HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

Yeah it was obvious someone was going to kill him and Arya was the meme-friendly choice

xp - i mean, if bran could like, warg into a bird, maybe he could have done so to uh, guide the dragons and direct them when they were caught in the fog?

the more I think about it, Bran is kinda a selfish dick

like, i'm just gonna chill here by this tree while a lot of PoC die and I coulda done something to prevent it but naahhh

Some stray observations:

* Beric got his own "hold the door" moment, didn't he?

* Bran was saved with the same weapon the assassin tried to kill him with in season 1.

* We never saw the other dragon that was wounded by the zombie dragon actually die, so it's probably still alive? So I guess ballista attack in King's Landing that's been foreshadowed in the opening credits is gonna happen.

* In the end, the protagonists' plan worked, didn't it? Using Bran to lure out the Night King so he wouldn't just ride the entire battle on his dragon, then killing him while his attention is on Bran.

yeah rhaegal is still alive, slight spoilers from the 30-second preview of next week's ep.

they really should've made it clearer that he survived, but whatever.

they really should have made everything clearer tbh

where is littlefinger? is that fucker going to show up again?

Every time I see a medieval-style battle on film I start thinking what they must have really looked like and I get a little more perturbed each time I see the "lone fighter cutting down all comers" cliche but for the most part I thought this was effective (caveat about it being darkly lit to cover for special effects aside), especially early on when the dead seemed like a wave of mass death rather than individual zombies.

uh Arya slit his throat? xpost

some of you clearly don't pay close attention to this ridiculous show!

ha, i forgot Littlefinger was dead too. an no, i really don't anymore.

is Theon's dick gonna come back again? Haven't seen it around for a while

i really do think the dothraki mass coming upon a vague mass of death in the darkness and then cutting to their torches being extinguished was a pretty ill visual, and Arya's moment of triumph owned.

really though, what was Bran doing. Was there any point to it, is it something for a future episode? I'm usually pretty good about following things, I guess it could be he was keeping on eye on the NK but why?

the NK noticed Bran before when he was warging a bird. I imagine he was trying to get his attention to set up the murking

There's a ridiculous fan theory going on (based on one ambiguous scene, I think) that Littlefinger hired one of the Faceless Men to die in his stead and is gonna show up again this season. But as theories go, that one seems even more pointless than the "Bran is the Night King" one that was proven false by this episode.

littlefinger was killed with the same knife as the night king

i can't keep this show straight from season to season. I totally forgot Littlefinger died.

I was confused about the dragons too, and thought that ice dragon was already dead/gone somehow and that Jon was facing his own recently dead and resurrected one especially since it had crash-landed and was covered with wights

I enjoyed that but still feel suitably trolled for the third week in a row in all the ways already covered upthread. An astounding waste of the White Walkers who did nothing but die.

ya why is there no wight history month?

There's a ridiculous fan theory going on (based on one ambiguous scene, I think) that Littlefinger hired one of the Faceless Men to die in his stead and is gonna show up again this season. But as theories go, that one seems even more pointless than the "Bran is the Night King" one that was proven false by this episode.

― Tuomas, Monday, April 29, 2019 3:27 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's stupid...

"I'm hiring you to die for me"

"How much are you offering?"

"Uh, a billion dollars?"

"Make it 2 billion and we have a deal"

"Sure buddy."

"What a sucker! I'm gonna be so rich!"

also if it was a faceless man, they would have had the battle training to uh, not be killed?

that is the stupidest theory

Re: Melisandre, yeah, considering that her character to date was little more than a mixture of obtuse repetition of LoL jargonism and flip-flopping between "let's kill Davos actually let's not" "you're the Lord of Light actually you're not", it was very intense for me-- at least, in my own head-- to see just that brief minute of her casting that spell, and reflected on her face was all her fervent belief colliding with self-doubt, righteousness with guilt, futility with triumph, and then the spell works and a battle later she recognizes that her part has been played and she walks off into oblivion, I was amazed at how her denouement justified (for me) hours upon hours of eye-rolling and boredom experienced on the character's behalf

Varys's face when the crypt opened for business was so funny, it seemed like normal-Varys with non-existent eyebrows slightly raised

All things considered this was good not bad and certainly thrilling & terrifying in the moment of watching it.

