Game of Thrones Season 8

[huskypantz]

I think the gist of the night king is that he’s a simple personality. He’s an evil being with a singular purpose- build an army to take over the world. He considers himself invincible. There’s no strategy because he thinks he doesn’t need them. His methods are to attack, kill, raise dead, rinse and repeat. It worked except for the fact that his overconfidence was eventually his undoing.

 

[Fishy]

My wife complained about the clarity, but I thought it was a nice touch. Gave a truer sense of how chaotic and confusing the battle was for the living, and it amped up the anxiety of the situation.

Generally, I’d agree, but it was almost a radio broadcast for a while there.

 

[jleves]

Completely disappointed in this episode. Way too dark. I get that it's night and you want to express the fog of war, but at least let me see who is fighting who. Having 30+ minutes of soldiers charging into soldiers with no idea who is who was ridiculous.

Totally not GOATs to have nobody really important die in such an epic battle which was ridiculous. I wonder if most of the main character have clauses in their contracts not to die before the final or penultimate episode.

While I'm not surprised at all that killing the Knight King would end the battle, they could have done that way better.

I'm not even going to bother with Arya being able to kill one after another on the ramparts while she had her weapon and others had trouble with one or two at a time.

I just can't believe they got done shooting this episode and thought - 'yeah, we nailed it.'

How do you build up to all this and end it in such a ridiculous episode.

Skip one of the build up episodes and make the battle a couple episodes and add some interest.

I think HBO has a need to end this wrapped up and happy as possible to make the show like every other show. Happy endings.

Should have been so much better.

I'll get off the porch now.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Completely disappointed in this episode. Way too dark. I get that it's night and you want to express the fog of war, but at least let me see who is fighting who. Having 30+ minutes of soldiers charging into soldiers with no idea who is who was ridiculous.

Totally not GOATs to have nobody really important die in such an epic battle which was ridiculous. I wonder if most of the main character have clauses in their contracts not to die before the final or penultimate episode.

While I'm not surprised at all that killing the Knight King would end the battle, they could have done that way better.

I'm not even going to bother with Arya being able to kill one after another on the ramparts while she had her weapon and others had trouble with one or two at a time.

I just can't believe they got done shooting this episode and thought - 'yeah, we nailed it.'

How do you build up to all this and end it in such a ridiculous episode.

Skip one of the build up episodes and make the battle a couple episodes and add some interest.

I think HBO has a need to end this wrapped up and happy as possible to make the show like every other show. Happy endings.

Should have been so much better.

I'll get off the porch now.

They couldn't do a two episode battle scene. It is a very long battle scene as is.

 

[Fishy]

They couldn't do a two episode battle scene. It is a very long battle scene as is.

Yep.

It was damned near an Avengers movie for well over an hour.

 

[Horatio]

I guess they were supposed to fight the “Night” King on a sunny day at noon.

 

[Mots010]

You may have a bit more luck today with the darkness, especially if you streamed it.
Was Last Night's ‘Game of Thrones’ Too Dark, or Does Your Screen Suck?

 

[Deadrody]

Wanted to reflect for a bit before responding.

Don't the writers feel any need to explain what a terrible general Jon Snow is? He sends the entire Dothraki army to its death in the first 5 minutes of the battle, when the plan all along was to light a trench on fire and then hide in Winterfell. If that was the plan, why were they bringing civilians into Winterfell rather than sending them South as fast as they could? Why wasn't everyone inside the trench line? Why wasn't the whole field set on fire somehow? Given that the ultimate plan actually worked, why was there a need to sacrifice so many others unnecessarily.

I would have liked if there was more ebb and flow to the battle, instead of a one way beatdown that was saved by Arya at the last second. I would have liked some one-on-one battles between White Walkers and major characters. About 30 minutes into the episode, the overwhelming beatdown left only two potential outcomes to the battle: 1) The survivors of the battle escape to the South and join up with Cersei to fight the dead, or 2) some crazy deus ex machina moment happens at the end of the episode to defeat the Night King and the dead. The first choice would have been more interesting.

My biggest problem with the episode is that the Night King is defeated and we never hear from him about what he really wanted or why he did this. A huge part of the plot of the series, starting from the opening moments of the first episode, is resolved with "they are just evil". I was hoping for something more interesting.

Right. Because HBO writers know what makes or doesn't make a good general

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Right. Because HBO writers know what makes or doesn't make a good general

Do you have any idea how much research goes into writing a good script? If not, don't post on the topic.

