Game of thrones season 8 [contains spoilers]

[Steel Icarus]

View attachment 170972

 

[ska invita]

Couple of points just tripping round my brain.

Daenerys has "breaker of chains" as part of her name, she was heartbroken at losing a child and her dragons. Why suddenly does she want to kill rather than save people? Even the most twisted psychopath surely can't turn that far, that quickly.

And this, this morning:

Latest Game of Thrones episode sends curveball to children named Khaleesi


Good luck explaining why your kid went from positively angelic to rabid.

And am I the only one to question, and I know dragons are fictional so we haven't exactly got the fact sheet on them, how those walls had the consistency of an chocolate teapot once the flames got them but people were still relatively intact after their initial kebabing Surely if it's hot enough to "melt" walls, the people would have been a mass cremation.

She hadn't eaten anything for two weeks
Hangry
I can relate to that

 

[strung out]

Did anyone else pick up on the fact that Varys had been attempting to poison Daenerys with the help of the servant girl?

Martha: “She won’t eat,”
Varys: "We’ll try again at supper,”
Martha: “I think they’re watching me.”
Varys: “Who?”
Martha: “Her soldiers.”
Varys: “Of course they are. That’s their job. What have I told you, Martha?”
Martha: “The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.”

 

[moochedit]

Did anyone else pick up on the fact that Varys had been attempting to poison Daenerys with the help of the servant girl?

Martha: “She won’t eat,”
Varys: "We’ll try again at supper,”
Martha: “I think they’re watching me.”
Varys: “Who?”
Martha: “Her soldiers.”
Varys: “Of course they are. That’s their job. What have I told you, Martha?”
Martha: “The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.”

Yes i noticed that second time i watched it.

Edit - maybe she has another go next episode

 

[Lord Camomile]

I did wonder if she was being set up as some instigator or holder of a grudge to be acted on decades hence, setting up a sort of nextra generation, "some things never change..." bittersweet finale.

Maybe a bit obvious, though. Also, GoT tends to be driven by the big families rather than anonymous poor folk.

 

[rekil]

"A Song of Ice & Fire" refers to:

It always makes me think of this.

Spoiler

 

[tommers]

It always makes me think of this.

Spoiler

Hahaha. How much more black could it be? And the answer is none, none more black.

 

[tommers]

Yes i noticed that second time i watched it.

Edit - maybe she has another go next episode

Who was he sending out those notes to?

 

[Cloo]

Who was he sending out those notes to?

Braavos? Dorn? May have some significance in final episode if he's been sending everyone messages saying 'Danaerys is going to defeat Cersei, but she's also going nuts and it's all about to go tits up in Westeros, so you might want to come help Jon Snow or whoever is left if you want an alliance with a ruler who isn't mad'

 

[Orang Utan]

 

[spanglechick]

I thought Cersei going out with a whimper was great. Villains, heroes... all are just kids inside playing at being grown up and hoping no one finds them out. It was a lovely counterpoint to Dany who essentially was releasing her overtired toddler side.

Cersei had all of her lifetime’s carefully plotted success, all of last week’s arrogance exposed as being brittle and momentary. Other than Qyburn (?) she has not a single intelligent, loyal voice around her. How is she supposed to get her head round everything flipping so quickly? And she’s doomed, and it’s her own fault. Of course she fucking cries. You would too.

As for Dany, she’s always been a spoiled brat. She freed the slaves because she wanted to be a legend. To be adulated and powerful. Since coming north she’s been unable to persuade people to treat her with the prostrate worshipping she expects. Plus, it turns out she isn’t the heir. Plus she’s lost her two closest allies and two of her children - the last three in quick succession. She doesn’t trust Tyrion and the surrender plan was at his behest, I think her “fuck it” moment is absolutely in character. She’s got very little left to lose.

Greyworm turns because above anything else his loyalty is to Dany. That’s the point of the unsullied, isn’t it? Unquestioning loyalty, the perfect soldier. He has no particular alignment with Jon or Tyrion. Plus he’s grieving.

 

[moonsi til]

Did Greyworn start to fight when he saw Dany wasn’t stopping when the bells rang?

 

[Steel Icarus]

Yes

 

[moonsi til]

That makes sense then as he was following his Queen though he was definitely full of his own rage.

 

[Mogden]

Maybe it was just my autistic brain then. I'm not usually good with fantasy, I just thought a sniff of realism about the walls would have been nice. The thing is that the characters are difficult to follow at the best of times, I mean even the books and the TV series differ on deaths but to go from that tremendous episode 3 to this one. Meh. Yes I know Dany would always have the risk of going rouge but from a slow run up to it we've suddenly hit super sonic speed to the finish.

 

[donkyboy]

Did Greyworn start to fight when he saw Dany wasn’t stopping when the bells rang?

yep

 

[donkyboy]

That makes sense then as he was following his Queen though he was definitely full of his own rage.

his gal was beheaded. so full of anger

 

[Nine Bob Note]

Did Greyworn start to fight when he saw Dany wasn’t stopping when the bells rang?

