max Game of Thrones, The Final Season

[Free]

Is this a spoiler? hehe...

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

As an aside....anyone who hasn't seen this actual video, with sound, is missing out on something amazing.

 

[Ann Launay]

 

[Arilynn]

I loved that episode.

• I especially loved the fact that Arya killed the ice king. She’s been one of my favorite characters from the start, and this fulfills her training.
• The darkness made it deliciously creepy to me and seemed to be at the appropriate level on our TV. I wonder how much the type of TV, viewing light level, etc. affected what they could see.
• Brienne and Jamie must marry and have blond, unusually large children. Sansa should consider remarrying Tyrion. He could help her regain some of sense of optimism and romance about life, make her laugh and engage her mind, and rebuild her trust in men and people in general.
• I thought the plan was to send out the ground troops in waves as bait to get the ice king come out from Dany and Jon (try to) roast him. Wasn’t this explicitly said in the previous episode?
• I agree the key characters were protected by the writers, but I didn’t mind. It feels like these characters just came back in my life and I wasn’t ready for them to die (e.g., I really want Grey Worm to quit his job and have a happy life).
• I hope Jamie kills Cersei. That would bookend his parricide.
• As it seems unlikely that Dany is going to get the throne, she and Jon should reign over Winterfell. The dragons could gently warm farmers’ fields during long winters and eat any baddies who wander south from beyond the broken wall.Then Tyrion and Sansa could co-rule the south from King’s Landing. Or Arya and Gedry. Or Jamie and Brienne. Or Podrick and one of his admirers. Or Tormund and a giantess. Or Davos and Yohn. I just want them all to pair off and be happy.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Sansa should consider remarrying Tyrion.

I was surprised by how appealing that prospect became, after just a few lines of dialogue between them. A Golden GoT moment.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

So what next? The teaser for next week suggests that Dany now intends to take the fight to Cersei, but unless killing the Night King affects the weather somehow then the middle of a Westeros Winter doesn't seem good weather for moving live armies about -- the Army of the Dead didn't need to worry about freezing or starving to death, but that has to be a practical concern for the remnants of the Unsullied and the Dothraki and for the Free Folk and the armies of the North.

And who holds Walder Frey's old castle, The Twins, after Arya killed off all the male Freys at the start of season 7? That's an important crossing point, as I recall, if Dani and Jon's forces are heading south to attack King's Landing.

 

[Ann Launay]

Emilia Clarke gave an interview this week and said that episode five will be even bigger than three, so I'm guessing there won't be a ton of action in four. Probably more moving pieces around the chessboard.

 

[Ann Launay]

OK, this is late, but I couldn't find it again when I wanted to post it.

 

[Arilynn]

From an interview in HuffPo with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, speaking about Brienne and Jamie:

“She likes Jaime Lannister, and she believes in him and the goodness in him, and he absolutely admires and believes in Brienne of Tarth, I love that he goes to her and says, ‘Listen, I would be honored to serve under your command.’ He’s letting down all his guards and [saying] this is the truth. The truth is I want to be close to you for many reasons but first and foremost, you’re the best. Jaime says himself he’s not the knight he used to be. That golden hand is not efficient when it comes to fighting these undead creatures, and he wants to be close to her when they face death.”

 

[Cristalle]

Emilia Clarke gave an interview this week and said that episode five will be even bigger than three, so I'm guessing there won't be a ton of action in four. Probably more moving pieces around the chessboard.

The director, Miguel Sapochnik, had originally been approached about possibly doing 3 episodes and he was opting for 3, 4 and 5 since he thought that they were really three parts of a whole. But it didn't work out because of the length of what was going on in 3, and they really wanted him to do 5. So we haven't seen anything yet, probably!

 

[Arilynn]

So what next? The teaser for next week suggests that Dany now intends to take the fight to Cersei, but unless killing the Night King affects the weather somehow then the middle of a Westeros Winter doesn't seem good weather for moving live armies about -- the Army of the Dead didn't need to worry about freezing or starving to death, but that has to be a practical concern for the remnants of the Unsullied and the Dothraki and for the Free Folk and the armies of the North.

