I really enjoyed the episode, but I think I liked the big battle less than most here.
All the Dany/Tyrion scenes were great. I loved the fact that they were both trying to out-cool the other one: [paraphrase] “I’m trying to decide whether to have you killed.” “Yeah? Well I’m trying to decide if I give a shit about you.” “I have deigned to let you live.” “I suppose I could suffer to allow myself to serve you.”
I’m really looking forward to seeing more interactions between the two of them in future episodes. The only thing that made me wince was Tyrion’s suggestion that Dany re-exile Jorah. Don’t get me wrong, I REALLY liked that Dany’s first “test” of Tyrion was seeing whether some unknown friendship with Mormont would trump good advice to here, but I think Tyrion is better than that advice. He should have suggested public exile but some private duty like spying for her in the outer cities.
Arya’s training as a secret agent/assassin was cool to watch. It compressed like half a book’s worth of stuff into five minutes, which I would say is bad… but we’ll see how they handle it.
Sansa’s confrontation with Theon seemed like an odd choice for the episode, but I gather that they are rushing to stuff a lot of stuff into the next few weeks. At least she knows her younger brothers are OK. That might be the only glimmer of hope about her family that Sansa has received since Robb died, right?
The Cersei stuff was cool. Her being brought low in the dungeon, the hulking Septa, Qyburn telling her that she’s basically been replaced back in the Red Keep, etc. Lena Headey is just great.
The scene with Sam and Gilly might have seemed like a throwaway, and someone upthread expressed exasperation with Olly repeatedly whining about the Wildlings, but…
My theory is…
My theory is that Olly will be the one that stabs Jon in the back in the final episode of this season, not Thorne or some other random Watchman. They’re just making sure that we know that it doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Finally, the big battle.
Rattleshirt is dead. It was cool that they took him out this way (he was kind of a loose thread), and it was great to show that Tormond was not going to take any crap.
The council was pretty cool; I liked how some were swayed and not others. My wife pegged the female Wildling chief as the main female villain from Pitch Perfect 2… I wish I had such an eye for faces. I agree that they telegraphed her death from ten miles away with the goodbye to the two kids, and that’s a damned shame because they could have teased us with another Ygritte-type love interest before snatching her away. Ah well.
The zombies… eh. Some might know from other threads that I adore zombie movies/shows/books/whatever. I mean, to an unhealthy degree. So when the battle started, my wife turned to me and said, “Well here you go; this is now your ultimate show.”
Yeah, sort of. But zombies only work when there is some kind of consistency, and there was basically none here. How do you “kill” one of these things? I have no idea: Sometimes they went down when someone hacked into their belly. Sometimes they didn’t seem to mind not having internal organs. Sometimes they went down when shot with an arrow in the head. Sometimes they had an arrow sticking through what appeared to be an empty skull. Sometimes they die when a giant crushes them. Sometimes they jump off a massive cliff and are fine.
Basically, the zombies went down when a main/supporting character needed them to and not otherwise. I find that annoying.
What DID work for me was the White Walker battle. I loved the shattering of weapons and the otherworldly calm the creature emanated. Why was he in the middle of the battle when the numberless hordes of undead were doing fine and all his buddies were still on the hill? That I don’t care about.
The sound was great too. I’ll have to go back and watch it again, but there was one sequence where the walkers were introduced or the undead were jumping off the cliff or something, and all the music and sound effects went wonky in an eerie way; I thought that was a great effect. Unless it was just my HBO feed getting screwed up. In which case it was STILL cool.
And the final scene where the lead walker raised all the Wildling dead in what was apparently a largely effortless gesture… wonderful. As said above, it really brought the core threat to the GoT world home. Nice.
