I agree. Absent some plot twist–and writing plot twists doesn’t seem to interest these show-runners any more, given the evidence of this episode (8.03) as well as the pieces already removed from the board–the entire emotional weight of this series appears to be focused on Dealing with Cersei.
We’ll see. Maybe they’ll surprise us yet. But at this point it does indeed feel anticlimactic.
(my bolding)
And to TroutMan------I laughed, too. (“Beric-ade”…too good.)
A far better ending to S6: the waif killed Arya in the catacombs (as she should have done), and it was the waif wearing Arya’s face who returned to Westeros. I’m still holding out for that to be revealed 
Couple days later, I am finding my thoughts are this:
Right? I didn’t even understand until hearing it in a podcast that the dragons were supposed to be lost in the snow. It just seemed like they were used very poorly, with just the occasional flaming of white walkers (and for some reason, one got low enough for a bunch of walkers to jump on it).
OTOH it did look awesome when they were up above the clouds in the moonlight.
Well, there are considerably fewer mouths to feed now, I would think.
How much population did the North lose in Robb’s war, then the Battle of the Bastards, and now the Battle for Winterfell? They could have lost a fully a quarter of the entire population of the North from the beginning of the series to now.
Question: Did they know the red woman was going to show up and light up their swords? If she hadn’t a bunch of Dothrakis would have gone to their deaths without killing a single wight, yeah? They looked to be using normal Dothraki swords, not dragonglass. We’re they just supposed to be Cannonfodder, cause that’s all they would have been with out the fire.
Varys knew she would be coming back at some point, so everyone probably knew that also. Judging by everyone’s reaction to her flicking her Bic though, no, they weren’t expecting that part.
They lasted like 45 seconds with the fire, so they were cannon fodder either way.
I thought of it, but that’s impossible. Fans could come to terms with Arya dying. But they would never forgive the authors for her having been dead for three seasons, having ended up miserably in Braavos after all she went through, and not having done all the cool stuff she appeared to have done since.
That would be Lost-level awful. So Waif-Arya came back to Westeros and settled Arya’s personal beef with the Freys (without it advancing her cover as Arya because no one knew about it), then she heads down to King’s Landing until she hears that Jon is King in the North, then returns to Winterfell, then had all sorts of tense moments with Sansa, then plotted to kill Littlefinger, and basically did all sorts of stuff that the Waif has no reason to do. It would be a completely nonsensical plot twist.
Not only no reason to do, but no reason to know about, especially Arya’s backstory with Sansa. Definitely one of the most preposterous and absurd theories I’ve heard.
Bran.
OK, this thread is moving faster than I can hope to keep up, so I won’t try to read all the responses… But I suspect I’ll be in the minority when I say that I liked it. I think it’s not without a certain irony that, on a show whose fans have spent seven seasons lamenting their plight regarding all their favorite characters being killed off, now everybody’s up in arms about how not enough people died in the last episode. Of course, everything will depend on how the characters’ stories are brought to a closure—if characters lived only because they’re too big to kill, then that’ll mean this was indeed bad writing; but if they have some role to play in whatever way the story is carried forward, then I think a good character arc trumps ‘they should’ve been dead with all the wights swarming them’. So I’m at least willing to keep an open mind.
Arya’s jumping the Night King did come kinda out of left field, although I did think that the dagger that had been used in the assassination attempt on Bran, thus playing a part in putting him on his course to becoming the Three-Eyed Raven, would play a role in the end. I did love, however, that they actually just went and resolved the conflict with the Night King here and now: it mirrors the way Ned Stark was unceremoniously executed in season 1. There, what we thought was the main protagonist is just dispatched with; here, what we thought was the main antagonist is likewise removed from the equation. Thus, this is a real Game of Thrones; the main conflict never was against the Night King, but about the Iron Throne. Not the simplistic forces of good against forces of evil (or fire against ice, or whatever), but mundane, ordinary, realistic struggle for dominance. Whether they can bring that to a satisfying closure, though, remains to be seen.
Oh, and I narrowly dodged a humongous spoiler bullet—the headline from the Telegraph, “Why Arya Stark was always destined to stab the Night King in the gut”, just showed up on my facebook feed. I mean, come on. Going to such lengths to reveal the probably biggest spoiler of GoT all in one headline kinda has to be an intentional dick move.
