[Book Spoilers] EP310 Discussion

[aFeastForDragons]

I wonder if it will be the Battle at the Wall or the Battle of Mereen.

[mwizzle83]

I have a feeling that the Kingsmoot is cut. However, I also had a strong feeling that LS would be in this episode, so...I expect every season from here on out to be radically different from the books. I don't think the Martells are cut. My mom bought me Martell merchandise from the HBO site during season 1. Would they really be doing that if they were going to cut all of them?

The Kingsmoot doesn't occur until book 4...they are not going to cut Theon's uncles or the Martell family because these characters all play huge roles in the remaining books.

[Mistress of Lemon Cakes]

Not to mention they already placed a casting call for Oberyn Martell. The Martells are definitely coming. :D

[Hangover of the Morning]

I absolutely adore both Ygritte and Rose Leslie (and I actually didn't much like her at first! but my god she's grown on me)

Me too. Loved the Jon/Ygritte scene in the final. Rose totally nailed it but I was really disappointed with Kit's performance. I know that lot of people here doubt Kit's acting abilities and hate his portrayal of Jon but I never had a problem with it until now. Jon/Kit's facial expressions and delivery of his lines felt completely off and ruined the mood for me a little bit. Even so, it was a great and powerful scene.

[Marpesia11]

I really don't even know how to rate this episode.

No Coldhands? *sniff* Yes, you can totally cast someone for 1 scene if you want and need them to be cast. I think they need "stuff to happen" in season 4 so they're saving coldhands for some big intro north of the wall.

No UnCat - I always always imagined a simple 5 second moonlight reveal at the very very end of the series but instead we get...

Freaking Dany. It's not just the crowdsurfing. What REALLY got me was the ridiculous Enya vibe. What? What were they thinking? It was like some kind of weird music video. Was that supposed to be them ending on a high note because we had to go through seeing Grey Wind's head on a stick? That was supposed to be a treat? It was just weird.

Stannis - I can't say I'm a fan of his in the books, but I see why he has a following. In the series you can see that they're trying to portray him as downright despicable. I don't get why.

but

I loved Arya's killing. genius. I loved the whole idea of the box going to Balon Greyjoy (who should be dead) and Ramsay's letter which made me giggle very inappropriately. I love that Reek is finally born because I was getting a bit tired of "torture of the week". Or maybe it's because season 9 was so awesome, this episode seemed lackluster in comparison.

[SerDanieloftheMuirfield]

and there goes the discussion of if he is truly Tywins son....

But he said "because you were a Lannister, not his son. Joanna was already a Lannister! Maybe I'm not correct on the dialogue but it looks like they've kept it open.

[Jon-Michael Pearson]

The Kingsmoot doesn't occur until book 4...they are not going to cut Theon's uncles or the Martell family because these characters all play huge roles in the remaining books.

agreed people need to calm down.

[yco]

I was wondering about this earlier this week and the excellent Tyrion/Tywin scene got me back wondering:

I don't remember reading it in the books but what happened to Robb Starks corpse after the Red Wedding? Was his head eventually send to KL? And what happened to the rest of his body? To the crypts of WF?

[Silverx2]

i believe the freys tossed it with everything else after they were done. Robb starks body shall never rest in winterfells crypt.

[JonDunn]

Don't see why anyone is making definitive judgements on Jamie/Cersei. It was purposely ambiguous. There was love there, Cersei looked at his hand, seemed concerned but weirded out, Jamie looked embarrassed. It will play out the same way as the books with them distancing from each other for a variety of reasons. Non-readers LOVED the scene. They wanted more.

in general non-readers' favorite part of the show seems to be Lannisters and King's Landing. It's the simplest to understand.

Edited June 12, 2013 by JonDunn

[JonDunn]

1. Davos rocked more than just the boat!!!

2. Did not get the sense Roose and Walder are buddies. In fact, more got the sense that Roose was trying to hint that Blackfish will be a future assache and Frey just didn't listen, much like the young wolf didn't.

3. Did not at all get the sense that Tyrion and Sansa are buddies. The story has to get Sansa to this place of completely giving up everything that she was - idealistic, romantic, hopeful - in order to become strong enough to turn it all off. A couple weeks ago she believed Loras was going to be her shining knight, even though he didn't even remember the moment she thought was her proof that he would be - the red rose he gave her at the tourney. Tyrion has been nothing but kind. Even if she never wants him in her bed, she knows he was forced into this marriage too, she knows he's saved her from Joffrey's abuses more than a few times, it's no stretch of the imagination that she might allow herself, and him, a MOMENT to believe that they might be friendly, if nothing else. The moment she realizes her mother and Robb are dead - that is the moment the armor will never come off again.

