Hi I'm a day later because the episode is released at a later time in my country. Unfortunately I have to agree with everyone that this was a disappointing episode.
I'm not that bothered by the bad tactics used in the battle (though I do agree they were quite terrible). My main problems with the battle were: 1. Why was it soooo damn dark? Even if it's night time you can still adjust the lighting in such a way that we can actually see what is happening. 2. Plot armor once again reached critical levels. I expected so much more people to die, but since they didn't it makes this season's second episode feel pretty damn meaningless. I did really like that Bran thanked Theon and told him he is a good man, and therefore it felt like a good moment for Theon to die. Apart from that the only 'main' characters who died were Jorah, Beric, Edd and Lyanna Mormont. I liked Edd, Beric and Jorah but they had already outlived their usefulness in the story, and I didn't give a shit about Lyanna.
About the Night King and his death: I have only read the first two books of a song of ice and fire (and I plan to read the rest) so I don't if it's more clear in the books that they are not just generic baddies, but when Bran said in the last episode that the goal of the night king is to erase mankind and all memory of it, for me that basically confirmed that the night king is just a generic bad guy. However, I was still secretly hoping that he wouldn't turn out that way, but I was obviously expecting too much from the writers by doing that. I hope GRRM will at least make them more interesting in the books. The night king's death was also pretty dumb. Arya's magical leap out of nothing made no sense at all. Also apparently all the other white walkers (who, by the way, did literally nothing the entire episode) also die when the night king dies, which is awfully convenient.
Now I'm just hoping that D&D will stay true to the ending George told them and tie up the remaining loose ends in a satisfying way. In that sense I'm actually glad they ended the white walker threat in this episode so now we can focus on the (hopefully) more interesting stuff.
Jon has been useless through all fight. I wish somehow Jon would fight NK and Arya would do the finishing move at the last sec idk. Though Theon's redemption was nice a touch at the end.
it actually made sense to me that Arya killed him, as she is a faceless or whatever and she can move silently. Jon would have never been able to sneak up on him, and we know the Nights King would have never stood toe to toe with him in a fair fight.
They showed us Arya sneaking up on Jon the episode before, which to me was fore shadowing in that it was presenting us with the idea that Arya is in fact better than Jon because of her training, and could have easily sneaked up on him and killed him.
This tells us that she would be the best candidate to land a killing blow on him.
We already knew Brann was going to use himself as Bait to lure him into the open, where someone would be able to blind side him.
I don't think there was anyone but Arya that could have landed that blow (at least there fighting at the time)
I know some people that were not happy with how it ended and that Jon should have killed him, but this stuff is a none issue for me really.
I was totally prepared for it all to go to shit this episode, but it makes sense that the true villain is cersei as well. I mean we might get an amazing rest of the season with her going full tilt mental. I am still excited to see what comes next.
I still think the episode was a bit of a let down, but mainly due to the lightning. It was so dark you just couldn't see what was going on most of the time. I am going to try and change the settings on it and see if it improves.
I reckon if I was watching it on a tellie it would be better as well. was too small on my monitor.
TBH I had issues taking in al the info from the battles in previous seasons as well. I think it;s shot in such a way as to maybe hide some of violence, or at least that's what I first though. Then I remembered the dogs eating Ramsay's head and like loads of really graphic shit, so that wasn't the reason for it.
So then the only explanations are that it's done that way to cut back on costs, it's like an incoherent, flurry of action most of the time which has got to be cheaper to animate than a full blown choreographed battle on that kind of scale.
Or it's simply my screen is too small. ha ha. It's probably a mix of the two I'd imagine.
I was prepared for a letdown and I was still disappointed
The tactics were borderline retarded. they sent their cavalry in first without even having visuals on the enemy. Said cavalry wasn't even equipped to kill the zombies until Melisandre just sort of showed up and gave them fire swords (which did nothing). Then they also had their heavy artillery at the front line which is pointless in so many ways I can't even count.
Like, what even was their plan in the first place. They said they wanted to lure the NIght King into the open, which they eventually did, but only after his entire army ran you over since Bran was kept in the center of the castle. It's also never explained why he was afraid of Bran in the first place since he does fuck all to even endanger him in the slightest. Night King could have literally just sswooped in on Sindragosa and raoasted Bran in an instant while the other dragons were busy providing air support (why Jon had to ride the other dragon is beyond me, he literally achieves nothing of value)
Also apparently nobody considered that putting the civillians in a crypt full of corpses with protection might be a bad idea against a guy who can literally raise the dead, but I digress.
All other White Walkers did fuck all, which is disappointing since they could have easily been used as mini bosses against the main characters.
Plot Armour was stupidly thick for every named character except those who overstayed their welcome. The Battle was all over the place and at no point could you really make out how bad the situation actually was. You only saw miscellaneous characters getting their asses kicked but the zombies making no real advance towards anything in particular.
Somehow Theon and his boyband managed to hold off an entire onslaught of kamikaze zombies purely byusing bows while the Unsullied who were decked out in Spartan gear and in perfect formation got overrun almost instantly.
Like, after in the last season it was made pretty clear that they wouldn't actually be defeating the Army of the Dead but rather just boss rush the Night King to end it all in one blow I was fearing that they'd just skip out on the battle entirely and instead have it be a 1v1 between Jon and the LIch King....but instead of doing that they actually just channeled all of their worst writing to create a scenario with the sole purpose of having an entire episode worth of non-stop zombie battle...coming of course at the expense of all reason or coherence
At this point I'm just hoping that after this idioitc zombie apocalypse plot is finally over (and whose entire purpose seemed to be to just destroy Dany's forces because otherwise there wouldn't even be a final conflict with Cersei, since she never stood a chance) we might get some more character moments and actual strategy in the last 3 episodes.
I'M just baffled how they made over an hour worth of battle more boring than the episode before which was an entire episode of preparation just for said battle.
