A Game of Thrones (contains spoilers)

[Moranis]

Incredible episode.

really highlighted the problems with how they killed rhaegal last week. And I get they have time issues but they went way too far too fast with Dany's full on villain turn. Should have just had her go for the red keep. Perhaps then the blood smell triggers more, but killing innocents that  quickly just too fast

To be fair, it's not the first time she's burned cities to the ground or coldly murdered people who didn't bend the knee. 

It all felt very rushed for sure, but there was plenty along the way to suggest this is likely where GRR Martin always had his story ending up.

oh no question she ends up there in the books, but it will be earlier, set up much better and will be less forced.  Jon will kill her, he will fulfill the prophecy, and will kill the Night King as a result.

[Celtics4ever]

More horrible leadership from the Queen of horrible leadership, Dany.

[Roy H.]

At this point, I’m mostly just enjoying the visuals. The writing has way too many gaps and inconsistencies.

Has anybody read The Dark Tower? In a lot of ways, this season reminds me of the final three Dark Tower books. Stephen King spent 20 years on the first four books in the series, and then started worrying about his own mortality, so he rushed the final three in about the span of the year. We saw the same things we see here: lazy writing, characters who are essentially written out of the script abruptly and anti-climacticly, deux ex machina, and disappointing fulfillment of prophecies set up over many years.

[ederson]

At this point, I’m mostly just enjoying the visuals. The writing has way too many gaps and inconsistencies.

due to the huge storyline problems this flies under the radar. the visuals are simply stunning. It`s a show featuring dragons for god's sake and still everything looks 100% real.

[Yoki_IsTheName]

CLEGANEBOWL!

That's all that mattered last night! All that hype, and we finally got it. Well worth the wait.

[nickagneta]

If I am Martin and am writing an ending to this it's that Jon sees Dany as an enemy of Westeros after killing maybe more than 200K innocent people in Kings Landing. He over throws her, kills the dragon and in a public ceremony, beheads Dany himself because as Ned Stark said, a man with power that decides to sentence someone to die, should be the man that swings the sword, thereby bringing the story full circle from it's opening scene.

[Kuberski33]

I'm going to defend the Arya plot line. I think the idea is that she's coming full circle - from innocent child to killer in training to bad ass assassin who 'looked forward to meeting death'.  She met it, and saw what can happen when the desire to kill/destroy goes out of control.  Remember she rejected Gendry's marriage proposal.  My guess is after whatever happens next week, assuming she survives, she's going to wind up back with him.

As for the rest though, yeah, the writing has kind of sucked.  From what I've read around the internet it sounds like Weiss & Benioff are just done with it and wanted to wrap it up.  HBO apparently gave them a blank canvas as they were fine with it continuing. 

They probably should have handed the series off to someone else to finish and walked away because their legacy has been tarnished. 

What saves the show for me is the acting, which is outstanding. And is still outstanding despite the writers and producers letting them down big time.

[Kuberski33]

One more thought on the plot. You can draw a comparison to Star Wars Episode 3 with Dany's heel turn compared to Anakin Skywalker's.  In Star Wars you had great writing, but they couldn't quite pull it off because Hayden Christensen was such a crappy actor.  Here they had the acting talent. Emilia Clark is world class. But she got let down to a degree by weak writing. That all said she still managed to pull it off with a degree of success because of her talent.

[fairweatherfan]

To be fair, it's not the first time she's burned cities to the ground or coldly murdered people who didn't bend the knee. 

Yeah I've been rewatching and when she torches Astapor there's zero chance there was no collateral damage - the show just ignores it but that's what happens when you torch a city. She's always been pretty capricious about brutalizing people with her dragons, especially when pressed.

I thought her villain turn was too over the top - would've made more sense to just have her go for the Red Keep in spite of Cersei filling it with civliians, then maybe torch some streets after taking some token archer fire (there were like zero ranged weapons after the Scorpions were gone lol).  Just randomly lighting up dozens of streets full of innocent people was a bit much. But I really liked that they showed the "good guys" - not just Dany - committing mass atrocities, it didn't sugarcoat the sacking of a city and was a nice steady transition from triumph to horror show.