Apex: the bit where, with the Stark ancestors rampaging around the crypt, Sansa and Tyrion are hiding together - their wordless little drama there was fucking superb.

As pointed out itt Melisandre growing desperate for the first time in her life while furiously spell casting, also excellent (xpost fgti indeed indeed)

ILX otm that there were way too many instances of Brienne, Jaime or Sam being insupportably overwhelmed and definitely going down but then back to semi-successfully holding off their attackers next time we see them. And while I got a vivid sense of how it was for this mass of humans to face this horde of wights, I never got a solid sense of what the close-up hero-vs-half-dozen-wights combat was like except in Arya's spear scene.

Disagree with the disappointment that we are now left with three episodes of mere humanity. Think of the times this show was indisputably awesome - the first three seasons or so - there was only a garnish of the supernatural, all of the best bits were people doing things to people. Definitely support the show closing out in that mode and perhaps making it just as wrenching and awful as the wight invasion. Most of the focal characters are alive, yes, but almost everyone else is dead - now low-hanging fruit for Cersei.

They really do need to give us something more re Bran's raven sortie & what he was about there.

The Lord of Light was all about Arya, wasn't he? Beric gets her out of the hallways alive, dies the true death at last, having served his holy purpose. Melisandre gives Arya a pep talk that sends her after NK, dies the true death at last, having served her holy purpose.

Loved the ice-fire leaking out of the wounds of the wight dragon.

For a moment I thought too that it was strange with how much devastation occurred, the armies destroyed and so forth, that so many main characters survived, it seemed unbalanced and unfair, but then I remembered that it's.. fiction! and the POV is going to follow people-of-importance (i.e. survivors, or people who will die notably) and not trace the glorious childhood and subsequent achievements of, say, a Dothraki who got sent to the front line. Fiction is cruel to those who die meaninglessly

He didn’t, he just slammed bodies against the walls until it worked (which, at the end of the day, really is the central looming threat of the white walkers).

The Lord of Light was all about Arya, wasn't he? Beric gets her out of the hallways alive, dies the true death at last, having served his holy purpose. Melisandre gives Arya a pep talk that sends her after NK, dies the true death at last, having served her holy purpose.

lol

the reaction of people in a bar when Arya killed the nightking#NotToday pic.twitter.com/MoR8SqowhS

— Raph (@RaphouuuL) April 29, 2019

lmao

I will also say that I was completely seduced by the "Night King Is Not Stupid" theory, and now I have absolutely no sure idea how this will play out, at all, at all.

Intuition states that the series will end with dragons dead, Jon dead, Dany will not be queen but something else will happen (no idea if she lives or dies), Cersei dead, Jamie perhaps also dead, Brienne dead (protecting Jamie), Tyrion alive but unwilling to rule, Bran lodged in a tree somewhere, Arya and Sansa safe at Winterfell, Euron dead. Ever since I read the first book I speculated that Gendry's story was more important than the other bastards because he'd end up on the throne, and I think he's at this point my most likely bet for succession, seeing as he's contributed little more to the narrative than being a snack for leeches and young assassins. But considering the sheer amount of power-play there's been up to this point about "who will sit on the Iron Throne" I wouldn't be surprised if the show ends with the Seven Kingdoms either being split apart again, or seeing the genesis of some other form of rule (I wouldn't go so far as to say "and then Samwell invented democracy" but there might be some kind of "rule by the small council" situation).

(also wow @ that video)

Also at some stage I thought, wow I hope the Hound is dead cos that’s a shitload of fire - cut to him panicking by a wall. Glad he didn’t die though (kill your zombie brother first!)

that video is a barstoolsports fake

Nice wholesome thread here:

ARYA YOU LIL PIECE OF SHIT I LOVE YOU. SOMEBODY GET THIS WOMAN SOME PREMIUM DICK ASAP!!!!!!!! @HBO @GameOfThrones #GoT #Season8 #DemThrones #Episode3 #BattleOfWinterfell

— T-Pain (@TPAIN) April 29, 2019

damn. should have known it was fake since it was light out

They really do need to give us something more re Bran's raven sortie & what he was about there.

