You know, after all these years of them having so many separate epicenters of various stories, and us longing to see them brought together…I’m starting to worry that they are going to have a crush of people to deal with each scene/episode if they don’t start some more drastic culling.
For example, at the start of the season they had Sansa and Jon butting heads over how to proceed. Now they have Bran-Font-of-Cryptic-Wisdom available to consult, too. And Arya will no doubt have advice to contribute. (“I’ll kill them for you” for all values of ‘you’.)
With Littlefinger doing his best to kept his finger in the pie.
And assuming the thaw/merging with Dany’s side goes on, we’ll also have Dany, Tyrion, Gray Worm, Misandei, Davos, Varys, and, hell, why not Jorah, too? All with potentially useful info/attitudes to contribute about how the war should be prosecuted.
And anyone who doesn’t get consulted on a decision, well, they’ll have to come up with a good in-story explanation of why they weren’t, and maybe consequences of their having been left out.
I forsee Death By Committee that way.
Time to start pruning to keep things from getting unwieldy. I think Misandei needs to go. And Varys. Give Jorah a moment of heroism and then off him. Let Tormund die at Eastwatch. Let Arya take care of Littlefinger ASAP. Yara can somehow make an attempt on Euron and die for it. Theon…out.
Mind, I like plenty of those characters. It’s just that there are too many ‘leading’ characters to give them all time and roles to play. Time to thin the herd.
There is no way fhe Lannister line would have held, dragons or no dragons. I think it was Bronn who said, ‘We are going to be overrun’, and that was before the dragons made an appearance. And they showed the lines being broken simply by the horses charging through, letting the first wave take the brunt of the pikes.
In ancient times, the defense against a horse-mounted charge was to form into a phalanx, with very long spears anchored to the ground. The whole thing looked like a giant square pincushion. The Lannisters were aligned in a long line, with pikemen simply holding their pikes. There’s no way that was going to last. Also, the Dothraki are superior mounted bowmen like the Mongols they appear to be loosely based on. That was devastating in the Mongol’s time, and would be equally devastating in Westeros. The Lannister soldiers were tightly grouped together, making them easy targets. To avoid being killed by hails of arrows, the men would have been forced to break ranks and scatter like they did with the dragon, and that makes them easy pickings for horse cavalry.
There is still a good reason for Daeneris to be there fighting. For one thing, the dragons are a terror weapon and employing them early could possibly cause her enemies to surrender or broker a peace. For another, it’s important for the people following the Mother of Dragons to actually see her and the dragons fighting with them. Big morale booster, that. It also helps Daeneris cement her position as queen - Kings were expected to fight alongside their subjects, and Daeneris is a wartime queen who can uniquely control the best weapon her side has. To send her army into battle without her or her dragons would look weak.
I will disagree with Sam Stone here. The key for infantry fighting cavalry is to maintain order. The Lannisters were doing that admirably. They had formed up a two deep line with another line as reinforcement. If they anchor their lines on the river, maintain order, and use their own archers then they probably would have been OK depending on the relative numbers. Certainly it wouldn’t have been the one sided rout that it was.
Did you miss the part about how she is the sole ruler? She seeks advice when she needs it - others don’t demand that she listen to them. We don’t need any other explanation for her making any decision she wants to. In fact, in this very episode she ignored the advice of all of her advisors.
The problem isn’t the size of the cast - Greyworm and Missandei and Davos can simply be sidelined as background as the needs of the plot warrant. They aren’t key players.
The problem is the number of plot threads/battles that still have to be cleaned up. We have the battle of Westeros for King’s landing, the problem of Euron’s fleet, The Hound and his mission, Littlefinger and his machinations, Ser Jorah’s grand return, the conflict between Daeneris and John, the red Priestess and whatever she is up to, the Iron Bank and the Golden Company. Arya’s story arc, Sam at the Citadel, Yara Greyjoy and her imprisonment, and I’m sure I am missing a few things. And that’s all before we get to the main event with the army of the dead.
If this show was running at the pace of the first two seasons, this would be about five season’s worth of storytelling, but they have to wrap it all up in what, nine more episodes, including what needs to be a multi-episode arc of the battle of the dead.
Every episode is going to have to move at the pace of the last one to get everything resolved satisfactorally.
Don’t forget that mounted cavalry has a massive mobility advantage. They can flank the Lannisters, forcing their lines to wheel, exposing them on the other side.
Also mounted archers who can fire accurately on the move have a huge advantage against stationary soldiers. That was true in Mongol times, and it was even true of modern tank warfare. The M1A1 Abrams’ ability to target and shoot on the move was a decisive factor against Iraqi tanks in the first gulf war. It’s very hard to hit a moving target with a projectile.
I recall hearing that the producers were in discussion with HBO that each episode next season would be 2 hours. I think they have realized they are running out of episodes.
I read this as Sansa realizing that when Arya said she had a list of names of people she wanted to kill, and that many of them were now dead, that Arya wasn’t speaking figuratively.
Well she manages to hold on to Drogon without a saddle or reins in an elegant dress, so I reject practicality as reason for her wardrobe choice. As for not being on the battlefield…did we watch the same show? If Jaime had put his points into archery rather than melee she’d be worm food.
Not a fan of the Hollywoodized Arya. The overly cocky fighting, meh, though I like that Sansa witnessed it. The several flourishes when she showed off her new dagger was a bit much.
Jaime and Bronn are not dead. The latter needs at least to quip once more before dying.
I will need to watch again: part of the Lannister defeat was that they spread their forces thin in one column, no? The caravan snaked across down the road and they couldn’t form a phalanx well enough. You have to admire the Lannister discipline (potentially unrealistic). They didn’t flee from ululating savages, nor from mythological monsters.
Randyll? I had thought I saw him dousing himself, but I think I’m mistaken. I think he’s MIA.
Dickon? He is younger, Sam having been forcefully disinherited. The actor is 3 years older than Sam’s, though.
We do not know. It might be revealed, or might remain a mystery. Probably not Jaime, as I’ve seen speculated. Not really his way, not into delegating to hobos.
The danger of getting arrow’d is less than the danger of falling off due to excess weight? Also presumably she is controlling him to some extent with leg pressure, armor might interfere with that.
Well, she wasn’t planning on it but she knows Drogon isn’t invincible. It just slightly irks me that despite mentioning it explicitly last week, this week we’re not going to even acknowledge the possibility she might bite it. Obviously helmets are hardly heroic and we’re not paying the stars all this money to cover their faces, but a breastplate, some gauntlets, greaves, anything. I mean, can you imagine Brienne going into battle in a dress?
I would’ve loved it if while she was "DRACARYS!"ing it up a random arrow came out of nowhere and thwacked her in the side of the head.