4. Shae loving Tyrion and Sansa. Here i do agree that D & D are deviating from the source material - BUT - in order to up the tragedy. TVShae has already been made considerably more 'ambitious' than BookShae. She wants to be his lady, she wants to be legitimized ( which IMO is ridiculous, but for the purposes of TV and having a character on for 3 seasons, and making her death tragic, i see why they made that choice), but as such, she needs to want more than gold out of the arrangement and if she loves Sansa, all the more drama...I suspect that Tyrion is going to make some choice in the future that seems to pick Sansa over Shae (again), and that will push Shae over the edge enough for her to betray him in the trial (and with his father)

5. Varys - his stuff with Shae makes perfect sense to me since I also think he was Symon Silver Tongue in the books, so I think his motives on the show are pretty transparent.

6. Arya - In the books, Arya had some names on her early lists that did some truly horrible things, but other names were for relatively menial grievances. For the show to keep everyone rooting for her, and in classic TV/Film fashion, she needed to have a decisive, and more importantly, inarguably sympathetic turning point, and the Red Wedding was it. Same as Sansa . Time to give up the childish fantasies and move onto adult agency. I actually thought this was the perfect moment for the GOT writers to choose. Yay!

THIS DUDE GETS IT.

Read and learn, folks.

[Sharpes]

All your complaints are trivial I tell ya! Trivial! Have we not forgotten the real damage D&D have done to the show from season 2?!

That is, the whereabouts of Renly's peach! They gave us a fruit bowl. A fruit bowl on a desk! Hundreds cried out over it's omission! Old ladies threw their tea pots out the window in disgust! Without it, Stannis cannot be Stannis. The seven kingdoms will crumble. The Others will take over the peach lands! No wonder he is so grumpy, he's lacking in the natural vitamins of a peach from Renly's garden! For shame HBO! :P

[six]

Don't see why anyone is making definitive judgements on Jamie/Cersei. It was purposely ambiguous. There was love there, Cersei looked at his hand, seemed concerned but weirded out, Jamie looked embarrassed. It will play out the same way as the books with them distancing from each other for a variety of reasons. Non-readers LOVED the scene. They wanted more.

in general non-readers' favorite part of the show seems to be Lannisters and King's Landing. It's the simplest to understand.

I agree that it was purposely ambiguous, but it's not like in the books in the slightest. In the books Cersei is not a snarky woobie who stares at sea shells thinking on the good times. Show!Cersei is a soap opera-like character. A dramatic heroine. Which is completely laughable and unfair to the books. She also doesn't love Jaime all that much, so that look of love is quite a change.

[BlueDragon]

if this looks too long, just skip it. i wouldn't be offended even if i could know.

I really don't engage in criticisms of book/show. This project is difficult, at best. Even what seem like arbitrary changes do not bother me. I'm sure there are logical reasons behind virtually every decision.

Stoneheart should NOT have appeared in this episode despite what many claim/assumed. It is far too soon for the pacing of the show and for the unsullied. It is a perfect opening scene for S4 provided the set up can be made clear.

There is no reason to believe the Greyjoys or Martells have been cut. People need to chill out.

Won't Yara die at the Dreadfort?

I seriously don't get the Kit Harrington derision around here. I love both the character and the actor and think he did a spot on job displaying his agony over leaving Ygritte and his emotional weakness. I thought, "I have to go home." was delivered perfectly. In my opinion, Jon is still an emotional child at this point in the story. I don't think Jon becomes a man until book 6 -- obviously I don't think he is dead -- but if he has to be resurrected, fine. However, the story works better if Jon is alive because emotional growth in zombies is even more difficult to make believable than dragons invading the White House. People ship Jon/Dany because their personal histories are similar -- outcasts with great talents and potential who want very much to do the right thing.

And for those of you who thought Ygritte shooting Jon was inconsistent with her loving him, just how young are you? Passionate love leads to a lot of murder in real life. You can claim those murderers are sick and never really loved the other person, but I think classic literature demonstrates that isn't so. You might start with Medea killing her own children.

The final Dany scene is the most fascinating from the point of view of reading many responses here. The white god comes to save the savages is the oldest racist trope in the book. It is to your credit that you felt uncomfortable. I don't think the brown actors were at all interested in fostering the realism of that scene. Good on them.

Martin does not deconstruct race -- he reiterates it, especially racial issues around Dany, of the books. For those of you who think she goes nutty in Dance and that it is her fault or her genetics, I would like to suggest that it is the situation which is nutty: the blondest mystical woman in the world saves ignorant brown people. GAG. However, from the perspective of Dany's internal consciousness, she doesn't have many choices, or even the kind of living experiences which would help her see these contradictions.

