THE GAME OF THRONES/ASOIAF SPOILER THREAD (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Also, did they change the guy that cut him from being a dude that was supposed to be on his side but betrayed him to just being some big random enemy? I didn't recognize the guy.

It was definintely a Kingsguard mofo who tries to cut him down -- Meryn Trant? Who aside from Jaime and the Hound, is the only Kingsguard guy who's gotten a name. Anyway, same guy who strips Sansa at Joffrey's command earlier this season.

REEDS! BLACKFISH!

Entertainment Weekly’s James Hibberd has the (partial) cast list of characters introduced in Season Three. Reproduced below with original role descriptions:

Mance Rayder: We’ve heard about him all season. A former member of the Night’s Watch who became the “King Beyond the Wall,” the leader of the Wildlings.
Daario Naharis: A confident and seductive warrior.
Jojen Reed; Meera Reed: A teenage brother and sister duo with special insights.
Edmure Tully: A brash young member of the Tully family.
Ser Brynden Tully (The Blackfish): Catelyn Stark’s uncle.
Lady Selyse Florent: Stannis Baratheon’s wife.
Shireen: Stannis’ daughter.
Olenna Redwyne (The Queen of Thorns): Margaery Tyrell’s sharp-witted grandmother.
Beric Dondarrion: A skilled knight who is the leader of the outlaw group Brotherhood Without Banners.
Thoros of Myr: A red priest who follows the same religion as Melisandre.
Tormund Giantsbane: A Wildling raider.

oh shireen.

I hope Glenn Danzig plays Ramsay Bolton.

Wait, wasn't Beric already in the first season? I don't remember him but it seems he should've been?

yeah, he was. Guess that guy couldn't wait around (or maybe wasn't up to it)

needs more patchface

patchface creeps me out, I'd be glad if he didn't show up

He is very creepy. I don't like clowns or fools to begin with, but he takes it to the next level.

totally. creepy-sad clown.

i am glad the reeds weren't left out. i have been missing the more other-worldliness part of GoT (dragons, white walkers, physic powers, etc)

there's been loads of that this season...

yes, queen of thorns such a great character ! reeds also cool !

Edmure Tully: A brash young member of the Tully family.

he's just a bit younger than catelyn stark ! this makes it sound like he's around the same age as i dunno, the stark kids or smth.

I think they might have specified young as he is younger than Catelyn and also not yet married.

Olenna is U&K, but Blackfish is awes as well.

Also puzzled why they don't just say that Edmure is Cat's brother.

NOT LUWIN!!!!!!!!!!!! I BLAME THE REEDS!!

I like all the changes they've made so far, what have we got?

- Massacre of the Thirteen
- Robb exists in Book 2
- Theon is a wimp
- Arya/Tywin instead of Arya/Roose, massively expanded

I feel like there must have been something else that happened in Book 2 that I've forgotten, Season 2 seemed largely fabricated, aside from King's Landing + Stannis

All I remember now of Book 2 was Dany getting lost in the desert and it taking a long time.

Oh, they also made Renly a more visible character. All good choices

Stuff they took out:

- Jojen and Meera
- Tyrion's chain
- Edmure Tully

Oh, they also made Renly a more visible character.

It's funny, seeing the amount of people online complaining that there was not enough Renly this season when he got his story got fleshed out way more than was in the books.

jojen and meera are cast for season 3 so i guess bran crew is just gonna bump into them on their way through the woods or something. edmure will show up when we go to riverrun i assume

err being cast, not cast yet

So many good decisions! The only plot threads of which I preferred the book version have been Jon Snow, Samwell and Davos.

this last one definitely showed the signs of the budget being spunked on the penultimate episode. i guess i had low expectations for the house of the undying. they could've spent half an episode in there and really gone big with it but i didn't see it happening. what they did on the smaller scale worked fine tho.

