Author George R.R. Martin himself said recently that, given the days-long conversations about the ending he had with showrunners Benioff and Weiss years ago, the end of Game of Thrones wouldn’t be “that different” from what he has planned for future books in A Song of Ice and Fire. However, some who disliked the controversial ending held out hope for a different endpoint altogether, not just a different execution. One of these contentious points was Bran becoming king of the now Six Kingdoms; a twist that, according to Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark), comes straight from Martin!
At the official Making Game of Thrones blog, Isaac discusses his reaction to King Bran the Broken, saying it was “the very last thing” he “expected to happen.” In fact, for a while he didn’t believe it would: “I was convinced they had sent a script to everyone in which they become king or queen, so I still didn’t believe it until the read-through.”
Once he got past his suspicions, though, the actor liked that choice: “I think he is a great character to take on that role. You never thought of him in that way, but what more could you ask for in a king than to have no personal attachments, no agenda, but have a calm understanding of the entire universe? He’s the ideal person to be in charge.”
And here comes the big revelation:
“[Showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] told me there were two things [author] George R.R. Martin had planned for Bran, and that was the Hodor revelation, and that he would be king. So that’s pretty special to be directly involved in something that is part of George’s vision. It was a really nice way to wrap it up.”
There’s much more to the interview, which I suggest you read in its entirety here.
This so-called revelation will not come as a surprise to those who have read Martin’s words quoted at the top, or the showrunners’ oft-repeated claims that, though there were no more of Martin’s published words to follow, they were following his outline (which, may I remind you, though only an outline, it took days to recount in detail.) And yet, given some of the reactions I’ve read to the ending, with some people utterly convinced Bran will not become king in the books (amongst other major events in season eight and the finale in particular), I’m sure some people will be shocked by this.
All hail King Bran the Broken! Long may he reign!
All hail King Bran the Broken!
I never thought it would be a different ending in the books, I just expect it to make more sense than the show. For instance, I don’t see Bran saying, “I can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, I live in the past” the chapter before he agrees to rule all of Westeros.
I’m optimistic the build up will be handled better.
Many people find issue with the endings of characters and the story in general, on principle, not just in execution, which is what I was addressing, and said so.
You do realize that was on purpose, right? Like, they didn’t forget they wrote that. The counterpoint was on purpose.
It not elements of the final story that are a surprise its the way they were realized.
They make sense well enough , however it’s the telling of the story that feels awkward. Hoping that GRRM brings more imagination to narrative.
I’m glad Isaac confirmed this and whilst I never doubted this was coming from GRRM there were clearly a vocal minority who were convinced it was not the case. The only slightly sad thing is it spoils a few things for avid book readers – I can imagine Linda/Elio and some of the trolls on Westeros.org (note. not all contributors there just the trolls) going into melt down that someone connected with the show spoiled a key point of the ending.
Jon Snowed,
On this point I would agree with them, it’s not D and Ds place to reveal information from their secret conversation to actors, nor is it Isaac’s place to publicly state it. Frankly I don’t think this should be in the headline of the article as it’s a major spoiler. Let people determine for themselves if they want to know that info.
Man I wish I had documented my conviction that he would eventually leave the cave b/c some people were just so 100% sure he wouldn’t that it feels nice to be right about this one. On the other hand, I only thought he would leave the cave to eventually take his rightful position as Lord of Winterfell, so the idea that he is going to be King of Westeros in the books is very very confusing to me. There are a few things from the show I can see making a lot more sense in the books with the extra build-up, but this is one where I have a hard time visualizing it.
But one of the awe-inspiring things with George, although he is not a perfect writer and I am pretty frustrated with the lack of conviction I feel that he will finish TWOW much less anything else, is how much he can use a single POV chapter and especially a series of them over the course of a single book to transform your understanding of a character (Jaime in ASOS, Theon in ADwD, even Asha in ADwD as well) so I guess we’ll see!
Is it , at this point in time , really clear what GRRM is going to do about the ending?
When I read the following about a week ago , I am not so sure.
http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2019/05/20/an-ending/
I knew this is from the future books. But GRRM talks so much about Aragorn’s tax policy and he will put a wizard on the throne? Lol
And when will Bran learn how to rule in the books? In that cave?
I’d expect that the main characters would end up at least roughly in the same situation as they do in the show, always have. Other secondary characters could be different, or not. Like George has said, some are alive that aren’t on the show, perhaps vice versa. I have zero issue with how the show ended, because I don’t HAVE to like a certain result for my favourites to find an ending good. It would have benefited from more time given to get to that ending, imo, but hey. Love the series.
I see Bran as an encyclopedia, he has all the info stored away in his database, but he needs someone to help retrieve and extract it from him at times. At least for now. Hello Tyrion. 😁
I will definitely appreciate having the build up to the novels’ ending being seen through the characters’ thoughts as well as actions – something that unfolds as only reading a book can do, page by page. Unfortunately unless you do a cheesy voice over or something, that aspect gets missed through television and film. Fingers crossed we get there.
Jon Snowed,
Shivers down my spine when reading those names. They who should not be named.
But I found it Funny that He and She Who Shall Not Be Named, have all the opinions about the adaption of the books even when both never finished SoS because they could get past the Red Wedding.
Why Isaac did you state this. Now the books will never be finished. Now GRRM has his hands full defending himself against reddit warriors.
LatrineDiggerBrian,
How is this a spoiler? GRRM stated last week that all the endings of the main characters are the same and only secondary and tertiary characters endings are different. Only the point of going there will be different.
Or do you expect that somehow grey worm will be on the throne in the books? My vote still goes to Ser pounce, GRRM you had the power, change the ending. Ser pounce for King. Long may he reign.
Yay! I knew it! (I know, I know it was not very difficult to guess but let me think I am smart for a sec!)
When I saw it I though it would be such a GRR Martin type of end lol, unexpected but not out of the blue. Yay!
I honestly loved episode 6, I was very satisfied with the end of every single character, even though I had some issues with their journeys to get there.
however, one thing that I have realized is that the books are gonna be extremely rushed lol. The source material ended back in seasons 4-5, that means they had content to make another 4 seasons and, honestly, even 6 or 7. How in the world is George gonna end every storyline (remember that the show actually simplified a lot the plot lines and even deleted some of them) in a cohesive way in just two books?
kevin1989,
He’s had almost a decade and still hasn’t finished the next book. I highly doubt we’ll ever see the end in print…the next book maybe, but the ending? It would take more than 2 books to get from where he is now to get Bran on the throne and have it make sense.