Also I'm kind of worried how they are seemingly turning this into an Arya fanfiction all of a sudden. Like...the sex scene fromt he previous episode already felt kind of out of place (but at least worked with what we knew about the character)...but then suddenly she'S the chosen one as explained by Melisandre who I'M not even sure met her before...and she gets to kill the NIght king despite being probably the character least involved with the whole thing. I mean she didn't even know about the whole zombie apocalypse before coming to Winterfell and then she just ninjas a bunch of Zombies, recreates the kitchen scene from jurassic park (what where those zombies even doing, slowly looking aorund the library?) until it is revealed that she apparently is the reason why Eyepatch grandpa did a Dark Souls all this time....it just wasn't built up at all...it's like if at the end of Return of the Jedi Luke flies the Millenium Falcon while Lando shoots the Emperor.
Also I hate how they kept implying Jon was gonna all Dragonslayer...but then just didn't...like, out of all the stupid shit you put into the episode, Jon killing a zombie dragon was just too much?
I do like Lady Mormont's death however, just because in the previous episode I was like "I hope this moron who is the future of heir house but demands to fight against the undead despite being a literal child just gets fucking tossed aside the moment she encounters an enemy"...and it's exactly what happened. Although they did make up for it immmediately by having the giant slowly pick her up to....I guess eat her? But I guess she needed an epic way to go out since she was a one-note gag character anyways.
TL;DR probably worst season unless the finale is mindblowing
Since there's a lot of negativity here about the latest episode, I'm going to offer my own positive thoughts on it. A lot of it is in direct contradiction to what you guys found disappointing, so I don't expect agreement, but I figure maybe I can get you to like some part of it a little more =P
First of all, I want to make something very clear - I have not read the books, and I think comparing the show to the books at all is futile. From what I understand, they've diverged so much so long ago that trying to reconcile character portrayals or plot points from the books with the show is not worth your time. You have to look at them as two separate pieces of media. If the show not following something from the books is part of your annoyance, that's fine, I just can't agree with you on that.
Battle Tactics: I'm sorry to say this, but you guys seem to have been expecting a battle between two armies. This was never going to be that - it was always an unstoppable force meeting a woefully underprepared wall, designed only to buy them enough time to lure the Night King in. We heard it all last episode when they talked about how they were going to die, and we saw it as early as after the Dothraki hoard were slaughtered in this episode, where Jon goes to stop Daenerys from raining fire on the encroaching hoard - neither Jon or Dany were meant to engage the undead army, their entire purpose was to kill the Night King. I think the futility of their defense and the gradual advance of the dead was really well done - apart from the terrible lighting, of course, thank god for Melisandre.
Bran, Boy Blunder: I don't remember seeing any of you guys complaining about this specifically, so I wanted your thoughts on it - were any of you actually expecting Bran to do... anything? I've seen a fair few people complain that he just sat in his chair and didn't help out in the battle at all, like they expected him to suddenly Gandalf it up or something. Dude's got no legs and has displayed no magical capabilities beyond warging and looking stuff up on the GoT wiki, he was meant to be bait and he played that role admirably.
Main Character Deaths/Plot Armour: Listen. There is a time and a place for a Red Wedding style culling of characters (which, honestly, even that I don't think was handled well), and three episodes before the finale isn't it. I don't know why you guys seemed to want like, Tyrion and Jon or whoever to bumble around for three episodes with everyone else dead before Cersei finally merks them, but that would have made for a shit viewing experience. Is it incredibly unbelievable that everyone in the courtyard survived? Absolutely. Do I give a damn? Nope. The deaths we did get were all incredibly well done, apart from Melisandre - I think she should have gone up in flames as she lit the trenches, a fitting end for her after all the people she's killed in the same way.
Arya, Kingslayer: I thought this was a fantastic way for the Night King to go out. They've been building up his arrogance for a while now, with his need to kill Bran/TER/Creepoid by himself, and having him hesitate to kill this tiny little human and get killed because of it makes so much sense. In addition, Arya is literally a trained assassin, and this is a perfect culmination of her story - after everything she's gone through, pledging herself to the god of death and then turning around and fighting for life, dealing the killing blow against death itself, saving Bran with the dagger that was meant to kill him (thanks Littlefinger)... fantastic storytelling. Having the Night King die after a 1v1 with Jon would be so... anticlimactic. It's such a trope, good vs evil, final fight to the death. Similarly, them using some sort of magic spell with zero build up would have been very deus ex machina and unsatisfying, in my eyes. Would it have been cool if they'd been dropping hints about it, or gone on a quest to learn how to perform it? Sure. But just pulling it from nowhere would've been so weird, I don't know why I'm seeing people suggest that.
Now What?: This is my favourite part of this episode - they've gotten rid of the big bad with three episodes remaining. They've given themselves plenty of time to deal with the loose threads they have, and still have plenty of people they can kill off, heroically or otherwise. Now, could they screw this up? Absolutely. I'll be ranting and raving right along with the rest of you if we get a cutesy closing shot in Episode 6 of Jon and Dany and their two beautiful kids playing around the Iron Throne while Sansa and Tyrion look on happily and Arya is off, I dunno, fucking Gendry. I'm expecting more from them than that, and I hope they can deliver.
So yeah! I really enjoyed this episode a lot. It went about how I expected in terms of number of survivors, though I personally refused to guess who'd be coming out alive so I can't claim to have been right or wrong there. The Night King's death was satisfying, in fact all the MC deaths we experienced were satisfying (in their own ways). My biggest complaint with the episode was the lighting/compression issues. The actual story, and the music, my god, were fantastic.
Hi I'm a day later because the episode is released at a later time in my country. Unfortunately I have to agree with everyone that this was a disappointing episode.
I'm not that bothered by the bad tactics used in the battle. My main problems with the battle were: 1. Why was it soooo damn dark? Even if it's night time you can still adjust the lighting in such a way that we can actually see what is happening. 2. Plot armor once again reached critical levels. I expected so much more people to die, but since they didn't it makes this season's second episode feel pretty damn meaningless. I did really like that Bran thanked Theon and told him he is a good man, and therefore it felt like a good moment for Theon to die. Apart from that the only 'main' characters who died were Jorah, Beric, Edd and Lyanna Mormont. I liked Edd, Beric and Jorah but they had already outlived their usefulness in the story, and I didn't give a shit about Lyanna.