It all felt very rushed for sure, but there was plenty along the way to suggest this is likely where GRR Martin always had his story ending up.

Yeah, there's a very slim chance the books weren't intended to wind up in a very similar spot with Dany. It makes total sense as an overall arc, even though the post-book part was sometimes poorly developed.

[Moranis]

To be fair, it's not the first time she's burned cities to the ground or coldly murdered people who didn't bend the knee. 

Yeah I've been rewatching and when she torches Astapor there's zero chance there was no collateral damage - the show just ignores it but that's what happens when you torch a city. She's always been pretty capricious about brutalizing people with her dragons, especially when pressed.

I thought her villain turn was too over the top - would've made more sense to just have her go for the Red Keep in spite of Cersei filling it with civliians, then maybe torch some streets after taking some token archer fire (there were like zero ranged weapons after the Scorpions were gone lol).  Just randomly lighting up dozens of streets full of innocent people was a bit much. But I really liked that they showed the "good guys" - not just Dany - committing mass atrocities, it didn't sugarcoat the sacking of a city and was a nice steady transition from triumph to horror show.

It all felt very rushed for sure, but there was plenty along the way to suggest this is likely where GRR Martin always had his story ending up.

Yeah, there's a very slim chance the books weren't intended to wind up in a very similar spot with Dany. It makes total sense as an overall arc, even though the post-book part was sometimes poorly developed.

A very simple way the writing could have even made her full on villain turn more believable is something like this.

Last week, instead of losing Rhaegal, they get shot at with the guns and back off, but Euron still turns on the ships and Dany still loses Missindrei.  Dany then has a couple of days of brooding the loss of the Missindrei, then gets rejected by Jon, but she still isn't set completely over the edge.  Then during the battle, Dany on Drogon and Jon on Rhaegal lay waste to the weapons just as Dany did with Drogon.  They then both sit on the walls on their dragons.  The bells ring and then after that, a stray gun (that was missed by Dany/Jon) fires and hits and kills Rhaegal.  In that moment, then Dany just snaps and goes on her Mad Queen rampage.  It just makes far more sense and also makes the dragon destruction of the weapons far more believable, while also taking out the nonsense of how Rhaegal died, thus fixing two episodes almost simultaneously.

I mean it isn't that difficult to craft far more realistic and believable story lines, they just have two nimwit hacks writing the show and they are wholly ill equipped to craft this story without the books as a guideline. 

[Csfan1984]

To be fair, it's not the first time she's burned cities to the ground or coldly murdered people who didn't bend the knee. 

Yeah I've been rewatching and when she torches Astapor there's zero chance there was no collateral damage - the show just ignores it but that's what happens when you torch a city. She's always been pretty capricious about brutalizing people with her dragons, especially when pressed.

I thought her villain turn was too over the top - would've made more sense to just have her go for the Red Keep in spite of Cersei filling it with civliians, then maybe torch some streets after taking some token archer fire (there were like zero ranged weapons after the Scorpions were gone lol).  Just randomly lighting up dozens of streets full of innocent people was a bit much. But I really liked that they showed the "good guys" - not just Dany - committing mass atrocities, it didn't sugarcoat the sacking of a city and was a nice steady transition from triumph to horror show.

It all felt very rushed for sure, but there was plenty along the way to suggest this is likely where GRR Martin always had his story ending up.

Yeah, there's a very slim chance the books weren't intended to wind up in a very similar spot with Dany. It makes total sense as an overall arc, even though the post-book part was sometimes poorly developed.

A very simple way the writing could have even made her full on villain turn more believable is something like this.

