Okay, I think I figured out the off-screen action:
The last time we see Arya, Melisandra tells Arya to kill the Night King (“and blue eyes”). Arya pauses, realizes she needs Valyrian steel, so runs off to the crypt to get it. The last thing we see is a shot of Melisandra and the Hound watching Arya run off.
The last time we see the dagger, Tyrion and Sansa have both just come out of hiding and are crouching next to an Alcove of Hiding +6 which is keeping all the main characters safe. (Varys, Missandei, Gilly, little Sam, etc…)
The next time we see either Arya or the dagger is when she kills the Night King. So I’m thinking the Hound (at least) and probably Melisandra as well followed Arya to the crypt. They stayed behind in the crypt to kill the wights down there, because otherwise it makes no sense.
No way does Arya pop into the crypt, grab the dagger from Sansa and then leave everyone in the crypts to be torn apart by wights. And I don’t think it makes sense for her to singlehandedly kill all the wights before heading out. Too much time. The only way she grabs the dagger and leaves is if someone else is with her to stay behind and protect the useless.
The next time we see either the Hound or Melissandre is at the very end, where both of them walk outside together. So it seems to make sense that they stayed together. She then walks out to the battlefield, takes off her necklace, and crumbles.
I bought into the theory that Bran was being set up to warg into the past and possibly possess the Mad King and, similar to Hodor, somehow break his mind and have him think he was ordering all the white walkers to be burnt, not the people of King’s landing. It felt like they laid the groundwork for some sort of clever reveal that way, and that Bran would play a critical role in doing some sort of three eyed raven shit to set up the defeat of the Night King that way.
So it was even more surprising that Bran’s contribution to the battle was looking through some Raven eyes and not telling anyone anything or doing anything.
It really felt like we were going to have some sort of clever solution, or to see things we knew in a different light, or something. But what we got was jumpy stabby. That is anticlimactic as fuck.
The dagger Arya gives to Sansa before sending her to the crypt is dragonglass, not the Valyrian dagger. It’s not obvious when she gives it to her, but when Sansa is seen holding it in the crypt the blade is dragonglass. Arya probably had the Valyrian dagger on her. She didn’t need to go to the crypt to get it.
Danny was in the background straffing the dead with dragonfire.
That said their battle plan left a lot to be desired. Start the battle with a cavalry charge in the dark? Really? How about pelting them with trebuchets endlessly as long as they won’t move?
I’m so happy that the BiggsHound saved LukeArya, who finally got set straight by Obi-Wan Melisandre who told her to use the faceless force. Thus enwisened, LukeArya went right down that ventilation crypt shaft over the heads of the white walkers and attacked at just the moment the death king was about to clear the sword from his scabbard and blow up Bran.
I guess the big party will be next episode. They should give a medal to Drogon, who will roar amusingly. And then eat the band.
Massively disappointed by this episode. Like SenorBeef I felt that while the writing clearly dropped off since they moved past the books, at least they had the spectacles down pat… Battle of the Bastards was freaking amazing. So to end up with this wet fart of a battle was… ugh.
I figured they went with the night battle for budget reasons, but the combination of the darkness with the fog/smoke made the battle nearly impossible to follow at points. Throw in lots of close angles and quick cuts and it’s even worse to the point you can’t even tell if the person getting impaled is a live person or a wight. Couldn’t tell the dragons apart in the air except for the blue flame.
And even when you can tell what’s going on, it felt very by the numbers with no real exciting or shocking moments except for maybe the Lyanna Mormont scene. Things really dragged once Arya/Beric/the Hound started skulking about the interior. I was really hoping for a twist with the crypt, because it felt so obviously freaking stupid that it would be the ‘safest place’ against a necromancer, but nope, the corpses rise and start killing people. At least we’d surely get some interesting bit with Bran and the Night King, but nope, turns out Arya just stabs him and that’s the end. Whoopie.
I guess maybe the Night King will just end up being the genesis for the Jon/Dany alliance and hopefully lead to more interesting things in the last three episodes. They’ve definitely laid the groundwork for a big crack in their relationship. To be honest I’ll be hugely disappointed if it just ends up with Jon and Dany beating Cersei then happily ruling together as King and Queen.
She absolutely does carry one, shows it to Gendry in one of the last two episodes when they were flirting in the forge. I don’t think she’s one to leave any of her weapons behind. Ever. Goddamned murder genie.
In season 6, when the sisters seemed to be at odds, Arya gave Sansa the Valyrian dagger to prove she trusted her. But she must have gotten it back before the battle. She would never have given such a special weapon to Sansa when she couldn’t use it.
But they supposedly filmed for 11 weeks to make this so they were not doing night scenes for budget reasons. They spent a fortune on it but yeah…the whole thing was in the dark, in the fog and pretty much a waste of time. The quick cuts…ugh…how does anyone let that happen these days? Everyone hates it.
