The role of the Uncast - was important after all?

[JonCon's Red Beard]

Now the show has ended, this begs for a question:

The show made the decision of omitting characters introduced in what we can call the "second part" of the books:

Arianne Martell
Quentyn Martell
Aegon
Jon Connington
Aeron Greyjoy
Victarion Greyjoy

(I might be forgetting someone, so I apologize).

Five of those characters have a PoV in the books and one is dead, meaning, at least four of them might have a certain relevance and will play specific roles that will affect the story.

So, the question would be, you think cutting it from the show was a smart decision? Was the show really missing these characters or where the already existing characters able to hold the show on their own? Were the many flaws of the show caused by their absence?

(this ain't a discussion to know what these characters' roles will be in the books, I will open a new thread for that specific discussion with a more specific topic).

[Ser Gareth]

6 hours ago, JonCon's Red Beard said:

Now the show has ended, this begs for a question:

The show made the decision of omitting characters introduced in what we can call the "second part" of the books:

Arianne Martell
Quentyn Martell
Aegon
Jon Connington
Aeron Greyjoy
Victarion Greyjoy

(I might be forgetting someone, so I apologize).

Five of those characters have a PoV in the books and one is dead, meaning, at least four of them might have a certain relevance and will play specific roles that will affect the story.

So, the question would be, you think cutting it from the show was a smart decision? Was the show really missing these characters or where the already existing characters able to hold the show on their own? Were the many flaws of the show caused by their absence?

(this ain't a discussion to know what these characters' roles will be in the books, I will open a new thread for that specific discussion with a more specific topic).

Yes.  GRRM said years ago that his original intention was to tell the entire story from the POVs that existed from the very first book.  So at that point we knew they were the only POVs that truly mattered.  Then he decided that wasn't feasible and introduced others, many of which weren't needed really.  For example.

We NEVER needed a Theon POV.  We could have heard a lot from third hand information (which makes it more interesting in a lot of ways) and through Bran's chapters.

GRRM then realised his 5 year gap (which was designed to allow the children to grow up and become skilled in their arts) wasn't going to work.  And since then he has been adding more and more characters to fill the gap or to untangle knots.  The problem is, the introduction of these characters has created new knots.

The story fundamentally is about the Starks, the Targs and the Lanninsters (well one really, Jaime and Cersei didn't really require POVs either and I say that as a big fan of Jaime's POVs).

In my opinion the show went wrong by not cutting more characters.  But a lot of that was because the show was being relatively faithful to the books and it was only when the book material ran out and they found out a lot of this subplots are irrelevant to the ending that they then decided to cut the plot lines and that made it an even bigger mess at times.

[LordImp]

Not sure if we needed them , but I think Aegon and Connington would have been a good addition to the show. 

[BlackLightning]

Oh we definitely needed them given how rushed and sloppy these last two seasons were...

[Winter prince]

8 minutes ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

Oh we definitely needed them given how rushed and sloppy these last two seasons were...

More characters would have made it worse

[Cas Stark]

It's possible that Aegon and Arianne would have given Cersei's KL story a little something more than staring out the window drinking wine for 2 seasons, but a better developed Euron story could have done the same thing.  So, I really don't think we needed those characters, certainly not Quentyn, the Greyjoys, Connington, what we needed was a writer's room where a good, coherent story and plot could have been developed.  

[BrianCizMe]

2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

It's possible that Aegon and Arianne would have given Cersei's KL story a little something more than staring out the window drinking wine for 2 seasons, but a better developed Euron story could have done the same thing.  So, I really don't think we needed those characters, certainly not Quentyn, the Greyjoys, Connington, what we needed was a writer's room where a good, coherent story and plot could have been developed.  

And once we had said "writer's room" they could have actually included part of a coherent Dorne plot line that did actually at least include Aegon and Arianne and I don't know, maybe excluded the Sand Snakes that were there for just? If only that "writer's room" would have existed? Oh the possibilities.

[Crona]

Yea they needed all those characters. I can’t believe people still deny it. But whatever take your cake and eat it.

[draft0]

9 hours ago, Ser Gareth said:

Yes.  GRRM said years ago that his original intention was to tell the entire story from the POVs that existed from the very first book.  So at that point we knew they were the only POVs that truly mattered.  Then he decided that wasn't feasible and introduced others, many of which weren't needed really.  For example.

We NEVER needed a Theon POV.  We could have heard a lot from third hand information (which makes it more interesting in a lot of ways) and through Bran's chapters.

Perhaps we never needed a Theon POV (let's put aside that he has some of the best chapters in this series), but did we need a Theon?

If Theon was totally cut from the show, would Season 2 or Season 5 have made any sense?

