Now that John is apparently in charge, he could freeze the tunnel as he wanted to, and that would seriously complicate the mater for the wildlings, as most of his camp probably isn’t fit to climb the wall (children, old people etc).
I think this is why they are attacking Castle Black in the first place, otherwise they could all climb the wall along the hundreds of miles of the wall completely undetected.
But anyway, the episode wasn’t bad, but all I could think was: “WTF is happening in King’s Landing !? They can’t possibly do a full hour at the wall ?!” but they did …
I can just imagine the nerdrage (that I would share) if during this episode Tyrion’s death sentence had been carried out off camera, and next week there’s only a couple brief scenes in King’s Landing at the end of which it’s mentioned in passing that Tyrion’s dead. Then the bulk of the episode is Dany doing paperwork.
I assume that it takes a while to freeze the tunnels solid, there might not be time any more.
I agree it was a bit weird in terms of season-length tempo to have an entire episode devoted to just one battle, and just to one day of one battle, but the battle action was so compelling that I basically didn’t notice.
The north has been gutted, as they would have been the first to reinforce in the event of an attack, by the war and I dont think Bolton was interested in hearing about fairy tales of giants and stuff. I think in the opening episode in season one, they said it took 4 months to go from KL to WF, so I cant see them having troops to spare , even if Tywin wanted to.
You know thinking on it this whole battle was a giant waste of time.
What do the wildlings want? Unless I’m forgetting shit I think it was to get away from the white walkers, that is it. Seems they could work out something, and gain the giants too.
The Then tribe will probably not work out, couldn’t he get Mance to turn on those cannibals?
Also the battle went on so long it looked silly, like everyone was running around playing sword fighting.
I’m having difficulty making logistical and strategic sense of the wall. Couldn’t Mance just build some boats and go around it? Probably not a fun voyage, but a helluva lot safer than a frontal assault on the single most defensible point on the continent. Or, if the sea is too far, wouldn’t it make sense to saunter off a few miles away from Castle Black and attempt to climb it there, where there aren’t many Crows waiting? After establishing a base at the top of the wall, it should be possible to toss ropes down and bring a lot of the army over that way. I get that Mance thought there were far, far more Crows stationed along the wall, but Ygritte’s advance party must have figured out how few people there were, right? And they have a warg, so shouldn’t it be a simple matter of tying a message to a bird and sending a letter to Mance letting him know the actual castle strength? I dunno, the whole situation really just doesn’t make much sense to me.
That was a good shot! It reminded me of the shot in The Avengers when it panned from Hero to Hero fighting in New York.
Re: The White Walkers. Early on I was expecting the battle to end because the White Walkers arrived to mow down the Wildlings. The crows would be like, “Yay!” until they now realize they have an army of White Walkers to contend with.
Why were the wildings climbing the wall at the gate to castle Black when there are miles of wall that could be climbed without archers looking down at you? Just go down a few miles. Climb there and then attack.
No gate, I presume. They could probably climb over anywhere, but remember that this is nearly a whole civilization – horses, mammoths, giants (presumably), and children are not going to be able to climb the wall. They need to open the gate to let through those who can’t climb, which may be half their numbers.
I actually thought this was going to happen when they blew the horn three times, I thought right when the battle was going to start the walkers had showed up again.
Chalk me up as another one disappointed with the episode. Cool battle and all, but for the most part, the status quo is maintained and all the other story threads got put on pause for it.
To secure their rear against zombie attacks for the duration of the siege?
Well, a shotgun blast doesn’t send a human flying because the shooter is of equivalent mass. Equal and opposite reaction and all that, the shooter of such a weapon would necessarily be sent flying too, so that’s not deemed practical. It’s rather more practical when your shooter has the mass of a construction vehicle.
That said, I’d still be expecting a messy punch-through, rather than entire-man-flying.
The strategic value of the wall is compromised by there being a tunnel through it. Snow was right to want to close it off. Now he’s in charge and, still, he leaves it open? Decides to go on a suicide mission to maybe strike a deal with the Wildings? Plug the hole first, then negotiate, I say.
And, again, how do you f-ing feed 100000 men and their entourage? Do they eat trees? Does anything else grow up North? Dried fish, I suppose, but a siege for the wall would be harder on the Wildings than the Watch, I’d say. It has to be an attack that succeeds quickly, or nothing.
Wasn’t there a scene in the previous show where the father showed his son the extent of his potentially fertile kingdom? Like the vikings, let them settle there and become farmers!
