On almost all fronts the show has caught up or passed the books, or the situations are different enough for spoilers to be meaningless. I don’t want to say it is 100% safe though, faulty memory plus stuff they appear to have cut from the show that happened in the books might still happen at some point.
Man, they don’t make plot armor like they used to.
Early in the episode I was thinking how they went for the “unwatchably despicable” trifecta this season with raping Sansa, burning Shireen and now caning a couple random little girls, but damn if they horrific scene didn’t have me busting out laughing twice. First was after he hit Arya a second time and the two other girls turned to look at her; comedy gold right there. Second was when he dismissed them, the way they bolted was funny as hell.
Is Arya now permanently blind, I wonder?
They tried for some more comedy with Dany and her dragon, but that fell kind of flat for me. Seemed too forced.
The biggest laugh had to be Cersei’s humiliation. When he said she’d return the way she was born, I was thinking “No way…” and then bam, a massive humiliation fountain just shit all over her. Not funny, I guess, but holy shit I laughed hard at that. Not even in a spiteful “Yeah you deserve it, Cersei!” way; more in a total shock and disbelief kind of way.
So Jon is dead, Sam and Gilly are gone, Stannis and his entire army are dead; are we done with The Wall, then? Not many characters to carry scenes there anymore. I suppose a season opening scene of the Night’s Watch mercilessly slaughtering every last Wildling south of The Wall, but other than that not much left to do up there.
Does no one bother to read the OP? The books do not exist for the purposes of this thread.
What happened to Melisandre? It looked like she didn’t just abandon the losing side; it looked like she had a major crisis of faith-- she did everything the Lord of Light told her to, and not only did Stannis’s followers abandon them in droves, the visions she saw in the flames were not what came to pass. The Lord of Light lied to her? Or, the Lord of Light showed her what she needed to know so that she would accomplish what needed to be accomplished, but Melisandre had come to see herself a leader and an emissary of the Lord of Light, and not as just one more cog in the Lord of Light’s grand plan, to be used and then discarded?
The Night’s Watch is outnumbered by a lot. 10 to 1 at a minimum I’d guess.
There’s like 100 of them, if anything the slaughter is going the other way.
That’s my thought as well.
I’m surprised that nobody has brought up Cercei yet. I imagine that the worst thing for her was the fact that her family either didn’t show up (Tommen, Jaime) or didn’t give her any emotional support (Kevan). I never thought I would feel bad for Cercei, but…
I originally thought she might help him, but he looked pretty dead in the final shot. But yeah, that’s totally plausible. Melsandre is there for a reason. Perhaps she went to fetch Davos, perhaps the Lord of Light told her to go. Or, it was just happy coincidence for plot reasons (i.e. contrivance). Either way, she’s there, and they made a big point of her being surprised at Thoros of Myr’s multiple resurrections. I can totally see her doing that.
And if she does, what happens to Jon then? Does he put all the conspirators to death and go on as Lord Commander? Or does he leave the watch altogether? The oath makes is a bit ambiguous:
[QUOTE=The Night’s Watch]
Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.
[/QUOTE]
So…does it end with his death, or is it for “all the nights to come?” Earlier this season he said he wanted to leave and fight the Boltons. If he is raised from the dead, can he truly trust anyone in the Watch now? Would he rather just decide “well, I was in the Night’s Watch, but then I died.”
I would love, love for that chickenshit murder plot to amount to nothing more than a “get out of Night’s Watch free” pass for Jon.
So no one at the Wall knows that dragonglass and Valyrian steel can kill White Walkers. That’s not good.
And I like that we finally saw the Frankenstein monster.
:rolleyes: And if the show has now caught up to or passed the books then this SDMB “the books don’t exist” rule is no longer necessary next year.
Possible, I suppose, but three things go against that:
[ol][li]I agree with F.Pu-du-he-pa-as that Melisandre has lost all her faith.[/li][li]Even when she was full of faith, she explicitly said bringing someone back from the dead was impossible despite that fiery sword dude being brought back, meaning she has no more skill in necromancy than anyone else at the wall.[/li][*]The Night’s Watch promptly burns their dead specifically to prevent them from coming back. If Jon is going to be raised, whoever does it will have to step in front of that mob that’s still standing around him prepping to burn his body.[/ol]
No - for an obvious example, some people reading these threads might want to go back and read the books and not be confronted with book spoilers (there were some pretty major things in the books that didn’t make it into the show) - just follow the frigging rule, it isn’t that hard.
Sam knows, and that’s what matters. He’s heading for The Citadel and thank goodness that Jon got him out before his murder. He can take the knowledge with him. I just hope he never goes back to The Wall now. Surely he’ll smell a rat when he doesn’t get any ravens from Jon.
Oh, shit, what’s going to happen to Ghost?! That’s really going to bother me.
I think it was just Bolton-folk.
Are you sure? Because they were laying it on pretty thick.
Also where did all those Dothraki come from?
Also, what’s the deal with Cercei? There’s obviously still a strong presence of Goldcloaks and Lannister men at arms around the Red Keep. Are they all just chillin while their queen is humiliated?
The rule serves as much to not spoil the books as it does to not spoil the show. Saying something about which has caught up to which effectively spoils one or the other.
No-- I think the books are still ahead of the show in a few minor areas. Even if that weren’t the case, it’s still a useful rule because the show and the books have diverged on a number of points, and this would confuse the heck out of people who were only familiar with the show.
She is not their queen. Their queen is still being held prisoner.
It doesn’t matter how strong their presence is, the sparrows basically have the support of the entire population. You saw the crowd out there, the goldcloaks would’ve got slaughtered.