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Steel

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,220
I mean for this army, EVERY jobber sword or bow or arrow without a name and well known character attached is made of dragon glass.
I don't care about this detail much, but it was said that it would be stupidly hard to make swords out of dragonglass so they only mass produced axes, spears and arrow heads. That's why the dothracki are using metal weapons still, because their weapons couldn't be mass produced in dragonglass. So technically that sword was special. But it's one of those things that don't really matter much. It was just a bit where directors thought her picking up a sword would be more badass than a spear or an ax and... Meh.


Literally the first thing Jon says to her in this season is "How'd you sneak up on me?"
He was deep in thought, alone and facing the other direction. A normal person could have snuck up on him. She didn't literally tap him on the shoulder, she got within 6 feet.

Arguably, LF didn't know she was sneaking up on him, he knew what her endpoint was and waited accordingly.

That would be a pretty blind argument. His plan wouldn't work if he didn't know that Arya was following him. He wouldn't be able to get her to overhear his conversations at any given moment if he didn't know he was being followed at that time.

There was also the bit in S7 where she snuck past two guards at winterfell the second they took their eye off her.

Those guards were complete jobbers and literally walked away from her with a "promise to stay right here" bit.

Like, you can recognize that that scene came out of nowhere and still enjoy the episode. Or at least recognize where the people criticizing it are coming from. I honestly expected Arya to be the one to kill the NK but not like fucking that.

And, let me be clear: Arya being shown not to be a perfect assassin repeatedly after incomplete training with the faceless men was interesting. It's not a negative against her character. The library scene was impactful because she wasn't a perfect stealthy assassin. It was touch and go. She struggled.
 

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
58,027
Just remember, if The Lord of Light didn't bring Jon back, this entire mess would have been avoided.

The only reason The Wall fell was because of Danny bringing dragons over to save Jon, there was no other mechanism for TNK to get past The Wall.

I have never liked these kinds of critiques lol Its like saying "None of this would have happened if Isildur would have just chucked the ring into Mt. Doom and gone home"


Its all meant to happen in order for the story the authors/writers want to tell to progress forward. If you take out key plot points then of course things would be different lol
 

Tawpgun

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,863
"She was moving so fast the White Walker's hair waved from the wind, but she was so stealthy she ran silently!"
That wasn't even the dumbest part of that.

What about her DIVING under a table in complete silence. Only to have blood dripping on the floor be loud enough to alert the wights.

Honestly just a better explanation of her assassin abilities would have justified it enough for me tbh.


Sneak 100 imo
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,244
the issue will be if that's the end of the White Walkers and all of their motivation after 8 seasons of built up mystery.
Was there ever anything in the show to imply that they had a motivation besides bringing about endless winter? We knew why and how they were created, we knew that they got out of control, we saw all the callbacks the NK had made to that specific moment indicating that even if he remembered nothing from his past life, he remembered what happened to him forcefully. Then we were told explicitly what his motivation was and who his first target was before moving on to the world itself.

Just remember, if The Lord of Light didn't bring Jon back, this entire mess would have been avoided.
Eventually the NK would've found a way. The threat still existed. The Lord of Light wanted that threat gone for good any means necessary.
 

Deleted member 1635

User requested account closure
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Oct 25, 2017
6,800
My guess is that WW are done. I do think it'll be revealed that Bran/3ER was manipulating everything in the past (good and bad) in order to get the Night King / Arya / Dagger together at that moment. Bran/3ER drove Aerys mad (burn them all, etc). Started the Rebellion War. Sent the assassin after himself. Started War of 5 Kings. First moments of the book/show are Ned teaching Bran that "if you deliver the sentence, you should swing the sword". Bran/3ER is a powerful warg that can enter other's minds. He delivered the sentence that killed so many people, but was able to also swing the sword by experiencing all of it. It was the best possible outcome for the WW threat, even with all the death that preceded it.

That would be pretty interesting.
 

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
35,593
If Arya is this good, the waif could have soloed all the white walkers and Jaqen could rule the world if he wanted to.
That's not how it works...
And the reason everyone in Westeros doesn't hire Faceless Men to wipe out all their rivals is...?
They're fucking expensive man. (Seriously.)

The real question is going to be what prevents Arya from just assassinating Cersei and Euron, or will they just never suggest that solution?
Maybe she will?