Jon Snowed,
Funny you should mention Elio/Linda. They had just posted a video last night before this interview was published stating that they had doubts that Bran would be king and that ‘if’ it was Martin’s intention then he’d have to do a serious time jump to get there given how young he is in the books.
off-topic: Don’t we need a season 8 song list.
– This girl is on fire, alicia Keys (episode 5)
– Dany are you okay, Michael Jackson (episode 5)
– Love is a battlefield, Jon Dany’s love relationship
– Ice, Ice baby (episode 3)
– Behind blue eyes (NK theme song)
It’s a double edged sword because some people are being overly critical about the ending and passing off their opinion as fact that people involved in the show had to respond rather than remain silent. I do feel it’s a shame that some book readers will now be spoiled although to be honest I would imagine most people would recognise that this has come from GRRM anyway and the devil will be in the detail of how it comes to transpire.
All the actors are coming out to defend their characters. That will not fix GOT.
Yes, I think everyone assumed that this was GRRM’s idea. However, that does not mean what we saw in the series provided any sensible basis for Bran as king. Perhaps D&D were trying too hard to surprise and did not lay enough in the series to make it make sense at all.
And of course, the non-existent book may also not make any sense either.
Lots to agree with here!
kathy,
I think if he cuts half the storylines very soon I think it will be possible. I think book 6 ends what season 6 was, and some storylines will be shown from season 7.
Starks: I have a feeling that Jon will go south once he is revived to deal with Ramsay. I think Stannis is gone just like the show. I think Davos will go back with Rickon. I hope Davos survives this in the books. and I think Sansa will come in with the Vale but that Jon’s reunion with Sansa will be after taking back WF. This will end with WoW. Bran I wonder how much flashbacks we got with his story. GRRM is more of giving some hints with his arc. Showing flashes. I don’t think Bran will be left in the cave at the end of the book. Or he just left, got back to Castle black. And he witness the fall of the wall there. Arya. I think she will sail back to white Harbor at the end of the book. I think her killing the freys will be given to Lady stoneheart. And I think LSH will be dealth with in this book. The wall will fall.
Dany: later first another.
Young griff: I think he will take Dany’s first part of season 7 storyline. Battles with the Lannisters. Who will win I wonder. Can be both.
Dany: I think she will set sail to Westeros.
Jaime/Cersei/Brienne: Have no idea. I think their love story is in book 6 and somehow I feel like at the end of the book or he and Cersei dies or b. they die beginning book 7.
book 7 can start with the walls down. I think WF will fall by the hand of the WW. I think Dany will get a vision about the army of the dead and moves north and saves the day at the trident. I even think the defeat of the WW will be more magical in the books.
The only thing I wonder if in the books the go the show route, first love Jon Dany with defeat WW after that the burning of KL. Or the opposite, that Dany dealt with KL first, and after that going on her liberating mission in the north. And that Jon snow finds out later what she had done. Somehow what the show did make more sense. Destroy the WW and after that detroying KL
Mango,
Why wouldn’t they? And why does it need to be fixed? It’s not a 5 star meal that we have eaten, but still a 4,5 star meal. Yes we would have expected a 5,5 star meal something that exceeded all other meals that came before. But still a 4,5 star is not bad at all.
So no they don’t need to fix things. People should be happy with the 4,5 star meal instead of rating it as a half star meal because they didn’t get a 20 star meal.
I actually liked the fact that Bran became King, particularity as nobody (except for Bran) saw it coming (despite how many who now start to claim otherwise).
As for complaining that this article is a spoiler, that’s just ridiculous. You watched the show, so you know how the story ends.
A point I find interesting is Bran’s route to the throne. He knew he would be king. And he knew how many would die for him to get there. Whilst I know that everything happens is necessary in order for the characters to get to their particular conclusion, hundreds of thousands of citizens burning alive is a high price to pay for him to be King.
Was there no other way to avoid that carnage? Bran could’ve warged into Drogon for example and bring him and Dany down to their deaths, saving all those lives.
I also think Bran’s powers were kind of sidelined on the show- all they were used for were to tell us how the WWs were created and that Jon was Rhaegars son, which in the end and despite all that build up, wasn’t even that important to the plot.
Aragorn was the hero, Bran is not. Bran being king doesn’t matter much actually.
The point is that the “heroes” we’ve seen going towards the throne (Jon and Dany) are people we also have seen in position of power.
Also, Bran’s Hand is Tyrion, who we have seen as Hand of 2 different rulers.
Of course, they are trying to defend GOT as a large part of their career is now associated with a failure based on critical feedback. (I mean with TV critics etc that will write the history of TV and will determine how GOT will be remembered formally). For the young ones, it is their entire career.
They all are likely now to be involved in a public relations effort with HBO.
On another thread, I will post NCW’s interview about Jaime at the end of Season 7 where he said that Jaime was done with Cersei and basically trashed the relationship between Cersei and Jaime. Actually, over the 8 years, he repeated trashed it. That was before he saw the script for Season 8. Now he is defending Jaime’s story as best he can.
1. All the arcs on the show make sense.
2. Still, almost all the arcs on the show feel like they are missing an entire season of build-up that would have made them feel more earned.
3. There is no doubt in my mind that GRRM will make this work at least 27 times better than did D&D.
4. Even so, I love the finale… as much as I could possibly love it following 3 seasons of Fast & Furious: Westeros Edition.
This essay of some years back provided me with some wonderful context for understanding the purpose of a character like Bran’s in the story told. Connecting to British mythology:
https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/125401-the-winged-wolf-a-bran-stark-re-read-project-part-ii-asos-adwd/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-6823505
Apollo,
You are on to something here.
GOT has a lot of build up that was not relevant to the story and endgame.
There was also a lot of focus on the humans in the story when the end was all about the wizard that was barely in the story at all.
Mango,
Or maybe they just like their ending?
GeekFurious,
+1
I agreed with Nik’s opinion then, and I agree with his new opinion now, because, just like him, the show made me change my mind. One can change one’s mind; it’s fine. It’s not the “gotcha!” you believe it is, I’m afraid.