About the Night King and his death: I have only read the first two books of a song of ice and fire (and I plan to read the rest) so I don't if it's more clear in the books that they are not just generic baddies, but when Bran said in the last episode that the goal of the night king is to erase mankind and all memory of it, for me that basically confirmed that the night king is just a generic bad guy. However, I was still secretly hoping that he wouldn't turn out that way, but I was obviously expecting too much from the writers by doing that. I hope GRRM will at least make them more interesting in the books. The night king's death was also pretty dumb. Arya's magical leap out of nothing made no sense at all. Also apparently all the other white walkers (who, by the way, did literally nothing the entire episode) also die when the night king dies, which is awfully convenient.
Now I'm just hoping that D&D will stay true to the ending George told them and tie up the remaining loose ends in a satisfying way. In that sense I'm actually glad they ended the white walker threat in this episode so now we can focus on the (hopefully) more interesting stuff.
No they are not purely evil, at least we do not know for now that they are. There are strong hints that the morality of the 1st war vs the walkers was grey. In fact there are very strong hints that the 1st war did not end in human's victory but more of "pact" or truce. Plus it is strongly hinted that the Stark themselves have whitewalker blood.
Ohh and the mummified look of the whitewalkers, it's only a thing of the show. In the books it is hinted that the walkers are extremely exotic and beautiful.Generally the "i wanna kill all living things and the Night King dies everyone dies" it's the show's bs. Knowing Martin's style, the walkers will propably have good reason for invading.
Before you click be aware that while the spoiler doesn't contain actual spoilers (events), it contains conclusions from stories in the books.
I must say, in defense of the episode, that our expectations were turned upside-down in a manner consistent with the whole "Game of Thrones is about subverting tropes" idea:
If the show yielded to the Good vs Evil trope, Jon and the Night King would have dueled to the death. Jon, being the Prince That Was Promised, would come out victorious with a flaming sword or whatever gifts The Chosen One would be able to demonstrate. Instead, that entire prophecy was fucked over because Arya stole the show.
Arya, compared to the expectations placed on people like Jon or Dany, is essentially a nobody. She is not the Prince(ss) That Was Promised; she's just someone who trained for this moment whether she realized it or not. The Song of Ice and Fire will be about Jon and Dany coming together to save the world, but will (probably) have no lines about Arya being the actual victor, because that's not her way.
You can see the clues that led up to this moment (Arya training with Brienne, sneaking up on Jon, Bran giving her the dagger, etc.), but most of us expected Jon to play the hero. Instead, "the hero" got pinned down by an undead dragon while someone else saved everyone.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
I was prepared for a letdown and I was still disappointed
The tactics were borderline ********. they sent their cavalry in first without even having visuals on the enemy. Said cavalry wasn't even equipped to kill the zombies until Melisandre just sort of showed up and gave them fire swords (which did nothing). Then they also had their heavy artillery at the front line which is pointless in so many ways I can't even count.
Like, what even was their plan in the first place. They said they wanted to lure the NIght King into the open, which they eventually did, but only after his entire army ran you over since Bran was kept in the center of the castle. It's also never explained why he was afraid of Bran in the first place since he does fuck all to even endanger him in the slightest. Night King could have literally just sswooped in on Sindragosa and raoasted Bran in an instant while the other dragons were busy providing air support (why Jon had to ride the other dragon is beyond me, he literally achieves nothing of value)
Also apparently nobody considered that putting the civillians in a crypt full of corpses with protection might be a bad idea against a guy who can literally raise the dead, but I digress.
All other White Walkers did fuck all, which is disappointing since they could have easily been used as mini bosses against the main characters.
Plot Armour was stupidly thick for every named character except those who overstayed their welcome. The Battle was all over the place and at no point could you really make out how bad the situation actually was. You only saw miscellaneous characters getting their asses kicked but the zombies making no real advance towards anything in particular.
Somehow Theon and his boyband managed to hold off an entire onslaught of kamikaze zombies purely byusing bows while the Unsullied who were decked out in Spartan gear and in perfect formation got overrun almost instantly.
Like, after in the last season it was made pretty clear that they wouldn't actually be defeating the Army of the Dead but rather just boss rush the Night King to end it all in one blow I was fearing that they'd just skip out on the battle entirely and instead have it be a 1v1 between Jon and the LIch King....but instead of doing that they actually just channeled all of their worst writing to create a scenario with the sole purpose of having an entire episode worth of non-stop zombie battle...coming of course at the expense of all reason or coherence
At this point I'm just hoping that after this idioitc zombie apocalypse plot is finally over (and whose entire purpose seemed to be to just destroy Dany's forces because otherwise there wouldn't even be a final conflict with Cersei, since she never stood a chance) we might get some more character moments and actual strategy in the last 3 episodes.
I'M just baffled how they made over an hour worth of battle more boring than the episode before which was an entire episode of preparation just for said battle.
Also I'm kind of worried how they are seemingly turning this into an Arya fanfiction all of a sudden. Like...the sex scene fromt he previous episode already felt kind of out of place (but at least worked with what we knew about the character)...but then suddenly she'S the chosen one as explained by Melisandre who I'M not even sure met her before...and she gets to kill the NIght king despite being probably the character least involved with the whole thing. I mean she didn't even know about the whole zombie apocalypse before coming to Winterfell and then she just ninjas a bunch of Zombies, recreates the kitchen scene from jurassic park (what where those zombies even doing, slowly looking aorund the library?) until it is revealed that she apparently is the reason why Eyepatch grandpa did a Dark Souls all this time....it just wasn't built up at all...it's like if at the end of Return of the Jedi Luke flies the Millenium Falcon while Lando shoots the Emperor.
Also I hate how they kept implying Jon was gonna all Dragonslayer...but then just didn't...like, out of all the stupid shit you put into the episode, Jon killing a zombie dragon was just too much?
I do like Lady Mormont's death however, just because in the previous episode I was like "I hope this moron who is the future of heir house but demands to fight against the undead despite being a literal child just gets fucking tossed aside the moment she encounters an enemy"...and it's exactly what happened. Although they did make up for it immmediately by having the giant slowly pick her up to....I guess eat her? But I guess she needed an epic way to go out since she was a one-note gag character anyways.