For a story so many people seemed to love for subverting fantasy tropes, people sure do love their prophecies.
The interesting way ASoIaF uses prophecies is how they are often self-fulfilled or they backfire immensely, or there's always some huge twist to it and people interpret it wrongly.

It's a different thing than, you know, "well this prophecy was utterly meaningless in every single way it was just made up shit lol".

It's called building up a threat. As that meme post poked at, why would anyone South of Winterfell believe the Army of the Dead or the Night King was real? It was a relatively minor skirmish that occurred in the North repelled by the diminished and battered remnant of the mostly Northern Houses and survivors of Dany's Essos army. The threat never went South of Winterfell. Never touched Essos. And, the threat was extinguished in one night.

This all coming from a legend that apparently was a world wide event last time requiring he entire world to team up and stop. This is like Sauron being defeated at Helm's Deep, except even worse since Middle Earth is smaller. Remember, even after their victory at Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith, Sauron was still at full strentgh ready to take over the world. They literally had to travel to Mordor to bait his ass out so that Frodo could destroy the Ring and they wouldn't have survived that fight if he hadn't. It took multiple battles and the lives of countless Men, Elves, and even Dwarves to stop Sauron. And, what we see in the films isn't even the full extent of the War since shit was happening n the North and other parts of ME as well.

The NK threat only encompassed a minor area of the North and ended there in the first real fight.
Yep. That's really the biggest issue with the whole thing but they wrote themselves in a corner because without taking out the NK, the dead army would be literally unstoppable.

the encounter with Arthur Dayne after Jamie confronts him in KL
*Jaime
 

Deleted member 3058

User requested account closure
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,728
Fucking all of this. What a freaking disappointment. Also this direction was terrible. Shaky cam bullshit. All that money wasted in bad action direction.
Nah, that's a bad memory. They're forgetting that Jon fucked his hand up killing a wight with fire. He isn't impervious to flames.

It's also asking Arya to cut the face off of her brother, lol
 

DrROBschiz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,018
Nah, that's a bad memory. They're forgetting that Jon fucked his hand up killing a wight with fire. He isn't impervious to flames.

I thought for sure that when he was facing the zombiee dragon that they would go the "he cant be burned route" but yeah totally forgot he'd been burned before

Nothing makes sense in this universe
 

DrROBschiz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,018
People also need to realize this didn't start recently lol. There's been dumb plot holes and weirdness all series.

I stopped caring about that sort of thing awhile ago

As far as character work and entertainment value goes the episode and series in general succeeds for me

Ill see how I feel by the end though.
 

Stiler

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
6,659
I mean, tell that to the people storming the beaches of Normandy.

That's not at all similar in the least.

For one, the allied troops were on the offensive, whereas the Dothraki were on the defense (which further makes it a stupid decision to charge)

Also with Normandy they didn't simply land troops on the beach and tell them to charge.

Before they landed they had worked with the French Resistance to sabotage the Germans, taking out railways, communications, electrical facilities, etc which isolated that German forces in Normandy.

The allies also worked on deception leading up to the landings, which worked and made the Germans think they were going to land somewhere else and it worked, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude

As for D-Day they had naval and air bombartments going, they had planes/gliders dropping airborne troops the night before the beach landings, which came in the morning. The landings were made up of multiple beaches and multiple countries were involved, Brits landed at Sword and Gold Coast, Candian forces at Juno, then the US at Utah and Omaha. It was a multi-pronged attack, not simply sending one (smaller) force into the meatgrinder like they did with the Dothraki.
 

takriel

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,221
Alternate take on the Arya vs. NK scene:

NK grabs Arya, she tries to do the dagger thing, but NK deflects. He nearly chockes Arya to death, like, we focus an awful amount of time on her close-up face making gurgling sounds. And then, just as she's about to die - fucking Nymeria chimes in, attacking NK. Arya struggles to regain her posture, manages just in time to witness the beheading of Nymeria. NK has by now drawn his sword. Arya stands between NK and Bran. At first, it looks like NK wants to duel Arya. But he thinks of a better strategy. Decides to retreat and let his White Walkers do the job...

Would have been a bit more impactful, no?
 