That wasn't my initial impression. The sly look over his shoulder immediately reminded of Roose Bolton flashing his chainmail cuffs at Catelyn, as if it were a plan/trap all along, but Snow's survival proved me wrong on that point.

 

[Nine Bob Note]

Did anyone else pick up on the fact that Varys had been attempting to poison Daenerys with the help of the servant girl?

I did, but watching TYT review I was surprised they mostly didn't, as he's done this before. I remember a wine merchant who worked for him (I think towards the end of season one), and then a scorpion (?) during the interminable pyramid stage. That might not have been him at all, but as I said, it was during that "Oh Meesa, your dragons have eaten my children but I still love you" bollocks.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Did Greyworn start to fight when he saw Dany wasn’t stopping when the bells rang?

Yes

She had specifically told him he would know the moment/the sign. Dany's meltdown was it. He threw a spear into an unarmed soldier's back. You remember Misandre's last words and how she died? Dany never once agreed to the 'once you hear the bells' plea..it was repeated but she never once said 'oh okay then.' I wasn't surprised by her behaviour.

 

[Cloo]

Yes, she seemed deeply uncommitted to the bells surrender plan.

 

[Treacle Toes]

She was not going to let Tyrieon betray her again. She couldn't take that chance. He let Jamie go also. So he'd actually done so already.

 

[Augie March]

 

[ska invita]

yeah, this is partly what i liked about the unnecessary massacre - it felt 'historically' true

 

[Augie March]

how are they going to kill the dragon?

A plot hole. Dragons are quite susceptible to those apparently.

 

[ska invita]

yeah, this is partly what i liked about the unnecessary massacre - it felt 'historically' true

Btw in terms of what happens in the finale I'm rooting for a bleak new hard-line Dany led order with Jon getting betrayal punished a bonus...skulking off at the very least.

 

[moochedit]

The "liberation" of Iraq also springs to mind.

 

[T & P]

Most of what I felt about this episode has been expressed already, but a couple of quick thoughts.

- As far as the action scenes went, I much preferred this week's episode to the much vaunted 'greatest battle in television history' wankfest showing the showndown with the White Walkers.

- The writing continues to feel lazy and amateurish. The timescale between major points in the storyline is all over the place. Armies and characters alike appear to materialise instantly between one confrontation and the next one. Quite pisspooor, hurried storytelling at times, as if the writers suddenly realised they had run out of episodes to wrap up the entire series and had to cram in everything in the remaining minutes available.

- Speaking of inconsistent storytelling, in the space of one episode we went from two dragons being proven to be highly vulnerable and nearly wiped out with relative ease with a relatively small number Scorpion weapons, to the one surviving dragon, which last week barely made it back to base a whimpering mess, suddenly impervious to and unconcerned by the much higher number of Scorpion weapons firing at him. Not to mention now boasting a massively more powerful and further-reaching firebreath that would give the M.O.A.B. a run for its money, and which could surely have destoyed the naval fleet taking pot shots at the dragons last week.

Having said all of that, I still enjoyed this episode, the second best of the series so far (second only to the 'preamble to the White Walkers battle' episode). But still a marked deterioration overall compared with previous seasons.

 

[moochedit]

In ep 4 just before the dragon gets killed you see it strugling to fly. Also john says it is injured in a previous scene. That (plus the element of surprise) is why is was killed so easily as it couldn't react in time. Right after it you see loads of sporpians fired at dannys dragon and she dodges them easily. She doesn't get a shot in but in ep5 she uses the sun to hide herself.

 

[Oula]

What's with that?
Faceless men assassinate via cunning infiltration.
Yet here she is wandering around literally telling people I'm Arya Stark.

1. It's just her and the hound traveling light.
2. They should have easily outpaced an army.
3. Kill Qyburn, steal his face, sneak up on Cersei.
4. War averted.

Also that whole leave it to me nonsense when she knows he don't give a damn about killing Cersei. The Mountain is the only one he's after.

The hound didn't say he was going to kill Cersei, just that she was going to die anyway.

See, I disagree with this. Apart from wondering why Qyburn didn't think to mount at least one scorpion on the Red Keep itself, I think this episode did a great job of showing how humans collapse into irrational, tumultuous fuck-ups in the face of utter chaos. All these people have been through so much, have schemed and lost and destroyed and seen loads of fucked up shit - at the point where resolution suddenly goes up in an unbelievable tornado of destruction, everyone is reduced to basic urges. The city folk stampede in terror, Arya flips from ice warrior to freaked out young woman, Danaerys disappears into her rage, Cersei watches everything she's worked for disappear in a matter of moments and finally understands that she's not indestructible, Jaime just wants to be with someone he loves as the world burns down. People aren't rational, not even carefully written plotters like Cersei.

THIS!!!!

yeah, this is partly what i liked about the unnecessary massacre - it felt 'historically' true

It made me think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dany made me think of Churchill. As Rob Newman said about him "just because the enemy you are fighting is evil, or doesn't make you good"