TL;DR probably worst season unless the finale is mindblowing
Great points. I couldn't see what the fuck was going on though. I must watch again.
I did think to myself though throughout "this isn't very good, is it?" and I wondered if it was just the lighting, but apparently it was way more than that.
TBH you could tell it was going to shit a bit last season IMO. It was definitely a lot weaker than one before it.
PS: was I meant to put my post in a spoiler box? I don't even know how to do that. I just thought like that it would be obvious theres spoilers here, so don't click if you've not seen it? can I get strikes for spoilers? ha ha.
PPS: they definitely met before. back when she was travelling with the hound. that line about "brown eyes, green eyes... blue eyes" was a quote. (they met when the hound kills that dude with the eye patch)
PS: was I meant to put my post in a spoiler box? I don't even know how to do that. I just thought like that it would be obvious theres spoilers here, so don't click if you've not seen it? can I get strikes for spoilers? ha ha.
It's the exclamation point in the edit/format window, over on the right.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
PS: was I meant to put my post in a spoiler box? I don't even know how to do that. I just thought like that it would be obvious theres spoilers here, so don't click if you've not seen it? can I get strikes for spoilers? ha ha.
It's the exclamation point in the edit/format window, over on the right.
Dragon fights were hard to follow because of lighting and camera angles
, but everything else straightforward. Would have been nice to if bran found a crazy beast to warg and battle with. Also would of liked valerian steel to flash blue. Still though a good episode.
Since there's a lot of negativity here about the latest episode, I'm going to offer my own positive thoughts on it. A lot of it is in direct contradiction to what you guys found disappointing, so I don't expect agreement, but I figure maybe I can get you to like some part of it a little more =P
Battle Tactics: I'm sorry to say this, but you guys seem to have been expecting a battle between two armies. This was never going to be that - it was always an unstoppable force meeting a woefully underprepared wall, designed only to buy them enough time to lure the Night King in. We heard it all last episode when they talked about how they were going to die, and we saw it as early as after the Dothraki hoard were slaughtered in this episode, where Jon goes to stop Daenerys from raining fire on the encroaching hoard - neither Jon or Dany were meant to engage the undead army, their entire purpose was to kill the Night King. I think the futility of their defense and the gradual advance of the dead was really well done - apart from the terrible lighting, of course, thank god for Melisandre.
I won't answer to the rest of your comment, because it is a matter of preference and i respect that. Honestly i envy you for enjoying the episode. But here.."HERE IS WHERE YOU ARE WRONG"** In Dalaran's Aspirant Voice**
How they could be woefully underprepared? The northeners had months to prepare fortifications while knowing about the walkers as they knew since jon became king. Heck, even when dany and her army arrived, they had at best weeks, at worst days as we do know not how much time passes between the episodes. Do know now what fortifications, they could build with the manpower they had?I suggest you reading about the battle of Vienna. You will be amazed how many fortifications they made in a nick of time.
Plus, we are not talking about plebs here, were are talking about battle hardened army of unsullied and dothraki with the help of two weapons of mass destruction (dragons). Screw the kill the night king-everyone dies plot device. A competent strategist would even win the war against the entire horde with the time,army and tools they had at their disposal. I know, i know it seems an overstatement considering every casualty joins their ranks. But when you read about real battles with insurmountable odds, much much much worse than those of the film (yes they have happened), makes the writing seem evem more piss poor than it is.
I dont have much to add except what a load of predictive rubbish. 8 seasons of "Winter is coming" tension and it ends in the most lame and predictive way. GoT really lost me here. Hollywood took over the production.
Since there's a lot of negativity here about the latest episode, I'm going to offer my own positive thoughts on it. A lot of it is in direct contradiction to what you guys found disappointing, so I don't expect agreement, but I figure maybe I can get you to like some part of it a little more =P
First of all, I want to make something very clear - I have not read the books, and I think comparing the show to the books at all is futile. From what I understand, they've diverged so much so long ago that trying to reconcile character portrayals or plot points from the books with the show is not worth your time. You have to look at them as two separate pieces of media. If the show not following something from the books is part of your annoyance, that's fine, I just can't agree with you on that.
Battle Tactics: I'm sorry to say this, but you guys seem to have been expecting a battle between two armies. This was never going to be that - it was always an unstoppable force meeting a woefully underprepared wall, designed only to buy them enough time to lure the Night King in. We heard it all last episode when they talked about how they were going to die, and we saw it as early as after the Dothraki hoard were slaughtered in this episode, where Jon goes to stop Daenerys from raining fire on the encroaching hoard - neither Jon or Dany were meant to engage the undead army, their entire purpose was to kill the Night King. I think the futility of their defense and the gradual advance of the dead was really well done - apart from the terrible lighting, of course, thank god for Melisandre.
Bran, Boy Blunder: I don't remember seeing any of you guys complaining about this specifically, so I wanted your thoughts on it - were any of you actually expecting Bran to do... anything? I've seen a fair few people complain that he just sat in his chair and didn't help out in the battle at all, like they expected him to suddenly Gandalf it up or something. Dude's got no legs and has displayed no magical capabilities beyond warging and looking stuff up on the GoT wiki, he was meant to be bait and he played that role admirably.
Main Character Deaths/Plot Armour: Listen. There is a time and a place for a Red Wedding style culling of characters (which, honestly, even that I don't think was handled well), and three episodes before the finale isn't it. I don't know why you guys seemed to want like, Tyrion and Jon or whoever to bumble around for three episodes with everyone else dead before Cersei finally merks them, but that would have made for a shit viewing experience. Is it incredibly unbelievable that everyone in the courtyard survived? Absolutely. Do I give a damn? Nope. The deaths we did get were all incredibly well done, apart from Melisandre - I think she should have gone up in flames as she lit the trenches, a fitting end for her after all the people she's killed in the same way.
