When I say a worthless death, I mean in character terms. Overall, the dragons have been very poorly served as characters in the TV version. They're little more than a mode of transport/superweapon. Is there any real resonance with other characters over Rhaegal's death? Dany screams a bit then basically turns tail and runs away leaving the rest of her fleet defenceless to be rapidly sunk. Is Jon Snow even remotely bothered that the dragon he rides is gone? What does Rhaegal's death actually earn? There's no payoff for that character, no sacrifice, no value to his death.
All the reasons you describe are for plot purposes, which is fair enough, but from a character perspective it's really just a big blank. They're just removing a piece from the board and setting up plot points. If there's one thing that defines this final season it's that plot drives everything and at breakneck speed. GoT used to be a show where character drove everything. Now characters are forced to do stupid things to drive events to meet the planned final outcome.
Good questions raised by Esquire Magazine after the finale...
1. Is there literally nobody left in King’s Landing?
2. So the Red Keep was damaged just enough to kill Jaime and Cersei, and
left intact just enough for Tyrion to easily find their bodies? (My note... if Cersei had just sat in the Iron Thorn chair, apparently she would have been just fine.)
3. How does Dany still have so many troops? Hasn’t she been hemorrhaging them all season?
4. If Jon was the biggest threat to Dany, why did she trust him enough to get so physically close? (My note....And really... in a town she just invaded, she has no guards around her when she is killed?)
5. What’s the point of the North being a separate kingdom if her brother is king?
6. Why does the Night’s Watch even need to exist?
7. So the only women Jon will ever have sex with are a wildling woman in a cave and a mass murderer who was also his aunt?
8. Why didn’t Arya ever have to use what she learned from the Faceless Men in the final season? (My note... this is a major WTF did we waste a season on?)
9. After all that, the Azor Ahai prophecy was nothing.
10. The Prince That Was Promised prophecy was nothing?
11. What are Bronn’s qualifications to be Master of Coin?
12. Does Bran need a Master of Whispers when he knows everything already?
13. What is the point of the Three-Eyed Raven?
14. What was the point of the Night King, in the end?
15. Why didn’t Brienne become head of Sansa’s Queensguard? Since when has she been tight with Bran?
16. What happens to the cities Dany liberated in the East? (My note... the army is going somewhere else, why won't the slavers re-take their lands. This makes no sense at all.)
17. Are we never going to know what the fuck Bran was doing during the battle of Winterfell?
18. Are we never going to know what the deal was with the Children of the Forest?
These are all good questions. Yes, I am sure people can come up with SOME reasons, just not ones that make sense in light of 8 years of character and story arc.
Who rebuilt the wall? Why the feck would anyone listen to grey worms opinion? Why was Tyrion walking for 15 minutes to kill time? Just poor writing imo .
An episode designed to upset nobody that pleases even less.
It was like a Children’s story book ending. An hour of symbolism and non-sensical storytelling shoved down my throat for everyone to walk off in to the sunset.
If I was cynical, I’d think that HBO might have asked not to kill certain characters so that they can sweat the asset. Fully expecting an Arya spin off series.
Not sure what people expected. Jon and Dany to marry and rule peacefully as King and Queen? Tyrion to pull a still living Jaime out of the rubble and they sail to Pentos to live happily ever after? Grey Worm to smile?
Really not sure what series everyone was watching for the past years if they thought a happy ending was coming.
Good questions raised by Esquire Magazine after the finale...
1. Is there literally nobody left in King’s Landing?
2. So the Red Keep was damaged just enough to kill Jaime and Cersei, and
left intact just enough for Tyrion to easily find their bodies? (My note... if Cersei had just sat in the Iron Thorn chair, apparently she would have been just fine.)
3. How does Dany still have so many troops? Hasn’t she been hemorrhaging them all season?
4. If Jon was the biggest threat to Dany, why did she trust him enough to get so physically close? (My note....And really... in a town she just invaded, she has no guards around her when she is killed?)
5. What’s the point of the North being a separate kingdom if her brother is king?
6. Why does the Night’s Watch even need to exist?
7. So the only women Jon will ever have sex with are a wildling woman in a cave and a mass murderer who was also his aunt?
8. Why didn’t Arya ever have to use what she learned from the Faceless Men in the final season? (My note... this is a major WTF did we waste a season on?)
9. After all that, the Azor Ahai prophecy was nothing.
10. The Prince That Was Promised prophecy was nothing?
11. What are Bronn’s qualifications to be Master of Coin?
12. Does Bran need a Master of Whispers when he knows everything already?
13. What is the point of the Three-Eyed Raven?
14. What was the point of the Night King, in the end?
15. Why didn’t Brienne become head of Sansa’s Queensguard? Since when has she been tight with Bran?
16. What happens to the cities Dany liberated in the East? (My note... the army is going somewhere else, why won't the slavers re-take their lands. This makes no sense at all.)