 

[ColchVEGAS]

I think the gist of the night king is that he’s a simple personality. He’s an evil being with a singular purpose- build an army to take over the world. He considers himself invincible. There’s no strategy because he thinks he doesn’t need them. His methods are to attack, kill, raise dead, rinse and repeat. It worked except for the fact that his overconfidence was eventually his undoing.

Surprised nobody else mentioned this. Everybody seems to be attacking the Night King for his poor plan after years of building an army, but he has always been extremely cocky in battles and was never a master thinker.

Also, Dany may have lost a good chunk of her army, but she still has Daario and the Second Sons in Meereen and for sure he would love to reunite with Dany and battle Cersei or Jon Snow to put Dany on the Iron Throne.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Throughout both the show and the books, the better generals do not typically win out. Robb Stark, Tywin, Stannis, Robert, and later on, Randall Tarly, were all top military leaders, and all ultimately lost. In the books, Tywin said something to the effect of more wars are won with the quill than with the sword.

I don't know if they will ever address how terrible the plan was for the Battle of Winterfell given that their are only 3 episodes left and they won the battle.

 

[Scalito]

Do you have any idea how much research goes into writing a good script? If not, don't post on the topic.

Lol

 

[Deepster]

Surprised nobody else mentioned this. Everybody seems to be attacking the Night King for his poor plan after years of building an army, but he has always been extremely cocky in battles and was never a master thinker.

Also, Dany may have lost a good chunk of her army, but she still has Daario and the Second Sons in Meereen and for sure he would love to reunite with Dany and battle Cersei or Jon Snow to put Dany on the Iron Throne.

Any shot Yara (or someone else) is off rounding up forces from Dorne? They hate the Lannisters.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I think the gist of the night king is that he’s a simple personality. He’s an evil being with a singular purpose- build an army to take over the world. He considers himself invincible. There’s no strategy because he thinks he doesn’t need them. His methods are to attack, kill, raise dead, rinse and repeat. It worked except for the fact that his overconfidence was eventually his undoing.

That would be a completely logical explanation if the Night King or Sam or someone explained it. We have no idea.

Giving the main characters motivation is Writing 101, yet the Night King has none. If you were a sophomore at UConn in a creative writing course and wrote a 10 page short story where the antagonist has no motivation, you would get a "C" if you were lucky and it was otherwise well written.

 

[crazyUCfan23]

Was just reading something that suggests Bran is actually the Lord of Light. Basically, it says that the followers of the Lord of Light believe that he is always at war with his great enemy (aka the Night King) and Bran shares similar abilities with the Night King. when he was warging during the battle, he could've been helping to manipulate events to ensure that everything would fall into place so Arya could kill the Night King. On this same token, Jon and Beric are technically wights, but they were reanimated by fire, not ice. They both played an integral in helping arya defeat the Night King, hence why Melisandre was always saying they've been brought back for a purpose, which was evidently to help Arya kill the night king. If all this is true, if Bran dies, does that mean Jon dies as well?

 

[Drumguy]

I'm not even going to bother with Arya being able to kill one after another on the ramparts while she had her weapon and others had trouble with one or two at a time.

The books better portrayed Arya's training as a faceless assassin - was probably one of the more creative parts of GRRMs books - her evolution in becoming one. She is a BadAss character. I liked the portrayal on the ramparts as she mowed down the zombies!

imho her ability to face shift and get through the white walkers was a creative use of her storyline.

My problem with the battle was Jon was lost and all over the place and then at the penultimate moment, hiding behind debris and whimpering at the blue flame dragon.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Arya and the Waif's fight in the streets of Bravos foreshadowed what Arya was capable of in combat. The Waif and Arya were jumping from building to building and dropping 2 stories on leaps. The writers had already used the "leap out of the background" when the Waif jumped off a building to get Arya in that fight 2 seasons ago.

 

[ZooCougar]

You may have a bit more luck today with the darkness, especially if you streamed it.
Was Last Night's ‘Game of Thrones’ Too Dark, or Does Your Screen Suck?

HBO needs to get in touch with the Silicon Valley firm “Pied Piper” for some middle out compression.

 

[intlzncster]

imho her ability to face shift and get through the white walkers was a creative use of her storyline.

There was no face shifting going on with Arya at the end. She merely snuck up on the proceedings. They foreshadowed that all episode long.