i didn't think the winterfell thing was handled as well as it could've been. not even one shot of the northmen outside the gates? it was all too vague. the business with ramsay in the books seemed a bit unnecessary on reading but i actually missed it here. the show might have done better to add ramsay in and take its time more with that storyline. it mostly disappears in book 3 anyway, and the bran parts there could be easily condensed to accommodate an escape mid-season. the burned kids could've been the season cliffhanger.

i didn't much like how the jon/halfhand thing happened either - also needlessly vague. i mean, it was clear enough what qhorin was trying to do, but there was no moment when the penny seemed to drop for jon, and in the end he killed him cos he said something mean about his unknown mam. at least they got where they needed to be, by a roundabout way.

on the plus side, tyrion's face was impressively fucked up, even if they had to keep his nose. if dinklage was really committed to his art he'd have let them hack it off. disappointing.

this season was always when the real challenge of making a tv show out of such a wide ranging story was going to be obvious. they really could've done better. i know there are pressures and expectations, but they would've been helped themselves a ton by cutting dany out of nearly all the first half of the season. i thought robb rampaging off in the west and then returning with his marriage a done deal was a great narrative twist, and i don't know how well the show was served by making him much more static and giving that nurse so much screen time. meanwhile, other parts of the story got sometimes bizarrely truncated.

i suspect they didn't want to have to cast Ramsay until season 3

after playing up theon's story to great effect this season i wonder if they'll actually vanish him for 2 years like in the books. theon's reintroduction was probably my favorite thing post-book-3 and i suspect it would have been less effective had GRRM peeked in on him even once during the interim

i didn't much like how the jon/halfhand thing happened either - also needlessly vague. i mean, it was clear enough what qhorin was trying to do, but there was no moment when the penny seemed to drop for jon, and in the end he killed him cos he said something mean about his unknown mam. at least they got where they needed to be, by a roundabout way.

I'd go so far as to say that they really messed up this stuff. Not only did the writers/Kit Harrington turn Jon into an ineffectual, drooling idiot, like, someone whom the Night's Watch would actually kick out, he dragged down Qhorin's BAMFness too.

They also changed Ramsay/Reek into Dagmar Cleftjaw.

I do not look forward to Ian's return, I'll have to make sure my eyes are ready to roll.

However, any new scenes with Varys are so much A++++.

yeah but needs less Ros. When they introduced Dontos in the first episode of s2 and then cut out that whole storyline including finding out Littlefinger was behind it all, it makes Sansa seem stupid for not going with the Hound, when in the book it's cos she has this other escape plan in the works.

http://f.cl.ly/items/281S2K19293C1c110Z0P/Screen%20shot%202012-06-05%20at%205.21.50%20PM.png

today is really having a strong finish

Bf asked me the same while viewing "What's milk of the puppy?" Some people just have not read enough poison & dagger-laden fantasy novels, jeez.

I've never thought I was partic good at following intrigue, based on my inability to get more than like 5 sentences into denser political articles without my eyes blurring, and me figuring that politics was basically the same thing, but non-fantasy people watching this show make me feel like a fucking genius.

finally watched this last night. was the crazy white walker monster at the end supposed to be coldhands??

no

the white dudes on the horses are Others. it's implied that coldhands is reanimated dead. he also wears nights watch duds.

and he rides a stag

or an elk

yeah i was a bit confused since he didn't immediately kill samwell

If you were a scary supernatural being, would you feel threatened enough by Sam to kill him?

But yeah, Coldhands crossed my mind too.

it's never mentioned who coldhands is in the books right? are we supposed to believe that he's benjo or whatver the stark's ranger uncle's name is?

benjy is the prime suspect

this season was so much better than the corresponding book. arya's story was WAY improved in pretty much every way.

agreed.

so they're gonna start off season 3 with the red wedding? that should get everyone all riled up!

They're STARTING with that? Holy shit.

no way that's true

source?

just pure conjecture, but we've got the background all set up, and it would be a hell of a kickoff. get em yammering at the watercoolers and whatnot.

nah they'll stretch it out, red wedding will be episode 8 or 9 of season 3. They're introducing all the tullys from the casting stuff upthread so that'll all have to go down for a few episodes. They'll give us more of the Boltons, etc.