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"
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"
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.
Spoiler answer to your spoiler question regarding big difference between books and show:
There is no Night King in the books (at least not yet). In the books there is a legend about a “Night’s King” (see apostrophe!) who lived hundreds of years earlier. According to the legend, he was a commander of the Night’s Watch that had a romance with a woman having white skin and blue eyes. They ruled together at the wall and committed atrocities (including making sacrifices to the white walkers) for some time until they were overthrown by a combined force of wildlings and Northmen. That's it. He never appears as a character in the book. All this stuff about converting babies to white walkers, about killing all other wights and walkers by killing him, it's all made up by the show writers, not GRRM. The creation myth is also wrong in the show. In the show, the children of the forest created the Night King and the walkers to fight humans that were invading their land, but the walkers turned on them. In the books (well actually in the extra lore materials GRRM has published between books) the white walkers first appeared during a time of peace between the children of the forest and the first men. Though, so little has been written about their origin in the books, its possible the truth could be closer to what's in the show.
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.
When Bran said to Theon " I'<wbr />m going to go now" and then did his warg thing with ravens, I thought for sure he's going for some help. Maybe some unexpected reinforcements, like wild animals coming from the woods and attacking those WW that stayed in the back. But no, he simply wanted to check out on his boy NK, that's all.
I fucking loved episode 3, I did not see that coming at all.
My only complaint is that the rest of the series finale might be a let down/anticlimactic since the battle against the NK has kind of been the most important plot point of the whole show. What are they going to do now? Spend the last three episodes wrapping up Cercei's storyline?
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Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.
I fucking loved all 3 episodes and the previous two seasons. I feel like the first 5 seasons, filled with drudgery and horror, were required to make the end satisfying. But ultimately, you want to root for someone.
I fucking loved episode 3, I did not see that coming at all.
My only complaint is that the rest of the series finale might be a let down/anticlimactic since the battle against the NK has kind of been the most important plot point of the whole show. What are they going to do now? Spend the last three episodes wrapping up Cercei's storyline?
I was talking with my buddy and they're going to have to do a little bit of goofy writing to make this exciting, like bringing the armies together when the best course of action is starve the city with your dragons, decimate the naval fleet, then let the city turn on Cersei in their desperation when those supply lines fail. Stannis almost accomplished that with just boats, so why not with two dragons?
So now the final fight here has to be a forced head-on confrontation, because a war of attrition is wiser, but incredibly boring in light of "We just watched humanity saved from eternal winter," which topped the Battle of the Bastards in scope, intensity, and desperation, not to mention importance. Why waste that big season 8 budget on "starve her out of the throne" when you have dragons, a dire wolf, and an army so diverse it's barely passable as symbolic for being so on the nose.
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Rage quitting: the best way to ensure your opponent knows they beat a giant baby.
The episode was quite entretaining despite the poor lighting, but there wasn't any emotional moment, since no important character died.
That said, I'm really glad the Night King died. I liked the White Walkers when they were just a looming threat, but once they gained importance, the whole thing became a bit stupid. The show became a fight of good vs evil, and it stoped being about politics and palace plots (you people talk about season 5, but I think the quality drop only happened in season 7, when the Night King became the main villain)
I'm looking forward to see what does Danenerys do now that she knows who Jon really is.
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"
You come off as... well, an ass.
does that make my points any less valid?
no?
then I don#t care
I admire your effort friend. People do not want to accept any kind of criticism for the terrible path the writing has gone down. It's one of those things that happen in the entertainment industry - From somewhere voices keep saying "this product is great/this performer is funny and talented" etc and we're just supposed to go along with those notions even though even giving the product or performer one glimpse, you notice several flaws.
Game of Thrones is under that protected category now. You cannot critisise it if you have any sort of following and any voice talking about it in the mainstream is only saying positive things about, of course it only being shallow praise, nothing detailed.
In reality of course, the show has destroyed any depths the characters have, any depth the overarching plot had and have degenerated into a state where it is telling and not showing. It's telling you certain characters have certain traits and that they are brave and smart and whatever, even though previous seasons have shown it to be the exact opposite. It doesn't matter anymore, now this season we demand it to be so and so the characters will be change to fit it.
You can say you didn't like the episode. In fact, I do agree with you in most of the points. However, personally attacking Shadows and telling him he has no clue... that's not OK.