The criticisms of her not sailing for Westeros don't hold water as this has been impossible to date and her dragons are still too small. That alone points out how dim witted Jorah and even Barristan are when they tell her she can get supporters in Westeros. When she has grown dragons, she will have supporters because a. she will appear worth supporting and b. she will seem like the obvious winner and everyone who can joins a winner. Baby dragons during a civil war with Tywin still alive would mean death for Dany. I'm going to give her instincts credit here: she knows it is too soon to cross that sea.

But ending the season with this scene which can't have been six minutes? really?, was an obvious choice. It may not have been all that dramatic, but it was a logical choice from the point of the progression of the story.

Dany and Jon are still emotional children in a way, despite what they have been given to endure. They can't help this; they simply have not had enough time to adjust to both hitting puberty and being thrust into all these crises. I see books 4 & 5 as making clear how much both of them still have to learn, no matter how talented each are in their own ways.

[The Flaying Man]

I can't be the first person to have noted this, but I'll point it out anyway.

When the episode opens, we see Roose, kingslaying dagger still in hand, ascending the final steps to the top of one of the Twins, and surveying the slaughter below. While an amazing shot and indeed sequence in itself, I couldn't help but compare it to Blackwater. What struck me was the sheer scale of the carnage outside the Twins; it actually looked like a huge battle/slaughter, as it should. I have always thought that while Blackwater was a fantastic episode, I never really got a sense of the scale that the battle was supposed to possess. All of the shots were too close to the actors, and there was never a large amount of combatants on screen at once.

Since the scale of the slaughter outside the Twins was so accurately shown in just one shot, I think Blackwater definitely would have benefited from at least a couple of similar shots. Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it bears thinking about.

[Dany4eva]

if this looks too long, just skip it. i wouldn't be offended even if i could know.

I really don't engage in criticisms of book/show. This project is difficult, at best. Even what seem like arbitrary changes do not bother me. I'm sure there are logical reasons behind virtually every decision.

Stoneheart should NOT have appeared in this episode despite what many claim/assumed. It is far too soon for the pacing of the show and for the unsullied. It is a perfect opening scene for S4 provided the set up can be made clear.

There is no reason to believe the Greyjoys or Martells have been cut. People need to chill out.

Won't Yara die at the Dreadfort?

I seriously don't get the Kit Harrington derision around here. I love both the character and the actor and think he did a spot on job displaying his agony over leaving Ygritte and his emotional weakness. I thought, "I have to go home." was delivered perfectly. In my opinion, Jon is still an emotional child at this point in the story. I don't think Jon becomes a man until book 6 -- obviously I don't think he is dead -- but if he has to be resurrected, fine. However, the story works better if Jon is alive because emotional growth in zombies is even more difficult to make believable than dragons invading the White House. People ship Jon/Dany because their personal histories are similar -- outcasts with great talents and potential who want very much to do the right thing.

And for those of you who thought Ygritte shooting Jon was inconsistent with her loving him, just how young are you? Passionate love leads to a lot of murder in real life. You can claim those murderers are sick and never really loved the other person, but I think classic literature demonstrates that isn't so. You might start with Medea killing her own children.

The final Dany scene is the most fascinating from the point of view of reading many responses here. The white god comes to save the savages is the oldest racist trope in the book. It is to your credit that you felt uncomfortable. I don't think the brown actors were at all interested in fostering the realism of that scene. Good on them.

Martin does not deconstruct race -- he reiterates it, especially racial issues around Dany, of the books. For those of you who think she goes nutty in Dance and that it is her fault or her genetics, I would like to suggest that it is the situation which is nutty: the blondest mystical woman in the world saves ignorant brown people. GAG. However, from the perspective of Dany's internal consciousness, she doesn't have many choices, or even the kind of living experiences which would help her see these contradictions.

The criticisms of her not sailing for Westeros don't hold water as this has been impossible to date and her dragons are still too small. That alone points out how dim witted Jorah and even Barristan are when they tell her she can get supporters in Westeros. When she has grown dragons, she will have supporters because a. she will appear worth supporting and b. she will seem like the obvious winner and everyone who can joins a winner. Baby dragons during a civil war with Tywin still alive would mean death for Dany. I'm going to give her instincts credit here: she knows it is too soon to cross that sea.

But ending the season with this scene which can't have been six minutes? really?, was an obvious choice. It may not have been all that dramatic, but it was a logical choice from the point of the progression of the story.

Dany and Jon are still emotional children in a way, despite what they have been given to endure. They can't help this; they simply have not had enough time to adjust to both hitting puberty and being thrust into all these crises. I see books 4 & 5 as making clear how much both of them still have to learn, no matter how talented each are in their own ways.

Hats off to this amazing post!

I agree with most of what is written here. I was a bit disappointed mainly because of the lack of LS. But that is my fault for expecting this to happen.

I liked the Jon and Ygritte passionate scene and her acting was brilliant here. I love Kit as well. I don't see the problem.

