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Game of Thrones – Deaths and Spoilers

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As per Mr. Cowslips suggestion, post your Spoilery thoughts here:

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  2. The primnary reason for starting this separate thread was to say “why is she so bothered about the elephants?”

    TBH I love GOT and am stupidly engrossed in how it’s all going to pan out. I think the next three to go will be Theon, Tormund and Sansa that order (but I have changed my mind about 6 times)

  6. My money is on the gloriously arch and precocious girl who is head of the house Mormont to either die soon or be last woman standing. Brienne has similar odds, I reckon. Great characters.

  7. Thanks for starting this!

    Three characters, eh? Good idea. Okay I already said Gendry, so I’ll add Brienne and Beric (think I have his name right- guy with the eyepatch and the fiery sword?)

    That’s my three. How about you? Choose three characters and whoever has the most left alive at the end of the series is the winner.

    Oh, and if someone turns undead that still counts as dead!

    – Gendry
    – Brienne
    – Beric

  8. It would also be good to use this thread for general spoiler-filled discussions as each episode airs.

    My thoughts on episode one:

    I was initially disappointed that not much happened. But in hindsight I think I needed a bit of a breather and a reminder of where everyone is. I had totally forgotten Sam had reached Winterfell, for example. It was good to see whatsisname still alive – the big red haired wildling who looks like a Viking? I thought he was a goner at the end of the last series when the wall came down.

    It was as a thrill to have some decent reunions and first time meetings. It’s taken many years to see dragons in Winterfell.

    I have no idea where the story is going to go. It seems clear, from a dramatic point of view, that the central part of this season is going to be a big showdown in Winterfell. Everyone who is anyone seems to be there, so if it doesn’t come to anything it will be a big setup with no payoff. BUT I half want/expect a loss of expectation like that as a narrative curveball just to keep everyone on their toes. What if the night kings army just waits it out and lets everyone starve and freeze in Winterfell? What if they just bypass Winterfell all together and head south?

    What I do NOT want is just a good vs evil showdown. That would just undermine the show’s investment in moral ambiguity over the last few years.

    The scene with Sam finding out about his father and brother was excellent. I totally forgot about that and so it was unexpected plot point.

  9. I GOT [see what I did there;-) bored with it in season 5 and stopped watching, but I am prepared to go back and finish it if it’s deemed to have a good ending.

    So I don’t have an opinion of my own to share, but this one online caught my attention

    https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/this-theory-on-how-game-of-thrones-ends-is-so-good.html?utm_source=PMNL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=190412

    And having read it I will pin my colours to Jaime Lannister being the last man standing.

    • I read that link and I have mixed feelings about that prediction.

      Dramatically, a lot of it makes sense. Jaime redeeming himself in the end, not to mention brokering peace with the night king and killing Cersei in the process, would be a satisfyingly unexpected turn of events.

      On the other hand, I hate ‘prophecies’ (a lazy device), and I especially hate ones that rely on a level of detail oblivious to the casual viewer. I’ve watched the whole series twice now and I can’t recall a single reference to azor thingummy or any prophecy about a flaming sword. That would be rather annoying to find it demanded a third watch to pick up on all this.

      Apart from that, his theory is internally consistent but seems to ignore a lot of the other lore in the story. Is that all just fluff and misdirection? The many faces thing, the dragon stuff, the lord of light, the bloody three-eyed raven…. does all that not matter in the end?

  11. I thought that was a terrific episode. Not what i thought Iwanted (I’m impatient for the death and gore) but what I now realise i needed. The calm before the storm.

    The scene by the fireplace was just magical. Thrilling to see these characters from all different backgrounds and having all travelled on their own unique journeys.

    I didn’t much like the whole ‘use Bran as bait to trap and kill the Night King so his army falls’ plot. Seemed as if it was cobbled together the night before the battle. Why didn’t Bran mention that before now, that he was the one the Night King was after? A bit daft.