Arya, Kingslayer: I thought this was a fantastic way for the Night King to go out. They've been building up his arrogance for a while now, with his need to kill Bran/TER/Creepoid by himself, and having him hesitate to kill this tiny little human and get killed because of it makes so much sense. In addition, Arya is literally a trained assassin, and this is a perfect culmination of her story - after everything she's gone through, pledging herself to the god of death and then turning around and fighting for life, dealing the killing blow against death itself, saving Bran with the dagger that was meant to kill him (thanks Littlefinger)... fantastic storytelling. Having the Night King die after a 1v1 with Jon would be so... anticlimactic. It's such a trope, good vs evil, final fight to the death. Similarly, them using some sort of magic spell with zero build up would have been very deus ex machina and unsatisfying, in my eyes. Would it have been cool if they'd been dropping hints about it, or gone on a quest to learn how to perform it? Sure. But just pulling it from nowhere would've been so weird, I don't know why I'm seeing people suggest that.
Now What?: This is my favourite part of this episode - they've gotten rid of the big bad with three episodes remaining. They've given themselves plenty of time to deal with the loose threads they have, and still have plenty of people they can kill off, heroically or otherwise. Now, could they screw this up? Absolutely. I'll be ranting and raving right along with the rest of you if we get a cutesy closing shot in Episode 6 of Jon and Dany and their two beautiful kids playing around the Iron Throne while Sansa and Tyrion look on happily and Arya is off, I dunno, fucking Gendry. I'm expecting more from them than that, and I hope they can deliver.
So yeah! I really enjoyed this episode a lot. It went about how I expected in terms of number of survivors, though I personally refused to guess who'd be coming out alive so I can't claim to have been right or wrong there. The Night King's death was satisfying, in fact all the MC deaths we experienced were satisfying (in their own ways). My biggest complaint with the episode was the lighting/compression issues. The actual story, and the music, my god, were fantastic.
so I'm just gonna refute all your points, because you're really not making much sense.
1) it doesn#t matter what their goals were, their tactics were absolute nonsense from any angle unless their plan was to literally suicide all their troops and hope for a miracle, because unless you forgot, Arya doing her ninja shit wasn't planned anyways. The plan was to lure the Night king into an open area with Bran and then kill him somehow. Meanwhile they don't set an ambush, leave Bran with Theon of all people (literally why not Jon, who doesn't even need to be on a dragon at all since he contributes barely anything to its combat)
THe battle was set up in such a way to get the maximum action, not in any way that the characters would realistically choose. It's bad writing at its finest and you don't need to be a military strategist to see it
2) The problem with Bran is not that we expected him to ex-machina the battle....but that there is no explained reason as to why the NK prioritizes him int he first place. He's literally a glorified drone with spoiler powers. The whole "the NK wants to destroy all memory" is just a flimsy excuse to make all this work since the NK is a pooorly written villain in the first place. You're basically giving them a free pass for the plot hole they themselves set up in the first place
3) you don#t seem to understand what plot armour is. It's not about whether this was the time to kill off characters, it'S about constructing the story in such a way where certain characters end up in a situation where they should die when clearly you don't want them to. The battle could have been written in such a way where the main characters were not in such obviously lethal situations all the time, but they didn't because no effort was put into a coherent flow. There could have been several ways where the characters could have just been put into situations where they just fought from a defensible position instead of literally being surrounded by zombies and still not dying despite the power of the hoard that was previously established. Even worse at some point literally the only living people are the main characters which makes the whole scene look ridiculous.
Just because you are able to ignore the obvious stupidity doesn't mean it's acceptable.
4) while I concede that Arya is the best choice to murder the NK it's not set up at all, doesn't feel earned (she literally didn't even know about the guy before she came to Winterfell) and overall just makes it seem like this is some fanfiction-tier wish fulfillment. I like Arya as a character, but the main thing about her was that she had this crazy journey all on her own and fought her own battles. She was kind of the counterpart to Sansa who was constantly in the spotlight, while Arya herself was living her life in the shadows. Both went through insane struggles in their own way....and now Arya just saves the day, Leeroy Jenkins style.
5) this is probably the worst part about it all. After this entirely pointless detour (since the NK is not the ultimate bad guy after all) all that really happened was Dany'S forces being nerfed after we've established before that Cersei never had a chance against her. Now we're back at a point were the good guys face impossible odds which will most likely lead to some ex-machina bullshit instead of the clever political and military strategizing that the series began as.
Whether you enjoyed this dumpsterfire is irrelevant. This is objectively poorly written and is so far detached from what GoT used to be that the only reason why it's not considered an insult to the fans, the books and just the general concept of storytelling itself is because this downward spiral has bee set up for the last 3 seasons anyways.
Enjoy it if you can, but stop trying to defend bad writing with flimsy excuses. It's people like you that let Hollywood writers get away with the bare minimum because "I was entertained, so really, they didn#t need to try anyways"
I must say, in defense of the episode, that our expectations were turned upside-down in a manner consistent with the whole "Game of Thrones is about subverting tropes" idea:
If the show yielded to the Good vs Evil trope, Jon and the Night King would have dueled to the death. Jon, being the Prince That Was Promised, would come out victorious with a flaming sword or whatever gifts The Chosen One would be able to demonstrate. Instead, that entire prophecy was fucked over because Arya stole the show.
Arya, compared to the expectations placed on people like Jon or Dany, is essentially a nobody. She is not the Prince(ss) That Was Promised; she's just someone who trained for this moment whether she realized it or not. The Song of Ice and Fire will be about Jon and Dany coming together to save the world, but will (probably) have no lines about Arya being the actual victor, because that's not her way.
You can see the clues that led up to this moment (Arya training with Brienne, sneaking up on Jon, Bran giving her the dagger, etc.), but most of us expected Jon to play the hero. Instead, "the hero" got pinned down by an undead dragon while someone else saved everyone.
there is a difference between subverting tropes and pulling a 180 just because. All that was established is that Arya iss a murdergoblin with ninja powers...which works against humans. The whole point of the NK was that he is this unstoppable evil that works outside of known rules...but insstead he ended up being just a regular bad guy who can easily be outsmarted by the power of plot convenience.
Like, I expected they'd just rip off World of Warcraft and have Bran become the new Night King who retreats back beyond the wall and reamins there forever...like a Bolvar situation....but no, I guess my expectations where still way too high.
