Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[Cyrrex]

I do not know which ones are his (maybe all of them), but the Battle of the Bastards, the battle where Jaime and Bronn are leading the army back from Highgarden, and the battle during the Long Night are some of the best battle sequences ever put to film.  TV or movie.  Battle of the Bastards is the single best sequence.  I was physically impacted by it, I can still feel my chest tighten up.  If that's all the guy will be known for, I'd say that is one hell of a CV.

[eldaec]

Hardhome, the Battle of the Bastards and then this episode.

He also did the last episode of s6 with the Sept explosion and Dany taking names on the way out of Mereen, and one of the least bad s5 episodes.

[Cyrrex]

Hardhome was also really nice, though less impactful than the other two.  Pretty intense.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

I watched some reaction videos on Youtube and this is how everyone seems to react. It's awesome seeing people get excited then freeze in place when he catches her. Some of them going "Noooo don't kill Arya!!!" then scream when she does the knife switch.

I was thinking about this episode last night. As near as I can tell only the following characters have any purpose going forward:

Arya
Sansa
Jon
Dany
Tyrion
(Maybe) Jaime
(Maybe) Sam

I'd have at least added Podric and Bran to the kill lists if I was the show writers. Especially Bran to symbolize both sides of the Old Ways (Children/NK and Green Seers) are gone. I'd also have been tempted to add Brienne to the kill lists and most definitely Grey Worm. Probably Missandei too.

Edit: Also, this episode probably will have a major impact on Dany. We were just shown how Jorah is a calming influence on her when he convinced her to keep Tyrion as hand and even talk to Sansa. She watched her Dothraki die and her Unsullied get decimated then Jorah dies in her arms. If she's going to go mad queen, I think they just set up the final push.

[Khaldun]

The way that Bran's importance was described by Sam really sucked, I thought. The Night King wants to kill Bran because he's memory or whatever? What? Like, the previous Three-Eyed Raven was up there north of the Wall forever and nobody in Westeros, even the Night's Watch, knew about it. Even the Free Folk didn't really. So what fucking good was all that memory to anybody? So unless Bran suddenly says, "Ok, now that we're done with all that shit, I can tell you everything about Cersei's movements, I can tell you she has a dragon-killing crossbow in King's Landing, etc., I can tell you exactly what to do to win big time", who the fuck cares about him? He is the most useless McGuffin in the history of McGuffins and every single drop of screentime given over to him in the entire series has been a waste of time, even the Hodor stuff. Better that Theon actually burned him and Rickon way back when.

Now if Bran had explained to everyone that the NK was basically an ancient doomsday device built by the Children but that he was also the one vulnerability that the Dead had because he was the portal through which neverending winter and death came into the world of men, and that the goal was for anyone with a Valyrian weapon to get to him, by any means necessary, that could have shaped a really different episode and made Bran necessary to the narrative. Suppose Bran says: he has to stay somewhat close to the army of the dead and the Walkers, so we know he's here somewhere. Imagine a battle plan that's basically "Hunt the Night King", with a lot of deliberate suicide wave attacks and character deaths, the same sense of chaos and uncanny doom, where every Valyrian weapon on the battlefield is the only thing that really matters. Then you could have a situation where most of the Valyrian wielders are eventually defeated or killed or are imminently going to die, but Arya's been hiding and waiting for her chance--maybe the bait isn't Bran but is Jon, essentially, and you finish the same way. I love that Arya was the one who took him out; I loved some of the set pieces in the episodes; but the overall narrative framing really fell flat for me and retroactively makes a lot of the entire series seem sort of pointless.

[Phildo]

Sansa is going to kill Cersei with the dagger Arya gave her.  That's my hot take for the rest of the season.

[Riggswolfe]

The way that Bran's importance was described by Sam really sucked, I thought. The Night King wants to kill Bran because he's memory or whatever? What? Like, the previous Three-Eyed Raven was up there north of the Wall forever and nobody in Westeros, even the Night's Watch, knew about it. Even the Free Folk didn't really. So what fucking good was all that memory to anybody? So unless Bran suddenly says, "Ok, now that we're done with all that shit, I can tell you everything about Cersei's movements, I can tell you she has a dragon-killing crossbow in King's Landing, etc., I can tell you exactly what to do to win big time", who the fuck cares about him? He is the most useless McGuffin in the history of McGuffins and every single drop of screentime given over to him in the entire series has been a waste of time, even the Hodor stuff. Better that Theon actually burned him and Rickon way back when.