    I’m still hoping for something unexpected. I saw a theory about the big climax having something to do with Bran travelling through time and ending up looping back to the mad king (something like the Hodor story arc) and everything from history somehow tying up in that way… And i would quite like something like that.

  13. I thought last night’s episode was much better than the first. There was a tension throughout, which was well executed.

    Next week’s epsiode – presuming it will be the battle – will obviously be the one where we start seeing some major casualties. I can’t see Bran dying, if what he says about the Night King* is true. However, I don’t think survive Ayra will surive the battle. Neither will Brianne or Theon Greyjoy.

    Jaime and Tyrion will, I think. As will Sansa, Daenerys and Jon Snow (though I think only one of those two + Cersei will surive to the very end – and my money is on Daenerys being responsible for the death of Jon Snow)

    *One interesting theory I’ve seen is that the Night King is another Targareon, hence his ability to control the dragon so easily in the previous series.

    • Having slept on it and thought about it more, I really love this episode and it’s one of my favourites ever I think. At the time I wasn’t even thinking of who was going to die and who wasn’t, but I’ve seen a few comments now pointing out that this seemed like a succession of farewell scenes, and I agree with that. While there are plot strands to tie up here and there, there are about ten or so characters who have completed a full arc and don’t really need any more – Tormund, Pod, Brienne, etc etc. We really could be in for a bloodbath next week.

      • An epsiode like this would have been a dud in an earlier season, but at this point it was perfect. We all know what’s coming, as much as they do, and it underlined the “calm before the storm” moment perfectly.

        I still stand by my Tormund amd Theon prediction, but Sansa might make it right to the end.

      • Possibly – she clearly fancies Gendry something rotten, but was the motivation for the bonk losing her virginity or knowing that her particluar bun in the oven would be of royal blood?

  14. Redemption for Jaime Lannister, Theon Greyjoy and the Hound..? I suspect they will all be toast after redeeming themselves in battle, and they all seem to have set themselves on that path. However, this being GoT, I expect to be completely wrong….

    I am completely shitting myself about the battle.

    • I can’t wait. Although big CGI battles are ten-a-penny these days, it’s rare to have a group of characters taking part that you have so much emotional investment in.

      Yeah, narratively speaking Jaime, Theon and the Hound have all made themselves prime for slaughter next week, having all completed that redemption cycle.

      Hmm, mind you, I feel the Hound has unfinished business with his brother…. could that still be a loose end that needs tied up? I’d love to see a proper Hound/Mountain face-off.

  17. If you are already dead, but back to life, like Jon Snow and the eyepatch fella (19 times), does it affect your death by Walkers? Or is that something only Bran knows. At this stage in proceedings, anyway. Just a thought.
    (Death by Walkers sounds like Gary Linnekers worst nightmare)

  20. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

    Spoilers – I’m talking about episode 3 here. Stop reading now if you haven’t watched it yet.

    …

    That’s episode 3 done and dusted, and this was the big climax to the Night King plot that has basically been teased for years now. The very first scene in season 1, episode 1, was an encounter with this undead force that showed how sinister it was – and since then it’s been a long slow buildup.

    In the end – too much buildup, not enough payoff. Sorry, but that was an incredibly disappointing episode.

    The good first –
    Technically speaking, quite a lot of the action set pieces were rather breathtaking. The brave decision (possibly due to budget constraints!) to show the Dothraki charge against the undead army as a series of flickers in the distant darkness, rather than from a more obvious “in the thick of it” viewpoint. It really built the tension (although totally ridiculous from a strategical point of view of course). The dragons above the snow cloud were quite beautiful. The mayhem of the battle inside the walls of the town was satisfyingly grimy and claustrophobic – plus it must have been a logistical nightmare keeping the audience up to date with the actions of about 15 or so main characters all involved at different bits of the battle. They managed to do that wonderfully, I thought.