Obviously I 100 percent agree with your notes on Dany. She has to wait for the Dragons to grow and this is why George has stalled her. I see no reason to believe she is on a pathway to madness.

[BlueDragon]

Hats off to this amazing post!

I agree with most of what is written here. I was a bit disappointed mainly because of the lack of LS. But that is my fault for expecting this to happen.

I liked the Jon and Ygritte passionate scene and her acting was brilliant here. I love Kit as well. I don't see the problem.

Obviously I 100 percent agree with your notes on Dany. She has to wait for the Dragons to grow and this is why George has stalled her. I see no reason to believe she is on a pathway to madness.

thank you so much :blushing: :blushing:

[Young Lion]

Again, I'm just going to post what I already posted in another forum.

AMAZING episode, TERRIBLE choice for the final scene.

I know what I'm going to say is very unpopular, but for me this episode was much, much, much better than the last one. Considering the content they had for the 9th episode they should have done a lot, and I mean a lot better. The hard part was actually screwing it up, and when you have content like they had for the Red Wedding, it's almost impossible to fail and it's expected for them to deliver the best product they can. But it felt very underwhelming for me, but thank God the last episode saved it.

This episode had so many characters, so many storylines, that it felt rich, complete. Of course, considering they showed a lot of things from a lot of different characters, most of the scenes felt a little rushed, but it's not really their fault, considering the amount of time they had, but I loved it. One of my favorite episodes this season.

Beautiful start, with Roose looking over the destruction of the Stark's bannermen. I thought the Robb/Grey Wind scene would be terrible, considering the picture that was released before the episode aired, but they did prove me wrong. It was beautifully done. Perfect, really, because it managed to achieve and develop the appropriate feelings in me at least. Eerie, creepy and sick. Exactly as it should have been.

Stannis/Davos and Tywin/Tyrion's scenes were amazing as usual. It shouldn't even be up to discussion. I LOVE Dragonstone. Add to that Stannis and Davos in a scene there with Stannis' theme playing in the background and you got one hell of a moment. The thing I hate is how much they're destroying Stannis' character. Making him decide to sacrifice Gendry without thinking much, when in the books he had to think a lot, and in the end he was still struggling with the decision and then sentencing Davos to death in a complete normal way. The way they made him say it was so emotionless, like it was just procedure, like it was all normal.

Finally, Jaime gets back on my screen. About damn time. Pretty short, but it achieved its purpose by developing and showing how much Jaime and Cersei care about each other. It was very short and I expected more, but it still managed to get the point across. Yeah, twins practicing incest, pretty bad, but when you look at all the forced marriages completely devoid of any love, and all the other tragedies and atrocities that happen in Westeros, I just cannot fault them. A couple that actually loves each other. The problem with this scene is that they might have created a little problem by making Jaime arrive in King's Landing before Joffrey's wedding and Sansa's disappearance. I mean, in the books, considering he AND Brienne only arrived there when Sansa had already fled, they did not have a chance to talk to her or take her away, but now they can do all that. Of course they will find some way around it, but I don't really think the excuse will be good. Especially regarding Brienne.

Balon not giving a damn about Theon, his son dammit. Unbelievable. Theon/Ramsay's scenes have, in a way, the quality they have in the books. Powerful, sick, emotional and extremely eerie scenes. The best, literally. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with freak. Terrific stuff. People should just buy the books to read Theon's chapters. Legit masterpieces.

Snow/Ygritte was good and bad at the same time. The acting was good, especially the emotion from Ygritte, her internal struggle was very well executed and came across, but why in the fuck weren't the other wildlings with her? Completely out of nowhere, Ygritte finds Jon, and very luckily for Jon she just happens to be alone! I cringed at that. This scene should have been incorporated with the one from the prior episode, like in the books, it just wasn't because they had to have some sad dialog along with it. Nothing serious though.

The last scene I just can't... I prefer to not even talk about it.

P.S. Am I the only one who doesn't really like how much they are trying to make Arya look like a badass? They are trying so hard to force it, when it should come naturally. Not really a fan of how they are handling things with her.

Edited June 12, 2013 by The Brain

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I seriously don't get the Kit Harrington derision around here. I love both the character and the actor and think he did a spot on job displaying his agony over leaving Ygritte and his emotional weakness. I thought, "I have to go home." was delivered perfectly.

Glad you said this because I thought the exact same thing. I really didn't like his portrayal of Jon earlier on, but I think he's gotten better, and he nailed that scene. The exact kind of passionate, not quite the right words, emotive outburst that seemed very real to me. It was clearly an incredible awkward moment for the character, completely torn between two loves/duties, and I bought it 100%.

[thepooperthatwaspromised]

THIS DUDE GETS IT.

Read and learn, folks.

Why, THANK YOU kind sir!