Arya is a faceless man, who are trained assassins.
We don’t really know whose face she was wearing. Might have been a face she brought with her. Lord Frey at least doesn’t identify her.
I loved this episode. I found it so good that it erased much of my dissatisfaction with the past couple episodes. In retrospect, when looking at the season as a whole, I don’t hate the storyboard:
8.1: Get all the characters to Winterfell
8.2: Let the audience make peace with all the deaths we know are coming
8.3: Resolve the night king
8.4: Kill a dragon by surprise (to us and Dany) and drive a wedge between Dany and Jon
8.5: Dany burns King’s Landing
In retrospect, my main objection is the execution of 8.4. Specifically the ballistas, which were unstoppable in one episode and then inept the next. I like the story idea of a surprise attack killing a dragon. Quite a bit, actually. But the presentation of that story was patently absurd: Euron hid a dozen boats behind a rock and then hit the target at range before the dragons were even aware of them? Come on. Then the next episode one dragon kills all the ballistas?
I like the story idea of the surprise attack, and I like the story idea of a single full grown dragon annihilating a fleet and a city. In fact, I kind of love those story ideas. But the way they presented it in 8.4 was full of suck. I would much prefer it if Dany and both dragons saw the ships, started an attack run and then the ships manage to take out one dragon just as Dany’s dragon burns them all, including Euron. Euron wasn’t required in 8.5 at all; Jaime could have gotten hurt any number of ways before finding Cersei if he had to be mortally wounded in that scene.
In every case I can think of, my complaints are about poor presentation to enhance tension in an unearned way. After 8.4 it looked like dragons were useless, then in 8.5 dragons are invulnerable? The only explanation for 8.4 leaving that impression is so that the audience at home would think the siege of KL would at best be a fair fight, at worst Dany’s forces wouldn’t stand a chance.
But why can’t the audience know going into 8.5 that KL doesn’t stand a chance if Dany decides to rage out? That would still offer tension and anticipation, but not in such a ridiculous “mmo devs rebalanced a unit” way.
Similarly, the battle tactics in 8.3 were comically bad solely to provide cool visual shots. The dothraki charge looked cool enough to warrant it, but the rest of that battle should have been better executed. Seriously, there would have been no change if Team Living put their trebuchets inside the walls and just kept up a non-stop barrage on Team Dead for the entire battle. Maybe they kill an extra 10,000 wights that way, but it wouldn’t be enough to change the battle significantly. Plus it would look cool and people wouldn’t have been grousing so much about stupid tactics.
Given that many/most of my remaining complaints come down to showrunner decisions on how to present the story specifically as a tv show, I can’t be overly critical. It is, after all, a tv show.
For example, Jon telling Dany before the battle in 8.3 feels 100% like a “make this a tv show” decision. Why couldn’t that have happened after Dany sees all the love Jon gets at the start of 8.4? It would have been a great scene for the actors; imagine Dany fighting her insecurity about the people’s love of Jon only to then hear Jon tell her he’s the rightful heir to the throne. Ouch!
Boy Qyburn’s arc was stupid. Somehow this deceitful, emotionless character remains loyal to Cersei to the stupid, pointless end? Any vizier worth their salt would have abandoned Cersei and fled to pre-arranged safety (like Varys several seasons ago) at the first sign that the battle was lost.
I did like that he was killed for trying to stop Cleganebowl, though!
Agreed. That was an excellent moment.
In my previous post I talked about my complaints stemming from them applying tv show standards to the story, but in most cases I love their “make it a tv show” decisions. This was one example.
Absolutely. Tyrion has become an intellectual Warf. (Warf, the super strong battle master klingon, got his ass kicked by every enemy who ever set foot on the bridge just to establish how badass the enemy was.) Tyrion is now outsmarted by everyone just to establish how smart they are, which is a terrible thing to do to the character of Tyrion.
That wouldn’t work at all. We saw the Night King being made by the children of the forest, and we saw every single undead thing (except the Mountain!) die when the NK died.
The only way they come back is if the children make another NK, and there’s no in-story way that can happen since the children have fought against them for millenia.
Oh lord, not another week of the equivalent of “Brienne didn’t kill Stannis because they didn’t show it!” type speculation. Please, anything but that.
I was watching it on a train in the sunlight, and did not catch any specific death of Cersei and Jamie (and indeed Qyburn), and rules of GOT is that if not seen killed, then not dead…
Arya got buildings dropped on her multiple times, and involved in crushes, and survived. I expect C&J to have made it, despite a serious gutwound. Just the way of GOT. Escaped to Pentos, and still alive, and plotting their return.
We do see them die- The basement they’re trapped in collapses and they’re buried by the rubble.