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"
You come off as... well, an ass.
does that make my points any less valid?
no?
then I don#t care
I admire your effort friend. People do not want to accept any kind of criticism for the terrible path the writing has gone down. It's one of those things that happen in the entertainment industry - From somewhere voices keep saying "this product is great/this performer is funny and talented" etc and we're just supposed to go along with those notions even though even giving the product or performer one glimpse, you notice several flaws.
Game of Thrones is under that protected category now. You cannot critisise it if you have any sort of following and any voice talking about it in the mainstream is only saying positive things about, of course it only being shallow praise, nothing detailed.
In reality of course, the show has destroyed any depths the characters have, any depth the overarching plot had and have degenerated into a state where it is telling and not showing. It's telling you certain characters have certain traits and that they are brave and smart and whatever, even though previous seasons have shown it to be the exact opposite. It doesn't matter anymore, now this season we demand it to be so and so the characters will be change to fit it.
Read my post again, friend. Didn't defend any part of the show, the episode, etc.
Folks can disagree and not be complete tool bags about it; that's all I was speaking to. Whether he liked the show or not, I don't care. I was speaking to his method of delivery, which outs him as something of a... well. Just read it. Self-righteous? Check. Smug? Check. Condescending? Check.
The discussion about tactics was amusing, though, because a 21st century armchair general denizen of the internet... on a computer card game's message board... is talking about the medieval warfare tactics in a fictitious tv show like he's the second coming of some feudal Japanese Daimyo.
Yes, please, Yourprivatenightmare. Tell us all about the placement of troops and the strategy that you would have employed in such a scenario, that would have been so much more effective. ~sigh~
Dothraki dying was kind of useful for Dany in the long run. Good luck importing hundreds of rapists into your realm and getting them to change their ways. There's a very easy joke I can make here about real life events, but for the sake of Hearthpwn, I won't.
I also liked the Night King's acting. Seriously, the actor just nails that merciless look. You can see it in his every move.
We actually got to see Daenerys and Arya Stark losing at something. It wasn't much, but for once seeing those smug characters afraid made me actually kind of root for them. I actually felt sorry for Dany when Drogon was under attack, and she's a character I despise.
I also liked seeing the Unsullied a bit afraid. It's impressive to see slaves bred to be utterly fearless still cracking at the sight of the Night King's army. Goes to show how terrifying it is.
Lyanna Mormont got to show us she is more than a little girl who talks shit by killing an undead giant. It's a pretty badass way to go IMO, and she redeemed herself for being annoying to my eyes.
Oh, and we got to see Arya using skills that she'd actually learn among the Faceless Men. Like sneaking and stealth in general. It wasn't very long, but that scene makes 1000 times more sense than any of her combat ones. I also liked how it was filmed, actually.
Jorah shielding Dany with his body was kind of cute. And Emilia Clarke managed to show a lot more emotion when he died than for Viserion.
Jon was hilariously useless in this fight. This wasn't supposed to be a good thing, but I just found it funny.
And there were three major things I disliked, especially in the second half of the episode.
First and foremost, I'll say it: no single "important" character died here. This was basically a dump for non-main characters to trick us into believing there were high stakes. Okay, two armies were primarily wiped out, but think about it, very few relevant characters died. Lyanna, Edd, Beric, Jorah and Melisandre had their importance severely lowered by now. The almost exception was Theon, whose story arc concluded upon his death and redemption. C'mon! Kill off a Stark or two? Tyrion? Brienne? Another dragon? I mean I cared a lot about some of the characters that died, but you'd really pull at your audience's heartstrings if one of the fan-favorites got axed.
Now it's time to say what I dislike the most: the Lord of Light's role in this battle. Are you serious?! This is the most powerful divine entity in Westeros, perhaps the only one too. He brings people back from the dead, he imbues his priests and priestesses with incredible powers and he has shown multiple signs that he can see into the future (albeit trickily). And Azor Ahai's prophecy goes down the drain. No shining sword, neither Jon nor Beric (the two proteges of the Lord of Light) kill the NK and his incredibly powerful priestess does relatively little to stop the enemies in the dark. Heck, what was Beric's purpose?! You get resurrected multiple times to escort two people?! Why couldn't Beric kill the NK and maybe die afterwards? His touch is clearly dangerous, maybe that alone could kill someone and give them a much more graceful death. Even Jon would have been better, and he is bland as hell. Or Dany, she was also theorized about being Azor Ahai.
