Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Threash]

2) I quite liked Arya getting her moment but what happened to Azor Ahai and all that? That has been a thread running through the show (and books) from the beginning and at the end, it came to nothing. Even if Jon is the "Prince that was promised" as many think, at the end of the day he just hid from Viserion while Arya did the actual deed.

I think the point is that it was her.

[Rendakor]

Arya could be Azor Ahai, the word prince isn't gendered in Valyrian.

[Riggswolfe]

The prophecy is indeed gender neutral. Almost all signs of it point to Dany or Jon though.

Azor Ahai is born amidst salt and smoke. This part in particular could easily be Jon or Dany.
Azor Ahai is also born under a bleeding star. I'd assume that's a reference to the red comet. I'd need to check to see whether that appeared during either one's birth.
Azor Ahai will supposedly sacrifice a loved one to make a flaming sword.
Finally, the Prince that was promised was stated clearly to be from the Targaryen bloodline. Hopefully Arya isn't a secret Targaryen. I have no idea if the Starks have any Targaryen blood in them but I doubt it.

So, other than being the one to kill the Night King, she doesn't fit the prophecy at all. My issue with that is simply that they spent a lot of time building up the prophecy. It's an even bigger deal in the books. So it feels like it was all for nothing unless they pull some twist and have the Night King come back or something.

[Samwise]

I'm gonna guess that the Night King won't even exist in the books.  It seems like he existed just to make it possible to end the white walker conflict with a single dramatic stab.  The show hasn't really played up the Azor Ahai prophecy so much and it might be that giving it whatever payoff it was supposed to have in the books just isn't doable on the show but also isn't really integral to the other plotlines.

[HaemishM]

It's entirely possible both the books and the TV show used that prophecy as a red herring, so it could be complete bullshit.

[grebo]

Excellent job by the director Miguel Sapochnik.  Beautiful, picturesque, haunting, desperate hot garbage. 

Fuck Martin for not caring anymore, and fuck Benioff & Weiss for thinking they have even 10% of his talent. 

I find this very telling:
https://dorksideoftheforce.com/2019/02/11/star-wars-trilogy-benioff-weiss/

[Chimpy]

People are just NOW not expecting much from the rest of the series?  

Jesus, I have been at that point for at least the last couple of seasons.

The show runners are pretty terrible at writing a narrative above that of what a 14 year old autistic boy would as fan fiction. Once they got past the source material that was laid out in detail (and that source material itself started to fall apart before the end of the second book) their ability to do anything that wasn't just "schlock fantasy with more tits and gratuitous violence" was obviously lacking.

[eldaec]

So the episode, great.

If that is really the end of the global warming allegory, then... OK... but seriously....

Like the last two episodes, seems they are telling a story within their time limit and writing talent constraints. And that is fine.

[eldaec]

The prophecy is indeed gender neutral. Almost all signs of it point to Dany or Jon though.

Azor Ahai is born amidst salt and smoke. This part in particular could easily be Jon or Dany.
Azor Ahai is also born under a bleeding star. I'd assume that's a reference to the red comet. I'd need to check to see whether that appeared during either one's birth.
Azor Ahai will supposedly sacrifice a loved one to make a flaming sword.
Finally, the Prince that was promised was stated clearly to be from the Targaryen bloodline. Hopefully Arya isn't a secret Targaryen. I have no idea if the Starks have any Targaryen blood in them but I doubt it.

So, other than being the one to kill the Night King, she doesn't fit the prophecy at all. My issue with that is simply that they spent a lot of time building up the prophecy. It's an even bigger deal in the books. So it feels like it was all for nothing unless they pull some twist and have the Night King come back or something.

Azor Ahai doesn't specifically have to be the guy who kills the king though.

Also, it is far from clear that the night king is the cause of the night rather than a symptom.

In book terms it is an awfully large coincidence that the dragons emerge at the same moment as the others.

Book arya is fairly strongly marked for death, so I could definitely imagine her getting a scene like this, alongside other people having to do other shit to save the world.

[Rendakor]

So the episode, great.

If that is really the end of the global warming allegory, then... OK... but seriously....

Like the last two episodes, seems they are telling a story within their time limit and writing talent constraints. And that is fine.

Their time limit seems self enforced, though. They could easily have made last season a full 10 episodes instead of 7 with less teleportation, and done the same with this one.