    But there is also lots of bad –

    (1) Firstly, where were all the deaths? I loved last week’s episode particularly becuase it seemed like the prelude to a lot of people being killed off. Brienne dying would have made dramatic sense, Tyrion too, even Varys. One of the “couples” (Jon/Dany, Arya/Gendry, Greyworm/Missandei) should SURELY have been separated. About halfway in, I started craving someone really important to die, rather than all the peripheral characters we kind of expected (Beric, Edd).

    (2) Tactically, the battle was a right mess. Why the charge into the darkness? Why not group behind the fire pits and the walls in the first place instead of waiting until the undead army were on top of them? Why didn’t the two dragons strafe across the undead army and breathe fire all over them while they were running across the plain? etc etc etc. There seemed to be just no neat, cohesive strategy – compare to the battle of Bridgewater in season two.
    And it was the same on the White Walker side – the Night King knows his army will die if he is killed. So why get involved in the battle at all? His army would have done fine without him. Why didn’t he hold back and not get in the thick of it?

    (3) Arya came literally out of nowhere in the end. That was just far too sudden and left too much to the imagination. Last we saw her was in a room with Hound and Melisandre, then suddenly she had somehow made her way through a whole division of zombies surrounding Bran and was on the Night King’s back. How did she manage that? The viewer is left to speculate on her sneaking abilities, and her “face” disguises, but that’s all speculation. I felt really cheated.

    (4) And….. the ONE thing I didn’t want to happen… that tired old trope that has plagued just about every fantasy/superhero movie since…. ooh probably Lord of the Rings. That is: kill the main baddie and his entire army crumbles into nothing. This has been hinted at for a couple of seasons now, and I just prayed that GoT was cleverer, that this was a red herring. Don’t you think it’s just so…. cheap?

    (5) The overall sense of anti-climax was just unbearable. This is an unstoppable undead army. From the point of view of us viewers, we have watched this force build up for ten years or so now. From the point of view of the world in the show, it’s been, what, eight hundred years or something? (I can’t remember). And after all that…. the first town they arrive at manages to completely destroy them. So… that’s that, is it?
    As well as being unsatisfying to have the entire protagonist force killed off in a single episode as soon as they experience a proper fight, it also leaves a lot of narrative threads dangling with no satisfying resolution. There was no real twist, no further exploration of who the Night King really was, no proper showdown with Bran…. and we didn’t even get to hear the Night King speak. (I was convinced that would happen and it would be an epochal moment).

    (6) Where was Hodor??? Come on. One of the most beloved characters, with one of the most satisfying and emotional narrative arcs of the entire series. We last see him getting overcome by the undead army a few seasons ago… Surely it would have been the most obvious thing in the world to show him fighting as a zombie himself?? Again, something else I was convinced they would do. He must have been in that army somewhere.

    (7) Bran – Okay I didn’t like him, but I was intrigued by the whole raven thing, and I was wondering where that plot line was going to go. Well, I now know – nowhere. I was holding out for some trippy mindbending time-travelling stuff, but no. At one point he said “I’m leaving now….” and I thought “wa-hey here we go!!!”… was he going to warg into a dragon? Travel back in time to change the course of the battle? Try to have a mind battle with the Night King? No…. he kind of went into some birds and flew about a bit… then just sat there.

    Overall, I just felt flat afterwards. Throughout the whole series so far there have been a series of clever twists and unexpected left turns. This just felt like lazy fantasy battle stuff.

    There’s a chance they can redeem this with the final three episodes. Maybe this is part of the plan – the Night King plot has just been a red herring all along to distract from the real “game of thrones” (Cersei Jamie, etc), so you are meant to be feel unfulfilled at this point. Or maybe there will be some twist where the Night King is still a threat somehow – living on inside Bran or something.

    I don’t know. I doubt it. I think in a few month’s time I’ll be saying – “Yeah I watched Game of Thrones and it was watchable while it lasted, but they ruined it with a weak ending”.

      • Yes I know THAT, but I just thought the series would be clever enough to do something unexpected or different.

