That’s the scene I was thinking of, thanks for finding a picture.
Initially I thought, “Of course he is, he was doing blacksmith stuff and talking to Arya”.
Then I had my doubts and looked it up.
Then realised that Podrick isn’t Genry. Doh!
Potentially knowing everything and actually knowing everything is quite a difference. Bran has to look for specific things or use animal scouts. He can’t just go to a weirwood tree and google “what are potential events that will harm our effort.”
I agree that he’s very powerful and the deus ex machina that he can prevent isn’t super compelling. However, if the plot requires him/the Winterfell crew to be surprised then I see no contradiction there.
At first I thought it was just a creepy symbol the White Walkers used to display how morbid and deadly they are. But something about the wight kid waking up this last episode and screaming makes me think these pinwheels are kind of like the weirwood network is for Bran and the Children. Portals that allow the WWs to spy on various places. I suspect the Night King saw and heard the plans Tormund, Beric and Edd made in that cavern. I wonder if Bran might be able to hijack and use them eventually, to see behind enemy lines.
A pretty good episode, I thought. Lots of reunions and setting up the chessboard for the carnage yet to come. Not enough Brienne, though. I need more Brienne!
GOT has only made passing references to logistics. Over and over we see vast armies marching - hardly ever do we see all the wagons that would be carrying their supplies, or the raiding parties that would have to be out getting food from the oppressed peasantry. “Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics.”
Mark my words, Yara Greyjoy is going to come sailing to the rescue with her (by then much bigger) fleet sometime this season.
I *highly *doubt that. Littlefinger is really most sincerely dead.
Eh, that didn’t bother me. Just a bit of sisterly flattery, I thought.
Nice catch! Hadn’t thought of that.
I never really bought that scene. Dany was sitting right there, and could easily’ve said, “Indeed you did pledge fealty, Jon Snow, which I greatly appreciate. However, now (a) I release from your vow, or (b) I command you to comply with Cersei’s request.”
I doubt it, but could be! Stranger things have happened, and he is a royal bastard of Robert’s, after all (perhaps the last one now living).
A probably better option is to come back to Essos. Zombies can’t swim, they say.
There’s a third option :
Women didn’t stop drinking wine when pregnant, back then. Abstaining from alcohol during pregnancy is a very recent concept.
As far as I can tell, he mostly noted that she kept touching her belly.
It’ not specifically explained in fact. It might have happened way north of the wall, not close to it. And I don’t think the deserter was brought to Winterfell, I think he was caught there. I assume that if he had been caught by the night watch, they would have dealt with him themselves. The Lord commander clearly can sentence members of the watch to death himself.
Didn’t Sam work most of it out through his research at the Citadel?
That’s true for Earth history. Westeros isn’t “Earth”.
I don’t think they (or we) know if there is a connection between the weather and the White Walkers. As far as they know, winter is coming regardless.
I’m pretty sure pillaging Dothraki doesn’t sweeten the deal for Sansa. And what are tens of thousands of Dothraki going to pillage in the desolate, cold, sparsely populate climate of the North where all available food has probably already been squirrelled away in anticipation of the long winter?
We actually don’t even know where or how Danayris feeds and clothes her army. Up until last season, her troops have been mostly fighting in the dry arid climate of Essos. Where did she suddenly produce fashionable winter gear for tens of thousands of soldiers? Does she have supply chains leading back to cities Essos?
He also has to know what to look for. In the last season, he didn’t know Jon was the legitimate heir to the throne. He “watched” the marriage ceremony after Sam told him it had taken place.
He also has no knowledge of the future, seemingly.
But I agree that he’s overpowered and a too easy to use plot device.
This last season is past “Winter is Coming” and into “Time has Stopped.”
Need to get armies from several months travel away? Time has stopped. Need to feed and clothe those armies? Time has stopped. Need to get the Hound fighting the Mountain? Time has stopped. The only exceptions will be last minute deus ex machina rescues and whatever timeline Cersei’s baby is on.
I understand why they’re doing this. Time lapses are the death of narrative action. Whole episodes will be taken up by battles, reducing the on-screen minutes for anything else. They need to create tidy endings for several dozen speaking characters. Nothing else matters to them, because they know they’ll be judged solely by how those lives - and deaths - are handled.
We do have the example of Drogon lighting up the Lannister wagon train before Bronn shoots him with the Scorpion. Jamie tells Cersei that a 1000 wagons were burned. In retrospect, maybe they should have captured them and brought them to Winterfell. They probably did with whatever didn’t get torched.
Right. Knowing everything in the entire world and its entire history actually limits Bran in some ways. He has the equivalent of a million Encyclopedia Britannicas to look through. He’s never met Bronn, so there’s no reason to look for him. Bronn didn’t even meet directly with Cersei, so even if he was keeping one of his three eyes on Cersei he might not realize that there was a plot.
In the first episode, when the three members of the Night’s Watch find the dismembered Wildling bodies forming a pattern, there is also a young Wildling girl transfixed to tree but intact. She doesn’t reanimate at first but is later seen by Will walking around, the first wight we see.
It definitely appears that it didn’t happen all that far north of the Wall. It seems that Will has been on the run ever since he saw the White Walker. He may have found some way to get back over the Wall without being detected. However, he could have reported back that his companions had been killed by Wildlings and then just deserted at the first opportunity. The fact that he was AWOL when Ned found him was sufficient reason to execute him.
Tyrion noticed two things: That she didn’t drink the glass of wine that he put in front of her, and then touched her belly. There was no reason in that scene for the business of putting the wine in front of her unless it was meant to be significant.
Great to see the young Lady Lyanna Mormont, BTW, as fierce as ever.
Here’s the actor who plays Sam talking about the scene with him and Jon Snow in the crypt: Game of Thrones Season 8 Premiere: John Bradley on Jon Snow Revelation
Exposed to the elements, but walled.
Heh. My favorite line of the evening. The runner-up:
Edd: “Stand back, he’s got blue eyes!”
Tormund: “I’ve *always *had blue eyes!”
Maybe she would’ve named them all Stampy.
Could be. Remember Bronn is all about being paid. Didn’t he tell Tyrion he’d kill a baby if the money was right? But he has a heart of gold, deep down, so I suspect he’ll come over to the Lannister Brothers’ side in the end.
Thanks for those links. Westworld, another HBO show, has been doing something similar with mazes and mysterious symbolism.
Chekhov’s wineglass?
The real reason is that we’ve condensed the entire story to two main locations. Before, you could jump around. Each episode might have 5 or 6 locations, but if you break it down, the plot might only be moving in 1 or 2 of them. They can’t do that anymore.
At the end of the very first episode Ned tells Jon “next time we see each other we will talk about your mother”, fitting that it was in the crypt in front of Ned’s statue that Sam tells him about his mother (and father).
During the crypt scene, there was a small statue of a boy with a dog on a leash. That Rickon?
Well, the way I would look at it is that, if the undead were dead, they can become redead.