I was so blown away by how utterly awful that was that I couldn’t enjoy how good Barry was.
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That was just the worst, serious confirmation of my worst fears for this final season
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I mean, like…imagine thinking that this is how the show should go out. I’m reeling (even after some of the episodes this season).
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Good ole Tyrion, the smartest of all with his brilliant ideas. Real gems like having a one handed man and a pregnant woman cross the sea in a god damn rowboat.
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Like, I’m a pretty big fan of the show I think. Season 1 got me into the books, it got me reading them ahead of the show, and it was one of the cool pieces of fiction me and my friend bounced theories off of.
I am kind of mush right now. One of my favorite franchises was just ruined in front of me in the worst possible way.
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Especially hilarious considering that even Jamie (aka in his own words the dumbest Lannister) was like uhhh seems like a good plan bro
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Also Stormlight Archive Book 4 is coming out this year if you all want a new fantasy series that isn’t misery-porn after all this.
The heroes basically are Keyblade Weilders.
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I picked up both In the Name of the Wind and the first of Stormlight book recently, and I haven’t been able to get into them.
Stormlight has a really over the top intro that was cool, but also super confusing. In the Name of the Wind is ‘Gary Stu, the biography by Gary Stu.’ so far.
The reason I like GoT was because of its low fantasy, I guess.
I read the leaks (which came true) because I couldn’t be assed. But even with that foreknowledge that this was going to go very badly, I was still very disappointed.
God if you told 16 year old me that I was so disinterested in the series that I read the end of the show in a reddit text dump and laughed about how terrible it was I would have been crushed.
Heck i still kinda feel it, that kind of lame half angry embarrassment when you realize something you used to really like just train wrecked.
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I can’t say this heel turn was exactly a surprise, I’ve predicted Dany would be the final villain since the end of season 4, but I don’t think I expected it to be quite this rapid or shoddily handled
I’m rewatching The Knick right now, and it’s nice to balance out this trainwreck with misery porn that has some gosh darn craft to it
Of course Euron survives his ship getting nuked and magically appears where the plot needs him to be one last time.
On some level I thought the city getting burned was interesting, but Dany’s heel turn was weird and problematic as others have pointed out. Jon remains as naive as ever, he would make a terrible ruler. Tyrion continues his plot induced stupidity. I think it’s too much to hope for The People’s Republic of Westeros at this point.
I guess I’m not really invested that much anymore, just seeing things out. My wife was wondering if there will be a time skip next episode, I think she is probably right.
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Watched tonight’s episode so I’m gonna allow myself to be on my usual bullshit.
I continue to believe Arya is Azor Ahai, The One Who Was Promised. Tonight we saw her emerge, reborn perhaps having lost the last thing that defined her (killing Cersei). Born amidst smoke and salt (from the tears of those who died needlessly and they showed way too much of for me to be comfortable with but perhaps that was the point).
I have my issues with the execution of many aspects of this show over the years but the pulled back, view from 1000 ft up version of the show I’ve always dug.
Ultimately this entire show has been working towards this, 2 women, used as pawns in the game of thrones ultimately acquiring more and more power. Both are stripped of their power and imprisoned in a place they’re told they belong and can’t leave and escaping it by burning everything down keeping them there. Losing their children (both killing the unborn children one on purpose, the other accidentally) as a result of their plays for power. They’ve been playing chicken with each other for a decade, they only just now got close enough to see one another and neither flinched.
Dany has relished in revenge since season 1, her worst impulses have been peeking their head constantly. She defaults to using fear, kill those who defy her to bring everyone else to heel. Did she go from 1 to 100 over night? Nah, she was always going 69 in a 65 zone. It was sloppy how they wrote it, it definitely happened quick in show time, she’d been stewing for weeks in reality.
Varys did what I expected him to do, Tyrion did his usual bullshit (Dany listening less and less each time culminated here), Jamie continued to be motivated solely by hating himself, Jon is still naive at every turn, Davos continues to not die in battle even though he’s the most killable.
Sandor v. Gregor was pretty anime, Sandor pulled a Spike Spiegel.
Overall, I really liked it.
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Valid but elitist take:
If only the show had ever even tried to make me care about the dimwitted peasant randos in King’s Landing.
Another valid take:
Daenerys has been a white savior the entire time, destroying cultures (she literally burned down the ENTIRE Dothraki culture to gain some points in her military stats) and it’s all been propaganda from the start and better writers would have been able to reveal this in a less rushed way.
Edit: Oh and her entire motivation has kinda been a Lost Cause parable the whole time.
