Game of Thrones (HBO)

Lots of blame on both sides of this issue.

We are going to build a wall in the North, and believe me, the Night King will pay for it.

Damn! Got me with this one.

This may reflect poorly on me, but I was largely blindsided by the scene, mostly for the reasons mentioned upthread: The scene with Arya, Sansa and the masks doesn’t work if they’re playing a con on LF, and it doesn’t really work if they’re not.

The show is not as tied to “POV Characters” as the books are, but mostly it plays it straight: the audience knows more than Jon, Dany, Sansa, Arya, Tyrion, Davos etc. If one of those characters learns something important, we are there to learn it with them. The exceptions are Littlefinger and Cersai – but we are aware that we don’t know what they know by visual cues and simply experience.

This is the first time that the show has had (two!) core characters effectively lying to the camera. Maybe it was a way of juxtaposing Sansa and Cersei: after all, Sansa’s play was basically the same thing that Cersei did - using a meeting as part of a ruse to get her way- but it didn’t “feel” right.

Finally, I thought that the CGI for the ice/lightning dragon was terrible. Close-up scenes with Dany riding on the back of Drogan are kind of “iffy” compared to the full-dragon scenes, but the ones where the showed the Night King on the hovering wight-dragon were straight-up AWFUL. Not flashback-Rheagar’s wig awful, but still awful.

More absurd complaining…yea it’s QT3 alright.

An amazing ending to the season for a landmark television show. Hell calling it a tv show is a disservice. There’s GoT and then everything else.

I am curious, why Cersei would allow Jamie to defect after telling him all her plans about “Moving her armies north/YOINK!” and Euron sailing to fetch the Gold Army…

Because, for better or worse, she does love him in her own twisted way. Probably also why The Mountain didn’t kill him. She probably has a kill command that she didn’t specifically use.

I think it “works” (without any lying to the camera) if you view Littlefinger’s “trial” and execution as a unilateral act from Sansa. Arya took the first step to resolve the conflict by giving Sansa the knife in her room and then it took Sansa time to work through her decision. The key was Littlefinger’s own game: the worst thing that he could come up with for Arya’s actions was Arya wanting to be Lady of Winterfell. Yet,via her actions in her room, Arya proved conclusively to Sansa that that wasn’t what Arya wanted, because it could have been hers right then and there. So, that led Sansa to think about what Littlefinger’s motivations were.

Calling Arya into that meeting of the lords was solely Sansa’s action—not pre-planned with Arya. Arya had her own process to go through, but she worked through it and made her call to trust Sansa (even in light of the message to Jon). I think Sansa pointing out to Arya that she was at Ned’s execution but didn’t do anything (“I wanted to!”) made Arya realize that the situation that Sansa was in when she wrote that message wasn’t very different. You do what you have to do to survive sometimes.

Yeah OK

Yeah, I don’t know about that. Just watched the scene and Arya gives a very satisfied smirk immediately after Sansa’s “Lord Balish?”. No surprise. No relief. Just a bit of a “got ya” look direct to Littlefinger.

So, assuming the dagger/faces scene was genuine–not staged–they must have had a talk at some point prior to calling her to the hall. Of course, that makes all of Arya’s initial nervous glances at the guards when she walks in pretty goofy. I guess they are all just enjoying pranking Littlefinger?

I am coming around to the idea that the dagger handover, followed by Littlefinger’s “imagine the worst” speech was the turning point for Sansa. I guess she just had a conversation with Arya and Bran at some point after, and left us (the audience) out of the loop for the sake of the surprise.

I’m fine with the outcome, and prefer it over the alternative, but it’s a pretty clumsy setup in writing or direction or both.

I just want Arya and Sansa to have a decent season. They’ve been mishandled for like three seasons now.

Arya and Sansa aren’t ‘pranking’ Littlefinger. That was a trial. He enters that room as Lord Protector of the Vale. He’s also been talking with many of the Northern Lords present. Sansa had to make him look guilty. She did so by giving him zero time to prepare, scheme or flee.

