Things are rushed enough. Plus episode 6 was 71 minutes long and episode 8 is going to be 81 minutes long.
Wow, even episodes that are not among my favorites (O.K., bad episodes), fly by so very quickly. I still blink at the screen for a few seconds when the credits start to roll, expecting and wishing for more.
As I said in the episode 2 thread, it’s so frustrating to see such a great series end like this. It’s so cheesy now. THe thing I loved about the early seasons of GoT is that there was a draconian Westeros ethos that was shocking to the audience. Hell, in the first episode Ned beheaded a guy who they thought abandoned his duty at the wall and made his son watch. Jamie tried to kill Ned’s son because he caught him fucking his sister. This was great. Now it’s just a bunch of cliched crap where the good guys are always good and live by modern ethics… there is nothing interesting about that and it’s a shame that GoT turned out this way.
There’s far too many loose ends to neatly (and logically) tie up in only an hour. I fear that next Sunday we might be seeing several Bobby Ewing-comes-out-of-the-shower-type endings.
And the minutia being gone over in this thread reminds me of the ending of the first season of The West Wing when President Josiah Bartlett was shot. It was said that fans were going over the clip as if it were the Zapruder film.
I thought the ethos was more dragonian than draconian.
Ultimately the problem with Game of Thrones is that it has to end. It kind of worked best as this sort of Medieval fantasy Lord of the Rings meets Sopranos soap opera slowly boiling feud between great houses with this ever-present threat of Wildlings, Mance Rayder, and crazy rumors of White Walkers and Seven Gods knows what else lurking just past the mysterious giant Wall from antiquity. They could have Kahl Drogo die suddenly or Red Weddings or whatever that radically change the direction of the plot because they have all the time in the world to build up new characters following a new plot arch. But there’s no time to do that now if they want to wrap things up next season in any meaningful way.
The other problem IMHO is that while Lannisters, Ironborn, Greyjoys and Boltons all have various complex characters with various motivations, the White Walkers are a bit of a generic “Mindless Ancient Evil”. I guess that’s the purpose of Three Eyed Bran (I hope) to provide some insight into where the Night King comes from. Otherwise they are just another “Army of Orcs”.
Do we have reason to believe that ravens in Westeros don’t fly faster than the speed of sound?
It’s a good thing the Night King brought a shit-ton of giant chains with him.
Why is that lake the only thing not completely frozen north of the Wall?
“Dick?”
Yes I hadn’t thought about it before but this might well be the biggest problem right now. It’s fine for the white walkers to strut around trying to look menacing the first couple of times, but by now there should be more to them than that.
And not just the history. We know they’re sentient (remember they even reached an understanding with Crastor), so what’s going through their minds? It would be awesome to find out, and it doesn’t need to be something sympathetic.
So…how many of those “Spear of Dragon Slaying, +1” does the Night King have? It’s got to take powerful magic to one shot kill a dragon…a ballista wasn’t enough to kill Drogon…
So do you think the Undead Dragon will breath fire like normal or Ice and Wind?
ETA: Something else I meant to mention: I am hoping arya is playing a part to draw Littelfinger out but I could see her resentment and underestimating of Sansa being legit.
Yeah, that dragon basically exploded. I think the biggest problem with the last couple seasons is that the writers know WHAT is supposed to happen, but have no idea HOW those things happen. The how part of the equation is what makes Martin take a decade between books, he has explicitly said so. Getting the right characters at the right place at the right time is what he has a hard time doing. The show writers simply teleport them there and it’s very jarring.
This image kinda sums up the current state of the show. No spoilers.
A million times this. There is a sharp declination between stories already told in the books and the stuff not yet written. I am still loving it though and am glad they didn’t wait for GRRM to finish the books to start the show. Mostly because I don’t think he would have even attempted to finish the books without the show. Plus, even for your standard fantasy, GoT is very good.
That’s pretty funny. Or sad. Maybe both.
Well at least now we know what the army of the dead was doing all that time - forging four massive iron chains.
The part with Jon in the water was so implausible that I at first thought he had died and come back to life. That is almost more plausible than surviving the dip in the pond and then being able to ride back in wet clothes and sub-zero temperatures.
The episode was still entertaining, but it’s also jumped the shark. It’s clear that they didn’t properly plan the pacing of this show since early stories were drawn out and now they’re rushing to make things happen.
I don’t think the Arya/Sansa/Littlefinger plot makes any sense right now. Hopefully when we see the motivations of Arya, it will make sense, but I’m not confident.
I laughed.
Agreed. We haven’t seen him for so long, then he reappears for twenty seconds, and then goes down to the wight horde after killing, what, three of them? Yeesh.
Preach it!
This presupposes that the Night King has any expression other than Implacably Evil Stare.
I wanted to call him that myself, after he revealed to the bad guys that the lake was refrozen again and they could walk right over.
My teenage son and I wondered about that, too.
Hmm. Interesting. That creates all sorts of potential for dramatic reveals.
I think Dany just went north with two dragons, right? One is still at Dragonstone, I think.
I don’t buy it. If the NK were smart, he’d kill the dragon that Dany was riding, which was stationary and appeared to be quite nearby. Keep Dany on the ground and send the troops, er, wights in. No way the dragon overhead will fry the NK’s hordes as they overrun Dany & Co. due to the risk of crisping his mom too.
I think that this season would’ve benefitted from having a few more episodes in which to stretch its legs, and this episode could’ve likewise used a few more minutes working out the timeline kinks as Our Heroes sat on their rock surrounded by the undead (simple idea: move all those character-building conversations they had earlier in the episode to happen while they’re sitting around waiting for the dragons!).
What political system is Dany/whoever going to put in place when they “break the wheel?” Is Tyrion going to invent multiparty parliamentary democracy? If so, which voting system will the Seven Kingdoms use?
It seemed pretty obvious that they were hinting at democracy with him praising the Night’s watch and Iron Born systems, both of which use direct votes by the members.
seems like it would be very odd to go all season without a big name person dying one way or another. (I don’t count Oleanna as big name. ) If I had to predict I think Littlefinger gets it next week.
[QUOT E=Jack Burden;20429196]Well at least now we know what the army of the dead was doing all that time - forging four massive iron chains.
[/QUOTE]
A wag on Twitter said those chains were from HardHome Depot. Ba-dum-dum
But Viserion isn’t a dragon anymore, he’s a dwight.
So rather than the Cleganebowl some seemed to expect, it seems likely that the show is going to end with Fire vs Ice: Dragonmania.