Last week, instead of losing Rhaegal, they get shot at with the guns and back off, but Euron still turns on the ships and Dany still loses Missindrei.  Dany then has a couple of days of brooding the loss of the Missindrei, then gets rejected by Jon, but she still isn't set completely over the edge.  Then during the battle, Dany on Drogon and Jon on Rhaegal lay waste to the weapons just as Dany did with Drogon.  They then both sit on the walls on their dragons.  The bells ring and then after that, a stray gun (that was missed by Dany/Jon) fires and hits and kills Rhaegal.  In that moment, then Dany just snaps and goes on her Mad Queen rampage.  It just makes far more sense and also makes the dragon destruction of the weapons far more believable, while also taking out the nonsense of how Rhaegal died, thus fixing two episodes almost simultaneously.

I mean it isn't that difficult to craft far more realistic and believable story lines, they just have two nimwit hacks writing the show and they are wholly ill equipped to craft this story without the books as a guideline.

that's a good fix.

I heard one person say a great fix for Bran and Night King is Arya jumps down from the tree above Bran and is caught in air the same way but drops the dagger to Bran who then stabs the Night King. Bran like a boss say's " I'm not a cripple I'm the three eyed Raven."

[PhoSita]

Another week, another set of inexplicable character decisions and dramatic shifts in how basic elements of the world work.


Interesting that fire suddenly gained the ability to not just heat up and melt rock but actually blow apart fortifications.  Drogon was basically shooting bunker-buster explosions from his mouth all episode.

At this point there's no reason to expect that anything on the show is going to make sense without a strained, reading-between-the-lines explanation.



I continue to be mystified by the fact that they insisted on making these last two seasons be so short when apparently they had the option of making them much longer.  A lot of the seemingly dumb or inexplicable stuff that's happened this season would feel satisfying and earned if they just gave themselves more time to fill in the gaps and lay foundation.

[PhoSita]

I mean it isn't that difficult to craft far more realistic and believable story lines, they just have two nimwit hacks writing the show and they are wholly ill equipped to craft this story without the books as a guideline.

The problem is that you care about the show making sense and being good; the folks in charge of GoT obviously don't, they just want to be done.

[Moranis]

I mean it isn't that difficult to craft far more realistic and believable story lines, they just have two nimwit hacks writing the show and they are wholly ill equipped to craft this story without the books as a guideline.

The problem is that you care about the show making sense and being good; the folks in charge of GoT obviously don't, they just want to be done.

Of course, I expect all shows I watch for the people making them to care and want them to be good.  HBO really blew this season by letting those two idiots continue to have carte blanche.  HBO needed to run to Martin and beg him to actively participate and do whatever was required to get him to participate.  Because, while people are watching this disaster, and watching en masse, it really hurts HBO to have this season, especially, become such crap.  What could have been one of the greatest series ever, has been turned into complete and utter rubbish because the guy responsible for X-Men Origins Wolverine, would rather not do to the show anymore.

[keevsnick]

I mean it isn't that difficult to craft far more realistic and believable story lines, they just have two nimwit hacks writing the show and they are wholly ill equipped to craft this story without the books as a guideline.

The problem is that you care about the show making sense and being good; the folks in charge of GoT obviously don't, they just want to be done.

Of course, I expect all shows I watch for the people making them to care and want them to be good.  HBO really blew this season by letting those two idiots continue to have carte blanche.  HBO needed to run to Martin and beg him to actively participate and do whatever was required to get him to participate.  Because, while people are watching this disaster, and watching en masse, it really hurts HBO to have this season, especially, become such crap.  What could have been one of the greatest series ever, has been turned into complete and utter rubbish because the guy responsible for X-Men Origins Wolverine, would rather not do to the show anymore.

Basically this. There have been reports that HBO would have more than happily given them more seasons, or at least full 10 episode seasons, but the show runners refused. Allegedly because they always felt the show was gonna end up being about 73 hours but the more you listen the more you get the feeling that they just wanted to move onto something else. And if thats the case then why not just let them? Given the overall decrease in writing quality the last three seasons its not like you couldn't find somebody who would do an equal, or better job.