[Chimpy]

They actually split the last season into two shorter seasons. All of the principal shooting for season 7&8 was completed at the same time.

[HaemishM]

I imagine the time limit was imposed upon them by HBO rather than chosen by the showrunners.

[eldaec]

So the episode, great.

If that is really the end of the global warming allegory, then... OK... but seriously....

Like the last two episodes, seems they are telling a story within their time limit and writing talent constraints. And that is fine.

Their time limit seems self enforced, though. They could easily have made last season a full 10 episodes instead of 7 with less teleportation, and done the same with this one.

Not with their writing talent.

[eldaec]

I imagine the time limit was imposed upon them by HBO rather than chosen by the showrunners.

I get the impression HBO would sign up for season 10 but the showrunners want to move on before people notice they have been bad at writing for the last 4 years.

[Khaldun]

Everyone involved, except HBO, wants to move on and do new things. Understandably. Hence the compression at the end of the story, I suspect.

I would fully credit, however, that Martin (and thus the show) are writing prophecies that they fully think are con games/misinterpretations. Martin has one deeper thing going on: violating your oath is a bad idea. But that doesn't take mysticism, it's basic drama and basic social reciprocity. The salt pledge is a basic game-theoretic thing: if we make a sacred pledge, and someone violates it, they ought to die horribly because otherwise nobody's ever going to have weddings or meetings where they're able to conduct basic business that might allow former enemies to make peace and get back onto an altruistic tit-for-tat pattern. The Godfather movies are about the same thing.

Beyond the "don't violate oaths: bad things happen because that's the point of an oath (look out Jaime)", I don't think Martin is seriously invested in the mystical side of prophecies as the accurate rendition of godly or non-human beings who see more than humans see. I think that's the point of the Three-Eyed Raven etc.: seeing more than humans see turns you into a spiritual and practical eunuch, unable to say or do much, as it naturally would. The more you can see the less you could say about what you'd want or what people should do. Think of this whole story: should Ned have said no to King Robert? Earlier War of the Seven Kingdoms, perhaps with catastrophic consequences (or not). Should Robert's wishes to assassinate Dany have been policy? Should Joffrey have been sidelined earlier (or murdered earlier)? What if Ned had been at the Wall with Jon as his loyal second-in-command? Etc. The more you can see of all the branches, the less able you are to say what's best: all choices lead to someone's ruin, and to someone's rise. Prophecies in this sense are stupid con-games. I doubt Melisandre or anyone else really "saw" the future up until the last moment; she was consistently wrong about what she thought would be true.

[Threash]

I imagine the time limit was imposed upon them by HBO rather than chosen by the showrunners.

Completely the opposite, HBO was trying to get a few more seasons out of them.

[Teleku]

Again, books and TV series are different, but prophecies are huge in the books.  There are a ton of them that have come true, so it would be really out of character for the biggest ones to be a 'con'.  And the Red Witch literally see's whats going to happen multiple times (though she does misinterpret what she see's other times).  Martin does like having prophecies that are fulfilled in unexpected ways, sure, but it still happens.

To get an idea of how many:

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Prophecies,_visions,_and_dreams

[Teleku]

So final death toll for the episode:

Ed
Lyanna Mormont
Beric Dondarrion
Jorah Mormont
Theon
Melisandre
The Nights King

Oh, and her entire army of Dothraki and Unsullied.  Grey Worm made it though!

Calling 2 out of 3 aint bad I guess.  Miguel Sapochnik directs episode 5, so I guess we can assume next week will be all talking again, then episode 5 another big battle, then last episode all talking and narrating how every character lived happily ever after.

[Chimpy]

It takes an entire episode to teleport everyone 1000 miles.

[Draegan]

Remember, the fight in the North was just a side quest for Dany.

The war everyone else knows it the war for the iron throne.

They have no army, cersei has one. Something has to happen in the next three episodes. Unless summer just happens, something it's causing winter.

[Riggswolfe]

Book arya is fairly strongly marked for death, so I could definitely imagine her getting a scene like this, alongside other people having to do other shit to save the world.

I read somewhere that GRRM has said his wife has more or less threatened to divorce him if he hurts or kills Arya.