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
58,027
Alternate take on the Arya vs. NK scene:

NK grabs Arya, she tries to do the dagger thing, but NK deflects. He nearly chockes Arya to death, like, we focus an awful amount of time on her close-up face making gurgling sounds. And then, just as she's about to die - fucking Nymeria chimes in, attacking NK. Arya struggles to regain her posture, manages just in time to witness the beheading of Nymeria. NK has by now drawn his sword. Arya stands between NK and Bran. At first, it looks like NK wants to duel Arya. But he thinks of a better strategy. Decides to retreat and let his White Walkers do the job...

Would have been a bit more impactful, no?

No offense but that would have been even more ridiculous than what we got by about 3,000% lol
 

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
35,593
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | The Night is Dark and Very Short
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | His Name is Jaime. J-A-I-M-E
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | The Long Night is Dark and Actually Very Short
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | What is a White Walker? A Miserable Pile of Secrets
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | It Can't Be Bargained With, It Can't Be Reasoned With, It Absolutely Will Not Stop*... Ever! (* Except Valyrian Steel)
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | Stick Them With the Pointy End
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for hours at a time
Game of Thrones S8 | OT2 | What Is Dead May Actually Die
 

Apple

Member
Oct 27, 2017
505
My guess is that WW are done. I do think it'll be revealed that Bran/3ER was manipulating everything in the past (good and bad) in order to get the Night King / Arya / Dagger together at that moment. Bran/3ER drove Aerys mad (burn them all, etc). Started the Rebellion War. Sent the assassin after himself. Started War of 5 Kings. First moments of the book/show are Ned teaching Bran that "if you deliver the sentence, you should swing the sword". Bran/3ER is a powerful warg that can enter other's minds. He delivered the sentence that killed so many people, but was able to also swing the sword by experiencing all of it. It was the best possible outcome for the WW threat, even with all the death that preceded it.

I love everything about this and I hope you're right.
 

steejee

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,461
If I remember right Robert says to Ned "This Khal Drogo....its said he has a 100,000 men in his horde". I can't remember if that is ever confirmed or not.

But we for sure know that by the time the Battle for Winterfell takes place that she has nowhere near that number.

She definitely has less. Drogo had one of the largest hordes ever, and 100k was hearsay not intelligence. Dany's horde is the handful she took with her after Drogo died and the ones she gathered when she burned the other Khal's to death, which was a lot smaller group. She didn't go around gathering up more at that point either, she basically headed right back to Meereen.

So figure she started with far fewer than 100k in the first place, not all would have crossed the sea and would have taken losses in the loot train battle. Also possible a bunch didn't go North with her.

During the scene when they brought down the Wight and the Unsullied marched up to KL then the Dotharki flooded through them it didn't look like the horde was much bigger than the Unsullied army, which was 8000 at its peak. So I'd say you're looking at a horde that's a shadow of Drogo's.
 

TAJ

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
12,446
I didn't see any of the wights getting dusted by dragonglass. Only the WhiteWalkers. Otherwise it was just regular "deaths" by weapons.

What?
The wights die and fall apart when you poke them with the right material. Normal weapons can't kill them. Normal weapons can only cut them into smaller, but still living pieces.
The WWs explode.
Maybe they should have made them both explode to make it more clear.
 

Hollywood Duo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
48,229
If I remember right Robert says to Ned "This Khal Drogo....its said he has a 100,000 men in his horde". I can't remember if that is ever confirmed or not.



But we for sure know that by the time the Battle for Winterfell takes place that she has nowhere near that number.
Wasn't it 1,000 ships that crossed the sea? That includes Dothraki and Unsullied. 8,000 Unsullied give or take, you are looking at like 50k max before any of the Season 7 battles.
 

Steel

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,220
Alternate take on the Arya vs. NK scene:

NK grabs Arya, she tries to do the dagger thing, but NK deflects. He nearly chockes Arya to death, like, we focus an awful amount of time on her close-up face making gurgling sounds. And then, just as she's about to die - fucking Nymeria chimes in, attacking NK. Arya struggles to regain her posture, manages just in time to witness the beheading of Nymeria. NK has by now drawn his sword. Arya stands between NK and Bran. At first, it looks like NK wants to duel Arya. But he thinks of a better strategy. Decides to retreat and let his White Walkers do the job...

Would have been a bit more impactful, no?
That would have been worse.

