The producers have said as much.
That was like five episodes crammed into one.
Fucking crazy!!!
Welp, I guess we can’t complain about having too many characters to keep track of any more.
A very “meh” episode for me. Lots of dramatic moments that were detracted from due to bad writing/character motivations/etc. Cersei has no line, no claim, to the throne, and without a military force she can’t impose herself on it. With all of Robert’s ‘children’ and brothers dead, the realm would call a great council to determine the next ruler, they wouldn’t meekly allow Cersei to plop her butt on it. Especially after committing such an atrocity.
Westeros apparently uses teleportation devices. The entire final scene was ruined because I was taken out of the moment wondering WTF Varys was doing there and how he was introduced to Dany since they’ve yet to meet and why she’d just accept his presence in her court (because I’m doubtful she would). Doubly amusing to listen to D&D carry on about how Tyrion has done such a good job earning her trust right after that scene.
No Wall coming down, and the Bran scene wasn’t explicit. Just cutting away to Jon doesn’t guarantee anything with these asshats, they could just be trolling GRRM and the book fans again (which I wouldn’t put past them at this point). The Tower of Joy scene was very flat for me because of this.
Why kill Pycelle? The reasons are clear in the book, but in the show there’s no real reason for that scene. He’s a Lannister loyalist, served that family well for years, and Cersei could allow him to live out his life after being replaced by Qyburn. This is yet another example of D&D parroting the books without GRRM’s meticulous fore-planning, his attention to detail when it comes to plot and character motivation.
We’ll never know what Margaery had planned, though it was certainly less than I’d hoped for considering she let the heir to Highgarden renounce his rights and be permanently disfigured. Book Loras would’ve cut those fanatic down when they came to arrest him; show Loras meekly allowed himself to be led off by peasants in robes like a weak little puff boy. And daddy, one of the most powerful men of the realm, stood there all helpless as religious fanatics carried out their ritual. Fuck that nonsense.
Setting off the wildfire was so heavily foreshadowed that watching the Great Sept of Baelor go up was almost anticlimactic. The green fire almost looked cartoonish to me. But that scene should’ve been placed toward the end of the episode, since to me the rest couldn’t compare in terms of spectacle.
My Arya prediction is she stole a bag of holding and will produce whatever # of new faces the script requires out of her back pocket over the next two seasons. I really hope GRRM goes with a full-blown Black Wedding rather than merging the Manderlys serving up Frey pie with Arya doing her uber assassin thing.
Yeah but then they don’t really do anything to say how far apart those story lines are… weeks, months. a year… and it looks like they’re merging them but fast forwarding them at different speeds.
The Night King is going to come south, indiscriminately slicing through countless ranks of Westerosi armies, come face to face with Lyanna Mormont and then turn around and go home.
She changed faces a few times last year.
I cant see them doing anything else. They have to play with the time jumps, the show would be impossible to film other wise.
Cersei has a clearer line to the throne than Jamie simply because she was married to Robert and (supposedly) birthed their sons and daughter. Jamie doesn’t have much of a claim, he wasn’t a member of the family (only a cousin by marriage) and besides which was a member of the Kingsguard, thereby not being able to have kingly ambitions or valid offspring.
I forgot to post this the other day but it had been clear for a bit now that they were cleaning house. With shortened seasons coming up, D&D needed to trim all the myriad storylines and characters by quite a bit, and this season they’ve done that in spades. Plus, characters with speaking roles get more and more expensive as they span the seasons. I didn’t think they would go to the extent that they did in the season finale but yeah it certainly ties things up in a lot of areas. Heck they didn’t even have to kill of characters to get rid of them (Daario, Melisandre).
We’re obviously marching towards the end-game now; Dany is finally sailing to Westeros, Jon is King of the North, Bran is fully the Three-Eyed Raven, Winter has come, and Cersei is now childless, a dangerous crazy person at the heart of the Iron Throne. What better way to end a season and wrap all the craziness up? Why would anyone bother complaining???
— Alan
Here’s the thing, though.
If you’re 4/5ths of the way through a big, thick book and everything has suddenly gone to shit, then you know what genre you’re in - a comedy (not the ha-ha kind, the happy ending kind) because you’ve just hit The Reversal, where everything looks bad for a bit in the exciting climax, but works out in the end.
If you’re 4/5ths through and you’re seeing the opposite - suddenly the characters’ plans all seem to be on track and firing on all cylinders - well then, son, what you’ve got yourself there is a tragedy.
Yeah, they kind of accomplished a lot in one episode. Also what the fuck was with the tower of joy double tease bs?
No.
They’re just being lazy.
I loved the rat cook scene from the book.
It would have made for good television.
Why kill Pycelle?
I think they understood that was a problem, hence the whore in his bed.
It doesn’t solve it though.
Westeros apparently uses teleportation devices
This was a point of grief for me.
Every story has a set of rules, and dramatic tension generally comes from following those rules. If you establish that no one is safe, then your audience will actually worry about the fate of your characters. The problem with teleportation is that you’ve break the whole thing apart. You’re telling the audience that characters not only can appear out of thin air, but will appear, as is convenient to the writers.
There were two Israeli gentleman who did a video a few weeks ago asking if Game of Thrones had been dumbed down in these last two seasons.
I would say yes, yes it has.
I thought it was a pretty slow episode. The high point for me, by far, was Arya killing Walder Frey, and having killed his sons and apparently cooked them. A shout out to the books there.
10 months until the next season. Arg!
Soundtrack was on point for this ep. Too much to unpack without more thought.
I am not criticizing the time jumps so much as the complete lack of effort in trying to let the viewer know they’re happening in a coherent way. The books do the same thing but it feels a little less jarring to me there.
I have to say that I thought this one was pretty darn good, after feeling pretty meh about episode 9 (except for the Jon in the middle of the battle shot.) Tommen is still alive in the books, right? That scene caught me off guard a bit and I think it was really well done. Same with Arya’s bit, no matter how she actually pulled it off.
Lady Mormont was awesome again of course but that whole scene makes me wonder how it ends offscreen…does everyone just gradually stop chanting, then mull about uncertainly and slowly disperse? AND WHERE IS GHOST? Why didn’t they just have Ramsay kill Ghost also and be done with it? Littlefinger is creepy as shit and that last shared look with Sansa was pretty chilling.
I’m less a fan of the Cersei crowning - Jamie’s arrival just happening to coincide with the ceremony seemed really contrived. Seems like he’s finally seeing her in a new light though, after being so desperate to return to her that he’d kill every Tully that ever lived.
Dany’s on her way finally, with a Dorne-Martell-Greyjoy alliance apparently secured. Is it Spring 2017 yet??
That scene may work better in the books. The show Cersei, who I’ve liked, is very sympathetic… whereas the character in the books resembles the Mad King. The Mad King that Jamie slew.
edit…
Which is one of the reasons I’ve disliked what they’ve done to Jaime. If they’re going where I think they’re going, then his arc makes little sense. Rather than split from Cersei, he’s only grown closer to her.
I am hoping in the future Jon’s linage is revealed by him not burning, perhaps by him being surrounded by undead. It would be a nice scene. I also fear Littlefinger and Sansa might… turn on Jon because he just because a direct threat to Littlefingers dreams.
If I remember correctly, she stole the face she used to kill Ser Trant. Jaquen later denied her the use of a face when she was assigned to kill the actor.
I suppose Arya stole a bag of faces when she left Bravos.
I’d love to see GRRM use Sansa to show how the Anakin-to-Darth transition would have gone if Lucas was a competent writer.
[SUB]And then don’t let the people who wrote Arya-in-Bravos near it for the show script.[/SUB]