Mango, I feel like you’re forcing your opinion onto the intentions of other people because you want to believe your opinion is “correct” and if the actors don’t agree then they are either wrong and/or lying and/or doing promotion for HBO.
Seems like you have an extremist opinion, not a righteous one. Just because you’re very negative doesn’t mean everyone suffers from the same torment.
You can read my opinion but how can I force it on you?
Unless I missed something the ending was largely critically well received though like the show overall, now the Bells was hit and miss and UUU was poorly received largely due to the Sansa rape rather than the ridiculous Sandsnakes fight. This is the most popular show of all time and ranked number one on IMBD as the best TV show of all time, I’m sure the actors will do well in future projects because of it (take Sophie getting a role in Xmen despite arguably being one of the weaker actors on the show).
I did not say it was Gotcha! I also pointed out that it was before he would have seen Season 8’s scripts.
NCW is an actor telling a story written for him. I do not think he is married to his story or characters one way or the other. I think this is a professional job for him. He has moved on to his other jobs.
I imagine that in his discussions of Jaime, he is simply defending the story as the end of Season 8 indicated was Jaime story. This is to be completely expected. I simply wanted to point out that his published interviews took a different line at the end of Season 7.
Yes, they may!
In the show, Bran couldn’t see into the future, only the now and the past. That’s making it a really difficult leap for me to believe that Bran has been manipulating everyone since he left the cave. On show cannon alone, it makes absolute zero sense, unless we’re supposed to take that ONE vision he had as ‘groundwork’ for thr ending.
Having everyone take Tyrion’s one- minute advice that ‘Bran had the best story’ was a weak substitute for their purposeful lack of groundwork. No build up, just a gotcha. It will never not be disappointing.
trarecar,
Lots here that is useful to clarify my thinking about GOT. It makes me think of an earlier comment in this thread. In many places, GOT seems to have gotten to an end that is divorced from the previous seasons in that the groundwork was simply not laid.
Apollo,
Many of this stuff wasn’t in detail in the show because its very difficult to adapt more fantastical things to a visual format like TV/movies. Look at that terrible dragon movie where you hear the dragon’s mind talking with the human, it was painful to watch and extremely hokey. I suspect that GRRM has been struggling to figure out how to make these things work and not have it seem lame.
There’s questions as to whether warging into Dragons is even possible because the more independent, intelligent and less trusting an animal is, the harder they are to bond with. Only the Valyrian descendants are trusted by the dragons. Warging into animals is also dangerous and changes both the animal and the human. The human has to resist the urges of the animal, which Bran struggles with when he is warging into Summer. It is said to be easier if there is a bond between the two parties. Bran and Summer, Bran and Hodor. If he wargs into Drogon, who has a very strong personality as shown through the series, he could easily be caught up in it for the worse. The Dragon could also see into Bran and see what is going to happen, which could set off an even more destructive chain of events. Dragons are highly intelligent beings prone to mood swings. When a warg is within an animal when it dies, it is said to be a traumatic event and changes the psyche of the warg.
Bran could see how many more would die if the events didn’t play out as they did. If Dany had her way, every city they “liberate” would be burnt to ashes. I suspect much of these revelations will be revealed in the book through inner monologues that aren’t shown in the show.
Mango,
People say D&D cut Bran from S5 but GRRM did the same with AFFC.
There were ways for D&D to do this better, but I don’t think there was a great way. There is a reason why “King Bran” was not popular theory in book fandom. There is no set up for this at all. Almost everything else that happened in S8 existed in some book and show theories. But not this.
He never had “learnig to rule” arc, majority of his story is connected to magic and not politics. He had only 3 chapters in the last 2 books that had 130 chapters. Only 4 chapters in ASOS.
He is 10 year old magical boy in the cave at the end of the world. I don’t see how GRRM can make this work in only 2 books.
trarecar,
He can see the future. He gave Arya that dagger, he saw Drogon burning KL, Cersei destroying Sept, he saw that Jaime would die and so on.
A question, not an argument. Your comment triggered a thought.
NCW is the actor charged with expressing Jaime’s story. He does not select the storyline or words but he has some actor’s choices on portrayal within the director’s preferences.
You seem (?) to believe that NCW had a change of opinion btw S7 and S8 of Jaime’s story.
Do you think his portrayal of Jaime over the previous seven seasons would have been different if he knew Jaime’s story for S8? Just to the extent that he had discretion in his portrayal? Or how does any opinion change reflect on acting choices made earlier?
(Jaime is by far my favorite character. I completely misjudged his arc or lack thereof. But that is on me, not anyone else! I thought NCW did a wonderful job. But then what do I know?)
trarecar,
No, Bran clearly can see the future. He knew he was going to be made king, by his own admission. How much he knows and when is opaque in the extreme.
As to Isaac’s interview, it’s good to have that confirmed, though I was already quite sure because there’s no way D&D by themselves would have had the idea to put Bran on the throne. He’s not a character that ever interested them, and left to their own devices I expect he would have splatted against the ground and died in the pilot.
mau,
While not the most popular theory, Bran as king (at least of the North) was a theory in the book fandom. I personally was an adherent until the show went out of its way to marginalize him in the final seasons and make him so detached from everything.
GRRM leaving him out of AFFC is not equivalent to skipping a season, since those two books are geographically divided and half the cast skipped AFFC.
Exactly. This is why the small council scene was so important and why I absolutely loved it. It shows that Bran is setting the pieces in place for a well run kingdom and to answer those questions about Tokien’s ending that George had.
GRRM’s quote on King Aragorn:
To the extent that we consider imdb useful – GOT is ranked at #6. And expect that to continue to fall. However, this is still excellent and reflects all 8 seasons.
As for critical consensus on Season 8 – one could say it is a critical failure/disappointment. Just look back on this site that published a summary of articles. On Rotten Tomatoes, it does not have a critics consensus as yet. However, Season 8 is rated at 52% for critics – this compares to over 90% for all the previous seasons. The viewers’ rating a very comical 36%.
Mango,
Which shows that critics reacted emotionally and they turned against this season when they realize where Daenerys is going.
Their reviews for the last 3 episodes makes no sense in context of their reviews from the past.
