I hope there is a lot of pressure on HBO to reissue this episode with clearer visuals.
Did anyone get the feeling that D&D were not enthusiastic about this episode in the making of segment?
darkness hides a lot of stuff , you never got too many closeup looks at the wights. Probably because it takes a lot of effort to use makeup or CGI for them.
Maester Aemon died of old age seasons ago!
Very disappointed in this episode. I thought “Hardhome” was done so much better.
I agree with all the obvious criticisms mentioned by others. (Half the time we couldn’t see what was being shown on the black mirror screen because here in western Australia it shows at 9 am Monday morning. And there is lots of incidental lighting from all the windows. Arrrgggh.)
The little things don’t bother me so much. What bothers me the most is that the arc of the series was that the political game of thrones doesn’t really matter. What matters is the great battle of ice and fire. The battle of the living against the dead.
Pfffft. Not true apparently.
Seven seasons building up the threat of winter coming is wiped out with one lucky stab. I like Arya and all, but c’mon. The Night King couldn’t sense her behind him like he did Jon?
Very disappointed indeed.
He did sense her coming, that cartoonish leap.
Turned around and caught her by the neck. Her dagger fell. She caught it and stabbed.
Here someone made a GIF of it.
They should call in Gary to help out.
Anyone else thbought for a second that Theon was going to get up and charge the Night King again?
I thought perhaps the greyscale that Jorah had but was healed of might grant him some special protection.
Agree, though I’m not sure how they could have done it better. The Night King had to die this season; would it have been better to draw it out? I don’t know the answer, but I’m with you in thinking that the Night King and thus the entire threat of White Walkers and zombies are just gone seems somehow anticlimactic.
It occurred to me last week that maybe, just maybe, the whole “GRRM doesn’t finish the books before the show ends” was on purpose. It definitely would have cut into the excitement of these last few episodes if a significant number of the viewers knew the ending, right? I could totally see there being an agreement that he’d not finish the series, at least not until the show is over.
I guess we’ll see in the next few months if the next book appears as if by magic.
I came here this morning really excited to read other’s reactions to the episode and I have to say I am shocked that it is so overwhelmingly negative. I loved this episode and although I agree sections of it were too dark I didn’t think it was that bad. I spent the entire episode on the edge of my seat. The Dothraki charge was an early punch in the gut watching the lights blink out. By the last few minutes of the battle, my mind was reeling that I could not believe the writers were going to have the Night King win. If the combined forces of Daenery’s and the North plus dragons couldn’t beat the Night King… there was almost no one left and the Night King was going to roll over Kings Landing. Then came Arya’s attack and when the Night King caught her by the throat I thought this is it, this is where they kill a major character and fan favorite.
Other things I really liked:
The detail of the dragon’s throat being ripped out in the earlier fight coming back in the end when it was doing it’s ice version of shooting flames out it’s mouth. Having that jetting out the neck wound was a nice touch.
How they kept the “mass” of the Night King’s army in the dark, it created a tremendous sense of dread. I felt Mormont’s fear watching the army swallowed by the darkness.
The whole visual of the lighting of the Dothraki army’s weapons was stunning.
The tactic of the Night King to raise up the winter storm to (somewhat) neutralize Daenery’s dragons.
Theon’s ass kicking and redemption. I think that was an exceptionally strong moment of Theon with tears in his eyes receiving forgiveness.
I also thought the moment with Sansa and Tyrion hiding behind the crypt was just full of emotion. So much was said by their faces without a word being spoken.
“Not today”.
Ah well, I’m still on a bit of a high over the episode. I do agree with the earlier comments about subverting tropes only works in the beginning to middle. You can’t do it through-out else you end up with chaos and no way to complete the story. I do suspect we will see one or two twists or at the least some satisfying ends to certain character’s story - Mountain vs. The Hound anyone?
I think the problem isn’t so much with the anti-climax of the Night King’s death, but as you say, where does the series go from here? Now all that’s left is the Game of Thrones part, now that the the Song of Ice and Fire part is all wrapped up and Fire won.
Consider this alternate episode. Winterfell is set up like we saw it, except the Dothraki are kept off to the side like an actual cavalry would be. A horde of wights, commanded by the White Walkers we saw from the end of Ep 2, rushes the defenses set up around Winterfell. The Unsullied, the Wildlings, the Northmen, everyone is caught off guard by the ferocity of the surge. They have to fall back almost immediately just as Drogon and Rhaegar start strafing the undead army. Several strong by expendable characters (Beric, Jorah, Theon, Edd, maybe Samwell and some others for a real gut punch) are overrun, their past successes having left them unprepared for the raw force of the rushing attackers. However, we the audience quickly realize that while the wights have speed and numbers, they lack a cohesive strategy. We see our heroes recover from the initial surge and establish defenses – Jon Snow, Arya, Tyrion, Lady Mormont, and others display their tactical prowess by holding their respective sections of the castle. The Dothraki, seeing their window has opened, rush in and mow down the remaining wights who haven’t been burnt by dragonfire.