I suppose I've already given clues that I do not like how Arya was the one who killed the NK. Okay, it could have been worse. The knife hand switch has at least been foreshadowed before... But still, what the hell does Arya have to do with this? It felt... off. I don't know how I would write it if I had to make the NK reach Bran, but I wouldn't have had Arya kill him, for sure.
Still, I am... shockingly not that upset at this episode. I still think this season has been better than 5, 6 or 7 so far. It's probably because I didn't wince at the dialogue too much yet (let's not forget Dorne or season 7 meta-shipping), but it felt... alright!
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
I enjoyed the episode, but a lot of criticism I read is quite fair.
I wanted to add one thing:
I think they went the wrong way to end the show - it would (probably) feel more satisfying and appropriate for this episode to be the last one, with Cersei defeat first. Jon and Dany would decide to meet NK in Winterfell in order not to let him slaughter 2/3 of Westeros before arriving in King's Landing with an enormous force. That could also mean more meaningful and emotional moments during that battle. Thing is - from the start it's implied NK is the greatest villian, it kinda looks now like it's Cersei.
If only Hearthstone had the depth, diversity and versatility of GOT...the whining about episode 3 says it all. Hearthstone is for the simple minded. Episode was an intellectual and cinematographic masterpiece.
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ep 3 was letdown af. They fucked up, most characters did shit, plot saved heroes. Only person, that should have never killed NK is Arya. Jon was disappointing. It was epic, but that ep was bad. Everyone who says else, lies.
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"
You come off as... well, an ass.
does that make my points any less valid?
no?
then I don#t care
I admire your effort friend. People do not want to accept any kind of criticism for the terrible path the writing has gone down. It's one of those things that happen in the entertainment industry - From somewhere voices keep saying "this product is great/this performer is funny and talented" etc and we're just supposed to go along with those notions even though even giving the product or performer one glimpse, you notice several flaws.
Game of Thrones is under that protected category now. You cannot critisise it if you have any sort of following and any voice talking about it in the mainstream is only saying positive things about, of course it only being shallow praise, nothing detailed.
In reality of course, the show has destroyed any depths the characters have, any depth the overarching plot had and have degenerated into a state where it is telling and not showing. It's telling you certain characters have certain traits and that they are brave and smart and whatever, even though previous seasons have shown it to be the exact opposite. It doesn't matter anymore, now this season we demand it to be so and so the characters will be change to fit it.
I actually feel the opposite to be honest. GOT at the start was about a bunch of despicable people doing awful things to each other. Which, to be fair, is somewhat what life can be like. But the way it was handled in the earlier seasons was like a soap opera. Some of the characters (let's be honest, the ones who survived), are growing or showing different facets of themselves.
I agree. I hated the last episode. Everything has lost its meaning now. The end could have been beautiful, they all had to die during the last few episodes.
This in my opinion had to be the meaning of the series. Useless power games, quarrel over a throne, as opposed to the imminent apocalypse.
Inability of men to ally in the face of the imminent apocalypse, extermination.
This would have been a true parable of life, which would have given meaning to the whole series.
But no, A little girl jumped and it's all worked out, how boring.
The white walkers had to be a punishment for human stupidity, for the futile things in life. Something invincible that destroys everything without mercy.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
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You come off as... well, an ass.
does that make my points any less valid?
no?
then I don#t care
I tried having fun once. It was awful.
Spoiler answer to your spoiler question regarding big difference between books and show:
There is no Night King in the books (at least not yet). In the books there is a legend about a “Night’s King” (see apostrophe!) who lived hundreds of years earlier. According to the legend, he was a commander of the Night’s Watch that had a romance with a woman having white skin and blue eyes. They ruled together at the wall and committed atrocities (including making sacrifices to the white walkers) for some time until they were overthrown by a combined force of wildlings and Northmen. That's it. He never appears as a character in the book. All this stuff about converting babies to white walkers, about killing all other wights and walkers by killing him, it's all made up by the show writers, not GRRM. The creation myth is also wrong in the show. In the show, the children of the forest created the Night King and the walkers to fight humans that were invading their land, but the walkers turned on them. In the books (well actually in the extra lore materials GRRM has published between books) the white walkers first appeared during a time of peace between the children of the forest and the first men. Though, so little has been written about their origin in the books, its possible the truth could be closer to what's in the show.
When Bran said to Theon " I'<wbr />m going to go now" and then did his warg thing with ravens, I thought for sure he's going for some help. Maybe some unexpected reinforcements, like wild animals coming from the woods and attacking those WW that stayed in the back. But no, he simply wanted to check out on his boy NK, that's all.