        I’ve now learned this cliche has a name – the ‘Keystone Army’ cliche. It’s been used in so many films before I just hoped GoT would do something different. For seven seasons (!) they’ve been saying ‘just wait until you see what’s around the corner!’, talking of a night that lasts a generation and all that, so to just wrap that all up in a single episode is quite an insult! It just smacks of them procrastinating and buying time until they had the budget to do the battle.

        I don’t really mind the surprise of a character coming out of nowhere to save the day, but it has to be earned.

        How would I have liked it to go instead?
        – they should probably have had the night king crossing the wall at least two seasons ago, setting in place a long campaign of battles slowly moving southwards

        – a mega twist like the much-speculated ‘Bran is actually the night king’ plot

        – a truly Pyrrhic victory where the ‘heroes’ ‘won’ but it was offset by some cosmic irony

        – the night king undermines their plan by staying back and not coming to the battle at all (he should have taken tips from sauron)

        – or, the night king actually wins. The country is overrun by ice and dead people, so everyone has to move abroad and NO ONE gets the iron throne. Some moral about fighting for something you don’t really need and missing the bigger picture in the process.

        But one battle! Really?? Even Theon’s torture storyline got more time than this.

  21. Harsh, Arthur!
    …
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    Though I do agree with a lot of what you say, I still thought it was a great ep. I was relieved that it wasn’t simply a roll call of beloved characters being killed off, but I loved the fact that they were leading us in that direction before Arya made her move. Personally I’ve always found the threat of the white walkers less interesting than the machinations at Kings Landing, so it didn’t bother me that they’re clearly not considered the big bad that Cersei is. Equally it wouldn’t surprise me if we hadn’t heard the last of them.

    Will we now have *another* grand battle, I wonder? Or will the final reckoning be decided another way?

    • I definitely agree the white walkers stuff has, on the whole, been less interesting than the human political stuff. However, they have been building this up for eight years now as this huge existential threat to humanity itself… it just didn’t seem right to have them wiped out by a character coming out of nowhere.

      I struggled hard to accept it as a dramatic and unexpected turn of events, but it just feels unearned. What’s worse is looking at internet commentary (never a good idea…. apart from here….) and seeing people justifying it as “the signs were all there, Arya was the one to fulfil the prophecy”, etc, all that rubbish. To the lay viewer like myself, she just came out of nowhere.

      Thinking back, I was worried that the buildup of the Night King stuff would never pay off satisfyingly. It would take the most skilful writer in the world to conclude an eight season-long story arc in a single episode without it feeling unearned.

      • Isn’t that partly the point of the whole thing? That things aren’t necessarily neatly balanced or ‘earned’, that life is actually random and unpredictable? I think many people were expecting the big final confrontation to be between the NK and Jon the ‘hero’…they cleverly swerved past that and gave us something which, whilst surprising to many, was actually foreshadowed in an earlier meeting of Arya and Melisandre.

  22. Well I thought it was great, give or take surprisingly few name deaths as yet. Sure, nobody expected Arya to suddenly appear, but ain’t that the point of a surprise. She had shown herself to be the “best” fighter about, surpassing even “just a scratch” Ser Jorah. 7 deaths, I gather.
    And with 3 episodes to go, nothing is over yet.
    Shame about Lyanna of House Thunberg, tho’.

  23. I thought it was incredibly tense, from the start and right the way through. Quite a difficult thing to sustain, I think.

    A lot of unanswered questions- have we really seen the end of the night king?

    And are we down to just one dragon now?

  25. It was very dark and yet not dark enough. Dark in the very real sense that it was at times hard to make out what the hell was going on. is that smudge Jon Snow fighting for his life? No, it is an actual smudge on the TV screen where I swatted a wasp at the weekend. Not dark enough in the sense that it wasn’t sufficiently disturbing. I was going to write that I was disappointed at the lack of nudity but then for all I know there was a full on orgy happening right in front of me which impossible to see amongst all the charcoal fog.

  26. I’m with @Arthur-Cowslip here in many ways.

    I was actually shaking at the start, wondering what the heck was going to happen (I know, a bit weird that!)…but….