I’m still not completely convinced, but will take it as read, I barely could see some of the episode. However, I’d not be surprised if they did make it. Arya looked a goner for the same reasons all through the last 30 minutes.
Tyrion has certainly failed, but I don’t think anyone who “outsmarted” him is better off than they would have been by following his advice.
I didn’t see it noted by anyone else, but the backstory for the Hound and the Mountain is that the Hound’s face was half burned off because his big brother, the Mountain, shoved his head in a fire when they were kids.
This episode was brutal but I enjoyed it and feel it was very much in character for everyone. Some thoughts.
Varys died as he lived: jumping from side to side. You only can do that so many times.
Tyrion and Jaime’s hug was wonderful.
The image of the Dragon’s shadow over King’s Landing goes all the way back to a vision Bran had like four seasons ago.
The theme of this episode was vengeance. The Hound literally died for his but not before he was able to teach Arya how empty it is to live your life that way. And Dany finally said, “Fuck this entire place for what you did to me and my family. A Targearyan built it and one will now tear it to the ground!”. She aways wanted to give into her worst impulses but usually had Jorah or Tyrion to hold her back. No longer. Maybe Jon will reel her back. Maybe not.
It’s interesting that Cersei (and Jaime) died in such a way that people within the show will never be fully sure they died. Even though she is awful, if Dany is worse I could see her become some sort of folk hero to the Smallfolk, “Maybe Cersei will come back some day to save us. I hears she’s in Pentos gathering an army”.
It is also right in line with this show that Cersei never had a reckoning for the terrible things she did and she got to be in her lover’s arms when she died.
I guess they need to figure out how to quickly reunite the people at Winterfell with the Kings Landing group. But traveling a long way in a short time has not been an issue in the past .
It is not a comic book show but close – but the rule is if you do not see someone actually die, they can return alive. (Shrödinger’s character)
So for sure dead: Varys, Sandor, The Mountain.
Did we actually see Qyburn die?
We did NOT see Euron nor Jaime/Cersei actually die, though I wouldn’t bet on them being alive.
Oh, and Happy Mother of Dragon’s day! (it just occurred to me)
Brian
Yes, Qyburn had his brains splattered all over the rubble, he’s gone.
but even really dead people can come back like Jon Snow and the guy with the flaming sword
About the Dothraki - we didn’t see it two weeks ago because it was too dark, but I watched some YouTube videos where people had upped the brightness and contrast in parts of ep 8.3 and quite a few of the Dothraki can be seen retreating back through the lines as Jorah and Ghost returned. They were decimated, but not wiped out.
I expect that when this season comes out on DVD, that ep will be a lot lighter.
Remember the Hound? Granted his wound wasn’t as bad as Euron’s, but he lived.
I’m not sure there are any Red Priest(ese)s available, (though there certainly could get one) and can/would they resurrect someone now that the Night King is dead?
Brian
I don’t think the Red God would bring anyone back now that the Night King is dead.
Well that was a helluva thing to see. Never seen anything quite like that before.
Where they shit the bed for the set-up to this was Season 7. Burning to death Sam’s family was NOT sufficient narrative prep work. This spectacle would have been a lot less jarring if there had been a small city/fortress/castle that was genuinely fighting to the last man in Season 7, or at least thought they wanted to do that. No civvies, all soldiers – and therefore fewer moral concerns about the attack. And she was all like, fuck it, I want to preserve my army, not waste my time on these twerps. So she does a strafing run just like she did here. Burns them all out, no quarter, burns the whole castle down. Everyone is ash.
If she had done something kinda-sorta-similar-ish before, but on much smaller scale, then it would have been easier to imagine her choice.
I had no idea what the “choice” she was making at the time. It literally did not occur to me that she might do that, until it was already done. Like… there was just no rational point to it. Whatsoever. I knew they were building up to something, my wife was all “this is weird, when is the other shoe going to drop?” We just didn’t know it was indiscriminate mass murder coming up. Narratively, it would have been much easier to see her flip her lid if she’d done something “similar” before. If she was just doing something that had worked for her before on smaller scale. “Burn out all the defenders and spare my army”. Except she was mis-applying the lesson because of the tension, resorting to previous successes because she is now insane.
That was a bloody amazing thing to see, tho. WOW. Fuckin incredible.
reminded me of the Braveheart scene where the king said it was OK to fire arrows into the battle even though his own troops were also getting killed by the arrows. He made some comment that the troops were cheap to get.
I liked how Cercei kind of just scooted past the Clegane Brothers once she realized that The Hound wasn’t actually there for her.
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
Revelations 6:8
It references the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I’m surprised you’ve never heard it. The line is referenced a lot in film and tv.