No matter how much they try do deny it – they hate what happened and not how.
Jon’s fate. There is no way on the 7 god’s green earth those horse people will be quiet and peaceful. they WILL riot and kill and start war. Who will the people of Westeros turn to when that happens?? Yes, Jon will be back in action. Could have gotten us 2 more seasons right there. Funny, Jon is now the King beyond the wall.
Mango,
If RT is to be believed, the season 8 premiere is the best of the season.
Sean C.,
Wait, you think it’s ok that Martin sidelined Bran just because he sidelined other characters? That makes it worse, not better.
You may be right. But many fans can clearly articulate why it did not work for them.
I am not a Daenerys fan. I actually may have been one of the major Daenerys haters on this board. I thought she was always dangerous. But I was surprised at the turn of her personality so late in the series. I think they could have done a better job of the groundwork.
On critics: There are several critics whose work I have read for many years. I do not just read them for GOT. Many of these individuals are professionals and really good. So their feedback is often well grounded and not always based on “personal” preferences. The trick is to read across several. Critics often add a great deal of insight to my understanding. I also read book and film critics as well. I read critics of art exhibits usually beforehand I see it. Film and TV, I often read after. There are film critics/reviewers like Roger Ebert who work I read whether I planned to see the movie or not. His writing was just great!
Yes, many thought Episode 1 and 2 were among the best of the entire series. Particularly Epi 2.
kevin1989,
Meouw!
Mango,
I read a lot of reviews on RT. They are too emotional to be objective. It makes no sense to think that there is such drastic difference in quality between Eastwatch/Beyond the Wall and The Last of the Starks/The Bells.
And a lot of them are criticizing the show for political reasons.
Mango,
I haven’t seen much high praise for the premiere from fans. For me, it was good, but my least favorite of the season.
Yeah Magic should not be made powerful and dragons are dangerous and no one individual must be so powerful.. so what will we do we will choose a guy who is literally a God and access to past and future and can bend those information however he wants and for his own gains..
But he is Broken and hence it’s totally fair..
I guess choosing someone like Davos is outof the equation because he is not royal blood..
Young Dragon,
Which again makes no sense. They hate S8 because it didn’t give them what they wanted. They can’t hide behind excuses about pacing and execution. It’s laughable.
Pacing wasn’t problem for them when they got their fanservice ending in S7.
People in the future will laugh at those reviews of S8.
Young Dragon,
No, because AFFC and ADWD are two halves of the same story. That some characters aren’t in one is merely a reflection of the split. The only character who has chapters in all five published books is Arya.
That is not the same thing as dropping Bran from an entire season while everybody else’s stories continue on as normal (compounded, of course, by making him so irrelevant once he came back).
mau,
Why does that not make sense? If you thought the season started off with decent setup and then failed to deliver on it, then the first episode being the highest-rated is certainly plausible. I’m slightly surprised it’s not the second, but I suppose some felt two more or less action-free episodes in a row was iffy.
Well a week or two ago Game of Thrones was number one TV show on IMDB with an average rating of 9.5. I see it’s dropped now to 9.4 largely driven by the coordinated internet trolls who have been providing 1/10 ratings.
I did not think the fans were that happy with the premier but I did see a few decent reviews from critics that it was Ok to good. GOT seems to have a pattern of “table setting” premieres.
Epi 2 was a triumph all round, I think.
I would have Season 8 episodes 2 and 3 in my all time top ten. Both are extremely strong episodes in my opinion, episode 4 is probably the weakest of the season due to feeling like two episodes shortened and merged into one.
Sean C.,
Structure of the last two books was really strange and it destroyed the whole pacing of the story IMO. I think everyone will agree that there is no way to arrive at this endgame we got in the show with only 2 more books. And decision to give only 3 chapters to endgame King that don’t set up his endgame in any way is also really strange.
Sean C.,
It makes no sense because it doesn’t lol. Beyond the Wall was not better episode than The Bells. It’s just nerd outrage.
Mango,
Why are people still having the notion that Dany changed at the moment when she waited on top of that building in KL? It was not a snap there. It already happened much earlier in the episode. Or even better the snap happened in episode 4 not 5.
Her decision was also very rationalized. She even justified it, made it clear she though of it before she did it. This was not an out of the blue reaction, it was a decision she made that she already planned beforehand. Her whole conversations the whole season made that clear. Especially those in episode 4 and 5. Why else do you think she states: Let it be fear? Because then she already decided to go burn innocent people.
Mango,
I agree that episode 2 was amazing, but even that only has an 88 on RT. Unless I’m mistaken, the vast majority of episodes are in the 90s.
I have to say that 8×04 and 8×05 are much bette then 7×05 and 7×06.
And yes to emotional. If I look at the reviews who hated it, youtube clips etc. 90% of them are not talking about How it happened. But what happened. the show fucked up for turning Dany mad and not having the Dany Jon relationship in the end. They are mad that a female main lead have been turn to a villain. They are mad that the starks are not together in the end. They are mad that the NK is not defeated in the series final.
It’s not about HOW it happened that critics criticize, but the WHAT.
Look at all the upgrade versions on YT for this season. They never include some scenes, what they did was rewrite the whole storyline. Where it ends with Dany being the hero and ruling at the end. And the NK being defeated by her.
Young Dragon,
If I rank the season premieres it would be
1. Two swords
2. Winter is coming
3. Red Woman
4. Winterfell
5. Valar Doharis
6. Dragonstone
7. Wars to come
8. The North remembers.
Not sure about the last 2 maybe they needed to be switched. Maybe they are 1 place higher or lower for me.
kevin1989,
They are just trying to objectivize their feelings.
They say they like plot points and not the execution because they know plot points are from GRRM.
Sean C.,
Bran was still sidelined, though, since he was only given 3 chapters in the last 2 books. Sansa was also sidelined, receiving only 3. Arya only received 5. The show only sidelined 1, for one season.
Because that’s clearly how the show presents it, and the writers of the show confirmed as much.
kevin1989,
And yes, that’s why is said the show is criticized for political reasons like the fact that female main lead have been turn to a villain. Or that black girl was killed.
When the same nerd outrage happened with The Last Jedi, critics were on Johnson’s side because they agreed with political ideas of that movie. And I love both TLJ and S8. I even like The Hobbit movies lol.