I think the answer is no, and the same is true for fAegon, the Martells, Lady Stoneheart, book Euron, Lady Stoneheart, and more. These characters are not necessarily important in themselves, but as foils, antagonists, and motivations for our main characters, their presence was sorely missed. Look at Lady Stoneheart--without her, Jaime's arc (and maybe Arya's) was totally destroyed. Look at how impotent Dany, Tyrion, Varys, Cersei, et al became in Season 7 without fAegon to bounce off of.

It's like Jenga. You can't keep on pulling stuff out of the story and expect it to remain standing.

[nyser1]

19 hours ago, Winter prince said:

More characters would have made it worse

I am sure they would love to have found more ways to waste time given the lack of material they had to choose from...

[Lord Lannister]

It's a hard question to answer without the final written product. I'm not going to deny I was disappointed with how Dorne was depicted and the road to the finale in the show. I will say Quentyn's arc seemed largely incessant in the novels. Even Arianne's to a certain extent, though both have grew on me over time. The whole situation with the Greyjoy brothers seems undetermined as well.

I get the feeling that Aegon's arc ended up getting folded into Dany and Cersei's arcs and can kind of see the point that introducing another Targaryen pretender would be clumsy for the show. Heck Jon even stole his name, unless Rhaegar really have both his sons the same name. 

I honestly think the largest mistake was Martin not jumping ahead with the five year gap as he planned initially. As a result, the situation gets crammed and rushed and tied up into situations that could be written off in exposition over years passing. Books and show alike.

[BlackLightning]

22 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

It's possible that Aegon and Arianne would have given Cersei's KL story a little something more than staring out the window drinking wine for 2 seasons, but a better developed Euron story could have done the same thing.  So, I really don't think we needed those characters, certainly not Quentyn, the Greyjoys, Connington, what we needed was a writer's room where a good, coherent story and plot could have been developed.  

Aegon, Arianne, Connington and Euron could have all given Cersei something interesting to do. Hell, even postponing Myrcella's death until after Tommen had died, would have been good.

Arianne would've shone the brightest out of all of them though because Arianne serves as a great foil and a powerful antagonist of Cersei and Daenerys both.

I feel like Carol and Sandra took some of Arianne's role in that Daenerys is not likely to care that much about Cersei (unless Cersei starts employing slave traders and slaves to fight her post-King's Landing battles) when she comes to Westeros. Daenerys is going to have eyes for the Others, Euron and Aegon which indirectly puts the crosshairs on Arianne. Unlike Sandra and Carol both, Arianne also has a legitimate bone to pick with Daenerys.

Quentyn is the deconstruction of the typical action hero who goes on a far-flung adventure with his friends. Which is thematically huge. And Quentyn is also Ned Stark's counterpart, the fire to Ned's ice. Quentyn also gives us our first grassroots view of Daenerys Targaryen's rule. Thanks to Quentyn, we realize that even though Daenerys acknowledges that she doesn't know what she's doing and hates the fact that she doesn't know what she's doing and has to constantly compromise and sacrifice to actually accomplish anything....she's a worst ruler than she even realizes. She has a gift for conquering and makes a damn good public speaker and activist...but she's far too heavy-handed and revolutionary to rule on a macro-level, much less on a day-to-day micro level.

[Ser Gareth]

On 5/21/2019 at 8:57 AM, draft0 said:

Perhaps we never needed a Theon POV (let's put aside that he has some of the best chapters in this series), but did we need a Theon?

If Theon was totally cut from the show, would Season 2 or Season 5 have made any sense?

I think the answer is no, and the same is true for fAegon, the Martells, Lady Stoneheart, book Euron, Lady Stoneheart, and more. These characters are not necessarily important in themselves, but as foils, antagonists, and motivations for our main characters, their presence was sorely missed. Look at Lady Stoneheart--without her, Jaime's arc (and maybe Arya's) was totally destroyed. Look at how impotent Dany, Tyrion, Varys, Cersei, et al became in Season 7 without fAegon to bounce off of.

It's like Jenga. You can't keep on pulling stuff out of the story and expect it to remain standing.

To bring Winterfell down, yes.  After that?  Not really.  At least not from what the show has shown us or the lack of anything worthwhile from his ADWD chapters.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

2 hours ago, Ser Gareth said:

To bring Winterfell down, yes.  After that?  Not really.  At least not from what the show has shown us or the lack of anything worthwhile from his ADWD chapters.

Theon's role is quite related to the North, and they ignored pretty much everything about it and brought Sansa there.

That's what happened with a lot of chracters. they removed their arcs from them. You cannot have Brienne and Jaime without Stoneheart, for example. Varys without Aegon is just some fool around. Dorne without Arianne had no purpose and Arianne's purpose is meeting Aegon.