    1. Pity it had to be at night which had us peering at the screen myopically. It became a long succession of wondering who we were watching.
    2. Bran and the raven thing….er, so WTAF… ? Maybe I missed something, but I expected Bran to be central to the victory in some way. The Night King was obviously wanting to confront him, but why? Probably me forgetting some key scene in series 4 or something, but that was confusing.
    3. People died in their thousands, but (mostly) the important characters survived, which is another familiar trope. The scenes of the ones that didn’t survive were much more moving…Theon especially. Also, the scenes in the crypt were much more creepy than the big set pieces.
    4. Essentially, it was all a bit…well…predictable , which GoT just isn’t usually. There were no real surprises. Maybe it is a good thing that they got this out of the way with three episodes left. The plot backed itself into a bit of a corner….they were always going to win, so let’s throw loads of money at it, hype it up, then we can get on with the really interesting stuff..?

    • I enjoyed the whole fog-of-war, ‘it’s really confusing’ thing, and thought they interspersed it well with the other moments (Lyanna’s death, Tyrion and Sansa etc.), as well as pulling back for the overhead shots when needed. Personally, I felt that while I didn’t know what was going on in each individual skirmish (deliberately, I think), I always knew what was happening in the battle as a whole.

      All that said, I still think Battle of the Bastards tops it by a long way. (And given that episode was directed by Miguel Sapochnik it seems only fair that they chose him to direct this one, even though Neil Marshall might well have made a better fist of it.)

      P.S. Wasn’t Bran letting the king know where he was, in order to draw him out? I’m fairly foggy on all that raven business, but that was my understanding.

      • I should maybe qualify my criticisms and explain there was a lot technically I really enjoyed about. The fog-of-war was over the top, but in general the sense of confusion and despair was expertly handled, with just the right amount of noise-noise-silence, close-close-far-away stuff.

        I’ve since watched it again (I’m a glutton for punishment) and again I was impressed with a lot of the emotional high points and technical achievements.

        IF this had been the climax of, say, a three-movie cycle or one series of a fantasy-based TV show with a more linear narrative, I might well be saying it’s a work of visceral genius and beauty. But this is Game of Thrones! We’ve been front-loaded with complexities and sub-plots for seven seasons now, all setting the expectation that what seems to be a straightforward fantasy “Keystone Army” (yes I like that term so I’m going to start using it now) is surely never going to be as simple as that. There HAS to be a twist or a bittersweet irony involved.

        I did wonder, going into this series, how on earth are they ever going to wrap up this night king stuff in just a few episodes? I was praying it wouldn’t done quickly and in a cliched manner – but it has and now it’s coloured my appreciation of the series as a whole I’m afraid!

  27. I watched it last night and I must admit I was midly disappointed with the episode too. The build-up to the actual battle was well executed, especially the Dothrakis turn as the Light Brigade and the suspense aftewards.

    Not enough main characters died. I fully expected – as did most of us I expected – a few more final scenes from Brienne, Gendry or Jaime for example. Instead we got Theon (expected), Jorah Mormont (probably the saddest scene of the episode), Lyanna Mormont (the screen was so dark I actually thought it was Arya at first), Melisandre (I’d forgotten where she’d disappeared to in the last season) and a couple of others who were instantly forgettable.

    Considering the Night King is/was supposed to be virtually impossible to defeat, Arya managed to take him out pretty easily in the end.

    Moving onto the next few episodes –

    How will Daenarys fare in her quest to claim the Iron Throne now that she’s lost most of her army? Granted she’s got two dragons though.

  29. Right, I’ve caught up now and watched the first three episodes (with steadily increasing blood alcohol level) last night. I pretty much agree with the comments above about baffling tactics, gloomy lighting, the missed opportunity to kill major characters, and Arya popping up conveniently. While I’m in a snarky mood, the slow piano music was overdone and Bran one-note gaze into the distance while making mystical pronouncements is very heavily modelled on Joey Tribianni’s ‘smell the fart’ school of acting.