Young Dragon,
The whole structure of the story in the books is just big mess that is beyond saving.
mau,
The funny thing is that they say season 8 was rushed. But season 8 had the slowest pacing of all the seasons. Look at how long every scene is about. Look at the scenes from the first seasons.
We got almost 50 minutes of an after party after the defeat of the WW. In season 1 till 6 they would have had a 10 minute scene of it and be done with it to the next scene.
Sean C.,
I have to agree with you, the reason why D&D omitted Bran was because else we had 2 characters who were learning a new skill in the same season. I would have loved to see Bran in season 5. Didn’t need to be the whole season. Maybe a Sandor like present from season 6. Just 2 episodes at the end.
Jon Snowed,
True, I remember the first 2 weeks the episode was rated at 8,5 and 9,0 Then after 3 the first small decline happened. it dropped to 8,8 episode 2, episode 1 stayed at 8,5. After that the trolling begins. After episode 4 the episode seem to drop. Somehow the amount of people rating the episode seem to have been tripled in a week. After episode 5 even more. It is just systematically attacked. Even reddit message board stated that this is done deliberately by fans making up 10 accounts or more.
Same with the petition. Maybe voted multiple times. I think those 1,5 milion votes were more done by 100.000/500.000 max people.
kevin1989,
Mine are:
1. Two Swords
2. Winter Is Coming
3. Winterfell
4. The Red Woman
5. Dragonstone
6. The Wars To Come
7. The North Remembers
8. Valar Doharis
mau,
Personally I liked the combination read of those 2 books. I felt better. But for me the writing in those books is better, but too slow. That because of adding 100 characters. Why couldn’t we have read Dorne all through Ariane. Or Iron Island through Yara and maybe after the kingsmood Victorion. But I think the strongest part of the saga was in book 5. Theon chapters, and the last third was brilliant where every single plot came together.
kevin1989,
The reason why D&D omitted Bran is because he had nothing to do. Isaac said that the only thing they got from GRRM was hold the door and King Bran.
It’s clear that they had very hard time incorporating him and his powers into the story because GRRM has no idea what to do with him either.
And I’m sure that GRRM has no idea how WW are going to be defected and that’s why D&D created Night King.
mau,
And once all the books are released (look at me, making a joke he he), the shit is hitting the fan for them. Reality kicks in, Dany is still the tyrant the show depicts. Bran still king. Arya still going west. Sansa still queen of the North. Tyrion still hand of the King etc. KL is still burned. Jon still killed her. The WW still not defeated by Jon because how could it, there is not a single identity in the books. Or is he going the kill every single WW in single combat. Oh wait Sam already stole a peace of his prohecy. Whaaa Sam why did you kill a WW that was Jon’s job.
kevin1989,
I don’t hate any GRRM’s book. I like them all. But it’s a fact that the structure of the last two books made it extremely hard to continue the story. Maybe even impossible. And that had negative effect on both the books and the show.
Sean C.,
Well for me that snap happened way before, she stated killing 10.000 innocence is for a good cause, Tyrion let her move away from that. She even stated the people of KL are not innocent, she literally stated that. They are guilty for choosing Cersei instead of freeing themselves like the Mereen slaves did.
And then it happened, she saved them from Cersei’s grasp, and they chose Cersei at that moment.
At that moment she sort of snapped, but it was more like a “See my first plan was right all alone, Tyrion was wrong, they are not innocent.” plus the combination of her families past.
mau,
Does he need to, though? I honestly see Tyrion as King by proxy for a long while. Besides, let’s we forget that Lord Brandon Stark was in fact in charge of Winterfell for a short time while Robb fought against southern forces. I would argue that Bran is way ahead of Tommen in terms of understanding what ruling entails. Will he be good king? I think there’s potential in that he has chosen a good council (minus Bronn who’s there only because of his acquired wealth) and that he can’t be manipulated and he has no ambition. Does that change? Not sure because the TER is such an enigma. Is it just an entity that takes hold of a host body or does it maintain the core personality of the new body is inhabiting? If Bran is able to regain some of himself with the passing of time, then I think the realm is in good hands.
mau,
I agee but what’s the hobbit? I read somewhere they were making that movie into 3 movies, but somehow it never aired. It never did. Right?
But I agree, I personally didn’t love the hobbit like the Lotr, would never watch it again, but it was enjoyable. And not as bad as some stated.
Same with the last jedi. Yes it was a copy of star wars 4. But still it wasn’t worse than 4, only not that original. For me (even when I was a huge SW fan when I was 10) Star wars is not that great of a movie. The universe is great, but for me even the OT is very one dimensional. and I found Kylo Ren much more interesting then what we saw in the OT.
mau,
They kind of improve if you read them simultaneously. Someone created a list of how to combine chapters in both books so that it reads like a single (gigantic) book. It makes a lot of difference. I personally hated A Feast when I first read it – none of the characters I cared about were in it and then there was Quentyn Martell (what a waste) and both Greyjoys. Not sure who I hate more Euron or Victarion, Rodrick the Reader on the other hand was a decent character.
As long as the book version character is better developed so he doesn’t become Branbot after learning from the 3ER I might enjoy it better. I didn’t hate the way the show ended. There was a lot of positives but it could and should have been better
LOL Never thought of that. Hopefully GRRM will explain it much better. I don’t think Bran is an inherently bad guy, but absolute power DOES corrupt absolutely. And it IS rather chilling, if you think about it, how he caused SO MUCH unnecessary suffering and death just to make it so he could sit on the throne. Like, he couldn’t have warged into another human and have them shoot an arrow into Dany’s back? He HAD to let Jon know the truth so it could push Dany over the edge so she could kill thousands? Just….. LOL I mean, it’s a story, I get it, and I accept that this is GRRM’s ending, I really do. I look forward to seeing how he gets there. Because I did NOT appreciate how D&D did it.
We literally went from having multitudes of fans complaining that Bran was just sitting there doing NOTHING in Ep 3 to him being king three episodes later with no build up, and so many of you expect folks to shut up and be happy. That action became a meme for christ’s sake. LOL We get it, you love it, great. But if you expect everyone else to fall in line, you better get used to disappointment, because many of us expected better, and with good reason. The show is not as popular as it is because of T&A or dragons, it’s popular because of the storytelling and the characters. AND THIS SEASON FAILED TO DELIVER THE SAME EXCELLENCE. It was still beautifully shot, the CGI was amazing, gorgeous, the music was wonderful as always. But the story line fell far from par.