One of my favorite lines in the whole series was Sansa telling Arya, “You’re still weird and annoying.” They deserve a momentary return to normal sibling dynamics.

Aww, c’mon, Game of Thrones isn’t that bad. It might be clumsy, contrived, poorly written, and focusing on its worst actors, but it’s still got really cool dragon scenes.

By the way, how does an undead dragon’s frost breath bring down a wall of ice? According to the Monster Manual, that’s not how frost breath works.

-Tom

I was thinking it was a blue flame, which as everyone who has done freshman Chemistry knows, is hotter than a red flame. It was not a frost breath!

It’s split damage dice, 6d10 frost and 6d10 bludgeoning. Don’t worry about the rules so much, the the DM handle that~

I expected frost breath, but blue flame was a nice surprise.

Amazing finale. I feel more sated by it than by most biggest hollywood blockbusters combined. They should put the last season in cinemas, my plasma is not enough.

Did you just get a television? :)

Aesthetics-wise, I think the CGI at the end was some of the best I’ve ever seen (barring Tin Wisdom’s point about CGI things riding on other CGI things never really looking quite kosher).

It had an apocalyptic, biblical quality reminiscent of the romantic artists of the “sublime” school (e.g. Caspar David Friedrich, early Turner, but particularly John Martin). Connected with this, it also felt like they had consciously gone for an aesthetic reminiscent of matte painting for the background. IOW it felt “real” in the dreamy way that matte painting used to feel real in the old movies.

Great finale though, very satisfying end to Baelish. (I think we can fill in some background in our minds re. Arya and Sansa conspiring because of the moment when Arya handed Sansa the dagger in their conversation, that’s more or less symbolic of the jig being up for Baelish. IOW, I think that convo was meant to represent some lingering bad feeling between Arya and Sansa, but Arya figuring out the truth and getting Sansa in on it.) And a good thing too, because pretty much all the “intrigue” aspect of the series has gone out the window by now, in the pell-mell rush to the finishing line, so he didn’t have a function any more.

Early part with the meeting, etc., and the mini get-togethers of characters who’d spent time together in the past - also very enjoyable. Aegon reveal we all knew about, but it was nice to have it all confirmed in a systematic way.

But what the fuck was that stuff coming out of the dragon? Was it so cold it was colder than the wall, or was it so hot it was blue/white hot and melting the wall? Or was the blue/white just sort of all-purpose “eldritch?” Inquiring minds want to know.

I’ve only seen 2 “epic” TV story arcs through to completion: Lost and Sons of Anarchy.*

Lost I enjoyed the ride up until the final season, but I didn’t like the final season at all. However, I really enjoyed playing the “what did mean” game with some friends every week. Near the end, when it became apparent it didn’t mean shit, I was disappointed, That said, the interaction with other fans and the theorizing was fun.

Sons of Anarchy had a better overall run. The only season I didn’t like was the one set in Ireland, but I had watched it on Netflix and just powered though it. The later seasons were very well done.

When Game of Thrones had the source material to work from, it was the best TV series I had ever seen. When they had to freelance the ending, it obviously had a lesser quality. It is still really good, and as with Lost I have fun making my rounds Monday morning to talk about the show. This season had a lot of “nudge-nudge, wink wink” moments, but I liked it over all. The entire series now feels like a writer has a 100k cap on his novel, and is at 80k words 50% in. I wish they went 9 seasons and slowed the pace down a little on this one. I’m expecting next season with 6 episodes to feel even more crashed together.

I do like this season they tied off a lot of the little plot lines. I have no idea what to expect next year since I would have placed money on them wrapping up the King’s Landing bit this year, and undead army next year.

*There is an asterisk for the US version of Life on Mars. It got cancelled during the first season and they showed us how it would have ended, but was so jarring I wished, as Tyrion said, they’d learn to lie a little and change the ending.

Propane.
The Night King is actually Hank Hill, and he really just wants to introduce Westeros to the joy of propane and propane dragon accessories.

Sorry I wish I could be apart of y’all hipster haters but oh well…