To all of the posters upset that the battle occupied the full ep, I say: meh. It will fit nicely into a binge-watch session.
Enjoyed it. Of course we don’t get Tyrion updates - whaddya think this is, Homeland? They put him in their back pocket (no intended commentary on his size; I only mean as a point of plotcraft), to pull out for the finale. Frustrating for all the right reasons, you know?
Sam got the best lines and I kinda like how they handled his “I will be back” bit and then actually doing it. Hero Sam! Whedon-esque, if you will.
I was also disappointed by this episode. Don’t get me wrong, they did a great job filming it, I’m just kind of bored with straight-up fantasy battles these days. I was disappointed when The Two Towers film spent most of its time on Helm’s Deep as well (and skipping The Voice of Saruman, which I was really looking forward to). I kept waiting for a cut to King’s Landing, or just anywhere that wasn’t The Wall. The Battle of Blackwater Bay was great because we got to see Tyrion’s natural strategic and leadership abilities, and there were some quiet yet uneasy moments with Sansa, Shea, and Cersei in the safe room. The pacing was better and they got us to actually care about King’s Landing because our main man Tyrion was there. This thing at The Wall was just a big, long, exhausting battle, and while I know it really is a huge deal, I don’t care about it as much as the other plotlines. I suppose, in that way, they’ve once again put me in the King’s Landing perspective. I really should care about the continent-shaping events transpiring at and north of The Wall, but I’m much more interested in the drama with the Lannisters.
I really did like the attention to detail though. When a commander shouted orders to the soldiers on the wall, you could hear others echoing the order so the soldiers out of earshot could hear it. There were some other things like that but I’ve forgotten the details.
Is it wrong that I was mostly saddened by bearded Night Watch guy’s death, even though I can’t remember his name? I figured at least on of Jon’s friends wouldn’t make it through the night.
Also, regarding the climbers on the wall. I figured those were mainly a distraction. Mance had a giant army on one side of the wall, basically doing nothing. The main force was the Wildlings on the south side. They were winning at first, mostly because the Night’s Watch too many many men on top of the Wall and they didn’t need to.
There was some great action here, good special effects, and really good dialogue in a bunch of places. I loved the shot that panned all the way across the castle as the fighting raged on. But I felt a little underwhelmed with the episode as a story. It landed in cliche places a few times because we don’t know the minor characters that well and I had trouble believing the Night’s Watch could really hold off that gigantic army- or rather that the assault would just stop when that seemed like the one thing the free folk shouldn’t do. Aren’t they supposed to be angry, terrified people being pursued by the undead? I don’t know how many rangers died, but it felt like a significant number (call it 20 or 30) compared to an insignificant number of free folk killed (maybe a few hundred out of 100,000). From what I can see the Night’s Watch will run out of arrows and barrels long before their opponents run out of people, so why stop fighting? Yes, Tormund’s team failed. But send two more giants to that gate and the whole thing is probably over.
I was trying to keep count - the giant killed five or six, and it seemed like Ygritte, Tormond, and the scarred Thenn guy killed at least six to ten each by themselves, not counting random deaths like the one who got blown up by the oil and the one who got impaled by the crossbow. There should really only be maybe two dozen Watchmen left at this point.
But Mance still doesn’t know that, does he? He’s still operating under the belief that there’s one or ten thousand men at Castle Black, whichever figure Jon Snow gave him. That may have also been why they kept the bulk of their men on the walls, to keep up the illusion of numbers.
It also looked at one point like they were lighting poles on fire atop the wall to look like additional archers from afar.
Did he Night’s Watch head dude get dragged away injured by friend or foe? I thought he had been getting dragged away to be attended to medically, or did I get that wrong?
By this point Mance should know how many men are in the castle, because he has guys in his army who can get a literal bird’s eye view of the ramparts. Whether he’s used that capability or not, I don’t know. The wall is still a hell of a force multiplier, though.
Well, Mance has NOT given up (assuming Jon Snow is right). This was just a feint. We should also assume there’s some fog of war going on… Mance might not realize what happened with the giant who made it into the tunnel at all. (Remember, Mance’s army is NOT a well organized trained fighting group which works together and has established lines of communication, etc.)
I get the impression that the producers wanted this to be a “wow” episode. There was a lot of money up on the screen - battle sequences like this aren’t cheap (especially when they include giants and war mammoths). And yet the episode was probably the least good of the season. There was about ten minutes worth of story stretched out for the entire episode.