And who holds Walder Frey's old castle, The Twins, after Arya killed off all the male Freys at the start of season 7? That's an important crossing point, as I recall, if Dani and Jon's forces are heading south to attack King's Landing.

I thought the really bad winter weather was an effect of the Army of the Dead and/or the Night King. Maybe I am confusing novels, but doesn’t the temperature drop to way below freezing around at least the major wights? If so, maybe Westero’s long winters have more to do with the Other(s) and icy dead things than weather patterns and the winter will now end - just in time for spring weddings!

 

[Vaelissa Cortes]

Here's a good breakdown on many of the reasons why the tactics in the battle were so dumb, for anyone interested:

 

[Free]

The horde of the dead were nothing more than a force of nature. I don't see how you tactic your way through a tidal wave.

 

[Ava Glasgow]

And who holds Walder Frey's old castle, The Twins, after Arya killed off all the male Freys at the start of season 7? That's an important crossing point, as I recall, if Dani and Jon's forces are heading south to attack King's Landing.

The only major roadblock to King's Landing is Moat Cailin, which controls the causeway through the swamplands of The Neck. The Twins is toward the west, and Robb's army needed to pass there to sneak attack Lannister armies in the Riverlands.

 

[Vaelissa Cortes]

The horde of the dead were nothing more than a force of nature. I don't see how you tactic your way through a tidal wave.

Tactics always come into play in combat, especially if you're trying to live. It's a single minded enemy that's always rushing forward, they can be killed, so you want to get the most out of what you have. Unfortunately, most of what the living did was just needlessly throwing away lives out of the stupidity of bad writing. I know it's just a show, but it's suppose to be grounded in a mostly believable reality. I can only suspend disbelief so much.

I suppose I should be less annoyed since I have been rooting for Cersei anyway.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

That New Jon Snow Theory Sucks, and Here's Why

The latest episode of Game of Thrones bought the war to end all wars crashing down on Winterfell, with a surprisingly dramatic conclusion to one of the show’s biggest threats. It’d be exciting, if only had it not brought with it a tide of completely ridiculous fandom nonsense.

io9.gizmodo.com

 

[Beebo Brink]

Of all the missteps any show can take (and there are so many), poorly staged battles are my least concern. For the most part, I just see it as [ insert intense battle here ]. The significance of the battle, and the end result, are my key takeaways. Who showed signs of courage, who didn't, who died, who lived -- that's all I really care about.

I really enjoyed the episode while I was watching it. Right now, however, I'm a little apprehensive about how it fits into the overall arc of the series and where we're going from here. I don't think we can properly judge this episode until the series is over and there's a context for what happened and when in the story's timeline.

Considering that the very first scenes of the series set us up to fear the White Walkers, I'm a bit nonplussed at the way in which they appear to have been demoted as a threat. By winning against the Night King in one (glorious) episode, with three more left to go, the marching undead were treated as a diversion from the throne game, an inconvenient disruption, rather than a game changing paradigm. Of course, it's entirely possible that I simply misread the tea leaves and placed greater importance on the wights than the part they actually were intended to play in the narrative. But if that's the case, I've suffered through endless hours of Bran the Three-Eyed Raven for very little reward.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Does anyone still need a spoiler warning? Well, spoiler warning: LOL awesome Make sure to turn sound on if it's not.

 

[Romana]

What does the actor who plays Syrio Forel say to the right-wingers who want to use his image in a political meme? Not today!

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Lots of interesting stuff about GoT in tor.com, including this analysis by a military historian

https://www.tor.com/2019/04/30/breaking-down-the-battle-of-winterfell-from-a-military-perspective/

tl;dr Jon and Dany: Let's create the most screwed-up battle-plan imaginable.
Night King: Hold my beer.