Bran is a walking, well rolling, Library of Alexandria. Anything you need to know he can look it up. If the Night King had killed him a lot of knowledge would have been lost forever. It wouldn't have doomed the human race necessarily, but it would have been a blow.

[Bunk]

I watched some reaction videos on Youtube and this is how everyone seems to react. It's awesome seeing people get excited then freeze in place when he catches her. Some of them going "Noooo don't kill Arya!!!" then scream when she does the knife switch.

I was thinking about this episode last night. As near as I can tell only the following characters have any purpose going forward:

Arya
Sansa
Jon
Dany
Tyrion
(Maybe) Jaime
(Maybe) Sam

I'd have at least added Podric and Bran to the kill lists if I was the show writers. Especially Bran to symbolize both sides of the Old Ways (Children/NK and Green Seers) are gone. I'd also have been tempted to add Brienne to the kill lists and most definitely Grey Worm. Probably Missandei too.

Edit: Also, this episode probably will have a major impact on Dany. We were just shown how Jorah is a calming influence on her when he convinced her to keep Tyrion as hand and even talk to Sansa. She watched her Dothraki die and her Unsullied get decimated then Jorah dies in her arms. If she's going to go mad queen, I think they just set up the final push.

I suspect they kept Bran around as a convenient way to keep dropping exposition (expositing? Is that a word?) on whats going on in the magical side of things. They'll use him to answer a few more of the lingering background questions.

[Teleku]

I have a feeling GRRM gave the show runners the write up for Bran's arc, but it includes all sorts of extra stuff they didn't have time for so they are just dumbing it down in a way that seems really weird.  Like, The Three Eyed Crow probably reveals how being the memory of the world is vital for its continued survival, what the old gods were, how white walkers came about, ect.  All sorts of critical stuff about what actually drives the world and how it will all fall apart and become eternal winter if they do not keep up their eternal watch (and a recent failure on their part is why the Others have returned now).  But since they needed to speed things up and wiped out the entire Children/3ER crew, they're just like "Bran's the memory of the world, that's important for reasons we don't need to explain.  GRRM used the phrase memory of the world in his description, so he's that."

Honestly, now that the entire WW threat is gone, I don't actually care what happens much next.  Who actually 'took' the throne in the end was never of interest to me.  I mean, I always assumed they'd die when the White Walkers came streaming down because the 7 kingdoms destroyed themselves fighting internal wars instead of facing a great threat.  That's what's been hinted at all along.  But regardless, all the interesting people are dead.  Already mentioned how I dislike this version of Cersei, and we know she's going to die anyways.  The only way this might get interesting is if Euron pulls a double cross and seizes the throne, and its him they are dealing with.  Don't have much hope they have any sort of clever resolution to this in store.

[HaemishM]

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.

The White Walkers have ALWAYS been inconsequential. It's why Cersei just ignored them when she was shown they existed. It's a Northern problem, not a Lannister problem. They were a plot device to get characters to recognize how unimportant the Iron Throne is in the overall scheme of things. Who cares about this petty squabble for power and influence when fucking Winter is coming? I submit it was mostly there as an allegory and to make it a fantasy story, but A Song of Fire and Ice has always been about the humans, not the fantastical stuff.

As for Arya jumping out and stabbing him, she's a Faceless Man. She has some kind of magical ability to disguise herself. If they'd shown like 2 seconds of her magically disguised as an undead fucker then leaping out, there'd be no quibble there (or at least there shouldn't be). I just assume that's how she did it.

[luckton]

Nah, see, Three-Eyed Raven did his voodoo thing and flew Arya in on a murder of crows.