I’m sure eventually the rancor will ease, but the disappointment in what could have been with such and amazing show will always be there. Calling us names and participating in ridicule will do nothing but drive people from this site. Just like as******, everyone’s got an opinion, and your as****** doesn’t look any better than mine. LOL We all need as****** to live, and ridiculing the state of someone else’s as****** doesn’t change it.
Debate and respectful disagreement is wonderful. Ridicule is not, and I’m seeing quite a bit of it here now. I don’t have the same opinion as you, that’s fine with me. Human nature dictates that we’ll likely continue to try to change each other’s minds. LOL But as long as it doesn’t dissolve into name calling, this place will still, hands down, be the best place to talk about the show we loved!
About the ending, a funny tough came over me. A scene where a raven is flying over WF and Sansa screams to it: Cut it out Bran, I’m queen here.
mau,
I think he should have never made the decision to seperate the characters per book. I rather that he had implemented part 1 of DwD into FfC and having the second part of DwD combined with the aftermath that we will get in the first part of WoW.
trarecar,
I bow to you, sir. Excellent comment!
Bran’s ending was carefully built up throughout the entire series. He eagerly shows his muscles to strong-man King Robert. As another commenter here noted, he did a good enough job as The Stark In Winterfell. After he had to flee, he consistently displayed leadership of his rag-tag band of adventurers. As the 3ER, he adriotly maneuvered the last few persons into place for the fight against the NK.
All that while, every character who had or sought the Iron Throne died violently, often causing needless sufferering and misery to many innocent persons along the way. (In case you still missed the point, the only character in the entire show who died naturally had refused that Throne.) The trope of the unwilling ruler was well-established, but with a twist: Bran instead of Jon.
(And, let’s be honest: an elected leader who had inspired his own men to mutinous murder probably shouldn’t be elected to another position of leadership.)
Boojam,
The denial sets in ! What a surprise
Mango,
He never said anything like that or trashed anything, why are you making things up with no evidence to back it up just to support your claim, this has been one of the worst things of any fandom since the beginning, claiming they read or saw an interview whatever and then think people will believe it as a fact .
This strangely reminded me of something. It turns out that Robert’s curse from the first episode turns out to be true foreshadowing. For any not familiar with it, when Robert greets the Starks at Winterfell in 1×01, he touches Rickon, embraces Cat and Ned, shakes Robb’s hand, but does not touch Sansa, Arya or Bran (or Jon for that matter since he’s in the back) and they all survive. Whether planned at the time or coincidental, who can say, but a great bit of foreshadowing nonetheless.
On the show, my husband and I have decided that Bran is evil and was planning this for a while now. Not sure how it will happen in the books lol
I get that Isaac is getting some heat so felt the need to put this out there. He shouldn’t. The actors did an amazing job with that they were given in the last season. Which dialogue-wise, was demonstrably diminished.
The show also diminished the importance of magic-from old gods to all Starks warging to dreams etc-so it will definitely be different and make more sense. Particularly the king choosing scene.
I would have thought if GRRM only gave them those two points, they would have been more inclined to give him a bit more onscreen conversation, more flashback action or have more insightful aid coming from the character this season.
I kept waiting. First I thought, Jon is a great warrior, Arya is a fm, Sansa is Littlebirdfinger and Bran is Wikipedia. Surely they’ll join forces and make an unbeatable plan as a pack. Nope.
Okay then, surely since he saw Jaime kill the Mad King in his visions and saved Jaime when he came to Winterfell, he’ll give Jaime a task that’s really important, or tell him Cersei wasn’t pregnant and slept with Lancel. Maybe he’ll even let him know what Cersei really felt about him.
Nope.
Okay then maybe he’s helping Sansa make trouble and Arya and Sansa don’t like or trust Dany because of what Bran has told them. Nope.
Maybe he’s the one who told Arya- who was talking all about last of the Starks and pack a second before- to suddenly go with the Hound and kill Cersei.
Nope.
Surely seeing the truth about Jon, the actual song of ice and fire in the flesh, the most consistently heroic character-who loved and guided Bran before the fall-would have Bran having a more in depth conversation with him about Jon’s true importance-or to thank him in some way and maybe mention what Jon had said to him before he originally left for the wall to convey some tenderness–instead of just making him the guy that drives Dany over the edge and has to be punished for saving the realm again.
Nope.
What I’m saying is, after ten years of developing a character that you’ve written for before, there were a dozen ways the audience could have been more satisfied by every characters ending and yet still surprised when Bran was made king.
kevin1989,
The funny thing is that they say season 8 was rushed. But season 8 had the slowest pacing of all the seasons. Look at how long every scene is about. Look at the scenes from the first seasons.
Unfortunately, even with hindsight and two weeks to mellow, and even though I will always love this show, I still think that.
Yes the scenes were long with plenty of facial expressions, walking and rehashing, but apart from episode 2 there was not a lot of meaningful dialogue or forward momentum. Which is kind of what the show is famous for (think of Tywin and Tyrion, Tywin and Arya, Arya and the Hound, Olenna and everyone, LF and Varys etc)
Instead, all the big plot points were hit one after the other.
There was a new villain in every episode from 3 on-which they’d never done before.
All major conversations were cut off, shortened or faded to black.
They didn’t sit with anything they did. They didn’t use that time to deal with all those threads of story and factual consistencies hanging out there.
LF killed last season-Little who? (it was kind of a big deal)
Sam stole all the secret important books-ignore that, it’s nothing
Arya killed the NK after just finding out about the WW–one toast and done
Jon knows who his mother is! Doesn’t even get to talk with anyone about his feelings-just reveals to Dany and sisters for shock.
Mel shows up without sharing anything, lights two fires, turns on Arya assassin mode, dies.-seriously, that’s the end of entire red priestess story line. We know nothing.
Yara and Dorne prince were totally cool with Sansa getting independence instead of them. Um, have you met Dorne and Iron Islands?
