Earlier this season people pointed out that Cersei was just a person. She didn’t want to kill all life or open a portal to a demon dimension or anything. Compared to the Night King, Cersei was just kind of a jerk. A human jerk who by her very nature posed zero threat to humanity itself.
For someone like Bran, I’m wondering if the sack of King’s Landing was even worth noticing. A few hundred thousand people died, whoopty-do, he’s been preoccupied with trying to stop an Extinction Level Event for the better part of a decade.
If a hundred year civil war erupted starting now, that still wouldn’t even register on his existential threat scale, I don’t think.
How can you say that Bran knew everything was destined, if he was an active participant in the chain of events? He had no free will to keep his trap shut about Jon’s lineage? If Bran was gonna end up being king no matter what, then why not keep your mouth shut so as to not appear complicit? Bran as the source of the info was known to several people.
It’s possible that Bran saw a path to victory and didn’t know what would happen if he strayed from that path. So he did everything he saw himself doing, just to ensure that victory. Not exactly fate, but his free will would have been hampered.
It’s not really possible to convincingly argue what Bran knew and what he did not, or what his take on free will is. He speaks in noncommittal phrases most of the time. There is really no way one can demonstrate that he knew he’d be King.
Am I the only one who has been generally down on this season but rather liked the final episode? There were some beautifully shot scenes, especially Dany’s speech and death. While the latter felt rather abrupt on first viewing, I think the scene works, including Drogon’s actions, at the level of emotion and symbolism. I also just liked seeing the characters that we have been following for so long and who have been through so much, find some happiness, Brienne adding to Jaime’s entry, Sansa’s getting crowned and Jon returning to the Wall and beyond.
My overall feeling at the end was just gratitude, the show has been through its ups and downs, with more of the latter towards the end, but at its best it was a pinnacle of television and even the weaker episodes often have individual scenes of outstanding merit worth coming back to.
I would say I was rather indifferent to the rest of the season. However I found the Battle of Winterfell ridiculous and poorly shot. The overall feeling I have for the finale is “content.”
I really thought the society in GoT is what made it extraordinary, not the characters. Once the characters’ morals started tracking with our contemporary ideas of good and evil it went downhill. I didn’t have much hope for the finale, but I was onboard up until the council scene. From that point forward I just wanted it to end so I didn’t have to watch it anymore.
I don’t know… Bran repeatedly said to people lamenting their past actions words to the effect of, “You were exactly where you were supposed to be”, or “You did exactly what you needed to do.” When asked if he’d be King, he said, “Why do you think I came all this way?”, suggesting that he knew exactly what would be asked, and what he would say. It’s not like he was just sitting at home and thought, 'You know, I should make an 1800 mile trip just on the off chance that they want a crippled northerner to run the kingdom."
The implication I got from Bran’s actions is that he know what the future IS, not what it might be. And if that’s the case, he’s powerless to do anything other than what his sight tells him he will do in the future. He has to follow the script.
Which is a pretty hellish existence. Some science-fiction has characters who are possessed, and the original personality is behind the scenes just watching as the possessor controls the body.
I imagine Bran is a bit like that, knowing what’s going to happen, including knowing what he’s going to decide, and knowing that when the moment comes, he’ll not decide anything different.
That’s like Dany being your personal sovereign. You don’t get to decide. Or, maybe, he does have a choice. Bran could do what he would have ‘wanted’ before he no longer had wants, no matter what the foreseeable consequences were. Then he would be Dany.
I disagree. I don’t think Bran knows the future any more than the previous 3ER did. What he knows is probabilities. The more data you have, the better predictions you can make. Bran didn’t travel on “the off chance.” He traveled because he had a very good hunch they would pick him. But Murphy will always have a say.
Besides, knowing the future is the same as being prophetic, and we have seen how accurate that is on Westeros. That is, minimal at best.
Episodes 1-2: Excellent, I believed they had it in them to make an amazing final season.
Episode 3: OK, my stream was way, WAY dark on the night it aired. I re-viewed it in super-high resolution and it is a great episode. One of the great ones, actually.
Episode 4: I LOVED the post-battle celebration. I found the final 20-30 minutes with Cercei totally awkward and badly made. Forced, awkward, and eye-rolling-inducing.
Episode 5: Beautiful, but disappointing resolutions to storylines.
Episode 6: A mixed bag, but mostly good. I think Jon leaving the south forever is a beautifully filmed ending. The rest of the character endings ranged from frustratingly bland to wonderful.
I would have suggested two 10 episode seasons instead of one 7 and one 6 episode season. Or even 3 seasons of 2-8 episodes:
Season 6 - Night King
Season 7 - Cercei(final ep of season ends with Dany burning the city)
Season 8 - Aftermath of Cercei’s death and Dany’s decent into full psycho and a slower development of the other storylines.
I agree mostly with this. I love episode 3 but it would have been better if they would have let Sam stay in the crypt rather than somehow survive where he should have been dead at least three times. Episode 4 spiraled out of control from the surprise attack of Euron onward, and is by far the worst episode of the season for me.
I just wanted to say that I’m currently binge-watching the entire series with my son who has never seen it. We’re up to season 5 now, and I have to say that it’s causing me to already see the last season in a much more favorable light.
I think one of the problems Game of Thrones has had is that the seasons were so spread out in time that people forgot little details that make the actions in the last season much more reasonable. For example, it’s very clear that Daeneris, left to her own devices, makes rash decisions that lead to great harm for a lot of people. For example, she had 161 masters crucified along the road to Mereen, against the strenuous advice of Barristan Selmy, who counseled mercy. Then in the next episode one of the supplicants to see her says that his father fought bravely and tirelessly against slavery, and fought against crucifying the child slaves. Daeneris says, “Where is he now? I’d like to meet him.” And the man replies, “You crucified him.”
There was another scene a few episodes before where Ser Jorah had to talk her down from killing a whole bunch of people. And it was an effort, because she really wanted vengeance.
When she heard that Yunkai and Astapor had fallen to the slavers again, she ordered Dario Neharis to take the second sons and simply kill every master in those cities - after she had already been shown that not all the masters were evil people. Again, Ser Jorah talked her down, and she agreed to give them one chance to free the slaves or they would be killed.
At almost every turn along the way, Daeneris’s instincts told her to do the most brutal thing she could, but the fact that she was doing it in the cause of freeing slaves allowed her and the audience to overlook her tendency to violence. But imagine if she had done the same actions in King’s Landing, crucifying or murdering every Lannister or Knight in the King’s Guard, and along with assholes like Meryn Trant we saw her crucify Jamie and Tyrion Lannister and Bronn. The audience would never have forgiven her, but in terms of her morality it would have been no different. But because they were NPC’s being crucified, we overlooked it.
I suspect that when we get back to the last season, it’s going to feel a lot more justified and coherent than it did watching it after waiting 2 years.