It's about as "subversive" as if at the end of Avengers Thanos just has a heart attack and that'S it. Like...sure, you wouldn't see it coming, even if there were implications he had heart problems...but at the end it would feel terribly anti climactic and leave you unsatisfied.
If they wanted to do a real subversion they'd actually have the final encounter between Jon and the NK, but Jon actually just gets killed and then we have Arya as the unlikely hero. That's would be a twist that incorporated previously established elements.
I dont have much to add except what a load of predictive rubbish. 8 seasons of "Winter is coming" tension and it ends in the most lame and predictive way. GoT really lost me here. Hollywood took over the production.
it's mostly George R. R: Martins fault to be honest. The series was great when they were strictly adapting his material, but after they weren#t able to do that anymore and he basically to this day refuses to actually finish his magnum opus (because I guess he got bored or something?) they had to fill in the blanks with what they were given and still make a compelling story without the benefits of having Martin basically screenwrite for them....and that's whn you get garbage like this.
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I tried having fun once. It was awful.
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Hi I'm a day later because the episode is released at a later time in my country. Unfortunately I have to agree with everyone that this was a disappointing episode.
I'm not that bothered by the bad tactics used in the battle (though I do agree they were quite terrible). My main problems with the battle were: 1. Why was it soooo damn dark? Even if it's night time you can still adjust the lighting in such a way that we can actually see what is happening. 2. Plot armor once again reached critical levels. I expected so much more people to die, but since they didn't it makes this season's second episode feel pretty damn meaningless. I did really like that Bran thanked Theon and told him he is a good man, and therefore it felt like a good moment for Theon to die. Apart from that the only 'main' characters who died were Jorah, Beric, Edd and Lyanna Mormont. I liked Edd, Beric and Jorah but they had already outlived their usefulness in the story, and I didn't give a shit about Lyanna.
About the Night King and his death: I have only read the first two books of a song of ice and fire (and I plan to read the rest) so I don't if it's more clear in the books that they are not just generic baddies, but when Bran said in the last episode that the goal of the night king is to erase mankind and all memory of it, for me that basically confirmed that the night king is just a generic bad guy. However, I was still secretly hoping that he wouldn't turn out that way, but I was obviously expecting too much from the writers by doing that. I hope GRRM will at least make them more interesting in the books. The night king's death was also pretty dumb. Arya's magical leap out of nothing made no sense at all. Also apparently all the other white walkers (who, by the way, did literally nothing the entire episode) also die when the night king dies, which is awfully convenient.
Now I'm just hoping that D&D will stay true to the ending George told them and tie up the remaining loose ends in a satisfying way. In that sense I'm actually glad they ended the white walker threat in this episode so now we can focus on the (hopefully) more interesting stuff.
Jon has been useless through all fight. I wish somehow Jon would fight NK and Arya would do the finishing move at the last sec idk. Though Theon's redemption was nice a touch at the end.
GG Bran, Well Played (whatever you were doing).
https://outof.cards
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it actually made sense to me that Arya killed him, as she is a faceless or whatever and she can move silently. Jon would have never been able to sneak up on him, and we know the Nights King would have never stood toe to toe with him in a fair fight.
They showed us Arya sneaking up on Jon the episode before, which to me was fore shadowing in that it was presenting us with the idea that Arya is in fact better than Jon because of her training, and could have easily sneaked up on him and killed him.
This tells us that she would be the best candidate to land a killing blow on him.
We already knew Brann was going to use himself as Bait to lure him into the open, where someone would be able to blind side him.
I don't think there was anyone but Arya that could have landed that blow (at least there fighting at the time)
I know some people that were not happy with how it ended and that Jon should have killed him, but this stuff is a none issue for me really.
I was totally prepared for it all to go to shit this episode, but it makes sense that the true villain is cersei as well. I mean we might get an amazing rest of the season with her going full tilt mental. I am still excited to see what comes next.
I still think the episode was a bit of a let down, but mainly due to the lightning. It was so dark you just couldn't see what was going on most of the time. I am going to try and change the settings on it and see if it improves.
I reckon if I was watching it on a tellie it would be better as well. was too small on my monitor.
TBH I had issues taking in al the info from the battles in previous seasons as well. I think it;s shot in such a way as to maybe hide some of violence, or at least that's what I first though. Then I remembered the dogs eating Ramsay's head and like loads of really graphic shit, so that wasn't the reason for it.
So then the only explanations are that it's done that way to cut back on costs, it's like an incoherent, flurry of action most of the time which has got to be cheaper to animate than a full blown choreographed battle on that kind of scale.
Or it's simply my screen is too small. ha ha. It's probably a mix of the two I'd imagine.
I was prepared for a letdown and I was still disappointed
The tactics were borderline retarded. they sent their cavalry in first without even having visuals on the enemy. Said cavalry wasn't even equipped to kill the zombies until Melisandre just sort of showed up and gave them fire swords (which did nothing). Then they also had their heavy artillery at the front line which is pointless in so many ways I can't even count.
Like, what even was their plan in the first place. They said they wanted to lure the NIght King into the open, which they eventually did, but only after his entire army ran you over since Bran was kept in the center of the castle. It's also never explained why he was afraid of Bran in the first place since he does fuck all to even endanger him in the slightest. Night King could have literally just sswooped in on Sindragosa and raoasted Bran in an instant while the other dragons were busy providing air support (why Jon had to ride the other dragon is beyond me, he literally achieves nothing of value)
Also apparently nobody considered that putting the civillians in a crypt full of corpses with protection might be a bad idea against a guy who can literally raise the dead, but I digress.
All other White Walkers did fuck all, which is disappointing since they could have easily been used as mini bosses against the main characters.
Plot Armour was stupidly thick for every named character except those who overstayed their welcome. The Battle was all over the place and at no point could you really make out how bad the situation actually was. You only saw miscellaneous characters getting their asses kicked but the zombies making no real advance towards anything in particular.
Somehow Theon and his boyband managed to hold off an entire onslaught of kamikaze zombies purely byusing bows while the Unsullied who were decked out in Spartan gear and in perfect formation got overrun almost instantly.