    Still a hugely impressive spectacle though. I’m in till the end now.

  31. I’ve been up and down this season. But I really enjoyed tonight’s episode – maybe lowering my expectations helped. After the mess they made of the whole Night King plot (see my comments above) I’ve decided just to watch the last few episodes and enjoy it for what it is.

    And on that level I’ve really been satisfied. Lots of great cinematic touches and some quite moving scenes this week. While pacing is still definitely an issue, I’ve loved the epiphanies of a lot of the main characters this week:
    – Cersei suddenly realising she was playing a losing game all along
    – Arya finding her humanity and realising the futility of playing revenge in the face of genocide
    – Jon AT LAST realising “wait a minute… I’m one of the bad guys???”

    Overall, a lot of the plot resolutions have just seemed moving and RIGHT. I’m happy with how it is all winding up now.

  32. Even aside from what happens now with Dani, there are still some other major plot points to resolve and I can’t believe that Bran is finished, plot-wise. Surely that’s just too big to leave at the defeat of the Knight King?

    Was that actually the end of Jaime and Cersei?

    • I wasn’t 100% sure at the time. But reading comments on The Internet it seems The Internet is very sure that’s them both crushed by rubble.

      The Bran, Night King, all that… stuff was just so disappointing this season… oh I can’t even be bothered to get into all that again…. don’t start me…. But in short, yeah I think Bran has had his story arc. He might appear in one scene next week, but the Three-Eyed Raven stuff is all over and done with I think.

  33. Yes, brilliant blood and guts, a CGI frenzy of falling and burning masonry, but all a bit thin, really. I had been looking forward to Hound versus Mountain for as long as I knew they were brothers, finding the whole expose of Mountain as Michael Myers max a bit preposterous. (And, surviving all the wounds, he’d surely survive a fall like that too? However the glimpse given earlier, by Arya, that Hound was maybe anyway long dead, on that mountainside, and was Sandor appropriating his face was great. If then making the fight between the brothers pointless other than for a big juicy set piece. And nice they remembered all the stored green fire underground, exploding as the city burned. But, yes, I was expecting more. Jaime and Cersei crushed by rubble? Bleurgh.

  34. It was both extraordinarily dramatic and disappointingly ridiculous. There was too much that was clichéd Hollywood blockbuster where the glaring inconsistencies made the two of us watching call out mockingly (this we normally do with many an otherwise top class series or film to be fair, though this was too much). Inconsistencies like one time a dragon is easily felled, but now suddenly all the shots miss and all the weaponry can be blasted with flame, not to mention that there is an endless supply of said firepower whereas I thought before it was much more limited.

    I think the character developments could have been accepted if allowed to happen over time but these have been too rushed. The Daenerys about face was a kick in the teeth for the audience but I think that it’s good for the cosy warmth to be upset and for the fans who think it’s their show to be appalled. It was too sudden and not sufficiently prepared for in the narrative though. The episode was a shocking, mad riot that was compelling but you’re left with a sense of what the fuck were they thinking. The part with Arya was good I thought. Maisie was tremendous. A sense with some of the characters of being stunned by the reality of war and having all their previous concerns and plotting put into perspective and made to seem unimportant. That was powerful.

    It’s all too much manipulating of events in order to get to an ending. Manipulation that has just got too wild. It was always going to be hard to satisfy the audience with such hyped up expectations of course. They probably should have had more episodes, or even an extra season.

    • The second dragon was taken by surprise. Those spear guns were slow to manoeuvre. I thought the attack from out of the sun was brilliant. They only got a few shots off.

      One of the themes of the books is how much more evil people become the closer they get to power. In that context, Dany’s temper tantrum was not unexpected. It turns out the humans with blood coursing through their veins are worse than the white walkers, as always.

      The final episode will be the Jon v Dany showdown. Game on.

      • Dany’s being going nuts for years of course, and don’t forget her father was the Mad King. I didn’t find her unquenchable blood lust out of character at all. She’s so close to what she has tried to achieve all her life, she has realised that Snow has the greater right to the throne so she will have to take it by force, she grieving for her second lost dragon, but she’s got one left and she’s damn well going to use it.