17. Are we never going to know what the fuck Bran was doing during the battle of Winterfell?
18. Are we never going to know what the deal was with the Children of the Forest?
These are all good questions. Yes, I am sure people can come up with SOME reasons, just not ones that make sense in light of 8 years of character and story arc.
Some good, some also really stupid and show either a lack of understanding or a lack of attention paid. I was thinking about answering some of these, but when question one is...
1. Is there literally nobody left in King’s Landing?
Now, when you quite clearly see multiple people alive, multiple times in the episode...I kind of thought what's the point in going through the rest? Or does my reason not make sense in the light of 8 years of character and story arc?
On a separate note, boring episode to end it all. The Starks ruling Westeros after all the crap they went through all those years ago though...I'll take that.
I enjoyed it. Was quite happy to wait 9 years for it. Not the ending I expected but that's what I like about the show. Happy for others to disagree, think people seem to dogpiling on the writers for the sake of it with juvenile campaigns to flood Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB with bad reviews. At the end of the day it is just a TV show and life goes on.
I'm a massive GOT fan but season 8 is a load of shit. Why would Bran want the iron throne and after killing Dany why would Jon join rejoin the Black? Thought the Night king destroyed it and there was peace with the wildlings now.
Such a massive fan that you went looking up spoilers and decided to post it here before the final episode? You're a massive something, and the word isn't fan.
Whilst I've thoroughly enjoyed the entire GOT saga, I can't help but feel they rushed that whole last series. It was good....really good....but could have been so much better.
I was ok with the ending, but it brought absolutely no response from me. No drama, no twists, nothing noteworthy to mention. Even Jon killing Dany was so predictable I was borderline indifferent to it. Jon going back to the wall was the only part that had a sad ending, and even he seems to have had a good ending in the end as he seems to have abandoned his post to live north of the wall with the wildlings. But a lot didn't make a whole lot of sense, a lot of which have been included in the list above.
Just disappointing really. Hopefully we get the books at some point before George croaks it.
Whilst I've thoroughly enjoyed the entire GOT saga, I can't help but feel they rushed that whole last series. It was good....really good....but could have been so much better.
Definitely needed to be at least 8 episodes instead of 6, that would have improved it quite a bit I think
It's comparable to the last 45 minutes of the last LOTR film. After the big epic battle sequence, there is a huge epilogue that is not particularly dramatic but is necessary to tie up loose ends. That's all an ending is.
I'm a massive GOT fan but season 8 is a load of shit. Why would Bran want the iron throne and after killing Dany why would Jon join rejoin the Black? Thought the Night king destroyed it and there was peace with the wildlings now.
Such a massive fan that you went looking up spoilers and decided to post it here before the final episode? You're a massive something, and the word isn't fan.
Massive what key board warrior? Don't be so angry. It doesn't make you look hard using your keyboard you know.
It's comparable to the last 45 minutes of the last LOTR film. After the big epic battle sequence, there is a huge epilogue that is not particularly dramatic but is necessary to tie up loose ends. That's all an ending is.
That's true, but there was a lot more than wrapping up loose ends to do in this episode I felt.
I'm a massive GOT fan but season 8 is a load of shit. Why would Bran want the iron throne and after killing Dany why would Jon join rejoin the Black? Thought the Night king destroyed it and there was peace with the wildlings now.
Such a massive fan that you went looking up spoilers and decided to post it here before the final episode? You're a massive something, and the word isn't fan.
Massive what key board warrior? Don't be so angry. It doesn't make you look hard using your keyboard you know.
I'm not angry, or trying to be hard, I didn't read it until this morning. It's just a dick move and you know it.
I'm a massive GOT fan but season 8 is a load of shit. Why would Bran want the iron throne and after killing Dany why would Jon join rejoin the Black? Thought the Night king destroyed it and there was peace with the wildlings now.
I enjoyed that episode. Brilliantly shot and acted. Quite depressing though, seeing as things are just carrying on as they always did in Westeros. There might be nice people in charge of everything now, but before long, once Sansa, Bran and Jon are gone things are going to devolve again. The Wildlings will become a threat again once their shared history with people south of the wall is gone, a Littlefinger-style politician will get himself elected king by his peers, and no doubt try and reclaim the North, and in the meantime other provinces will look at the North going free and try and rebel again, just like has always happened. It looks like everything is fine because the good are ruling, but if the system remains the same then the wheel keeps turning.