Yeah 

[Khaldun]

Bran's "library of Alexandria" is completely irrelevant to all of Westeros. Nobody knew that library was there, nobody drew upon it, nobody consulted it. Not even the Free Folk. Losing it would mean effectively nothing to anyone BUT the Children of the Forest, who might all be dead now anyway. There's an actual library of Alexandria in the Citadel and that's actually kind of useful. Losing Bran is losing something that has been entirely irrelevant except to Hodor, whose life was changed for the worse, and except for Jon, but he learned about his parentage from another source anyway.

[Cyrrex]

He was instrumental in determining that Jon was a Targaryen.  But beyond that....yeah, I agree.  Still, a few episodes to go, he might do something meaningful.

[Miguel]

Not sure if everyone knows this, but the music composer of Game of Thrones (Ramin Djawadi) is the same one as does Westworld - that entire episode had that same feeling, which was totally awesome.

[Bunk]

The White Walkers have ALWAYS been inconsequential. It's why Cersei just ignored them when she was shown they existed. It's a Northern problem, not a Lannister problem. They were a plot device to get characters to recognize how unimportant the Iron Throne is in the overall scheme of things. Who cares about this petty squabble for power and influence when fucking Winter is coming? I submit it was mostly there as an allegory and to make it a fantasy story, but A Song of Fire and Ice has always been about the humans, not the fantastical stuff.

As for Arya jumping out and stabbing him, she's a Faceless Man. She has some kind of magical ability to disguise herself. If they'd shown like 2 seconds of her magically disguised as an undead fucker then leaping out, there'd be no quibble there (or at least there shouldn't be). I just assume that's how she did it.

There's a somewhat hilarious debate on Reddit about the whole sequence. If you go back to the last shot of Jon in front of the Dragon, when he stands up and yells at it, it sounds very much like "GOOOO! GO, GO, GO". Then a few moments later we see the breeze rustle the walker's hair, and Arya leap out of the darkness. So people are trying to force in this idea that Jon really did contribute to the downfall of the Night King, as opposed to him just getting pissed off and committing suicide in the dragon's face.

Either way, I don't think the inference was that she was disguised - it was simply that she was fast and stealthy (a fact referenced multiple times), and they were all distracted by their Boss about to kill their version of the big bad.

[HaemishM]

Either way, I don't think the inference was that she was disguised - it was simply that she was fast and stealthy (a fact referenced multiple times), and they were all distracted by their Boss about to kill their version of the big bad.

I'm ok with either interpretation just because "rule of cool." The scene was utter fanservice but shit it made me cheer so I don't give a fuck how it happened.

[Threash]

Not sure if everyone knows this, but the music composer of Game of Thrones (Ramin Djawadi) is the same one as does Westworld - that entire episode had that same feeling, which was totally awesome.

That piano sequence during the night king scene did sound very west worldy.

[Bunk]

I really liked the fact that there was almost zero dialog in the last 30 minutes. They just let the music and visuals carry the mood.

[Miguel]

Link to music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1frgt0D_f4

It has that same gut-wrenching build up that Westworld does.  He is definitely the next up-and-coming John Williams or Hans Zimmer.

[MediumHigh]

If there is one thing that sums up my disappointment with Season 8 so far. Is that for a show that prides itself on engaging its audience.  Is now demanding we turn our brain off and watch the pretty pictures in order to enjoy it.

[Draegan]

Not sure if everyone knows this, but the music composer of Game of Thrones (Ramin Djawadi) is the same one as does Westworld - that entire episode had that same feeling, which was totally awesome.

That piano sequence during the night king scene did sound very west worldy.

My wife and I looked at each other and said the same exact thing.

[Draegan]

If there is one thing that sums up my disappointment with Season 8 so far. Is that for a show that prides itself on engaging its audience.  Is now demanding we turn our brain off and watch the pretty pictures in order to enjoy it.

The show has always had elements of bad ass dragons, tits, knights and swords and cool shows. Where the hell have you been.

[Chimpy]

The composer did the Game of Thrones theme (and most of the other music) long before Westworld was on the air.

[Miguel]

The composer did the Game of Thrones theme (and most of the other music) long before Westworld was on the air.

