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

Sam's own mother is also still alive.

ah yes of course. I'd forgotten she wasn't killed with his father

Jon dead, Dany on the throne, pregnant with twins, this seems way too obvious and cheesy but hmmm...

^^ that was my original thought whenever she says something about breaking the cycle. Coupled with a family member, pregnant with the true heir, just as ruthless as the Lannisters

we’d go from Cersei to Cersei II, basically

idg why people keep saying "oh this sucked, they all just won easily". They didnt fucking win! Their entire armies were turned to a pulp! They probably lost the bulk of the winterfell smallfolk there! I doubt many people have come out of this alive!

I kinda want Cersei to beat everyone left now, with a smug hateful grin, just to annoy everyone lol.

I hated that smug Night King face when he raised a second army from the bodies of the dead. I mean, I kind of wished I could do that too, but my version would be animating the corpses of my old and jaded coworkers to vanquish my work rivals

I was trying to think of which episodes featured the most deaths of named characters. I think this was probably second to S6E10 (Sept of Baelor)?

It was good that he got that "lol u guys r pwned" smirk and then BAM, flying ninja arya attack (ok yes where the f did she actually come from but ok)

Was the Septsplosion worse than Red Wedding on that front? I cant even recall anymore. Who died in the sept? Margaery, Diana Rigg, her weird old husband, Tommen.. who else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfkru6vtKsw

probably would have been fun to watch it in a bar

Diana Rigg poisoned herself elsewhere, in the same episode I believe.

the High Sparrow bought it in the Sept tho xp

(wait no dur Oleanna left and got killed later ha yes xpost)

Sept: Margaery, her dad, Tommen (sort of), priest Jonathan Pryce, Loras, Kevan Lannister, Lancel Lannister

Pycelle, not in the explosion but right before it.

Arya killed the Freys in that same episode too.

TBH a part of me will be glad if we go back to scheming and politics, that felt like the basis of the show to begin with and now its been waylaid by high fantasy battles which is like, fine of course, but life goes on, someone gotta sit on dat throne.

rip Margaery you did only scheming wrongs and we’re too hot to die

i thought melissandra was going to start singing New Order's "Temptation" with the eyes bit

As far as “where did Arya come from?!?” at the end, on rewatch, I have determined she must have gotten to the godswood before Theon’s demise, and hid herself amongst the corpses. Sneaky!

Is Jon not able to make the dragon breathe fire? I notice he didn't do this and kinda seemed pointless him riding around on it as a result.

I also wondered why there was only Theon and a few other lads guarding Bran, but also why they only had to fight off a trickle of dead.

The godswood only has one entrance in I think

As far as “where did Arya come from?!?” at the end, on rewatch, I have determined she must have gotten to the godswood before Theon’s demise, and hid herself amongst the corpses. Sneaky!

You see her pass a wight, if you watch; a wight's hair gets swept up in a light wind and he turns to look over his shoulder, then cut to the shot on NK and Arya comes flying in from behind.

O sorry yes I figured she was good at hiding in plain sight, no quibbles there. I just meant how she kinda came at him from behind and sort of airborne?

I phrased it today as “flying out of nowhere” and that’s about right imo

What sort of absolute fucking animal watches TV in a bar.

My wife watched Joffrey die in bar in NY with a big screen and apparently it was amazing, everyone cheered.

I’m disappointed we won’t get to see flying dragon skulls breathing fire on Cersei. But I loved the contrast between ‘not today’ for Aria and Melisandre signing off with her final ‘OK, today’. I’m going to give that episode a second viewing, I think.

just been watching a squirrel try to sneak up on the bird feeder, where we've put defences in place. it realised and deftly climbed up the tree above it to jump down and attack the bird food that way. Maybe arya could've just hidden in the tree.

Also the Night King is literally a dumb CGI avatar and would have made an incredibly underwhelming Big Bad, the problem with zombies is that they're scary but also kind of one-note and boring after a while, best to get them out of the way early. It's already been established that at some point in Westeros history they managed to defeat the army of the dead and humans still managed to fuck everything else up for themselves.

More to the point the Night King is a bad manager, what's the point of expending literally everything trying to take a well-defended fortress like Winterfell when you can just roll across country and take everything in your path?

Generally I thought this episode was great, I'm not especially nostalgic for the show as it used to be and big dumb fight scenes rule. Good move to have spent seven seasons building Arya up as this bitter avenging character and have that all be in the service of something higher. It does seem ridiculous that not a single White Walker managed to rinse through
Sam given he spent the entire episode with at least of of them pinning him down.

There's been a surprising amount of screen time given to one little girl who was being served by Davos and later in the crypt, I couldn't quite work out what they're building towards with that.

it's either a red herring or chekov's gun. what if she's had greyscale and is still contagious? she's been at close quarters with a lot of the principals so it would be a real threat

Probably do need to rewatch at least some of this. THink I missed a couple of the rapid points. Somebody being dragged over teh battlements etc.

Did see the bit with the dragon and Jon Snow and thought it was a bit close to a computer game or an arcade one.