It's a nihilistic outlook from them; the options we were presented with were basically overthrow the system via mass murder and start again, or perpetuate it forever, where the common people still die, but hopefully in smaller, less crispy numbers. The idea of democracy was laughed out of the room. Even when people managed to unite against the world being completely consumed by death, they still wouldn't let go of their power systems. I guess that's always been the point of Martin's books since the start.
I guess we are in spoiler territory now. I think anyone opening this thread at this point though is foolish if they haven't seen the episode.
There were themes running through this season that echo back to previous seasons, which is why I'm not going to shit all over the writing just because a coffee cup was visible, the scorpions were unrealistic and the battles weren't 100% historically accurate.
The themes being stories and breaking the wheel. A point that seemed to fly over the heads of most people was the bit earlier in the season about the Night King wanting to destroy the history of Westeros. It came full circle this episode. Likewise Dany's 'breaking the wheel' was really more of the same. Cersei was the saviour of the Westerosi, protecting the people againsta foreign invader. That was the narrative in King's Landing. For 2 seasons we, as an audience, were led to believe Dany's narrative that the people were oppressed and she would liberate them. The stories and who tells them are important. Because ultimately Dany will go down in history as a villain, and there is a wider point here, there are no heroes or villains. Only the living and the dead, and the living get to decide who is good and who is evil in the stories. Which is how actual history works. Dany was a villain at the end of this story, we just didn't see it because the story was being told from her point of view a lot of the time.
Didn't Mance Rayder once belong to the Nigth's Watch ? So, … history repeats itself … If HBO is planning multiple spin-offs, I now see how this could work out ...
Comments
All the reasons you describe are for plot purposes, which is fair enough, but from a character perspective it's really just a big blank. They're just removing a piece from the board and setting up plot points. If there's one thing that defines this final season it's that plot drives everything and at breakneck speed. GoT used to be a show where character drove everything. Now characters are forced to do stupid things to drive events to meet the planned final outcome.
Really disappointed...
But it was their story to tell, and now we pray for the books.
1. Is there literally nobody left in King’s Landing?
2. So the Red Keep was damaged just enough to kill Jaime and Cersei, and left intact just enough for Tyrion to easily find their bodies? (My note... if Cersei had just sat in the Iron Thorn chair, apparently she would have been just fine.)These are all good questions. Yes, I am sure people can come up with SOME reasons, just not ones that make sense in light of 8 years of character and story arc.
It was like a Children’s story book ending. An hour of symbolism and non-sensical storytelling shoved down my throat for everyone to walk off in to the sunset.
If I was cynical, I’d think that HBO might have asked not to kill certain characters so that they can sweat the asset. Fully expecting an Arya spin off series.
Really not sure what series everyone was watching for the past years if they thought a happy ending was coming.
1. Is there literally nobody left in King’s Landing?
Now, when you quite clearly see multiple people alive, multiple times in the episode...I kind of thought what's the point in going through the rest? Or does my reason not make sense in the light of 8 years of character and story arc?
On a separate note, boring episode to end it all. The Starks ruling Westeros after all the crap they went through all those years ago though...I'll take that.
It was good....really good....but could have been so much better.
Just disappointing really. Hopefully we get the books at some point before George croaks it.
How can the same people who have made the best anything ever committed to television do what they have just done?
I hope I'll calm down and be rational as I have been the entire way through up until 6am this morning
They clearly didn’t know how to write Bran, felt very much like a wasted character.
It's a nihilistic outlook from them; the options we were presented with were basically overthrow the system via mass murder and start again, or perpetuate it forever, where the common people still die, but hopefully in smaller, less crispy numbers. The idea of democracy was laughed out of the room. Even when people managed to unite against the world being completely consumed by death, they still wouldn't let go of their power systems. I guess that's always been the point of Martin's books since the start.
There were themes running through this season that echo back to previous seasons, which is why I'm not going to shit all over the writing just because a coffee cup was visible, the scorpions were unrealistic and the battles weren't 100% historically accurate.
The themes being stories and breaking the wheel. A point that seemed to fly over the heads of most people was the bit earlier in the season about the Night King wanting to destroy the history of Westeros. It came full circle this episode. Likewise Dany's 'breaking the wheel' was really more of the same. Cersei was the saviour of the Westerosi, protecting the people againsta foreign invader. That was the narrative in King's Landing. For 2 seasons we, as an audience, were led to believe Dany's narrative that the people were oppressed and she would liberate them. The stories and who tells them are important. Because ultimately Dany will go down in history as a villain, and there is a wider point here, there are no heroes or villains. Only the living and the dead, and the living get to decide who is good and who is evil in the stories. Which is how actual history works. Dany was a villain at the end of this story, we just didn't see it because the story was being told from her point of view a lot of the time.