Yeah, I’m upset how quickly it turned around, not that it did. In the book his desperation is much more palpable, and he hasn’t even sacrificed Shireen yet. I don’t think the show earned it. It could have if that was his season long arc instead of a two episode arc. Oh well.
So did Robb Stark’s. Sometimes that’s just how the story goes.
Both good points that I agree with, but it still doesn’t sit right with me. And I still want to know what happened to his body (if they weren’t going to put his head up at Winterfell, then at least they would be delivering it to King’s Landing for a hefty reward), and what happened to Lightbringer.
It is indeed disappointing that his story arc would come to such an abrupt and unceremonious end. But these loose ends are enough to convince me that it’s at least possible that something happened in those woods other than what we’re led to believe. Maybe a Child of the Forest shows up and stops her because they want him for… whatever weird pixie shit they’re into, but tells her to say to the world that he’s dead. Or he dies, but comes back as a White Walker. I don’t know. His story just feels incomplete.
But at least with Robb, we see him get killed and we see his body with the direwolf head sewn onto it. No question about his fate. Not showing Stannis’ death or any aftermath whatsoever (like what happened to his body and his sword) is suspicious.
Sarcastic. I was drawing a parallel to another example of extreme tediousness.
Exactly, perfect example. This is like the Poe’s Law version of overly labored attempts to outsmart showrunners. To me it reads as obvious and clear parody, but unfortunately I think you’re sincere.
It has nothing to do with “outsmarting” them. I’m trying to make sense of the extremely peculiar way they handled his death, which is not consistent with anything else in the show.
Would you not agree that their claim that to show his death would have been “too gratuitous” to be a bizarre statement that doesn’t fit with literally everything else in the show?
When S5 ended and I read that, I thought “OK well that’s a bullshit explanation but whatever, it’s just a stylized shot” and that at the beginning of S6 we’d for sure see the aftermath to confirm what happened: i.e., Bolton forces finding his body and sword and bringing it back to their Lord. Because again, that’s a big fucking deal. He was an extreme threat to the Throne, and they would be generously rewarded if they could prove he was dead. But there was no such scene. Nothing whatsoever to indicate that Stannis was indeed executed other than Roose and Brienne casually mentioning it. I’m not saying that he definitely wasn’t either, but it’s just a bizarre and sloppy way of handling the end of this major storyline.
What I’m afraid of is that the truth is that they really had not made up their minds about it and were leaving both options open.
Has the show ever engaged in such a gimmicky cheat as it would require for Stannis to see the sword coming at him, by a person who just declared himself his executioner, and then faded to black, and then having the forces he just battled with confirm his death, and the woman who executed him confirm his death to people later, and hey, it turns out he actually went to go party in Essos at the last minute because Brienne sneezed and he slipped away and she was too embarassed to admit it.
If Stannis shows up alive, it will be a vastly greater problem than the fact that we didn’t see his head mounted to a pole. They’ve given us no plausible reason why he would still be alive, but people are still straining hard to posit increasingly unlikely scenarios.
Yes, this exactly. This is what I was saying about Littlefinger, he takes advantage of chaos, whether he caused it or not. He’s an opportunist.
While I agree that any alternative seems unlikely, there’s no denying that the way they’ve handled it is weird and it seems to at least leave room for doubt. I won’t be surprised if we haven’t seen the last of Stannis in some form, even if it means he merged with the demon shadow baby and comes back around to haunt Old Melly. I also won’t be surprised if it turns out that the face value explanation of his fate is in fact true, but if that’s the case I think that it was a very shitty and elusive way to end his story arc.
I think if you cast a magical spell on a “regular” sword, it’s pretty fair to then call that a magical sword. 
In any case, do we have reason to believe the glamor would wear off upon Stannis’ death or if Old Melly stopped “maintaining” it? Because if not, that means somebody is walking around with a mighty fancy sword. And at the very least, I want to know what happened with it. It should have ended up with Roose/Ramsay if we are to believe his men found him, but it didn’t. Unless Brienne took it, but again we haven’t seen any evidence that she did.
Well, his sword was only on fire in one scene back in season 2, so yes. I think in the show it wasn’t even a glamor, they just used oil or something.
In the book, who knows.
He was also showing it off when he arrived at Castle Black. It wasn’t on fire, but it was all glowy and sparkly.
But the story arc didn’t end with Robb’s death. We’re still discussing whether "the North will remember"or not, how the people who betrayed him will meet their demise, how his siblings will avenge his death, what Lady Stoneheart will do, how the Starks/Tullys will reclaim their domains, etc…
No such thing with Stannis. He and everything related to him disappeared in a puff of smoke. It’s as if he never existed in the show. Even his most loyal companion seems mostly uninterested and immediately turned towards someone else.
On top of which, Stannis story arc lasted much longer than Robb’s. All these scenes featuring him, his family, his armies… for several years and his only contribution to the story is having won a battle against the wildlings, saving Jon’s ass? He could have been given five minutes of screen time for an identical result.
It reminds me of the prince of Dorne in the books whose expedition we followed for several chapters only to see him being roasted by a dragon as soon as he arrived. Except much worse.
We could also have seen Bran being killed by the reanimated skeletons before he could meet the three eyed raven, or Danaerys being executed by the Khals during the last episode. You could still say “that’s just how the story goes”, but it hardly would be satisfying, would it?
Exactly, the ‘Quentyn-ization’ of Stannis is the second most irritating thing about the show for me at this stage. It’s still not as annoying as what the show did to Dorne though.
In the show? What episode? I don’t remember that.
Yes - I’m having trouble finding a reference clip/still, but I want to say early S5 (maybe 5.02?), shortly after Stannis has set up shop in Castle Black. I distinctly recall a scene where he unsheaths it in front of a crowd of soldiers who ooh and aah at it’s glowy shininess. I’m pretty sure I’m not imagining it - does anyone else remember that scene?
I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that Stannis’s Lightbringer was anything more than a magic trick.
Nobody’s said anything to the contrary… my issue is what happened to it?
What happened to an ordinary sword in a huge battle? Is there any reason to believe that it matters?
That’s the thing - it wasn’t ordinary since it had a magic spell cast on it. That spell may have been purely aesthetic, but it made it very distinctive in a way that would make it stand out quite a bit. Unless, as I said, there’s some reason for believing the spell would have ended when he died. But I don’t see why we’d automatically assume that.
How do you know that it ever had a spell cast on it? As I said, I don’t see any reason to believe that it was anything more than a magic trick. No spell required.