I was unclear earlier, but I thought it was obvious Bran warged in order to signal his specific location to NK.

Disagree with the disappointment that we are now left with three episodes of mere humanity. Think of the times this show was indisputably awesome - the first three seasons or so - there was only a garnish of the supernatural, all of the best bits were people doing things to people. Definitely support the show closing out in that mode and perhaps making it just as wrenching and awful as the wight invasion.

i would LOVE to see the show close out in that mode, but i don't have high hopes. in the beginning, when the show was amazing and everyone got hooked, the Talking was dominant and very good, the Action was rare and good. but over time, the Talking became not so good. By late S6 and S7, it became straight up bad. GoT is no longer good at Talking, at least not consistently, but i'm really hoping they capture some of that early-season Talking magic for the final few sodes

They really do need to give us something more re Bran's raven sortie & what he was about there.

I was unclear earlier, but I thought it was obvious Bran warged in order to signal his specific location to NK.

i'm really hoping they capture some of that early-season Talking magic for the final few sodes

the talking was pretty good in episode 2! but then again, there aren't anymore cogman-penned episodes, so it may not be indicative of what's to come

the season 1 war of the roses late medieval europe stuff was my favorite bit, and i dreaded the wizard and dragon bullshit while it was getting going in the early seasons. but i also don't think they can just return to that now.

i liked last night's episode btw! i thought it was really exciting!

yep! yeah, the action has remained good even as the talking has faded away (though on occasion it's still good!), so I was pretty fucking stoked about last night's episode. but yeah...this is a good action show now.

The cheering crowd video is a fake often used for memes. In the real original they're cheering because a pirate ps1 game they've just bought has successfully booted up

but why was there a crowd of people in a movie theater watching a pirated ps1 game boot up?

(the question all of the game of thrones posts have been leading up to)

there are a lot of genuine reaction videos out there, the Arya moment was a ridic crowd pleaser.

i still really like the show, the scope and many of the characters overcome lots of the other bullshit. but it's such a different show that the Red Wedding is something that feels tonally out of place when thinking about it in the context of the last several seasons. The brutality was so palpable and grim and it was logical, and obviously exceptionally plotted. This is a hard-R action show now, but no matter what happens to any characters there won't be anything as direct and personal and bleak as what happened to Catelyn or Robb or Talisa.

They immediately charged their cavalry with 99.9% of the flaming weapons they had, otherwise accompanied only by a stealthy wolf, into the front of a teeming mass of enemies

Then they got their dragon tarpitted in a unit of zombies that chipped away at its health

Top level "me playing Total War" tactics imo

For a moment I thought too that it was strange with how much devastation occurred, the armies destroyed and so forth, that so many main characters survived, it seemed unbalanced and unfair, but then I remembered that it's.. fiction! and the POV is going to follow people-of-importance (i.e. survivors, or people who will die notably) and not trace the glorious childhood and subsequent achievements of, say, a Dothraki who got sent to the front line. Fiction is cruel to those who die meaninglessly

This would be true for most shows, but not one that billed itself as subversive fantasy that undercut genre conventions and whose calling card was killing important characters. It’s become so conventional as to be predictable in the extreme. Not for one second did I believe Arya would die or Jorah would live.

ghost somehow found his way into the crypts too, which adds credence to the theory that the production team hastily and haphazardly added him in post to make fans happy.

wow this was fun. nicely done with all the suspense.
although at the start of the action when the wights were just pouring in I was convinced nearly EVERYONE would be straight-up just immediately dead. Brienne, Jorah, all the fighting ones (not Jaime though). Quite enjoyed thinking that was happening.

the World War Z zombie-piling tactics (including to get over the spiky fiery trenches) was a bit obvious, no? Wouldn't the gang have considered this?