Like, after in the last season it was made pretty clear that they wouldn't actually be defeating the Army of the Dead but rather just boss rush the Night King to end it all in one blow I was fearing that they'd just skip out on the battle entirely and instead have it be a 1v1 between Jon and the LIch King....but instead of doing that they actually just channeled all of their worst writing to create a scenario with the sole purpose of having an entire episode worth of non-stop zombie battle...coming of course at the expense of all reason or coherence
At this point I'm just hoping that after this idioitc zombie apocalypse plot is finally over (and whose entire purpose seemed to be to just destroy Dany's forces because otherwise there wouldn't even be a final conflict with Cersei, since she never stood a chance) we might get some more character moments and actual strategy in the last 3 episodes.
I'M just baffled how they made over an hour worth of battle more boring than the episode before which was an entire episode of preparation just for said battle.
Also I'm kind of worried how they are seemingly turning this into an Arya fanfiction all of a sudden. Like...the sex scene fromt he previous episode already felt kind of out of place (but at least worked with what we knew about the character)...but then suddenly she'S the chosen one as explained by Melisandre who I'M not even sure met her before...and she gets to kill the NIght king despite being probably the character least involved with the whole thing. I mean she didn't even know about the whole zombie apocalypse before coming to Winterfell and then she just ninjas a bunch of Zombies, recreates the kitchen scene from jurassic park (what where those zombies even doing, slowly looking aorund the library?) until it is revealed that she apparently is the reason why Eyepatch grandpa did a Dark Souls all this time....it just wasn't built up at all...it's like if at the end of Return of the Jedi Luke flies the Millenium Falcon while Lando shoots the Emperor.
Also I hate how they kept implying Jon was gonna all Dragonslayer...but then just didn't...like, out of all the stupid shit you put into the episode, Jon killing a zombie dragon was just too much?
I do like Lady Mormont's death however, just because in the previous episode I was like "I hope this moron who is the future of heir house but demands to fight against the undead despite being a literal child just gets fucking tossed aside the moment she encounters an enemy"...and it's exactly what happened. Although they did make up for it immmediately by having the giant slowly pick her up to....I guess eat her? But I guess she needed an epic way to go out since she was a one-note gag character anyways.
TL;DR probably worst season unless the finale is mindblowing
I tried having fun once. It was awful.
Since there's a lot of negativity here about the latest episode, I'm going to offer my own positive thoughts on it. A lot of it is in direct contradiction to what you guys found disappointing, so I don't expect agreement, but I figure maybe I can get you to like some part of it a little more =P
First of all, I want to make something very clear - I have not read the books, and I think comparing the show to the books at all is futile. From what I understand, they've diverged so much so long ago that trying to reconcile character portrayals or plot points from the books with the show is not worth your time. You have to look at them as two separate pieces of media. If the show not following something from the books is part of your annoyance, that's fine, I just can't agree with you on that.
Having the Night King die after a 1v1 with Jon would be so... anticlimactic. It's such a trope, good vs evil, final fight to the death. Similarly, them using some sort of magic spell with zero build up would have been very deus ex machina and unsatisfying, in my eyes. Would it have been cool if they'd been dropping hints about it, or gone on a quest to learn how to perform it? Sure. But just pulling it from nowhere would've been so weird, I don't know why I'm seeing people suggest that.
So yeah! I really enjoyed this episode a lot. It went about how I expected in terms of number of survivors, though I personally refused to guess who'd be coming out alive so I can't claim to have been right or wrong there. The Night King's death was satisfying, in fact all the MC deaths we experienced were satisfying (in their own ways). My biggest complaint with the episode was the lighting/compression issues. The actual story, and the music, my god, were fantastic.
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
No they are not purely evil, at least we do not know for now that they are. There are strong hints that the morality of the 1st war vs the walkers was grey. In fact there are very strong hints that the 1st war did not end in human's victory but more of "pact" or truce. Plus it is strongly hinted that the Stark themselves have whitewalker blood.
Ohh and the mummified look of the whitewalkers, it's only a thing of the show. In the books it is hinted that the walkers are extremely exotic and beautiful.Generally the "i wanna kill all living things and the Night King dies everyone dies" it's the show's bs. Knowing Martin's style, the walkers will propably have good reason for invading.
Before you click be aware that while the spoiler doesn't contain actual spoilers (events), it contains conclusions from stories in the books.
I must say, in defense of the episode, that our expectations were turned upside-down in a manner consistent with the whole "Game of Thrones is about subverting tropes" idea:
If the show yielded to the Good vs Evil trope, Jon and the Night King would have dueled to the death. Jon, being the Prince That Was Promised, would come out victorious with a flaming sword or whatever gifts The Chosen One would be able to demonstrate. Instead, that entire prophecy was fucked over because Arya stole the show.
Arya, compared to the expectations placed on people like Jon or Dany, is essentially a nobody. She is not the Prince(ss) That Was Promised; she's just someone who trained for this moment whether she realized it or not. The Song of Ice and Fire will be about Jon and Dany coming together to save the world, but will (probably) have no lines about Arya being the actual victor, because that's not her way.
You can see the clues that led up to this moment (Arya training with Brienne, sneaking up on Jon, Bran giving her the dagger, etc.), but most of us expected Jon to play the hero. Instead, "the hero" got pinned down by an undead dragon while someone else saved everyone.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
Great points. I couldn't see what the fuck was going on though. I must watch again.
I did think to myself though throughout "this isn't very good, is it?" and I wondered if it was just the lighting, but apparently it was way more than that.
TBH you could tell it was going to shit a bit last season IMO. It was definitely a lot weaker than one before it.
PS: was I meant to put my post in a spoiler box? I don't even know how to do that. I just thought like that it would be obvious theres spoilers here, so don't click if you've not seen it? can I get strikes for spoilers? ha ha.
PPS: they definitely met before. back when she was travelling with the hound. that line about "brown eyes, green eyes... blue eyes" was a quote. (they met when the hound kills that dude with the eye patch)
It's the exclamation point in the edit/format window, over on the right.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
thanks.
l liked the plot twist, quite a lot.
I didn't like the battle, or whatever you call that thing.
Also, while i like how the plot twist frees so much narrative space, this overhyped Winter ended basically with one battle and a Assassinate. Wow...
