max Game of Thrones, The Final Season

[Noodles]

The whole thing was pretty meh. I look forward to the inevitable Arya's Adventures spin off.

Also I noticed this as well.

Following from that, it's not "King of the Andals and the First Men," it's "King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men." Given the Dorne are the Rhoynar, seems everyone's excluding them anyway. Also, the last of the First Men are the Northmen So with Nexit it's really just "King of the Andals" now.

"Aren't the North people the "first men"? didn't they leave?"

 

[Cristiano]

The best ending would have been Daenerys waking up in the shower with Bobby Ewing and realizing the past 8 seasons had all been a dream.

 

[danielravennest]

I'm impressed that someone spotted that. A cup on the table right in front of the queen is one thing, but a water bottle behind someone's boot? Who is studying all the feet?

I'm studying the triangulated truss holding up the tent/structure they are under. That's a modern design. But then, I'm an engineer.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Good one! That scene would have been even more dramatic if it had been Jon who screamed "Dracarys!!" to order the dragon to melt the throne.

Which gets back to the problem with the showrunners. They miss great opportunities for drama because they're just focused on the visual aspects, such as the image of the dragon melting the throne. They don't explore the motivations and the emotional context of scenes, just the blocking.

Having Jon command the dragon would reinforce his birthright, and all that implies. His tie to the dragons never went beyond just hopping on their back.

I'm glad they didn't go down the path of Drogon blasting Jon, just to prove, after all this time, that he's immune to fire.
Given his history, that'd be something we'd already know by now if it were possibly true.

For all we know there was ancient magic preventing Dragons from willfully harming Targaryons, and/or Jon's throne-o-phobia was picked up by Drogon, or who knows what.

 

[Eunoli]

Ariane

Dorne is a very different plot and place in the books. There's an Aegon Targaryen that isn't Jon in the books. Lady Stoneheart is super important as is Ser Barriston (who wasn't supposed to die when he did). Soooo many more.

But yes, major plot arcs are just missing or very different. Brienne isn't all that minor even if she isn't a major character, though. In a lot of ways she's more sympathetic in the books, I think.

 

[Ann Launay]

 

[Myficals]

As a follow up to Eunoli's post above, a good example of a minor character from the books given more prominence would be Bronn. In the books he's really only an occasional player in Tyrion's chapters, until he walks out of Tyrion's life in book three. Beyond that there's some references to him in later Cersei chapters, but only to off screen antics. He doesn't actually appear and he certainly doesn't go off to have adventures with Jamie.

Martin has even noted that it's a 50/50 thing that Bronn even lived past the first book. When he first appears he's with a second sell sword, travelling with Catelyn's party to the Eerie. Martin only needed one of them to survive the journey in order to help Tyrion, and Bronn ended up the lucky one.

 

[Cristalle]

Brienne's representation on screen has magnified her role a little bit but not that much. The problem with characters like Bronn is that he benefited from Ilyn Payne's actor getting cancer and losing the work, and the butchery of the Dorne storyline to excise them from the series quickly. Plus Jerome Flynn is a great actor and Bronn has been really funny.

Also, Noodles: there are other houses that date back to the First Men that are not in the North. Westerling, for example, in the Westerlands. Queen Jeyne Stark who never showed up in the show and was replaced by a Volantene nurse was a Westerling. The oldest houses may be First Men houses.

 

[Arilynn]

+ Jon and Ghost reunited. Jon owes his good dire wolf a few elks as a treat.

- The thing that is most important to people is a good story? [Pet peeve warning]I hate it when writers do this kind of self-congratulatory stuff. A good story is more important than experience, ethics, good judgment, etc.? When writers do this kind of thing it seems a bit like mental masturbation to me. (And Edmure, ex-professional prisoner, didn’t deserve the joke at his expense.) Picking a king because of his “story” was the most idiotic thing I had seen until I saw that...

- Bran the all seeing chose Bronn as the Master of Coin. Were they all drunk? This is the guy who was going to kill Jamie and Tyrion for money and then decided not to for money. Who was an ally to Tyrion for money until he betrayed him for money. There must be a pattern here somewhere...

- And back to the “best story” idea. Bran’s story is better than Arya who has been alone this whole time and went through books/years of torture to avenge her family AND killed the Night King. (And as far as I know didn’t get her dire wolf killed....) Meanwhile, Bran hasn’t shown a single human emotion in ages or more than a flicker of concern about others. Sure, he knows what’s going to happen. So he was fine with the incredible loss of life - including King’s Landing children - so he could be the king he knew he was going to be. After denying repeatedly that he is even Bran Stark, human being, any more. He’s the Three-Eyed Raven, so he can’t rule Winterfell. But he can rule the 6. The only way that makes sense is if Bran is a lying, callous raven/guy whose sole focus was to become king. That would make Tyrion the biggest fool among a sea of fools.

+ I really liked Brienne ending up as head of the Kingsguard. That must have been something she could barely hope for and will bring about positive change.

+ I thought Drogon melted the throne exactly because he knew what was going on. There has been more than one suggestion that dragons are sentient and highly intelligent, and that also was explicitly discussed by characters. I only hope he/she flies to that faraway place that the dragons are suppose to come from, makes friends, starts a family, and thoroughly enjoys a human-free retirement.