The battle is won, but at some personal cost to each of the main characters. As the dust settles and the sun comes up, though, the White Walkers are still standing on the far side of the field. Why didn’t they attack? Where’s the Night King and Viserion? Cut to Bran, unscathed in the godswood, coming out of a warg state – the battle, he says, has just begun. Cut to Kings Landing, where we see the same dragon shadow flying over the city that we saw in season 4. Roll credits.
(Also, imagine all of this where someone fixed the goddamn lighting.)
**Episode 4 **
Cersei, having ignored the warnings about Winter coming, now finds herself staring at the Night King, perched atop Viserion just out of range of her anti-dragon artillery. Still smugly satisfied with Qyburn’s creations, she wonders how one White Walker is any threat at all. However, King’s Landing, being a city of a million people, is full of dead bodies. The Night King raises all the dead in the city, who bust out of crypts (in KL instead of Winterfell) and start tearing the place apart from the inside. Cersei and Qyburn are caught completely off guard, as they should be for how little credence they’ve given to this threat. One by one Cersei’s loyal defenders are picked off as we see the city slowly crumble and start to burn, forcing them deeper into the bowels of the Red Keep. As they make their way to the escape boats they have as a last resort, Euron bites it, leaving only the undead Mountain to defend the Queen. The UNDEAD Mountain. Cut to the Night King, with a sudden moment of clarity and a little waggle of his nose. Cut back to the Mountain, whose eyes turn blue. The Mountain crushes Cersei in the most satisfying of fashions. The Night King raises a second army of the dead from the corpses around him and begins marching north, where the actual epic battle will take place in Episode 6 at The Twins.
I’ll stop there, but I think this is all much more satisfying than whatever they have cooked up now, which is likely 2 episodes of intrigue and bullshittery followed by something boring happening with Cersei.
But don’t get me wrong, I like the intrigue and bullshittery, but I think my proposal still leaves all of episode 5 and about 25 minutes in episode 6 for politicking and backstabbing between Daenerys and Jon, which would be plenty.
Martin gave up on the books and turned it over to the TV people. So what you get is a TV show. Why should anyone expect different?
My biggest issue is the whole Dothraki army wiped out that fast?
I had no problem seeing the characters but the overview of the battlefield was too dark for me. Am I correct in thinking that:
-1st line of defense: dothraki cavalry
-2nd: regular infantry
-3rd: trebuchets
-4th: elite spear infantry
-5th: trench + walls which had a small amount of archers on them
I’m no expert on medieval warfare but I do know that’s not how you defend a city in the Total War games :eek:
Keystone Army Warning:TVtropes
Yes, and he should have, by the logic of the episode. Jorah was stabbed in the chest and heart area several times and kept on fighting. Theon got stabbed once, in the side, then just laid down and bled on the Night King for a minute or two before closing his eyes.
Ok, so I watched it on a train, in daylight. Could barely see a thing for large chunks. I wasn’t sure what happened to the living dragons. I assumed at least one was dead, possibly both given they weren’t helped Danerys or Jon at all.
Ghost? I saw him at the start (or was it the portrait of ghost like last week?) Did they kill him off? Shockingly bad treatment for the last Direwolf in play.
Dothraki were shit. I guess it was largely helpless sheep farmers they trained against.
And even if a mention, when Tyrion was talking about being the one who won the battle of blackwater, at least he could have mentioned WILDFIRE, which would have been REALLY useful there, even if they couldn’t get any.
I would have thought Theon would have had a better chance that Arya to get the NK, great fighter, and I was supposing the other 11 odd white walkers wouldn’t have let him near the NK. And those other 11 white walkers weren’t much use against Arya either.
I do like the term “Load bearing character” though.
And half my enjoyment of this episode will probably come from Ozzieman’s commentary.
Technically, Nymeria is still in play.
Was Ghost in the Dothraki charge? I saw he was around and I was looking forward to some badass wolf action about three seasons since anything like that, and then I forgot about it.
Was Ser Friendzone in the Dothraki charge? Did he manage to get back?
It was annoying, especially with battles like Helm’s Deep to think about. But before the actual fighting started I worked out they were doing it on purpose. Your enemy can see in the dark, but you can’t. And you folks sitting at home? We can’t ship you a combat zombie, but we can at least give you an idea of how disoriented the good guys are and how fast death can come, seemingly from nowhere. Even now, after the zombies are all redead and the fight is over, nobody is quite sure who all survived.
I was disappointed Tyrion didn’t develop any useful tricks from his fireside chat with The Guy Who Knows Literally Everything. Or maybe he did–the only useful thing to do, apart from running far and fast from Winterfell, was to hide for as long as possible.
I imagine it surprised the hell out of them as well. The enemy was vastly underestimated, it was going to be a long night.