What would've worked is to have the night king reaching for his sword, a random wight shuffling forward, and then wight takes off the mask and jump him as Arya. Cue scene playing the same way, still having surprise factor but also having a built in explanation.
 

mikehaggar

Developer at Pixel Arc Studios
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
1,391
Harrisburg, Pa
im predicting bran is the true big bad, he needed NK to die to complete his plan, possibly under control of the lord of light. He's up to something, I refuse to believe they really just limped to this ending of the white walker saga and all the mysticism around them and bran

There's definitely some type of payoff still coming with Bran. There was the beginning of the conversation we saw between him and Tyrion last episode and then in the beginning of this episode they exchange this glance:



I expect more to be revealed regarding Bran/TER.
 

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
35,593
So expensive that literally none of the monarchs in the show can afford them, including the rich-as-fuck Lannisters and Tyrells?

Makes you wonder who their customers are. Just the Iron Bank?
Actually you're not far off. In the first book, when Robert discusses sending an assassin to off Daenerys, Littlefinger considers Faceless Men, but thinks they are too expensive even for the Crown...
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,244
Who is y'all? I was defending Arya's arc in season 5 because I thought it was building up to something. And her getting beat with a stick for two seasons is what most people were criticizing and calling boring.
She got progressively better and better as she trained more. We saw that progression. She went from beating beat up with a stick to being able to fight with a stick while literally blind. We saw multiple instances of her stealth due to the targets she managed to kill on her way to winterfell. Even sneaking up on Jaqen before she even headed home.

I don't care about this detail much, but it was said that it would be stupidly hard to make swords out of dragonglass so they only mass produced axes, spears and arrow heads. That's why the dothracki are using metal weapons still, because their weapons couldn't be mass produced in dragonglass sword. So technically that sword was special. But it's one of those things that don't really matter much. It was just a bit where directors thought her picking up a sword would be more badass than a spear or an ax and... Meh.
I'll have to rewatch again to see what the sword looks like. As it could be an oversized dagger like the one Sam was holding.

He was deep in thought, alone and facing the other direction. A normal person could have snuck up on him. She didn't literally tap him on the shoulder, she got within 6 feet.
That's where sound design comes in, watch that scene, she doesn't make a sound. Still watching the scene again, i'm reconsidering it less being about stealth and more about the NK's army not reacting because they were commanded to stay still.
 

Dream Machine

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,085
Maybe they'll go like a Dune Other Memory abomination route with Bran. Now that the Others are dead, their consciousness and memories have enter the weirwood net and are therefore a part of Bran? They start to corrupt him and use him for their own means? Who knows.

Jon having to hear the White Walkers motivations and "crimes" through Bran before swinging the sword to execute him would be a good callback to Ned's quote from the beginning.
Was there ever anything in the show to imply that they had a motivation besides bringing about endless winter? We knew why and how they were created, we knew that they got out of control, we saw all the callbacks the NK had made to that specific moment indicating that even if he remembered nothing from his past life, he remembered what happened to him forcefully. Then we were told explicitly what his motivation was and who his first target was before moving on to the world itself.


Eventually the NK would've found a way. The threat still existed. The Lord of Light wanted that threat gone for good any means necessary.
Giving them some more nuance and motivation than mindless silent killing machines would have been good. They are metaphorically death and endless winter, but if that's all they are (and they are all killed with violence), then it's a very weird thing to be in a series that is about subverting the standard fantasy tropes.
 
Oct 30, 2017
762
So here's my thoughts:

- Pacing past 2 seasons has been too quick and therefore fails to let certain events "sit" & receive the time and attention needed to properly appreciate the conclusion to a major plotline.
- Arya killing the Night King was a great unexpected move. BUT it would've been awesome if they had some solo swordfight scenes prior to that.
- the NK army being defeated in 1 episode and having the impact of the NK limited to the north really cheapened this collosal threat that's been built up for 8 seasons
- More major characters needed to have died!
- Jon Snow has now been bailed out by his sister's in the past 2 major conflicts haha... Hopefully he finally does something epic. He has not done anything yet.
 

Vire

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,591
3xfus8p474v21.jpg
 

Deleted member 16136

User requested account closure
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4,196
Mass Effect of Thrones.

