The Sept of Baelor was built post Dance right?
I have a very hard time believing that. The king clearly mistook her for Rhaenyra in their earlier conversation, and Alicent knew that. And then what he said to her in their very last time together was, “You wanted to know if I believe it to be true. Don’t you remember? Aegon? His dream. The song of ice and fire. It is true. What he saw in the north. The prince that was promised. The prince. To unite the realm. Against the cold and the dark. It is you. You are the one. You must do this. You must do this.”
Hearing that and believing that he meant that his son Aegon should assume the throne is a HUGE stretch.
You don’t need a Prince to defeat that. We just need a girl to jump the Night King from the back
I wonder what the point of the entire Arya plotline in GOT was for if not for her assassin training to be used in the end. If Arya didn’t kill the Night’s King, what other purpose was all that time we spent watching her become the baddest assassin in the land? Would seem to be a total waste of time otherwise.
But this is a tangent. Sorry. I won’t pursue further.
As for Alicent, I don’t think there’s anyway she didn’t realize she was listening to a dying man who had no idea who he was talking to. She was highly motivated to believe what she ended up taking away from that, but I don’t think she totally sincerely believed he really did a 180 after 20 years of intending Rhaenyra to succeed him as he lay on his deathbed.
I think the ending of the show bears very little resemblance to what GRRM had planned for the books due to all the things they cut and changed.
Yeah, this. It was pretty clear that Arya had intended to take vengeance on everyone who had a part in the fall of the Starks. She even got a start on it with that family she poisoned (I forget their names, the ones with the bridge).
But then that all kind of went away.
Well I guess there’s no way to know that because he never finished the books, and it doesn’t seem like he ever will. The showrunners had to come up with an ending. Martin seems to have written himself into a corner. I don’t think there is an ending he could write at this point that wouldn’t piss off a large part of the fanbase. Otherwise, why hasn’t he written the ending yet? It’s been quite a few years…
So did Martin. I don’t understand why people still think he has some master plan for how he was going to end it. If he did, he would have written the ending already. It isn’t a comparison between the ending of the show and the ending he wrote (he didn’t), it’s a comparison between the end of the show and the imaginations of every fan. I’m not saying it was perfect or even great, but I wasn’t angered by it and I enjoyed it for what it was because I realized it was a zero percent chance for them to end it and not cause lots of people to be pissed no matter what they did.
I’m still watching this, mainly out of boredom. The ambient light filming is really annoying. I don’t know if they’re doing it to avoid building expensive sets, or if it’s some ego thing with the showrunner. I have a new OLED TV and I still can’t see what the hell is going on at times.
I’m not even demanding the ending that he “would have written”, as you say, that just doesn’t exist. But it’s not wrong to ask for an ending that actually resolves some of the major plots of the earlier seasons, and Arya’s training is one of the biggest of those.
The problem is that the people who ended up writing the ending we got didn’t care enough to bother trying to come up with an ending for her that made sense, so they just tacked her on as the one who finally got the Big Bad, even though, thematically, there were probably five or ten other characters, ones who were dealing with the whole White Walkers problem for years, who would have been better suited to that role.
I understand the complaint. But the thing is, I liked Arya’s character. She was always one of my favorite characters, and I always wondered what she was going to do with these skills she was building for all that time. I was not surprised they went with something that defied expectations. The show did that the whole time starting with Ned Stark dying in season 1. It was never a by the numbers story and that was shown to us over and over throughout the story. Also remember Jon Snow always had a special relationship with Arya, he gave her sting. He set her on her journey to be the one to kill the Night’s King. Would she have without Jon Snow and his influence? Probably not. IDK, as I say I get what the complaints are about it, but I just don’t agree and it didn’t ruin anything for me. It’s all opinions anyway.
Correct. Baelor is a grand-son of Rhaenyra and Daemon, not born until after The Dance. He began construction of the Great Sept during his reign but it was completed until after his death. The coronation of Aegon II was at the Dragon Pit.
Ah, I see. This was the same location we saw in GOT that had been destroyed. I never read the books (well I started the first one, but the show got so far ahead of me that I stopped), so I don’t know all of the history and lore, just what I’ve seen on the shows.
It wasn’t hard to fix, that one. She morphed into a noticable zombie (they’re dead, right, so faceless men), allowing a sneak attack, done. Not just jumping from on top of a crate to kamakazi it. I think that is often the complaint about Season 8.
Best not to go down that path again, Season 8, if they’d had a half decent script advisor, could have fixed a bunch of things with a few tweaks here and there (I think there was a decent set of videos going along with the seasons 6-8 onwards to fix the episode). Fitted with lore. Gave satisfying reasons. I think the problem is really it wasn’t well written.
This was the same location where the GOT version of the Council of Elrond took place, when most of the cast got together for the first time and decided to fight the Walkers.
I do enjoy the sense of history we get from these shows. This feels like a place that has been there for a long time. I recently read an article online that pretty much spoiled most of what is to come on HOTD, but I don’t really care that much. I enjoy watching it all unfold.
I think Bilbo might have something to say about that.
Right … Needle?
Dany Benioff and Weiss kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet that they had to write an ending.
It’s especially noticeable when compared to OG Game of Thrones, which I am concurrently re-watching along with House of the Dragon as it airs. The lighting and color grading on the original show is absolutely on-point and conveys a sense of temperature and ambience that corresponds perfectly with each setting. Bright, cool, slightly blue-shifted light north of the Wall so you really feel like you’re freezing your ass off along with Jon Snow and the Wildlings; warm yellow light in King’s Landing that makes it feel like Renaissance-era Rome; the scenes in Highgarden are saturated with color and bright, as it’s supposed to feel like a lush kingdom centered around horticulture; the scenes with Danaerys are often in a desert setting with bright, sometimes harsh, lighting. And at no point does the color and lighting feel OVERDONE - it never looks muddy or washed-out. Even in gloomy places like Harrenhall and Dragonstone, they at least managed to get the lighting on all the characters so you can see everything clearly.
The constantly-changing scenery also gives a sense of variety and freshness because it changes many times in each episode as the story follows the different characters around.
I think the story and characters of House of the Dragon are improving, but the show is still not much to look at visually.