Maybe I’m just tired of long action sequences in fantasy films. They tend to get boring very quickly. Add to that the fact that, as Marley23, it hit a few clichés. Two things in particular bothered me - the “stop fighting in the middle of battle to hug my quasi-beloved as she dies”, and the fact that nobody was wearing any helmets.
For the first of these: This is the sort of thing I would expect from traditional fantasy stories, but I expected better here. I don’t mind that she was at the battle. That makes sense. I don’t mind that she deliberately sought out Jon Snow. That, too, makes some sense. It was nice to see Potato Son get some revenge, so that’s cool too. But an intimate conversation in the middle of a desperate battle is just stupid. I was half-expecting the cliché to be subverted by having Jon Snow get killed due to not paying attention. It would have served him right.
For the second: Do helmets not exist in this universe? It was bad enough in the Blackwater episode, but it’s just getting absurd now. They practically lampshaded this fact last episode when someone asked Oberyn to at least wear a helmet. In that case it can be explained by his arrogance and his fighting style, but there are no such excuses here. Did they just use up all their scrap metal on armor and shields, leaving nothing left over for helmets?
As to the strategies and tactics of the battle:
(1) I don’t think the tunnel can be properly sealed in a single day. They could try, but there are probably a lot of other things they need to do with their short respite.
(2) There may well have been climbers further out on the wall. Maybe there are dozens of soldiers who made the climb and are cautiously making their way towards Castle Black along the top of the wall, just waiting for the signal to strike.
(3) Going around the wall is difficult. It would increase their travel distance by a huge amount, and their supply line (however it works) is probably stretched damn thin as it is. An army marches on its stomach. The longer the march / attack / siege lasts, the harder it will be for Mance to keep the tribes unified. This is especially true due to a portion of his army consisting of cannibals, and the other portion consisting of cannibal food. I think crucible is correct that it is vital for Mance’s army to strike quickly.
There were good things about the episode, though. Sam got some great lines. We got to see the true colors of many Night’s Watchmen (good and bad). Some of the action was fun. Best of all, my prayers to the 7 Gods to “Please set the mammoth on fire” were answered beautifully.
I was definitely disappointed by Ygritte’s death, because it was a little too cinematic for my tastes. Part of what I love about this show is that pretty much everyone dies unceremoniously. No one gets to say their last words. You get a sword through your neck and you’re done.
Also, regarding going around the wall, I’m pretty sure the other two Night’s Watch castles are at each end of the wall and the wall extends out into the sea. So unless you have a boat (which Mance doesn’t have for his entire army), you aren’t getting around it very easily.
I’d be willing to give them a pass on the helmet thing just because we need to be able to see the characters’ faces. The show has a huge cast and a lot of the male characters have the same general look, and the Night’s Watch people have a uniform. I realized after this episode that I’d been confusing Tormund and Mance for this whole season (I also know nothing) and that wasn’t even because they look alike. So I’m glad that wasn’t worse. But you’re right about Ygritte’s last scene. Right after she died and the camera started pulling away from them I said something like “It was nice of everybody to let them have their moment in the middle of this battle!” And there were some other moments like that. Pyp biting the big one, for example. Not that I wanted or expected Sam or Jon to get killed, but you know the sidekicks are going to die when the main characters can’t. I enjoyed Sam’s heroism and his lucky shot on the Thenn even though that also fit into a pretty recognizable action movie trope. It’s not that the cliches ruined the whole thing, but they did take a little of the excitement out of it because Game of Thrones subverts cliches so well.
If this is all a feint from Mance, the tactics might be better justified. But in that case this isn’t a major victory for Castle Black. Is that how this is going to be portrayed? A dramatic, heroic stand that didn’t accomplish very much in the end. That does sound like a Game of Thrones way of handling it.
They don’t wear helmets for the same reason that they aren’t normally wearing hats and mufflers despite the cold. We need to see their faces. Helmets would obviously be worn if it were realy, but this is TV, and a battle between two sides of bearded hairy dudes (in the dark!) who both wear dark clothing is hard enough to follow. Putting helmets on them would make it incomprehensible.
I didn’t care for this episode. Battle, battle, and more battle, largely pointless as nothing was resolved. Surely they could have taken a few minutes away from the carnage to show us something else…Arya & Hound, Whatshisname and Brienne, Stannis, Tyrion…anything that happened anywhere that wasn’t the Wall…
I was buying all the arrow physics (even the giant’s arrow launching the soldier) up until junior shoots an arrow, at a distance, with his my very first bow, and it goes all the way through Ygritte.
They put him in their back pocket (no intended commentary on his size; I only mean as a point of plotcraft), to pull out for the finale. Frustrating for all the right reasons, you know?