        The whole thing was an exhausting spectacle, but The Light and I did keep turning to each other to say whey does/doesn’t he/she do this? Principply, why doesn’t Daenerys burn the Red Keep to the ground rather than torching the streets? Side note – we went to Dubrovnik last year, and spent a lot of the episode going, ‘I recognise that building!’

        • Yes that was another thing. Why not burn the main keep directly rather than a few insignificant turrets? Because it needs to be a drawn out affair where Cersei can attempt to escape while bits of masonry crash down around her and Jaime can have time to find her like the kind of predictable James Bond movie denouement we have seen ad nauseum only they get crushed anyway.

          • I bought that actually. I figured Danaerys knew Cersei was watching, and was making a show of destroying the city and people in front of her eyes. That aspect of it was fine by me – it seemed “right” dramatically.

          • …or because, barking though she has become, the victory would not be complete unless she actually sits on the throne.

            Dany going mental wasn’t quick – it’s been coming for a while and the callousness and arrogance of Missandei’s death pushed her over the edge

  35. Well, I was on the edge of my couch for virtually the whole thing. The point where Dany finally unravels was well done, I thought. But what can the surviving cast do about it?

    I don’t give much for Tyrion’s chances when mad Dany finds out he let his brother go.

    Jon has clearly realised what she has become – will he now do something about it? And would the dragon transfer its allegiance to him?

    I’d put some money on Dany having her throat cut by grey worm – who is promptly revealed to be …

    Alternatively, she could just decide she won’t stay where she’s not wanted and fly off back to Freedom Bay, leaving the iron throne to Jon.

    Also, loose ends – Sansa, Yara, Edmure Tully – any others?

    • You know, I keep seeing people on the internet mention Edmure Tully and I have absolutely no recognition of who he is. When did we last see him?

      Danaerys flying off, having had enough of the whole thing (perhaps going back east) is my current prediction. But I don’t know – people seem to be expecting this big face off next week.

      • He was the groom at the Red Wedding. Last seen being used as a hostage/dupe by Jaimie Lannister to get Riverrun handed back over to the Freys. The Freys are now all dead but where is Edmure – who presumably would inherit both Riverrun and the Frey estate (the name of which has escaped me) and therefore be one of the few people of substance left standing.

        • Ah yeah, I can picture the actor. I’m sure he’s been in something else, I really know his face. (Although back in the day I would say that just about every week with GoT).

          Yeah, I totally forgot about that whole Riverrun plot.

    • Yeah, I’m ploughing my way through them…the opinions are actually more balanced than in other forums I’m aware of. There seems to be a lot of entitled fanboi moaning, mainly based on the story not following the one that they’d feverishly imagined and predicted, character arcs being unfulfilled in the way they thought, etc. Everyone’s a showrunner these days…

      • Apparently there’s a petition by ‘fans’ of the show to get the whole of season 8 redone. We truly live in absurd times. I mean all times have been absurd, such is life, but our times take the biscuit. Do your own TV series then.

        I said I was a fan of GoT but I just enjoy the show really. It’s been one of the best series I’ve seen, despite flaws here and there the standard’s been exceptionally high. To be a fan of something is really a kind of sickness or derangement. I must admit I find it amusing that many are so up in arms about how things are turning out. It makes me like the latest episode’s about turn all the more to think it winds so many up.

        • I heard about this petition and I came on here to comment about it. It’s bizarre, isn’t it?

          I’m actually quite tickled by it. It’s indicative of the fact that people in general these days seem to have a lot more invested in these kinds of things, and also have a more sophisticated understanding of the work that goes in to them. Back in the day, I would never have known what a “showrunner” was, and I would little understanding of how much of a longform series was plotted out in advance.