In death, I exact my revenge!
I fucking loved episode 3, I did not see that coming at all.
My only complaint is that the rest of the series finale might be a let down/anticlimactic since the battle against the NK has kind of been the most important plot point of the whole show. What are they going to do now? Spend the last three episodes wrapping up Cercei's storyline?
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I fucking loved all 3 episodes and the previous two seasons. I feel like the first 5 seasons, filled with drudgery and horror, were required to make the end satisfying. But ultimately, you want to root for someone.
I was talking with my buddy and they're going to have to do a little bit of goofy writing to make this exciting, like bringing the armies together when the best course of action is starve the city with your dragons, decimate the naval fleet, then let the city turn on Cersei in their desperation when those supply lines fail. Stannis almost accomplished that with just boats, so why not with two dragons?
So now the final fight here has to be a forced head-on confrontation, because a war of attrition is wiser, but incredibly boring in light of "We just watched humanity saved from eternal winter," which topped the Battle of the Bastards in scope, intensity, and desperation, not to mention importance. Why waste that big season 8 budget on "starve her out of the throne" when you have dragons, a dire wolf, and an army so diverse it's barely passable as symbolic for being so on the nose.
Rage quitting: the best way to ensure your opponent knows they beat a giant baby.
I didn't love or hate the episode. Reasons below:
The episode was quite entretaining despite the poor lighting, but there wasn't any emotional moment, since no important character died.
That said, I'm really glad the Night King died. I liked the White Walkers when they were just a looming threat, but once they gained importance, the whole thing became a bit stupid. The show became a fight of good vs evil, and it stoped being about politics and palace plots (you people talk about season 5, but I think the quality drop only happened in season 7, when the Night King became the main villain)
I'm looking forward to see what does Danenerys do now that she knows who Jon really is.
I admire your effort friend. People do not want to accept any kind of criticism for the terrible path the writing has gone down. It's one of those things that happen in the entertainment industry - From somewhere voices keep saying "this product is great/this performer is funny and talented" etc and we're just supposed to go along with those notions even though even giving the product or performer one glimpse, you notice several flaws.
Game of Thrones is under that protected category now. You cannot critisise it if you have any sort of following and any voice talking about it in the mainstream is only saying positive things about, of course it only being shallow praise, nothing detailed.
In reality of course, the show has destroyed any depths the characters have, any depth the overarching plot had and have degenerated into a state where it is telling and not showing. It's telling you certain characters have certain traits and that they are brave and smart and whatever, even though previous seasons have shown it to be the exact opposite. It doesn't matter anymore, now this season we demand it to be so and so the characters will be change to fit it.
You can say you didn't like the episode. In fact, I do agree with you in most of the points. However, personally attacking Shadows and telling him he has no clue... that's not OK.
Read my post again, friend. Didn't defend any part of the show, the episode, etc.
Folks can disagree and not be complete tool bags about it; that's all I was speaking to. Whether he liked the show or not, I don't care. I was speaking to his method of delivery, which outs him as something of a... well. Just read it. Self-righteous? Check. Smug? Check. Condescending? Check.
The discussion about tactics was amusing, though, because a 21st century armchair general denizen of the internet... on a computer card game's message board... is talking about the medieval warfare tactics in a fictitious tv show like he's the second coming of some feudal Japanese Daimyo.
Yes, please, Yourprivatenightmare. Tell us all about the placement of troops and the strategy that you would have employed in such a scenario, that would have been so much more effective. ~sigh~
Your entitled to your opinion and so is the rest of the world.
You can not like it, but to say something as definitive? Only makes you sound kind of tilted.
I actually liked a few things about this episode.
Dothraki dying was kind of useful for Dany in the long run. Good luck importing hundreds of rapists into your realm and getting them to change their ways. There's a very easy joke I can make here about real life events, but for the sake of Hearthpwn, I won't.
I also liked the Night King's acting. Seriously, the actor just nails that merciless look. You can see it in his every move.
We actually got to see Daenerys and Arya Stark losing at something. It wasn't much, but for once seeing those smug characters afraid made me actually kind of root for them. I actually felt sorry for Dany when Drogon was under attack, and she's a character I despise.
I also liked seeing the Unsullied a bit afraid. It's impressive to see slaves bred to be utterly fearless still cracking at the sight of the Night King's army. Goes to show how terrifying it is.