Helm's Deep and Fields of Pelennor stay vastly unparalleled in fantasy warfare movies. For pathos, development of battle and filming.
PS: please somebody add a spoiler to this post. I am on mobile rn and i don't know how to do it.
Hold my drink
Dragon fights were hard to follow because of lighting and camera angles
, but everything else straightforward. Would have been nice to if bran found a crazy beast to warg and battle with. Also would of liked valerian steel to flash blue. Still though a good episode.
I won't answer to the rest of your comment, because it is a matter of preference and i respect that. Honestly i envy you for enjoying the episode. But here.."HERE IS WHERE YOU ARE WRONG"** In Dalaran's Aspirant Voice**
How they could be woefully underprepared? The northeners had months to prepare fortifications while knowing about the walkers as they knew since jon became king. Heck, even when dany and her army arrived, they had at best weeks, at worst days as we do know not how much time passes between the episodes. Do know now what fortifications, they could build with the manpower they had?I suggest you reading about the battle of Vienna. You will be amazed how many fortifications they made in a nick of time.
Plus, we are not talking about plebs here, were are talking about battle hardened army of unsullied and dothraki with the help of two weapons of mass destruction (dragons). Screw the kill the night king-everyone dies plot device. A competent strategist would even win the war against the entire horde with the time,army and tools they had at their disposal. I know, i know it seems an overstatement considering every casualty joins their ranks. But when you read about real battles with insurmountable odds, much much much worse than those of the film (yes they have happened), makes the writing seem evem more piss poor than it is.
I dont have much to add except what a load of predictive rubbish. 8 seasons of "Winter is coming" tension and it ends in the most lame and predictive way. GoT really lost me here. Hollywood took over the production.
so I'm just gonna refute all your points, because you're really not making much sense.
1) it doesn#t matter what their goals were, their tactics were absolute nonsense from any angle unless their plan was to literally suicide all their troops and hope for a miracle, because unless you forgot, Arya doing her ninja shit wasn't planned anyways. The plan was to lure the Night king into an open area with Bran and then kill him somehow. Meanwhile they don't set an ambush, leave Bran with Theon of all people (literally why not Jon, who doesn't even need to be on a dragon at all since he contributes barely anything to its combat)
THe battle was set up in such a way to get the maximum action, not in any way that the characters would realistically choose. It's bad writing at its finest and you don't need to be a military strategist to see it
2) The problem with Bran is not that we expected him to ex-machina the battle....but that there is no explained reason as to why the NK prioritizes him int he first place. He's literally a glorified drone with spoiler powers. The whole "the NK wants to destroy all memory" is just a flimsy excuse to make all this work since the NK is a pooorly written villain in the first place. You're basically giving them a free pass for the plot hole they themselves set up in the first place
3) you don#t seem to understand what plot armour is. It's not about whether this was the time to kill off characters, it'S about constructing the story in such a way where certain characters end up in a situation where they should die when clearly you don't want them to. The battle could have been written in such a way where the main characters were not in such obviously lethal situations all the time, but they didn't because no effort was put into a coherent flow. There could have been several ways where the characters could have just been put into situations where they just fought from a defensible position instead of literally being surrounded by zombies and still not dying despite the power of the hoard that was previously established. Even worse at some point literally the only living people are the main characters which makes the whole scene look ridiculous.
Just because you are able to ignore the obvious stupidity doesn't mean it's acceptable.
4) while I concede that Arya is the best choice to murder the NK it's not set up at all, doesn't feel earned (she literally didn't even know about the guy before she came to Winterfell) and overall just makes it seem like this is some fanfiction-tier wish fulfillment. I like Arya as a character, but the main thing about her was that she had this crazy journey all on her own and fought her own battles. She was kind of the counterpart to Sansa who was constantly in the spotlight, while Arya herself was living her life in the shadows. Both went through insane struggles in their own way....and now Arya just saves the day, Leeroy Jenkins style.
5) this is probably the worst part about it all. After this entirely pointless detour (since the NK is not the ultimate bad guy after all) all that really happened was Dany'S forces being nerfed after we've established before that Cersei never had a chance against her. Now we're back at a point were the good guys face impossible odds which will most likely lead to some ex-machina bullshit instead of the clever political and military strategizing that the series began as.
Whether you enjoyed this dumpsterfire is irrelevant. This is objectively poorly written and is so far detached from what GoT used to be that the only reason why it's not considered an insult to the fans, the books and just the general concept of storytelling itself is because this downward spiral has bee set up for the last 3 seasons anyways.
Enjoy it if you can, but stop trying to defend bad writing with flimsy excuses. It's people like you that let Hollywood writers get away with the bare minimum because "I was entertained, so really, they didn#t need to try anyways"
I tried having fun once. It was awful.
there is a difference between subverting tropes and pulling a 180 just because. All that was established is that Arya iss a murdergoblin with ninja powers...which works against humans. The whole point of the NK was that he is this unstoppable evil that works outside of known rules...but insstead he ended up being just a regular bad guy who can easily be outsmarted by the power of plot convenience.
Like, I expected they'd just rip off World of Warcraft and have Bran become the new Night King who retreats back beyond the wall and reamins there forever...like a Bolvar situation....but no, I guess my expectations where still way too high.
It's about as "subversive" as if at the end of Avengers Thanos just has a heart attack and that'S it. Like...sure, you wouldn't see it coming, even if there were implications he had heart problems...but at the end it would feel terribly anti climactic and leave you unsatisfied.
If they wanted to do a real subversion they'd actually have the final encounter between Jon and the NK, but Jon actually just gets killed and then we have Arya as the unlikely hero. That's would be a twist that incorporated previously established elements.
Right now it's just Arya fanfiction.
I tried having fun once. It was awful.
it's mostly George R. R: Martins fault to be honest. The series was great when they were strictly adapting his material, but after they weren#t able to do that anymore and he basically to this day refuses to actually finish his magnum opus (because I guess he got bored or something?) they had to fill in the blanks with what they were given and still make a compelling story without the benefits of having Martin basically screenwrite for them....and that's whn you get garbage like this.
I tried having fun once. It was awful.