True, but this was the first GOT episode (perhaps there were others) where the music was essentially the only dialog for the last 30 minutes of the episode, and really defined the entire feel of the scenes...like great music really should.  What was striking to me was just how much that episode *felt* like watching Westworld. :)

[MediumHigh]

If there is one thing that sums up my disappointment with Season 8 so far. Is that for a show that prides itself on engaging its audience.  Is now demanding we turn our brain off and watch the pretty pictures in order to enjoy it.

The show has always had elements of bad ass dragons, tits, knights and swords and cool shows. Where the hell have you been.

The show being Cool != the show being Dumb. We can have a cool and smart show. We don't have that now, but we used to and I can lament that loss while enjoying the pretty action sequences.

[Zetor]

The composer did the Game of Thrones theme (and most of the other music) long before Westworld was on the air.

He also did the slow/moody tracks for System Shock 2 (the techno tracks were written by another dude), and I think those tracks were pretty significant in setting up the (spooky/oppressive) atmosphere...

[Abagadro]

The composer did the Game of Thrones theme (and most of the other music) long before Westworld was on the air.

True, but this was the first GOT episode (perhaps there were others) where the music was essentially the only dialog for the last 30 minutes of the episode, and really defined the entire feel of the scenes...like great music really should.  What was striking to me was just how much that episode *felt* like watching Westworld. :)

Bringing in the piano was reminiscent of the opening to the episode where Cersei blew up the Sept which was the first time the instrument had been used on the show and similarly used here to underscore a long series of events cut together.

[Riggswolfe]

This is a great write up of the battle. It's a sort of tongue in cheek military analysis.

https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-winterfell-battle-tactical-analysis/

Instead, the Dothraki are ordered forward into an attack before the enemy situation is even known. This move, sometimes known as a “Custer,” predictably ends in ruin for the Dothraki cavalry, who get chewed up and spat out in an unsupported frontal attack.

[Abagadro]

Instructor at Army War College analyzes both sides:

https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/battle-winterfell-military-analysis-tactics.html

[eldaec]

He is too kind on the cavalry charge.

Aside from that, 'try to stay alive until Jon and Dany find a way to murder the king' was probably the only strategy available, but the godswood bait element wasn't well integrated with the rest of that plan.

[Tale]

This move, sometimes known as a “Custer,”

He is too kind on the cavalry charge.

Yep this one was a Custerfuck.

[Cyrrex]

He is too kind on the cavalry charge.

Aside from that, 'try to stay alive until Jon and Dany find a way to murder the king' was probably the only strategy available, but the godswood bait element wasn't well integrated with the rest of that plan.

While it was unfolding on the screen, I chose to ignore the problems with the whole baiting idea in the godswood, but on recollection it really didn't make sense at all.  As if the whole strategy was to lure the Night King to Bran and then..........what exactly?  Have Theon and a dozen iron born get slaughtered?  Good trap, guys.  I get that it was never the point to have a real trap sprung there, but they could have at least tried to pretend as if there was one.  Like they did when lighting up the trench (Dany was supposed to light it, Melisandre did instead).

[Teleku]

Nah, I actually like his defense of the cavalry charge.  I mean, he still criticized it, but he made some good points about its strategic purpose.  Also, a Dothraki horde on foot trying to defend is mostly useless, so honestly the only real gambit was to fire them off like preemptive rocket strike and hope for the best:

[Cyrrex]

Well, and having their swords lit on fire....the bigger problem with that scene, IMO, is that that they went out way too easily.  People did just fine inside the keep without fire swords, there is no reason a Dothraki charge on horseback with flaming swords wouldn't have been extremely effective, at least to the extent that they should not have been snuffed out in 30 seconds.  It was just a simple plot choice.

[calapine]

Hah, that the night king died was not totally but somewhat (it was an mentioned option, just people said: Cant do that, you cant built a threat for 8 episodes and then just kill it in one episode)  made sure I will end the show on a happy note.

Cersei is gonna die, but she did better than I would have expected. Who would have thought in season one, that the ultimate evil, the terror the realm unites again, is an border-line alcoholic with a reputation of being a shitty schemer. (Again, I am not defending her, I like her because her faults).