Lyanna Mormont got to show us she is more than a little girl who talks shit by killing an undead giant. It's a pretty badass way to go IMO, and she redeemed herself for being annoying to my eyes.
Oh, and we got to see Arya using skills that she'd actually learn among the Faceless Men. Like sneaking and stealth in general. It wasn't very long, but that scene makes 1000 times more sense than any of her combat ones. I also liked how it was filmed, actually.
Jorah shielding Dany with his body was kind of cute. And Emilia Clarke managed to show a lot more emotion when he died than for Viserion.
Jon was hilariously useless in this fight. This wasn't supposed to be a good thing, but I just found it funny.
And there were three major things I disliked, especially in the second half of the episode.
First and foremost, I'll say it: no single "important" character died here. This was basically a dump for non-main characters to trick us into believing there were high stakes. Okay, two armies were primarily wiped out, but think about it, very few relevant characters died. Lyanna, Edd, Beric, Jorah and Melisandre had their importance severely lowered by now. The almost exception was Theon, whose story arc concluded upon his death and redemption. C'mon! Kill off a Stark or two? Tyrion? Brienne? Another dragon? I mean I cared a lot about some of the characters that died, but you'd really pull at your audience's heartstrings if one of the fan-favorites got axed.
Now it's time to say what I dislike the most: the Lord of Light's role in this battle. Are you serious?! This is the most powerful divine entity in Westeros, perhaps the only one too. He brings people back from the dead, he imbues his priests and priestesses with incredible powers and he has shown multiple signs that he can see into the future (albeit trickily). And Azor Ahai's prophecy goes down the drain. No shining sword, neither Jon nor Beric (the two proteges of the Lord of Light) kill the NK and his incredibly powerful priestess does relatively little to stop the enemies in the dark. Heck, what was Beric's purpose?! You get resurrected multiple times to escort two people?! Why couldn't Beric kill the NK and maybe die afterwards? His touch is clearly dangerous, maybe that alone could kill someone and give them a much more graceful death. Even Jon would have been better, and he is bland as hell. Or Dany, she was also theorized about being Azor Ahai.
I suppose I've already given clues that I do not like how Arya was the one who killed the NK. Okay, it could have been worse. The knife hand switch has at least been foreshadowed before... But still, what the hell does Arya have to do with this? It felt... off. I don't know how I would write it if I had to make the NK reach Bran, but I wouldn't have had Arya kill him, for sure.
Still, I am... shockingly not that upset at this episode. I still think this season has been better than 5, 6 or 7 so far. It's probably because I didn't wince at the dialogue too much yet (let's not forget Dorne or season 7 meta-shipping), but it felt... alright!
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
Third episode was insane
I enjoyed the episode, but a lot of criticism I read is quite fair.
I wanted to add one thing:
I think they went the wrong way to end the show - it would (probably) feel more satisfying and appropriate for this episode to be the last one, with Cersei defeat first. Jon and Dany would decide to meet NK in Winterfell in order not to let him slaughter 2/3 of Westeros before arriving in King's Landing with an enormous force. That could also mean more meaningful and emotional moments during that battle. Thing is - from the start it's implied NK is the greatest villian, it kinda looks now like it's Cersei.
If only Hearthstone had the depth, diversity and versatility of GOT...the whining about episode 3 says it all. Hearthstone is for the simple minded. Episode was an intellectual and cinematographic masterpiece.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
ep 3 was letdown af. They fucked up, most characters did shit, plot saved heroes. Only person, that should have never killed NK is Arya. Jon was disappointing. It was epic, but that ep was bad. Everyone who says else, lies.
I actually feel the opposite to be honest. GOT at the start was about a bunch of despicable people doing awful things to each other. Which, to be fair, is somewhat what life can be like. But the way it was handled in the earlier seasons was like a soap opera. Some of the characters (let's be honest, the ones who survived), are growing or showing different facets of themselves.
I agree. I hated the last episode. Everything has lost its meaning now. The end could have been beautiful, they all had to die during the last few episodes.
This in my opinion had to be the meaning of the series. Useless power games, quarrel over a throne, as opposed to the imminent apocalypse.
Inability of men to ally in the face of the imminent apocalypse, extermination.
This would have been a true parable of life, which would have given meaning to the whole series.
But no, A little girl jumped and it's all worked out, how boring.
The white walkers had to be a punishment for human stupidity, for the futile things in life. Something invincible that destroys everything without mercy.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished