A Song of Ice and Fire /Game of Thrones Discussion V2: Winter Is Here
999 replies, posted
Sums up my thoughts pretty well. The episode was absolutely overflowing with Hollywood cliches. It was overly long, without much plot/character development, just an hour 20 of typical combat theatrics. Then almost all the good guys with plot armor live, the night king dies and white walkers are instantly eradicated just like that. Way too predictable overall. And the battle itself wasn't even all that enjoyable due to the spazzy cinematography.
I'm not sure that's a very fair response to what I wrote. The 'apocalypse' was all but confined to three episodes, where we only really saw it in force in one. It didn't spread any further than Winterfell, the people of the South who smugly doubted the threat probably have no clue anything really happened. The 'long night' played out exactly like the fantastical story in history, and just as unbelievably. Cersei was absolutely right to keep her armies back, and Jon and team good guys the fools for thinking they needed the united continent to win.
I don't doubt that the army of the dead made a dent in team good guys. I just think we all expected there to be far, far less left standing after the long-built up 'long night' had its way with the world.
Winter has come and gone, it seems, and we're left with a dream of spring. I've seen that dream - It's nothing but Cersei smugly drinking wine, Euron cracking bad jokes, and a belated army arriving at the last minute will probably save the day.
For a show about "not going with the obvious", I almost feel like this is a subversion of the original subversion.
It could have done more but honestly the amount of plot indications that Arya had some role to play in all of this is a lot greater than people seem to think.
Ok, so somewhat Tinfoil hat time. Anybody remember when Bran Stark is doing the training with the Three Eye Raven? After the Three Eyed Raven was killed, his power was slowly but surely transferred to Bran Stark. And given the Night King operates on the same form of Old Gods magic with the Weirwoods and the hivemind network. What if there's a possibility that whatever was left of the Night King on the "Hivemind Network" of the Old Gods magic, begins to slowly corrupt Bran. Especially since Bran is somehow "Branded" by the Night King.
I still think Bran is probably gonna die at the end of the series, along with everything related with magic. The Dragons will die, causing fire magic to begin to fade. And Bran dying will be the completely eradication of the Old God's magic.
And again I'm not dinging DB+W choice to make modern politics front and center instead of modern ecological holyshitness, which is actually happening right now in the real world. Yes the parallels might even be too on the nose, and too rooted in modern happenstance, but again it makes sense as to why. I would also rather have the NK+W be the issue the show ends on, the series is about petty shitty renaissance politics occurring in a medieval low fantasy world, and here we are. The series still has plenty of things to say, Winter is still coming, and one thing missed about that is the place where most of the food is isn't the place where food is supposed to be and there is not even kind of enough to go around, so things are still going to be a mess, just not a wight infused mess. I also agree DB+W could ahve taken the Big View on the last season, but with the this being the last movie budget per season show on HBO for a while, I'll take what I can get.
Kinda ironic how the Valyrian dagger that started the whole shit show in Westeros is what kills the Night King.
Also watching Samwell fight and actually take down a number of wights was awesome.
Samwell just crying in a pile of dead bodies because it's pretty much the end is the most normal thing anyone did that episode
I almost expected Arya to have built a fucking hidden blade
Amazing episode. Loved the parts where I could see shit.
Might've been way too over the top. But why the fuck did they not consider the idea or concept of Arya fighting against the White Walkers with the obsidian double staff? I get they were trying to "Subvert" shit. But if the whole episode is suppose to be spectacle. And the whole thing with the white walkers and the undead is "Fuck tactics, its fucking Attrition and grit". Why the hell did they not go with that idea?
By the way, in case you guys are still not convinced that Jon vs Dany isn't happening, turn over to the ep4 preview. Cersei's shoving peasants into the Red Keep, Dany now can't take KL with just her army since its tiny as balls. She can't just burn the Red Keep now either because it's full of innocent people, something Cersei knows Dany is willing to do. Jon would never be cool with fuck tons of innocents being burned alive, and so it begins. Cersei isn't the final boss, she's the backdrop for the main conflict to unfold, the dance of dragons. Something GRRM has been building up to for a long time. We've been told there's a final holy shit moment near the very end, what could it be other than Dany turning far more dark and burning down the Red Keep/KL, the building we've seen destroyed in the future? Dany will never sit the Iron Throne.
hmm I doubt it, introducing a new major conflict in a few episodes would be incredibly strained. We've had a mad queen that's been built up since season 5 if not earlier
Well, I didn't expect that.
As for the battle itself I gotta complain about a lot of moments where: They are surrounded. *cut* They have only couple of enemies around them. Also way too few characters died, mostly C or B level.
This is my biggest issue with the episode.
Could barely watch it, there was a lot of visual noise :-/
I check the Headscratchers page for Game of Thrones on TvTropes [WARNING: UNMARKED SPOILERS FROM SEASON FIVE ONWARD] from time to time to check people's reactions to certain plot elements in the series and see if anyone is actually making some good points I may have missed.
One of the most recent entry, for instance, makes some good-ish points about how both side of the Battle for Winterfell didn't exactly display that much strategic acumen:
The battle had so many strategic mistakes, it's amazing.
Sending the Dothraki into a blind charge. The enemy army doesn't need light, and so are pretty much invisible in the deep of the night, and yet they sent their entire cavalry to charge into the void. That's absurdly dumb, it's no surprise at all that tne entire force got wiped out in seconds. The fact they had no dragonglass weapons or fire until Mel appeared in the eleventh hour makes the whole thing even more stupid, they wouldn't even be able to kill a single wight.
Having the Unsullied do a shield wall on the outside of Winterfell. You know what's more effective than a shield wall? A stone wall.
Keeping archers in Bran's defense. What use are archers in the close quarters of the godswood? They pretty much fight at point blank, and only manage to not get overrun because the script dictates that the wights go at them almost one at a time, rather than all at once. That's where a shield wall would be more efficient.
And, because the good guys aren't the only ones being stupid, why did the Night King show himself at all? He would have won if he wasn't there. Just let your zombies overrun the castle, send your dragon to control the air, have the other walkers raise the dead and threaten the dragons with lances and if you really want to personally kill the three-eyed raven, send one of the other walkers to retrieve him alive.
(If you don't particularly mind spoilers, I'd suggest you to read those pages. They discuss topics we have been discussing ourselves in these threads, so they could provide an interesting perspective)
That strategy for the battle made no sense yeah, it was dumb. The army was deployed in front of two lines of defence and they had their artillery in front of their army. They sent light cavalry into the front of a wall of tireless undead, the shield wall of spearmen were in loose formation who couldn't brace against a tightly packed blob of undead literally rolling over the lines like waves. The plot armour is the only reason some people survived. The entire episode was stupid when you actually analyse what happened.
This episodes darkness didn't bother me that much, actually. The scenes from Ep 1 and 2 in the forge with Gendry, however, I actually could not fucking see anything.
If we are talking about strategical mistakes the Night King could of just waited until his icy storm mist had rolled in and then flown his dragon above the gods wood and blue fired it to ashes before John or Danny ever saw him roasting Bran.
The Night King had an army of undead that need no breaks or food and had superior numbers. The Night King waited who knows how long to get to the position he was in. It was mentioned by a character in either the first or second episode of the season as to how they are supposed to feed this great army of theirs. The Night King uses the tactic of just surrounding his enemy last season when they tried to capture an undead to bring back. He could of just sat around Winterfell until they all starved inside or pointlessly charged him.
The Night King could of won the battle in many ways easily.
The Dothraki charge makes sense in the context of who they are though, they're not known for being smart.
I guess a better way to have done it would have them stay in the back of Winterfell then come around and flank the sides.
Honestly, after seeing some discussion in this thread, I think there would have been a better way to let the people of Winterfell survive the battle without having to kill off the Night King.
If they really wanted to subvert our expectations, pulling a Snoke wasn't the right way. Near the end, you can see that the Night King is reaching for his sword to strike and kill - presumably - Bran sitting idly in his wheelchair. I feel like this would have been an opportunity to have the Night King do something completely unexpected, like take him, or have the Night King warg into Bran instead. I feel like there has been there unspoken connection between them this entire time, and having it just be "I want to kill the 3-eyed raven" is such a cop-out.
Perhaps, instead, after the NK acquired Bran, the battle could stop and they'd retreat for unknown reasons, or continue down South towards King's Landing.
I feel like I was TOTALLY okay with Arya being the one to finish off the NK, but I felt like it just came wayyyyy too soon. They've left out any explanation for the figures in they made in body parts since THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE ENTIRE SERIES, or in the caves, or even in Episode 2 of this season! It feels like they artificially shallowed the entire experience.
I am trying to hold off judgement completely until the end of the series, because they could still find a way to use Bran's omniscience to reveal more answers about the universe, but it really feels like they just didn't know how to finish it up without the books to write off.
Remember in season 1 when the person taking care of Bran talks about the long night? The fact that anyone survived that one should have been an opportunity to try and reveal more motivations of the NK beyond "LOl i really just want to KiLl everyonee, especially that there Raven DOod!".
If his motivations are supposed to be "unknowable", then maybe boiling it down to the most basic elements isn't the way to go.
I'm willing to give the Dothraki charge a benefit of a doubt. Cause one, in the setting, its the fucking Dothraki. They're gonna charge head first into whatever the fuck, no matter how terrifying their enemies are. In fact that was like a point in the history of Essos, where the Dothraki blindly charged constantly against an army of spearmen. But due to their arrogance and believing that infantry men are pathetic. They got fucked. And ironically, that story is the origin of the Unsullied.
"As the Dothraki have always held infantry in contempt, fit only to be ridden down, they charged instead of flanking them. Eighteen times the horselords charged and eighteen times the Unsullied locked their shields and held the line. By the end the battle only 600 Unsullied remained, but 12,000 Dothraki lay dead, including Temmo and his sons. The new Khal led the survivors past the city gates, one by one throwing their cut braids before the feet of the Unsullied. Since that day the Unsullied are employed both by cities and the rich of Essos."
So, Dothraki blindingly charging against the mostly infantry army of the dead makes completely sense. The problem is that they should've gotten obsidian weapons, then again, it wouldn't allow one of the best sequences i've seen in recent memory in terms of film-making and directing.
The other stuff of course does have some glaring issues. Like the idea of having the unsullied and the soldiers outside of the keep n shit. Though, one excuse to that logic is that the unsullied and everyone outside, they all had anti-wight weaponry. So only one stab at a wight kills it instantly. I think they were completely taken off guard by the literal fucking corpse tsunami that happens. Like compared to Hard home. The wights were swarming, but in a way where if you had a concrete spear wall, army, or defenses, they could be managed with. Then again, it could just be poorly executed Spectacle.
Though funny enough about the archer thing. Is that it seems that archery shit was working the best in the battle. Like the Ironborn were one shot-ing the undead when they were trying to swarm towards Bran. So why the fuck didn't they have archers along the wall. Just firing a fuck ton of obsidian arrows at the undead. Like they should've done the Helm's Deep method.
The Night's King coming up to Bran personally, i understand for the sake of cinematic purposes n shit. But part of me is wondering that the Night King had to be in the proximity or something when that happened. Due to Old Gods Magic bullshit. And even though the Night King was killed by Arya, i'm still thinking the white walkers are going to be "Lingering" for the next 3 episodes. I have some theory that possibly the Night King who operates on the same magic as a Greenseer like Bran. Knew he was going to get killed during the battle, but wanted to get killed in proximity to Bran. The theory is that the Night King is gonna pull the same shit the Three Eyed Raven did and try to corrupt Bran or take him over.
Yeah their plan was awful. Jon Snow's never played Midieval Total War/Mount and Blade before and it shows.
Also the shit with light cavalry, that only means they have light armor. The Dothraki, in how they operate. Is not considered to be Light Cavalry, in fact they're more similar to Heavy Cavalry tactics where they just charge head on. They're pretty much light-armored Cataphracts.
Their tactics are also Shock Tactics.
"Shock tactics were usually performed by heavy cavalry, but were sometimes achieved by heavy infantry. The most famous shock tactic is the medieval cavalry charge. This shock attack was conducted by heavily armoured cavalry armed with lances, usually couched, galloping at full speed against an enemy formation."
Was the NK even in the books? From what I understand their was the Night's King but the NK was just something invented for cinematic purposes.
the Book's NK was a leader of the Night's watch that married a "Corpse Bride". Which some believe to possibly be a female White Walker or possibly a wight that was influencing the Night's King. He declared himself king of the Night's watch and was loyal to his bride. They made sacrifices to the Others, and ruled the Night's Watch as a kingdom for 13 years. He and his bride were later slain by Bran the Breaker, alongside a Wildling alliance to end the 13 year rule.
As i remember, saying "Night's King" means this guy.
Meanwhile the Night King is blu boi from the show.
plot twist melisandre is the night queen
tbf she looks like a white walker after she takes the collar off
A couple things I would of found entertaining during this episode
Bran gripping the tree in the godswood and doing something profound. Like instead of warging into controlling a handful of birds to observe the NK he could of taken control of hundreds of them and flown them into the undead army to hold them back during the retreat into the castle.
After the red woman had set the trench on fire after not long ago setting weapons on fire I had hoped she would of gone out in spectacular fashion to serve her purpose. She said she wasn't going to survive into the morning so I would of preferred it if after she basically gave Arya the message to go kill the NK she told the hound to leave and once the undead breached into the room she ripped that necklace off and screamed her chant whilst turning older in front of the camera and just burst into a fuck off huge explosion black water bay style obliterating the section of the building she was in. This would of stopped the dead from going after Arya any further and created a big distraction for the NK when he is pulling out his sword to kill Bran. This could of caused him to turn around right as Arya is running into the back lines of the NK's general guys and she could of just flung that dagger of hers right at him. It was shown off previously how good she was at throwing knifes so it could of been more fitting and had great flow for the scene.
and she also turns to dust right after NK dies :O
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