- Jamie apparently didn’t go to King’s Landing to kill Cersei. So that whole character evolution arc, which was my favorite, was worth nothing and they had to make Brienne openly sob for him? The bastards.

- Arya sailing beyond the map? That’s about as specific and thoughtful as “and they lived happily ever after”. The way it was done made it seem like nothing more than a convenient plot end.

-/+ Anyone else a little nervous to have Sansa ruling people? She’s given off crazy waves for nearly the whole season.

 

[Ava Glasgow]

I had to look up who that pathetic guy was that was trying to claim the throne. It was that same guy who couldn't light a fire in season 1.

I don't remember the fire-lighting thing, but it was Edmure Tully (Caetlyn's younger brother) who tried to self-nominate. He didn't enter the show until season 3.

Bonus trivia: Edmure was played by Tobias Menzies, who played Frank/Black Jack Randall on Outlander.

 

[Cristiano]

 

[NyteWytch]

If crazy old people are using it...time to retire "craycray".

 

[NyteWytch]

And this pretty much sums up my reaction...



I like how a comment asks "you forgot why send the ravens? and why did bran go in his head during night king buildup" "he wanted to figure out which room in the red keep he wanted" LOL

 

[Innula Zenovka]

On consideration, I think the political system Tyrion invented is probably the worst possible choices for Westeros.

The underlying social structures are unchanged. So, too, is the main executive structure -- a small cabinet comprising the leading oligarchs and senior military and academic figures. The only thing that's changed is the method of appointing the monarch (I have an idea some historical European kingdom tried this method for a while -- Poland, I think).

This, it seems to me, is pretty much setting up future civil wars and the eventual break-up of the Six Kingdoms. Historically, the move has always been to centralise power and weaken the power of the local magnates, consolidating more and more of it in the hands of men from other backgrounds who owe their positions to the monarch (so Sam and Bron rather than the heads of the various houses), and then often into even larger political structures like the Hapsburg, Russian or Ottoman empires, and more recently supranational organisations like the EU.

Ironically, it turns out Daenerys was the most progressive political force of the lot, turning into a sort of deranged Leninist (only backed up with a dragon) who announces in a victory address to her victorious troops in what could have been Berlin after its conquest by the victorious Soviet Army, that she intends to unite the oppressed of the world, who have nothing to lose but their chains -- of which objects of oppression she is a celebrated breaker -- by exporting world revolution to them. In Westeros, like Lenin and Trotsky, and later Stalin, she intends to leapfrog the country direct from feudalism to revolutionary socialism, with no intervening rise of the middle classes as they have had in Bravos.

Anyway, unless Bron turns out to be a visionary economist -- which I can quite easily believe he would do -- I think long-term power is going to move to Bravos, as the main financial and commercial centre. Westeros is going to end up like the Balkans, only more so.

 

[Noodles]

Also, Noodles: there are other houses that date back to the First Men that are not in the North. Westerling, for example, in the Westerlands. Queen Jeyne Stark who never showed up in the show and was replaced by a Volantene nurse was a Westerling. The oldest houses may be First Men houses.

Yeah but aren't most of those houses under the banner of the Starks and The North? There's lots of.houses but only the 7 major kingdoms.

 

[Noodles]

- Arya sailing beyond the map? That’s about as specific and thoughtful as “and they lived happily ever after”. The way it was done made it seem like nothing more than a convenient plot end.

I am like 90% sure this was entirely done to set up a spin off for her character, since she isnone of the more popular characters overall. It sets up to do literally anything they want and have her wanter around Xena style in a blank slate fantasy land. They could even do some sort of GOT version of Orcs and Elves.

 

[Cristalle]

Yeah but aren't most of those houses under the banner of the Starks and The North? There's lots of.houses but only the 7 major kingdoms.

They're spread out, although the majority are in the North. The Andals came over when the Valyrians were pushing west and north into Essos, they're like the second wave of invaders after the First Men, who crossed the Arm of Dorne. The Children of the Forest broke the Arm of Dorne to stop the First Man invasion but too late. There are some First Man houses down in Dorne. Dayne, Fowler, and Yronwood in particular.

 

[Ariane]

I don't remember the fire-lighting thing, but it was Edmure Tully (Caetlyn's younger brother) who tried to self-nominate. He didn't enter the show until season 3.

Bonus trivia: Edmure was played by Tobias Menzies, who played Frank/Black Jack Randall on Outlander.

You are right, season 3. Here is the scene in question. He is basically the only one in the scene who survived to the end.

 

[Myficals]

I am like 90% sure this was entirely done to set up a spin off for her character, since she isnone of the more popular characters overall. It sets up to do literally anything they want and have her wanter around Xena style in a blank slate fantasy land. They could even do some sort of GOT version of Orcs and Elves.

A lot of folks have been hating on Arya's end, but I honestly think it's the only narratively satisfying end to her story that doesn't involve her dying. Arya is an outsider. Her entire story is about her struggle to survive without traditional or reliable support networks. In learning the skills to do so, she becomes less and less able to live within the constraints of the culture she's left behind. People talk about her marrying Gendry, or becoming Sansa's Queensguard, but as she says herself "that's not her." Arya has been on her own so long that she can no longer be subaltern to anyone, and that's the only sort of role Westeros offers her. Riding off into the sunset is literally the only option for her.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Anyone who thinks Arya marrying Gendry is a happy ending hasn't been paying attention.