          It does seem depressingly clear with Game of Thrones that they started it without knowing how they would finish it. They are also guilty of hyping up various mysterious subplots (especially the Night King stuff, and the Three-Eyed Raven stuff) with no idea of how to tie it up, so cutting those threads dead does seem like an insult to people (me included) who assumed someone had a reliable hand on the tiller all along.

          I do think they’ve also misjudged the amount of episodes they would need to tie it all up. Really in hindsight they should have started bringing it all together from season five onwards. But we’ve had seasons five, six, seven all going off in various wild subplot directions, so season eight was never going to feel anything other than glib and superficial as a conclusion.

          BUT BUT BUT… on the whole I say it is what it is. However dissatisfied you are with this final season (and I’ve been quite harsh on it in my comments above), remaking it (not that that will ever seriously happen, outside fan fiction) would only ever make it more complicated and lead to more arguments.

    • I enjoy reading the Guardian comments after each episode. They are quite balanced actually, with some really well written critiques. (I’ve made an appearance there a few times myself!)

  38. “I demand they remake season 8 because it’s extremely off-putting to think of burning children when I’m wanking myself stupid over pictures of Emilia Clarke. Also, writing, or whatever.”

  39. The verdict on the finale from the Gatz couch – disappointing.

    Tyrion comes up with a whole new system of elective monarchy, which results in Bran ‘smell the fart’ Stark being made king, and no one puts up a word of dissension (unless you count big Sam, and his preemptive idea of elective democracy). Various other characters sail off to further adventures while Bran gazes mystically into the distance.

    I quite likes Dany’s operatic death scene though, but would the Unsullied have let Snow live? And how did they know how she had died after the dragon bore away her corpse? It all felt heavily engineered to get out of having to make Snow king at the end.

  40. I loved it. I do understand that something overall has been lost, but it was always going to be the case that Game of Thrones was about the game itself rather than the outcome — the journey not the destination — and that being the case I thought the final episode was as good as it possibly could be

  41. I agree, as a necessity it was never going to be more than tying up loose ends. I liked the opening scenes, as, variously, Tyrion, Jon and Arya toured the wreckage, the gloom and despondency all too apparent. I appreciated the symbolic melting of the Iron Throne over the expected smelting of Jon Snow, who, until the preceding moment, would have been, anyway, too wet to ignite. I liked the appearance of all the old favourites, even if surprising to see ’em automatically at the top table. I confess that I had not realised the time lag between Jon committing reginacide and the top table, other than admiring Tyrions ever more luxurious beard, needing the raggle taggle appearance of Jon to confirm that. And it was especially good to see Tormund and the wildlings waiting for Jon, even if a shame that Tormund couldn’t get to knob the ‘big woman’, Brienne.

    • Drogon’s gentle, grief stricken handling of his mother was very moving as well as his anguished melting of the throne.

      It was the last twenty minutes that let me down. The joke about the jackass in the brothel remains incomplete. Bran’s selection was terribly contrived and Drogon’s absence an enormous loose end.

      There could be several sequels following individual characters. My money is on Arya. In other news, a prequel is in the pipeline. It is set 5,000 years before and the only character in both series is The Night King.

  42. Anticlimax once Jon did the deed. Didn’t really quite buy him doing the deed either but the scene was impressive. Greyworm and the Unsullied having been fired up, prepared to follow their queen to the ends of the earth seemed to unreasonably shrug off their beloved leader’s demise. That wasn’t dealt with. There’s been a cosy warm mood among the good guys all season despite war crimes, horror and mass murder trying to intrude and spoil things and that sentiment has prevailed in a rather lame, pat fashion. It ended up rather touching nevertheless because the characters are remembered so fondly and that’s not easily trashed. I enjoyed it because it was them.

  43. Well, King Bran the Broken was … unexpected. All in all though, I thought that it was satisfying tying up of loose ends. Sansa is Queen of the North, Bron is Lord of Highgarden and Jon finally gives his wolf a pat. All good.

  44. I thought it was as melancholic as I wanted it to be. The right people died and the right people (mainly) were left in charge. We are going to watch it again with a new perspective. Brilliant stuff.

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