There’s more, but that’s why people are saying it was rushed. It was. We had a lot more screen time, a lot of beautiful visuals and exceptional music, and the story was absolutely 100% rushed compared to all the previous seven seasons.
trarecar,
Oh yeah because calling the writers names and acting like entitled children demanding petitions is definitely what constructive and civilised criticism means, the fact that you try to make yourself a victim when the majority of opinions are negative and any positive opinion is silenced on any other place that is not this site is pure comedy, try to have someone defend the show on reddit or on any other places and they will be downvoted and insulted to high heaven . But i assume irony is not something you particularly understand .
I agree with that. Love this site. And the one thing this series-books and show-has always been famous for, is healthy fan debates, theories and friendly disagreements.
I’ve never seen a fictional world more argued about than this one.
A testament to how fantastic the worldbuilding was I imagine. 🙂
This is not surprising. D&D would never make something like this up.
They’ve repeatedly said the major beats will be the same, and if the person sitting on the throne isn’t a major beat, I don’t know what is.
There was no chance they’d change this, and honestly the fact that D&D have never seemed too fond of Bran’s character made it even more unlikely that they’d choose to make him king if it was up to them.
It’s from George, and it really makes sense in a lot of ways. The problem is the show built up to it very poorly.
They could have made Bran a much more compelling character, but they elected not to do so.
To me it makes perfect sense (though I had not predicted it) that Bran should end up king. All the references to him being desireless, having no personal agenda any longer, are precisely what laid the groundwork for him being the ruler Westeros needs in order to start progressing beyond feudalism and hereditary monarchy. It’s not a process that can happen overnight and everybody live happily ever after.
Jeez, has no one here read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series? The people running the galaxy are basing all their major decisions on consultations with a simple man living in a shack on a beach with his cat. He has no agenda. His thinking is uncluttered by desire for control. He is wise. Bran is the Man in the Shack. The very fact that he was not groomed to play the Game is a compelling point in his favor. To take it one step further, Bran is the Buddha.
I also think that those who are saying that Bran foresaw all this and manipulated matters to make himself king are waaaaaay off-base. If Bran can see into the future at all – and I don’t agree that we’ve seen confirmation of this – it has only been very spotty. Even with the past, he did not learn how to direct where/when he is going before the previous 3ER was killed. I think it will take him years of mental self-discipline and practice to be able to send himself exactly to the intended historical crux point. The present is probably easier because he can use the eyes of the Weirnet.
I’m good with this piece at least of the endgame (the walkback of Jaime’s redemption arc, not so much, but I don’t expect to get everything I wanted). I trust GRRM to make it all make perfect sense eventually, via internal PoVs that screen media simply cannot deliver. (And no, I’m not at all interested in your cruel and gleeful ‘reminders’ that GRRM writes slowly, is old, obese, allegedly lazy, possibly unhealthy, motivated only by money, does other things with his life besides write TWoW 24/7 etc. You can go take that negativity elsewhere.)
Bran becoming king is loaded with hypocrisy. He was trained by Bloodraven, the most manipulative figure in the history of Targaryen-ruled Westeros. I’ll be surprised if Bran isn’t the embodiment of Bloodraven’s devious machinations once he leaves the cave in TWoW. It may even be his meddling that causes Dany’s downfall and Jon’s alienation, especially if there is a Blackfyre connection to fAegon’s mission.
There’s no way Bran’s whole tale could have been part of the show. It’s too cerebral. I’m glad we got “hold the door” but I believe that scene indicates more devious behavior to come. The 3ER’s CotF origins and bias will cause more chaos than peace in the books to come. But can GRRM convince us that a 10-13 yr-old boy is capable of such bizarre manipulations without being manipulated himself?
Please, GRRM, give us a platform to debate this shit. Otherwise, we’re just sniffing the asses of the Unsullied. We got an adaptation of an outline. Yay. The real story unfolds in the telling.
This makes no sense whatsoever. She won easily, and then the city surrendered.
Then she burned them. How does surrendering = choosing Cersei ? That’s completely nonsensical.
And to say they aren’t innocent is absurd. It’s hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children ! How are they guilty ? Just because they didn’t want to be conquered by a dragon queen and her Dothraki ?
And why are they ALL guilty ? People are individuals, collective punishment for “supporting Cersei” makes no sense. Most people in that city had no choice whatsoever. The kids she burned didn’t make some evil choice to choose Cersei.
And why is choosing Cersei some inherently evil choice ? They don’t know Dany. For all they know she’s worse than Cersei (and as it turns out, they’d be right in thinking that).
What Dany did is worse than anything Cersei ever did.
Furthermore, your entire argument is disproven by the following episode, where we see that Dany does see the population of KL as innocent.
She refers to them as innocent when speaking to Jon. She says she “liberated” the people of King’s Landing, and that she will keep liberating until men, women, and children are no longer suffering.
So she’s just completely delusional. It’s not that she thinks the people of KL are guilty of anything, she fully acknowledges them as innocents who don’t deserve to suffer.
She’s just too delusional to even comprehend that burning them and slaughtering the city is not liberation, and is worse suffering than anything they had under Cersei.
That’s how utterly delusional they made Dany’s character. And that’s why it’s horrific writing.
Jack Nabble,
I wasn’t talking about any other place, I was talking about here, but thanks for giving a great example of what I was talking about. 🙂
trarecar,
The thing Ian most concerned with is that why does dany have to die..
Iam not saying this as a dany fan but think about it .
Bran knows everything and he must know about dany and how she had risen and how she had saved millions and including him…
And if he had known this is how she is going to go …he could have warned her and helped her…
We all thought that he never cared about the kings and queens anymore and he simply lives in th past but the moment he says why do you think iam here ??? It became pretty clear he too played the game and he know all the moves that will make him and his sibling the winner..
Arya stark saying that she doesn’t need any allies..good thing she didn’t say the same thing when the season started…could have taken the NK all by herself..
The one who admires Nymeria so much that she didn’t share a single scene with dany whom the author himself compared to Nymeria..
Sansa Stark asks why her…now after all ended where it was it will make Sansa was right but the time when she asked there was nothing to make that question ..when the said person just helped you win the great war..
If only the stark kids helped dany the same way she helped them they could have achieved victory and had given a jon a life with someone he loved..
Instead all their actions were ungrateful and selfish…they made sure that jon and dany is overthrown and sidelined thus ending the Targs line for good..