[schild]

this was gorgeous and worth watching just because it was uh

anyway

the arya stabbing was just the most contrived fanservice I've seen in a long long time

also, how inconsequential, 90 minutes and they killed jorah and uh, I guess melisandre and beric are finally dead

k

edit: oh, theon right how could i possibly forget theon, WWE character taken shape in an HBO drama

Remember, the fight in the North was just a side quest for Dany.

The war everyone else knows it the war for the iron throne.

They have no army, cersei has one. Something has to happen in the next three episodes. Unless summer just happens, something it's causing winter.

i beg to differ

arya has an army now  

[Teleku]

Yeah, not only did they just sort of make the entire White Walker threat actually inconsequential, they didn't even kill off many characters.  It was fun to watch, but a let down overall. 

And it still amazes me how afraid the writers of doing anything beyond the most basic TV tropes.  Arya jumping out and stabbing him is whatever.  But if you're going to do that, have the super stealth magic assassin do it in some super stealth magic tricky way.  This is easy, its a no brainer, and would have made for a fun moment.  Instead she comes running from behind out of the giant horde of ice monsters who can sense the warmth of humans who somehow missed her for 5 minutes, and just jump through the air at him like Thor.

You'd think the Red Woman would have given Beric a pity thank you resurrection before walking off into the snow.   

[schild]

i wish bran had died

talk about a stupid looking moron that fulfilled his purpose

[Ruvaldt]

Yeah, Bran has been reduced to bait.  That's just how uninteresting his character is.

If the Night King had stabbed him and Arya jumped out and killed the Night King, just a hair too late to save him, it'd have been significantly better.  Though still not great. 

It ultimately doesn't feel like any of it mattered besides killing a lot of characters that had long passed their expiration dates.

But it was a beautiful and unique looking episode, which definitely isn't nothing.

[Chimpy]

EVERY character is long past their expiration dates. 

[Cyrrex]

Very flawed episode, but great nonetheless.  Some of y'all just plain crazy.  We (humans i general) complain when they murder our favorite characters.  And then we complain when they don't.  Okay.

I get that Arya's role and that whole end sequence with the NK might have been a bit too easy.  But when I watched it real-time, after the drama with Theon and Jon's attempt to get past the ice dragon (he wasn't fucking hiding, jesus fucking christ), the anticipation was thick, and then....

Arya fucking leaps out of nowhere and I was like oh shit!  That's right!
And then the Night King caught her and I was like oh shit!  He is going to kill her!
And then she drops the knife, catches it and kills him and I am like oh shit!  Arya fucking killed the Night King!

Maybe I should have seen it coming, but in the moment I saw none of it coming and it was awesome.

The scenes with Melisandre were also great, and they way she went out was great.  I guess the Red God did have a card to play.

[schild]

We (humans i general) complain when they murder our favorite characters.  And then we complain when they don't.  Okay.

we understand the ways of westeros now

[Abagadro]

Arya fucking leaps out of nowhere and I was like oh shit!  That's right!
And then the Night King caught her and I was like oh shit!  He is going to kill her!
And then she drops the knife, catches it and kills him and I am like oh shit!  Arya fucking killed the Night King!

Basically my exact reaction. Loved it.

[Cyrrex]

Oh, and Lyanna Mormont....that whole scene was terrible, right up until it was great.  Holy shit.

[eldaec]

Is tormund dead yet? He sort of just stopped getting scenes. I thought he was going to show up when the giant did, but that bit was great anyway.

Also how does Sapochnik have zero credits anyone gives a shit about outside GoT? The 4 watchable episodes across s5 and 6, then this, and then nothing.

[Cyrrex]

Fairly sure Tormund made it.  I don't think they are killing any of the known characters off without making it quite clear.  They have only done that one time that I can remember, and I am still unconvinced of Stannis Baratheon's death 

[Cyrrex]

And more importantly, now that I lost Beric from my fantasy team, I need Tormund to kill hordes of people, perform magic, eat/drink, get named Hand and bang Ser Brienne whilst telling her witty stories.  Otherwise I am going to lose to whoever has Arya.

[Teleku]

Yeah, Sapochnik has been great.  They seem to only bring him in for battle scenes though (and his next episode lines up right when the next battle will probably be), so he may typecast himself into only ever being allowed to direct battles.   

[eldaec]

His best episode doesn't even have a battle in it. But you are probably right.