Episode was an insane spectacle, one I thoroughly enjoyed, except for seemingly the only remaining survivors shown being the good old fan favorites and barely a scrub soldier anywhere. Also didn't make sense any of them survived, they were fucking surrounded and just needed the zombies to jump on them at once. Also strange how 1 minute its hell on earth with the fury of thousands of the dead blitzing the castle, then it's Arya stealthing around like not much is going on (very quiet for what was on show a second ago), just a few zombies in the building.

Jon does not survive being completely surrounded, that's just BS, and would have really made the audience think "everyone's fucked" had he died. Same with Daenerys when she fell off the dragon, if she got butchered it would have been even more disheartening, and made Arya's stealth attack much better. Although, the episode made it perfectly clear she was going to do something .........

To be honest, I thought Arya jumped off the wall or a tree nearby, not ran past the damn generals. Actually quite liked the knife drop.

For me, the first few seasons were just brilliant all round, but its clear it started losing a lot of its quality when (going what others have said, as I've not read them) they ran out of books to recreate, instead having to go in a more ...... generic story direction, at least in terms of how things reach their conclusions. More about the spectacular now as shown in Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, Caravan and this episode, they were absolute beauties to watch.

Ah well, on to next week. Kind of wish this battle lasted over multiple episodes, they've been bigging them up for 7 seasons now and getting them dealt with in 1 (admittedly extra long) episode feels a bit "oh ok".

Edit - Also have no idea why they bothered charging the army at the start other than to look cool, they should have known they'd get butchered immediately and lower the the castle defence.
 

takriel

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,221
Like I said I meant no offense. But how would Nymeria have even gotten into the castle in the first place? How would should have made it past a thick circle of wights and Walkers without the Night King noticing?
Hmm, just thinking of more satisfying ways this could have gone down. I totally endorse Arya killing NK, but I would have wanted a bit more tension there, honestly.

That would have been worse.

What would've worked is to have the night king reaching for his sword, a random wight shuffling forward, and then wight takes off the mask and jump him as Arya. Cue scene playing the same way, still having surprise factor but also having a built in explanation.

This is better, but also not very tense if it's played out the exact same way.
 

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
58,027
Wasn't it 1,000 ships that crossed the sea? That includes Dothraki and Unsullied. 8,000 Unsullied give or take, you are looking at like 50k max before any of the Season 7 battles.

Yeah her Dothraki army was definitely large, but between getting the army and all the fighting and traveling in between getting the army and the battle itself her forces were greatly diminished.
 

bastardly

Member
Nov 8, 2017
11,384
if this truly is the end of the WW and NK.

We can start saying "dude fucking nightkinged", when someone gets taken out in a quick and unsatisfying way.

Please prove me wrong
 

papertowel

Member
Nov 6, 2017
2,077
Can someone explain why Dany is the exception then?
This is a quote from GRRM about it

"TARGARYENS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO FIRE! The birth of Dany's dragons was unique, magical, wonderous, a miracle. She is called The Unburnt because she walked into the flames and lived. But her brother sure as hell wasn't immune to that molten gold. "

The show making her immune to burning is a show only thing.
 

Steel

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,220
Its not though. Jon being susceptible to fire just like literally everyone else is not the plot hole. Dany somehow being immune is the question and even that is not a plothole in the show because its already an established fact. We just don't know why.

Isn't the red lady also immune to fire? Ahzor Ahai and all that jazz.
 

jfkgoblue

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,650
Ah when warging was for more than just creep spying on people.

This episode is just the logical conclusion of years going solo from Martin's writing, adapting his writing has been fine to okay, but the more and more they had to go without the worse it got, until the deviation is so much that it really has just been a silly fanfic for the past few seasons.

A rough outline of uncut characters and events is I hope a far cry from whatever ever his actual plans were.
Yeah, him coming back in the books will actually make sense

And D&D dumbing down warging is just par for the course
 

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
58,027
Hmm, just thinking of more satisfying ways this could have gone down. I totally endorse Arya killing NK, but I would have wanted a bit more tension there, honestly.

To me that was the best way the could have done it. The sheer "holy shit"-ness of that moment when she comes flying in was better than anything else they could have done in my opinion. I literally jumped off my couch and screamed.
 

Steel

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,220
To me that was the best way the could have done it. The sheer "holy shit"-ness of that moment when she comes flying in was better than anything else they could have done in my opinion. I literally jumped off my couch and screamed.
Eh. I mean when they started to slow mo the NK grabbing his sword you knew something was about to happen.
 
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