Game of Thrones (HBO) - Time to jump on board

As far as the question of "Who kills Cersei?" goes:

Remember her fortune said she would be queen for a time until a younger, more beautiful queen cast her down and took all she held dear. Then the valonqar would kill her.

Everyone assumes valongar means younger brother, so Jaime or Tyrion makes sense. But valongar is neither gender specific, nor possessive. It simply means younger sibling. Not even YOUR younger sibling. And that opens up some other possibilities.

At this point, everyone (probably safely) assumes the younger queen will be Dany. What I find amusing, is that while Sansa was betrothed to Joffrey, Cersei wondered if it would be her, and then dismissed it since she considered Sansa dim witted and naive. It's almost a certainty that Dany takes over, if only for a time. But it would be funny if it ended up being Sansa.

And regardless of who takes the throne, a younger sibling could still be Arya. Hell, it could be Jon since he's the youngest of Rhaegar's children.

If I were a betting man, I'd say it's Arya... disguised as Jaime.

 

A distant air horn sounds...

Let's get ready to ruuuumble!!!

 

I'd say that's a pretty safe wager.

I thought it would be Arya, but didn't think of the Jaime twist.

 

Get HYPE!!!

 

IDGAF who dies Sunday night as long as I get my CleganeBowl.

 

In a way, it reminded me of the Falcons- Patriots Superbowl...

Dammit. Hurry up and watch, people! I need to talk about this! LOL

Until then, that. Was. AWESOME!

 

I loved it right up until the sudden resolution. It was too much like Frodo throwing the ring into Mt. Doom.

Until then the episode was epic and completely riveting.

 

Turn your brightness up. It's set too low.

I had zero trouble seeing anything. Either mine is set (too) high, or I got lucky.

I can nit pick that episode to death. And I thought for sure the death toll would be higher by a factor of 2 or 3. But I refuse to overthink it and instead just enjoy the entertainment.

The rather sudden resolution did seem a tad too easy. Although, considering maybe 20% of the people survived total if even that, "easy" seems over the top. The who of it, well, I'm sure that's even who in the books. It may go down differently, but the broad beats should be similar.

 

The night is dark and well, it's just dark.

My wife and I thought the same thing, but figured it was because we watched it on HBO Now. We were in a pitch dark room and it was difficult to tell wth was going on at times. It's not my TV brightness. I realize the effect they were going for was chaos and confusion, but it wasn't exactly enjoyable as a viewer. Howard Stern often rants about this trend in television directing. I can't say he's wrong.

That aside, I thought it was a really good episode. I don't know if I would have even brought up the contrast issue if it wasn't already being discussed.

Lady Mormont goes out like a boss of course.

I didn't think the Night King was actually going to be in Winterfell this episode, but knew Arya was going to punch his ticket after the pep talk from Melisandre. I figured she'd be wearing a White Walker's face, which would have been cooler.

I was kind of thinking we'd see Ice Spiders. That would have been epic.

After fighting the entire army of the undead, King's Landing should seem like a spa day.

 

Yeah, but with what army?

Unless they have a magically regenerating army, Houses in the Vale and North that missed all of the fighting, and the Riverlands, what's left of the Reach and Dorne ALL throw in with them, they're really outnumbered now.

Because they really made it seem like the Army of Winterfell in total suffered like 85% losses.

 

Well, there’s 3 more episodes left to deal with Cersei now that Sauron... I mean the Night King... has been taken out, and the entire threat gone in the blink of an eye. Poof! One dagger stab and the gravest threat in history disintegrates into dust. Maybe there will be a satisfying ending for Cersei after the abruptly lame ending for Sauron.... oops, there I go again... the Night King, and all of his minions. Is it obvious that I feel let down?

 

We should have seen that coming (quick, sudden end) by the way they hacked the original material (pun intended). They care not for subtlety, logic, backstory or motivation. They're not GRRM. They're Michael Bay. Fire, splodey things, blood and action. So by that standard, it's... it's fine.

Again, I can nitpick this to death. But no one wants to read that novel. I choose to enjoy it for what it is. And pray we get the last 2 novels for the real story.

I truly believe that around the time they started writing season 5, they realized that it would take 10 more seasons to tell the whole story minimum. They had no desire to be on the same project that long - not to mention real world troubles like keeping actors under contract for that long - and decided to start fast forwarding and rushing to the end, gaps in plot or logic be damned. It is what it is.

 

Agreed somewhat. The lack of source material did hurt them. But they started hacking the story apart to fast forward well before they ran out of source material. They gave books 4 and 5 combined maybe 2 seasons. ASOS alone is easily 2 seasons. AFFC is easily 1.5 seasons. And ADWD is easily 2 seasons. (Yes, they'd need to shuffle AFFC and ADWD together, but you're still looking at 3.5 seasons minimum. Could be stretched to 4) And if each season is 10 episodes, we should be at the halfway point for The Winds of Winter at MOST. For all we know, that book will be dense enough for 2 seasons. Maybe I exaggerated the 10 more seasons. But the entire series done as well as can be would be about 12 seasons long. No matter how you look at it, they gave it a short shrift. But again, there's legitimate real world problems to keeping the show going that long besides just running out of enthusiasm for the project.

 

Almost a year ago, I read some "leaks" I assumed to be fake because they read like really bad fan fiction. After the last 2 episodes, he either guessed really, really well. Or they're true...

Prepare to be outraged. Just saying. No. I won't list the leaks here. I'm still holding out hope that they play better in context. But i'm expecting a disaster of Lost proportions.

D&D have lost all interest in the show. That's clear. They had a check list of plot points they needed to punch, and they did it haphazardly with zero effort into making it internally logical or consistent within character development. What a shame. Want evidence they're phoning it in? They couldn't even catch THIS!



ROFL. Good to see Starbucks is literally everywhere, including Winterfell.

 

I take issue with this meme. TWD has turned itself around the last 10 episodes.