I don’t buy it. The politics were always the interesting part, but the army of the dead was always a looming threat. It’s half the story. It’s hard for such an evil force that it’s basically just a force of nature to be interesting, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important, or that it couldn’t have gone in an interesting direction if it were written better.
The story hits us over the head with this theme over and over again. There’s a real threat out there. No one believes it, and because of all your petty squabbling and power grabs, it’s going to defeat us and wipe out all life. All of this is a distraction from the true battle. You could even find thematic analogies to this - like climate change fits pretty well.
So after 8 years of telling us “petty squabbling will be your downfall, you aren’t worried about the real threat” - what did that real threat end up being? “Oh, the apocalyptic force of Death Itself which threatened to wipe out all life” ended up being a minor problem that basically just served to weaken one side of a mundane human conflict so that the final battle would have closer odds.
That’s not subversive or clever, that’s just not knowing how to stick the landing on half the story you created over 8 years and so you basically just throw it away and try to land the other half of the story.
But it just cheapens everything. Bran’s whole journey, the army of the dead, the night king, the long night, the end of mankind, ended up amounting to jack shit. And we’re supposed to believe that a squabble between two queens was the real, high stakes threat after all, not something that looked for 8 years like it was going to wipe out all life.
That is just a mess. That’s not good storytelling. If you ever rewatch the series, you can discard half the damn story that involved the Night’s Watch and Bran and Jon Snow and the Night King because it never really amounted to anything.
That’s not right. The Night King was a real threat, and could well have brought about the end of mankind. It’s just that—precisely due to things like Bran’s journey—he was stopped. You want the manner of him being stopped to have some more meaningful import, to be something more grandly symbolic; but that’s exactly the sort of thing the show has hit us over the heads with again and again that it’s not into. Great leaders amass their armies over years and years to conquer all of the known world, to then succumb to an infected cut they got while shaving. Random shit happens in the real world; it has no obligation to respect the symbolic nature of events.
Of course, it’s fine you didn’t like it, I’m not trying to argue that you should’ve. But I think that this refusing to put grand symbolism over and above the random shit that sometimes just happens is very consistent with the show overall; it’s just that at this point, you’d rather it hadn’t followed that trend.
If you look at history, that’s just how things happen: the fate of the world is decided by random shit, petty squabbles, and base motivations. It’s not a grand struggle of good vs. evil—and that’s what the show’s been faithful to. I can at least respect that.
Stories aren’t just made by their endings, though. A story is worth it (or not) not just because of where it leads, but also, because of what happens along the way—and if you enjoyed that so far, there’s no reason to disavow it now.
The idea of an ‘ending’—some place where a story arrives at for final closure—is really just a narrative convention. We want to have things make sense, to know that everything led up to this moment, and is retroactively justified. But there are no endings in the real world; stuff just goes on. Nobody ever had to die just so x could happen; at best, they died, and x happened. So again, by not leading to the satisfying closure you desire, the show just honors its commitment to ignoring this sort of convention. (Which, of course, you’re free to dislike.)
I get what you mean. And you make a good case for it. But Khal Drogo dying from a cut feels like a subversion. An injection of reality into a story narrative. Whereas how the Night King was dealt with felt like a cliched fantasy or comic book hero story, like every other story like its type ever made. It’s hard for being cliche and paint by numbers and easy and predictable to feel subversive.
I really don’t think the intent was to be subversive like that. If the message was “hey, sometimes that’s just how things happen in the real world” then they did a bad job of showing it, by having our protagonists cheaply saved from death a million times over and generally having the resolution come at no cost to anyone. A perfectly routine fairytale ending. Basically, the resolution to the whole NK plotline feels like it came from a much lesser story, a cliched story we’ve seen so many times. Not the sort of subversions we’ve seen in this story previously.