Not to mention their battle plan was farcical. I am no general but I am certain I could have done better. Why send your cavalry into the enemy, in the dark, when you have no idea of their deployment? Let your artilklery go to town for awhile rather than for two minutes. On it goes.
And yeah, Arya killing NK was a Deus Ex moment. How did she get past all the other WWs on her way in? And we spend eight seasons to have NK killed by a minor(ish) stab? (Yes, I know…valerian steel…still…)
That cavalry could’ve been pretty useful if held off in reserve. When they lit the trench, the cavalry could’ve hit them from the side and flanks and forced them into the fire.
So I didn’t mind Arya being the one to kill the guy. It’s sort of been what she’s been training for since Ned died. It seemed almost fated that a trained assassin Stark with a Valyrian steel dagger would be in Winterfell when death came calling.
But the rest of it… Yuck. It was just so… by the numbers. Of course Ser Jorah happens to arrive just as Daeneris is about to be killed. Of course Brienne arrives just as Jamie is being swarmed. Of course the Hound arrives just as Arya is about to be killed. Of course Edd dies saving Sam, and not just being hacked down by a random dead guy. Of course Beric Donderrian dies saving Arya - he was on her list, so it’s poetic.
And as it turns out that the Crypt was a really bad place to be, it seems everyone overlooked the simple fact that they were going down where all the dead people are. On the other hand, things were no better on the outside, so maybe it still was the safest place to be…
Anyway, this is not the battle George R.R. Martin would have written - at least back when he was writing the first books. I’m not so sure about now. There was too much fan-service, too much writing in the service of cool visuals. A dragon battle in the moonlight? That sounds cool, and SFX says we can do it in budget because it’ll all be in silhouette. Call the script guys and tell them to make sure there’s a moonlight dragon battle.
Kill Jamie? Are you kidding? Our Game of Thrones Christmas merch would drop 10%. The golden hand was a good idea, though. The Jamie with detachable hand was our best seller at Comic-Con.
Oh and was I was the only one worried that Jon Snow was going to become a member of the NK’s army after he raised the dead? Because Jon WAS murdered by the Night’s Watch. Although I’d have screamed at the loss of Jon, it would have been a great twist.
One thing that’s always bothered me was that there were no obvious repercussions for being re-animated. Makes even less sense when his body sat on that table for countless hours. I appreciate that it’s a fantasy, and that logically the cold could have offered some protection against, I don’t know, brain rot, but come on. He didn’t even return with an eye twitch.
I thought the episode was entertaining, as I’ve already accepted that the GoT I loved is no more. I watched the little “making of” documentary after this episode and it didn’t do anything to make me think the rest of the season will be any better. Not that they divulged any information about it, but just from the showrunners’ views about the current episode, I realize they just don’t get it. They had an opportunity to complete one of the greatest series of all time, but I guess that’s what happens when the source material runs out and you’re left with your pumped-up confidence. You decide to to visit tvtropes.org and write your episodes on what you find.
I thought it was great. My only criticism is that they made the army of the dead look so impressive and overwhelming from time to time and then other times the threat would appear manageable, with their attacks much less focused and their numbers much less. When the Dothraki charged, my thought was, “They are going to cut through the dead with ease”. Seeing them annihilated in two minutes was a shock and recalibrated my expectations about how dangerous the dead actually were. I guess I’ve watched too much Walking Dead. Dothraki would ride through hordes of those zombies and enjoy the sport immensely. These dead guys wield weapons and move much quicker and with more organization. Yikes. Another scene that was amazing was seeing it basically raining dead people as they came over the walls. But then when the major characters needed time to breathe, they got it.
I get people’s disappointment, but I don’t think the books are going to be any better, even assuming Martin ever actually writes them. I’m betting he’s slowed down because it’s just not fun anymore. It’s easy to upend fantasy tropes and foil your expectations in the beginning and middle of the story. But if you’re going to have a satisfying ending then those tropes are likely to reassert themselves and they have. The trick Martin used was to kill off major characters because he knew he didn’t need them anymore, even though you the reader didn’t know that at the time. Once he only had characters he needed, they had to be constantly saved from peril at the last minute. Their crazy poorly thought out plans had to start working. So while the story subverted fantasy tropes through most of it’s run, at the end, those tropes are going to be necessary to get to the ending he wants. I suppose you COULD screw with us by having the Night King on the Iron Throne, or Cersei, but it’s just not going to happen that way. It’s either going to be Jon or Danaerys or Jon and Danaerys or they both die and the survivors decide to stop playing the Game of Thrones and do something different. That latter ending is about as reasonably subversive as we’re going to be able to get.
