It’s been so long I can remember so little from the last season and it’s all mingled in with the books. Is there some kind of refresher I can watch?
The girlfriend and I have considered rewatching last season over the holiday break this weekend. If nothing else we will feel better getting back into it if we remember where everything left off.
I finished the books recently, and I’ve been slowly watching the TV show, often getting annoyed at certain changes. I’m currently at Season 4 Episode 1, which, surprisingly is still on the 3rd book.
As annoyed as I become sometimes at the show for things they seem to change (from the books) for no discernible reason, I am impressed at what they’ve accomplished here.
I’ll try to catch up before the coming season, though it might be too late for that. Maybe all I need to do is catch up before the end of the season.
Just warning, as a fellow book reader. The more you watch the further away from the book it gets. It’s still good though.
Well, IMO season 5 was atrocious, but season 6 was pretty good for the most part.
I think we may have disagreed on this before, but Hardhome to me was one of the top episodes in the series. It was a good reminder of what is else going on beyond the throne bickering and well done. I figure that will be an episode I will remember long after the series is complete.
Hardhome (besides having the BEST FRIGGIN EPISODE NAME EVER!) is my favorite GoT episode (at least the zombie rush half is).
I love Hardhome. What genre nerd doesn’t love a well-made zombie siege? It’s great!
The rest of Season 5? Blech.
If you like podcasts, the Ringer has a new podcast called Binge Mode. Jason Concepcion (who is an absolute expert on all things Westeros) and Mallory Rubin are doing a podcast for each episode, with summary and analysis. It’s in the Top 10 for all podcasts on the iTunes charts.
I’m really enjoying the hell out of it. Plus, Concepcion does hilarious impersonations.
They’re doing a season a week. This week was Season 4. They’ll finish with Season 6 right before the Season 7 premiere, then they’re going to be doing it as a live Twitter show.
[quote]
At some points, when David and Dan and I had discussions about what way we should go in, I would always favor sticking with the books, while they would favor making changes. I think one of the biggest ones would probably be when they made the decision not to bring Catelyn Stark back as Lady Stoneheart. That was probably the first major diversion of the show from the books and, you know, I argued against that, and David and Dan made that decision.
In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands. David and Dan made a decision not to go in that direction in their story, pursuing other threads. But both of them are equally valid, I think, because Catelyn Stark is a fictional character and she doesn’t exist. You can tell either story about her.[/quote]
And Lady Stoneheart was pretty much one of those pointless diversions that Martin started to throw into the later books. Like, “You know, a revenant would be killer, here,” instead of “I could throw Cat in here as a revenant, but that would add yet another plot thread to a series that I’m already having issues with tying up.”
But yet it was one of the threads I was most interested in seeing continue! All the AV Club reviews for people who’d read the books had “LSH watch” updates, so it’s not like I was the only one.
I was going to say. . .it’s hard to call it pointless before we know where that arc goes. I’ll never forget reading book 3 for the first time and hitting that ending. I was wondering why the a Frey PoV epilogue and then we get unCat. Just the icing on the cake 100s of pages past the Red Wedding and its horrible events (I threw the book down on the coffee table on a rainy Sunday afternoon, stormed into the study, gamed for an hour, came back into the living room, and my wife says she still remembers seeing me standing there glaring at the book, trying to decide whether or not to pick it back up or wait longer).
She is in the epilogue of Storm of Swords, not really considered to be Martin’s “off the rails” period.
Yeah, it was a crazy huge reveal the first time around. Keep in mind that for readers, we’d already just made it through the Red Wedding, so that ending was nuts.
Man, A Storm of Swards was damn good.
I honestly didn’t know how to react to that ending. You have to remember this was my first Fantasy series ever. I didn’t even read The Hobbit and Lord or the Rings until after I read through Storm of Swords. And the series up to that point had been pretty light on magic/fantasy elements. And the death of Catelyn really hit me hard, it’s true. I expected Ned to die in book 1, because I thought he was super naive, going to the Queen, telling her that her life was over, basically, but he wanted to give her the chance to live and save her children. I thought his death was inevitable after that scene. I even expected Rob Stark to die at any time since we’d never even had a point of view chapter for him. But the two characters I was absolutely 100% sure were safe were Tyrion and Catelyn. So after Catelyn dies, I was already in shock. When Tyrion lost his trial by battle and was going to be killed, I just couldn’t believe it.
But then that ending. Catelyn was still alive somehow?
Of course, re-reading the book last year, I can see how much magic/fantasy I actually missed that first time around. Now that I’m familiar with so many more things with regards to Fantasy in general, I was a much more informed reader, and her return didn’t seem as shocking this time. But man, that first time, I was just thinking “what the fuck kind of weird shit is this?” Science fiction doesn’t have characters coming back after they’re dead. This was something completely new to me.
Man that was a great season opener. I thought last season was the best season yet, but the opener last year was weak. This was not weak. Even though there was not a ton of action, I thought the Arya stuff was great. The Hound stuff was great. Loved it overall. Can not wait for next Sunday.
So I have a theory as to what gift Euron will be obtaining for Cersei, but it’s a spoiler based on the books:
It could be Tyrion but I think the dynamic of Tyrion with Dany is too strong. And a lesser prize like Gendry is a pretty weak gift. But there is one big ticket item that Euron could grab, assuming the show follows the book plot of Euron having stolen some powerful artifacts during his years of piracy on the Fourteen Seas. In the books, Euron has a horn which can allegedly control a dragon, and although we don’t see it control any dragons, it’s definitely magical as it sucks the life out of the cannon fodder who sounds it. Right now, Dany has what appears to be a dominant hand with her Dothraki and Unsullied and alliances with two fairly strong houses, and on top of that 3 dragons. If Euron can steal one and gift it to Cersei that sets up a much more interesting scenario. That’s my guess for Euron’s gift,
Great episode. I hope they keep it up.
I thought the Arya opener was great, but the later scene was kind of lame. Still so naive and trusting of strangers? Hasn’t learned anything at all.