 

[Mike75]

I'm interested to see how they get Dany's army down to Kings Landing. The forces loyal to her are pretty much gone, save for a few unsullied. The remaining Northerners have no loyalty to her and can't be too excited to march 1000 miles south in the wake of this battle. Plus, Cersei is no direct threat to them, so why not stay in the North? Maybe she marries Jon to get them behind her? Just seems like a pretty difficult sell at this point.

On the PQ, I watched it again on HBO Go last night on my calibrated 4k LED TV and had no issues with the darkness. Much better than the PQ on my 10 year old plasma.

 

[Drumguy]

There was no face shifting going on with Arya at the end. She merely snuck up on the proceedings. They foreshadowed that all episode long.

I initially thought the same but thinking about it, we didn't see her sneaking up, all we saw was a white walkers hair move, and the likelihood of her sneaking through the zombie hordes as herself is small. The only way she could have gotten there unseen is as a faceshifter.

 

[intlzncster]

I initially thought the same but thinking about it, we didn't see her sneaking up, all we saw was a white walkers hair move, and the likelihood of her sneaking through the zombie hordes as herself is small. The only way she could have gotten there unseen is as a faceshifter.

She snuck up on Jon in the God's wood. In the middle of the day. She snuck away from the White Walker in the Library when she was dripping blood. They showed these scenes for a reason. And yes the hair moving thing is important.

We didn't see her sneaking because that would have ruined the moment at the end. We didn't see her acquire a face or sneak past the White Walkers either.

The problem with your theory is that, her killing a White Walker without anyone noticing (to get his face) is a long shot indeed. It's a mask, not a shift of her own skin. If she were just an undead wight, she would be controlled by the night king, and would not have been running forwards. Also, how/why would she have pull off her mask at the last second? It just doesn't tick enough boxes.

Also, I'm starting to buy into the following theory, as it makes too much sense now. Where Jon jumps out in front of the dragon at the end:

It explains Jon's (seemingly) moronic actions, and dovetails nicely with the Aria scene.

This Small 'GOT' Detail Reveals How Jon Snow Helped Arya Make That Major Kill

As we see the Night King begin slowly advancing towards Bran near the weirwood tree, the show cuts to a scene of Jon Snow hiding under a piece of rubble from the undead dragon Viserion at the edge of Winterfell. Jon looks panicked, but then suddenly leaps up in a burst of energy to face the dragon and screams at it.

It is not entirely clear whether Jon is just screaming in general or screaming a specific word, but fans on Reddit think Jon is screaming "Go!," and you can definitely hear that upon rewatch. This is important because it suggests that Jon is distracting the dragon in order to allow another person to escape it. Only a few seconds after this scene of Jon screaming, we see Arya sneak-attacking the Night King.

All of this paints a picture where Jon Snow spotted Arya near Viserion as she was trying to make her way to the godswood, and to help his little sister out, Jon decided to potentially sacrifice himself by distracting the dragon so Arya could make it to the weirwood tree in time to kill the Night King. Thankfully, Arya was able to make it to her assassination appointment right on time thanks to Jon Snow's dragon-bait distraction, and in turn, she was able to save Jon from Viserion by killing the Night King, which also caused all of his army to crumble with him.

 

[Scalito]

There was no face shifting going on with Arya at the end. She merely snuck up on the proceedings. They foreshadowed that all episode long.

Yeah, they basically beat you over the head with it. If you didn't know Arya was going to kill the Knight King after all the foreshadowing and then the Look John Is Pinned Down and Cannot Be the Savoir stuff, you should never make another movie prediction. The only open question was how is she going to kill the Knight King. Personally, I think it was a little lame the way it happened.

 

[intlzncster]

Yeah, they basically beat you over the head with it. If you didn't know Arya was going to kill the Knight King after all the foreshadowing and then the Look John Is Pinned Down and Cannot Be the Savoir stuff, you should never make another movie prediction. The only open question was how is she going to kill the Knight King.

I posted a fan theory just above. I'm interested to hear if the showrunners will confirm it or not. It's a plausible theory.

 

[Deepster]

Hot theory of the week is Sansa killing Cersei. Arya got the big kill she'd worked for in the Night King. No way they let her get both the big kills (and the schtupping of Gendry) this season.

Lots of plausible past scenes lead to it. Sansa gets the dagger from Arya. Prior mental abuse by Cersei when she was married to Joff. Saying she "learned a lot" from Cersei, assuming on how to be ruthless and cunning. Knowing her "brother" Jon is the rightful heir to that throne.

Can we set up a live feed into Casa de ADub for the next 3 episodes?