I think these are interesting things to do with an endearing character, subvert it by having it play out against objectively unjust cultures and have it stripped away once she encounters mostly free culture and an adversary with similar motivations to her own. I do not think the show’s writers either knew this was likely GRRM’s intent or just didn’t know how to write it (or maybe GRRM wrote a white savior without realizing… also very possible). Luckily for me I’ve filled those gaps in on my own and I’m having a great time.
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Saw someone joke on twitter about next week revealing it was all a dream, I then saw that white horse and my thoughts were “‘Book of Revelation: Behold a pale horse. The man sat on him was death and hell followed with him’ in the voice of Johnny Ringo from Tombstone” and “Is this fucking Blade Runner?”
The death of Qyburn was fitting. It was one of those monster turns on master stories but also very anticlimactic. The Hound and Arya’s arc was as good as it could be given the amount of time this show has left. Jon is so weak. I’ve never liked his relationship with Dany because he seems like the kind of guy that would only ever love one woman but I guess I’ve never had a hot blond show up with an army I desperately needed.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but I uhhh actually didn’t really hate this episode as much as most people?
I know I’ve been on my certified hater shit in this thread so far but honestly this was something that it felt like the writers were (often not even with any real subtlety) building to since like the first season, and I was pretty prepared for it I guess. There’s plenty of more interesting directions, but I had a gut feeling we were headed here.
Seeing quite a lot of tweets and stuff about how they threw eight seasons of character development out the window and betrayed a beloved protagonist and ruined it all but honestly did people really not think this was not just a strong possibility, but probable? I could go on with a list of times that Daenerys has given in to her worst impulses and made decisions which had disastrous effects, and she made a truly horrifying one here on a grand scale when confronted with the one thing that angered her more than anything ever: Cersei. At the very least I don’t think it’s a fair assessment to say this came completely out of nowhere.
Now here’s where the show will fumble, as expected: trying to convince me Jon should be the ruler of anything. I’ve said this before, but dude is laughably weak in the leadership department. Here we go with that shit next week.
As for everything else: why were the one-on-one duels so terribly shot in this episode? All the cuts and camera-work made them look super rough and hard to follow, the Jamie-Euron fight especially. Have to say one final time: Fuck Euron btw, good riddance, what a waste of everyone’s time.
The death of Jamie and Cersei I was okay with tbh. Everyone is pissed about his arc but, it seemed fitting. Redemption for him wasn’t a linear path to glory, it was rough and complicated. He did good things (fought for the living, saved his brother, tried to protect Brienne) but in the end succumbed to this toxic addiction of sorts and it was his downfall, as he kinda always suspected it would be. It’s fucked of course, but it would have made me angrier if he was made out to be some perfect hero after you know, murdering his cousin, attempting to murder a child, threatening to murder a baby, etc.
There’s a lot more I could nitpick: the hound fight was a bit cheesy but it is what it is, still a great character, Varys maybe deserved a little more dialogue at the end, how did dany dodge 100 scorpions with relative ease, several other things, but I think unlike the battle of winterfell the spectacle here was actually terrifying and believable and tense (and visible) enough that I was willing to overlook a lot of things I haven’t been in the last couple of episodes. Not a bad one all in all (still can’t believe this). Actually curious to see how in God’s name they’re going to try and wrap this up next week. At this point, that seems more impossible than ever.
Real winners in all this: Olenna and Varys, who are somewhere yelling about how they fucking called it
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I’ve managed to convince myself Jon still has no intention to lead and will definitely go back to the Wall (taking the black again cos he just gotta kill Dany)
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I think deep down all Jon really wants to do is live with the remaining free folk and spend the rest of his days brooding in a snowy forest at the edge of the world. I do hope it’s where he ends up. Tormund straight up says he’ll see him again and in an earlier season says he’s spent too much time with the wildlings to ever feel the same way about his society, so that seems fitting. But instead we’ll likely get Tyrion and Davos dragging him kicking and screaming towards the big metal chair (is it still there?) next week. Who knows
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Think nothing basically changing and Cersei’s army getting absolutely wiped out regardless might be a nadir in the show’s writing which is a shame because I actually really enjoyed this episode. I say it’s a shame but I messaged three people who don’t watch it laughing about how STUPID yet unsurprising it was. Someone on another forum literally said “it would be mental if she just swoops down and annihilates everyone after showing how vulnerable the dragons were” and they only went and did it!
Daenerys’s heel turn has been telegraphed for weeks but it was still satisfying watching her and Drogon levelling King’s Landing and thousands of innocents with it. There doesn’t have to be a surprise for it to be good and I enjoyed that.
Whats the over/under on them rebuilding the wall?
Maybe installing a huge gate/checkpoint in the part that fell down ?
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