She uses the sword dawn which is lightbringer, activating it. Hence that whole business about taking the body back and Ashara disappearing - she is protecting her own child who now looks Targ.

So we end up in the same place but from a different path and with less magic and without having to recast the lead character of the show. Not to mention, making it fit the time available.

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1 hour ago, hallam said:

Oh dear, another person who is so certain they know GRRM's ending that they are certain D&D are getting it wrong.

I am pretty sure that we are going to end up with a choice for Jon between the iron throne and Cersei killing Arya. The Missandei death pretty much tells us that is coming up. Danny faced that test and so Jon will. 

Once you work that out. It becomes pretty clear where GoT is really headed and it looks totally consistent with GRRM's subversion of the tropes. It becomes clear that Arya is the one to kill the NK in the books as well because the end point is the choice between Jon's family and the throne. And he picks his family.

The fAegon plot is missing because book Jon is going to turn out to look Targarean, not Stark after the glamor is removed and fAegon is going to look Stark. And that is something GRRM can do in the books but would not work in the show.

The main thing I think we are missing is that we will find out that the Red God is also pretty evil.

The showrunners said they came up with the idea of Arya killing the Night King three years ago. That is when season 6 was still being aired.

However, GRRM and D&D had their big endgame revealing conference at the end of 2012. When season 3 was in post-production.

Cersei killing Arya and Jon having to choose between saving Arya and getting the throne? fAegon plot is missing because glamour magic? Now I know you are bugging.

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