& Arya may have been a bit close to a deus ex machina but on the other hand had probnnably been built up to that purpose all the way through.
Wondered what the next stage if she hadn't done that would have been. I guess the Night king would have still been trying to expand his kingdom and gone up against Cersei and whoever. Who would have been ill-prepared. Was there anybody who could work with dragon glass even if she had recognised taht as a possible tool. THough that's a moot point now.

It was very well executed, and extremely tense. Lazily concieved though, and padded out plotwise. Arya killing the NK was cool and a bit surprising and made sense (a GRRM plot point?), but other than that you could describe the plot as "they had a big fight and the goodies won". Very linear and unimaginative, particularly compared to the books and the early seasons, and continuing to squander any thematic complexity.

On that note I can completely imagine the rest of the series being two episodes of build up and bro downs, followed by a battle with Cersei in which a few B grade characters die (Brienne and Davos most likely), and the day is saved at the last minute by a third party. Then Jon and Dany will get married and share the throne with Tryion as chief advisor, Arya head of security and Sansa Warden of the North, and everyone in the Seven Kingdoms lives happily ever after.

There's been a surprising amount of screen time given to one little girl who was being served by Davos and later in the crypt, I couldn't quite work out what they're building towards with that.

Then Jon and Dany will get married and share the throne with Tryion as chief advisor, Arya head of security and Sansa Warden of the North, and everyone in the Seven Kingdoms lives happily ever after.

there'll be a targaryen on the throne, a lannister hand, a stark as warden of the north (maybe all women?), it will be summer and everything will be fundamentally it was before Robert's rebellion. Some point will be made about history being cyclical or naturally returning to an equilibrium etc and then we get a whole load of spinoffs.

I'm guessing that Arya killing the Night King is another thing GRRM had planned anyway.

If the little girl died then that makes sense, I thought I saw her alive at the end but fair enough.

a targaryen on the throne, a lannister hand, a stark as warden of the north (maybe all women?)

Dany will make Cersei her hand?

I wouldn't rule it out

jon/tyrion/sansa would be the boring version of course

and of course the unborn Baratheon boy coming into adulthood in just enough time to upset the applecart again and trigger the next winter

they really had fun with the light/darkness stuff in this and there were some really striking visuals: sudden panic of the zombie giant emerging out of the darkness, dothraki lights being slowly snuffed out, dragon fire lighting up the wall of snowstorm, they got more mileage out of beric's sword in the dark, the zombie dragon thrashing around spilling ice fire everywhere, and with all the golden fire light set against the blue white walker glow it felt really trippy by the end. was surprisingly touched by theon's ending despite having been sick of his character for ages: that trembling jaw as he tried to keep it together & bran telling him what he needed to hear. and agree w/ fgti about melisandre, carice van houten was great and eerie & it was one of the most satisfying endings. the night king was so profoundly unterrifying though, they could have done so much better to make him other-worldly, he strutted around with his useless rubbery friends smirking like a 15yo larper who is smug abt getting to be the big-bad

Yeah the moment where the the battle cries and the sound of the horses and the flaming swords were all gradually snuffed out to make way for this terrifying darkness and silence was tremendous. The Unsullied seemed to do better than the Dothraki but how exactly did Grey Worm survive when his crew were pretty much serving as a massive human shield?

I agree with most of this - https://variety.com/2019/tv/columns/game-of-thrones-long-night-battle-winterfell-season-8-1203200303/?fbclid=IwAR0W1qFXx5qF-5b1nwnBTltZqiZgB8x1mjHck3k6DDnRqe58gOfN53YPsSo

how exactly did Grey Worm survive

Some Twitterites are saying he didn't? I couldn't say either way.

He definitely survived because considerably more marginal characters got the gushy sad music treatment when they died. He might be gravely injured I suppose.

Still, excellent defensive enforcer, the kind every fan would want on their team. 8/10 performance even if Arya takes home the match ball.

It's been a bit obscured by it being stretched over two seasons, but it's worth pointing out how incredibly stupid this five episode stretch has been.

Jon Snow is terrified of the ice zombies, so he hatches THE PLAN to go beyond the wall to find one, so that they can get everyone on board with fighting them.
THE PLAN immediately goes pear shaped, and he has to be saved by Daenerys and her dragons. But at the cost of one dragon.
Then it turns out that a dragon was the exact thing the Night King needed to get beyond the wall. If it hadn't been for THE PLAN he couldn't have attacked anyway.
Oh, but it turns out that Cersei tricks them, so THE PLAN doesn't even work to get everyone on board.
But then it turns out that not only does THE PLAN 1) fail and 2) end up helping the exact evil it was trying to combat, but 3) they win anyway without Cersei, so THE PLAN wasn't even needed to begin with.

And also, what was even supposed to be the point of getting Cerseis army anyway? They ended up planning to lure the Night King close to Bran, so more soldiers would just be getting in the way, and would mean more undead enemies eventually.

That said, all of it being so stupid makes me thing GRRM will just avoid anything having to do with that whole thing, and will just have the Night King be killed by Arya midways through book seven in a much simpler way.

it's a relief the night king isn't the final battle. the moans that the show doesn't surprise anymore don't really fit with the ppl complaining they'd built the white walker menace up too much to be dealt with so abruptly

The Night King hasn't even been introduced in the books, so maybe he just made up a rubbish villain of the top of his head to get them off his back.