Edit: I take that back. It’s not even a routine fantasy/fairy tale ending. Usually there’s some sort of personal loss or sacrifice and some sort of realization and growth that comes from the climax of a standard fantasy narrative. This didn’t even have that. It didn’t have some sort of clever twist, or something where our heroes journey endowed them with a unique idea or skill that ultimately lead to the victory, or some great sacrifice that the hero makes. And so it’s actually worse than the standard cliched fantasy story. Someone jumps on The Death of All Life and stabs him.
I do agree that there were cheap bits about it. Particularly, I was never a fan of the whole ‘keystone army’-thing, where you just have to take out the head honcho/explode the mothership/hit the exhaust port to save the day. That’s a convention I would’ve liked to see subverted: have Arya kill the Night King, and it does about fuck all. Some other White Walker simply takes over. Maybe a couple wights die—those directly animated by the NK—allowing them to win at great cost.
And as I said, much will ride on where they go from now.
Still, I think at least the analogy with Ned’s death was intentional—“You think that’s the main protagonist? Ha, think again!” vs. “You think that’s the main antagonist? Ha, think again!”.
Anyway, it’s entertainment—and I was entertained. When I could tell what happened, that is.
On to other things: What was up with Bran warging into that unkindness of ravens? It didn’t really seem to accomplish anything. Was it just to give us that initial shot of the Night King riding Viserion?
I follow you most of the way, but not here. Arya’s whole journey has been about developing the skills and inner fortitude to do what she did. From Syrio Forel to Jaqhen to the Hound to Jaqen again she’s spent 7 seasons turning into a deadly and skilled assassin. This is her *entire *journey. She didn’t become a warrior, mind. She did alright with her spear for a while but she’s not and never has been a one versus many melee fighter. in the mould of Jamie or Brienne. She’s a stealthy killer of high-value targets. She’s spent years becoming this, at great cost to her mental health and her humanity.
Sure, we thought Jon might go toe-to-toe with the NK, or may Dany’s dragonfire would work. Those would have made sense too. But it also makes total sense for the highly trained assassin to get through the NKs guard and dispatch him with a single dagger blow to a vulnerable spot when he’s least expecting it. That’s what assassins do.
I get what you mean, but the way she did it didn’t end up feeling “stealthy assassin” so much as deud ex jumpy ninja. The way she dropped her knife and caught it was a well supported flourish - we’ve seen her do things like that before - but it would’ve seemed like it was more unique to her skillset if it involved something she’s picked up along the way - face changing, blind fighting, or even just clever assassin tactics - rather than just jumping on him unexpectedly.
But fair point, I feel 3% better about it.
In fact, my big criticism of the episode is that none of the other characters got any kind of story arc within it - other than Arya.
Arya starts off watching on the walls, gets worried for Sansa and sends her away but backs herself to fight well - does so at first but gets overwhelmed and falls into full panic and runs. In the library she doesn’t even attempt to use her assassin skills on the wights - she’s given up on winning and is focussed only on survival. Her old ally and old adversary find her and help her and bring her to a place of relative safety (one sacrificing himself to do so) where she meets a further old adversary who gives her her confidence back by reminding her of what she has done and what she can do. This gives her a chance to recall all the lessons she’s learnt over the past 8 seasons; she immediately makes her way to where she can do the most good and at the critical moment applies all her skills to land the vital blow. That’s a nice little story with a beginning, middle and end.
Everyone else does stuff and moves around, but with little purpose or effect. This was worst for Jamie, Brienne, Pod, Tormund, Sam et al who just constantly battled wights without either driving them back or being killed, so it was very static. Sansa and Tyrion went to the crypts and did fuck all in the way of leadership either before or after the dead broke out. Jon and Dany did some more interesting stuff with dragons, mainly a) dismounting the NK and b) allowing him to demonstrate how powerful he was. It’s ok that they turned out to be less effective than we thought, but the way they were purely reactive the whole way through meant they didn’t really have any kind of arc. Bran spent half the battle warging to no apparent effect and didn’t seem to do anything even when finally confronting the NK.
If characters had been allowed to have an actual story play out in the battle, this would have opened up the possibility for all the sacrifices, meaningful moments, etc. that SenorBeef is absolutely right to point out were missing. But largely they just did stuff and moved around, which is very different.
Magical badass intelligent superwolf.
Just because D&D wasted him for the last three seasons does not make it a dumb wolf.