superflyninja wrote:

who was the Hound talking about coming to get the Mountain?

Brooks wrote:

Dragonbroad takes the throne but loses so much in the process that she turns out to be an absolute bastard overfiend anyway.

Dinostar77 wrote:

cersei "the mad queen".

Liveinadive wrote:

The series can end with a dance number and it wouldn't be as poorly received as a lack of Cleganbowl.

Paul the sparky wrote:

hoping for someone to be daft enough to drop a dragon off for them is a bit of a straw clutchy plan for the Night King

Andy wrote:

Interesting to read the mixed views. I've got mixed feelings on the season myself; while I understand (and slightly agree) with the idea that the pace is picking up as the events begin to whirl down the plughole, there are lines of dialogue which suggest that these events are supposed to be drawn out over a period of time. I feel that the events of this short season - to be consistent with the pace of seasons one through six - could (and arguably should) have taken place over two ten-episode seasons.

I loved the way the season opened, and I loved episode seven (more on that in a moment) but elsewhere, it lacked. The scene in episode five or six with Arya and Sansa, where Arya remembered Ned and then turned on Sansa, was nothing short of awful. It was like modern earnest theatre; a writer who seemingly does not know how people talk, an actor incapable of making those words sound either natural or meaningful, falling flat somewhere in between like a keen but incompetent teenager sight-reading Shakespeare.

That Sansa-Arya spat is an excellent example of where this season has gone wrong. The delivery was, "Look, the sisters are fighti... NO LOOK ITS FINE ACTUALLY." That's not the Game of Thrones way. The Game of Thrones way is to have that last long enough that it means something. We should have been despairing for four or five episodes, shouting at the TV what we knew but we thought they didn't. There would've been a season break in the middle of it. Partly because that would've made the 'trial' scene all the better, and partly because it should've taken Arya six episodes to travel with Kings Landing soldiers (fuck Ed Sheeran getting a part, though).

The episode which featured a lot of walking and talking north of the wall, on an expedition to kidnap a zombie was close to being great, but I spent most of it disappointed when they cut away to events elsewhere. I know that the GoT way is to show us everything that's happening, but I enjoy when TV programmes take a one episode break from the norm. I wanted that episode to only be about that expedition, a showcase of the characters, almost a round-robin of character interaction. Watching how they bounce off each other in the long wait (the episode as it was did zero justice to how long they would've actually been stranded on that rock) I think it had the chance to be a tour de force but settle for fairly ordinary.

But, that last episode. That last episode was a tremendous example of what the show can do when the writers, directors and actors are on form. The scenes with Cersei made me feel anxious in a way the show hasn't done for a while; I was genuinely worried about what was going to happen. The mix of frustration and pride at Jon's determination to be honest despite the consequences. The joy of Littlefinger's comeuppance. The sheer dread when watching the hordes of undead now seemingly unstoppable as they trudge south of the wall.

For what it's worth, I'm fine with death-beam dragon. I initially presumed it would breath ice, and freeze a path around the side of the wall (and given how the scene opened, I think they wanted us to think that) but it's not like wight-walkers are some kind of opposite monster. A devastating beam of ice-blue death magic makes as much sense as anything else.

As an aside, my folks have been catching up, watching from the start over the last month or so, and so I watched two episodes from season four when I was there on Sunday evening. It included the scene where the Night's Watch deserters left a baby boy (a gift for the gods, a gift for the gods) out in the snow for the wight-walkers. One collected it, took it to some kind of alter, and then converted it by prodding its cheek with its fingernail. Does anyone want to remind me if that plot line ever went any where, or is it another loose end?