Now come to tyrion…this so called brilliant mind on the westeros…he has nothing been a failure ever since he has met Dany…not one planning has been successful…
The most irritating thing is that they have stopped making dany having a mind and thinking of her own and made only dragonriding queen who knows nothing but saying dracarys..
She herself could have commanded and taken over westeros and could have been successful than trusting Tyrion..
When the party at Wintrrfell is going on, he being the hand of the queen must made sure that dany gets recognized for her part in the war of the dawn but he instead chose to play the drinking game…
Varys…oh this guy…he comes to know about Jon and switches just like that ..
Even chamelon changes it’s color slower than this guy..
He helps tywin by weakening dany by revealing the betrayal of Jorah..
Then he helps in killing tywin by letting tyrion go to his chamber..
Then he goes to dany..
Then he betrays her…and he is still the good guy..
He never releases Ned stark but releases tyrion and leads him to tywin chamber exact same moment…
What’s the death of Ned and tywin cause other than more chaos in westeros…
Cersei is making the people fear dany by speeding tales of How she is foreign invader…but as a master of whisperors he couldn’t help spread the news of Dany’s good actions in essos and how she has helped save the people of Westeros in the war of the dawn..
He remembers the little birds only when he knows about Jon..
Similarly tyrion remembers there is a secret tunnel in KL and Davos is a smuggler only in final episode..
Think about this…in the discussion scene before dany departs from Wintrrfell..
Tyrion the intelligent man in westeros come up with a plan that will make Davos smuggle Arya and Sandor into KL and they take out the cersei and mountain..
And varys spreads the news about the war of the dawn and how dany helped them..dany does a quick strike at the euron’ s fleet.and the remain armies take out the golden army..
That would have been team play and a victory but it would not been satisfied by because it’s what expected so we go and subvert the expectations..
Thus I place the blame on these 5 characters with what happened with dany…they are the ones who pushed dany more than cersei…
Nick20,
The thing that gets me everytime is the castle is there for her taking sitting at the top of the hill and she goes crossing street by street…it never makes any sense..
It’s so telling that we never get to have her POV when this is happening..
I have to say I would have found cersei blowing up KL rather than surrender more believable than what we got ..if dany does going to burn ateast make that believable…
I know people would bring the whole season 2 dialogue of her saying that she will burn cities down to grounds as foreshadowing….
Do you know who else wanted to kill cersei and entire KL…none other than Tyrion himself…but that foreshadowing never happened and he stayed as a good guy till the last scene .
He is so good that he even forgets that cersei sent bronn kill him and jamie..
Nymeria as one that Arya idolized, but we know she idolized Rhaenys, Visenya and their dragons as well. How everything ended I guess it made sense for Daenerys and Arya to never have a discussion, or even directly speak to one another, to prevent any kind of idea of bonding. On the other hand, would they being friendly for a bit make it impossible for Arya to later see that Daenerys went off her rocker? I was reeeeally looking forward to some interaction between the two and possibly even Daenerys taking Arya to meet her dragons. It’s one thing I’m a bit disappointed in not getting to see.
Clob,
It was one of the things Iam most disappointed with the season…Even if we put the whole Nymeria and visenya thing out .
We still have the lives of dany and Arya themselves…
Dany spent all her childhood running from one city to city and living of the streets and hiding for their lives..
I bet Arya could relate to that …
We see how dany understands Sansa very much and how she acknowledges what Sansa went through would have changed her because she herself faced similar things in her life …she used to be pana in others game just like Sansa was..
If the ladies were united and understandable of each suffering and strength…
They would have been deadly..but I guess that’s the story they never wanted to tell..
One more thing i like to add with all this talk about reviews..
We don’t have to look anywhere but here…I remember the times how the episode stream thread and episode recap thread will have more than 500 to 700 comments and even reaching 1000s at some time…
You don’t get to see that much comment in this season…that must itself tell that there was something wrong with the season..
GRRM didn’t confirm that this is his ending. He confirmed it’s an ending.
If it is, however, he knows how to get there without leaving any questions pending.
If he goes there indeed, then I fear he’s planning a much, much wider destruction of Westeros than the one we’ve seen on screen, that would necessitate that a person such as Bran becomes king. In this context, his reign would be symbolic and connected to the earth and balance of nature (he has confirmed in his interviews that he’s using symbolisms for the climatic change and the destruction of the environment), while all other characters will have lost credibility and trust.
And even then things would have to happen, e.g. that Jon, Sansa, Tyrion and whoever denounce any claims on the “throne”.
Taken that out of the equasion, this ending makes no sense. I can see Bran as ruler of the North (lord or king), but not of the entire Westeros because he doesn’t have the political connections.
What the show gave us as ending: three kingdoms, three different rulers. Take them and swap them. Jon or Sansa South, Bran North, Tyrion possibly at the Wall (makes better sense; Jon ending up at the Wall, even though I don’t dislike the idea, is no character progression, while all other characters have evolved as persons and have control of their lives).
Bran is connected to all the magical elements of the earth, he’s connected to heart trees and there are no heart trees South. If his reign is that much symbolic, it makes no sense to have him somewhere without weirwoods.
Also, if there is this magic element, it makes no sense to have three kingdoms, because Bran’s beneficial and healing ruling should spread to all kingdoms, otherwise what’s the point? I see a contradiction there the way the show solved the problem.
So, no, I think it wasn’t Martin’s solution in the end. I think they swapped persons for reasons they know themselves and perhaps we’ll never know. It has nothing to do with Martin’s bittersweet ending, it was all bitter.
And people have a right to protest and criticize. It’s public. The petition, though, is utter crap. Show some respect to the people that have worked in it to make it all happen.
Sorry if I’m coming a bit too strongly about this.
Dragonbringer,
I was somewhat confused by that as well. The episode streams had far FEWER people than normal.
I don’t chalk it up to the season being poorly received though. In fact, a lot of posters like to come to WOTW just to complain.
Mr Derp,
At first I thought it was because of leaks..
But the same thing happened with recaps as well…
I know many like to complaint but iam saying that because I myself wanted to stay away from all these rather than complain and I guess may would have had the same feeling..
Firannion,
I like how you draw that parallel to the man in the shed.
I posted it above but I must be really bad at contributing because it was soon washed over in the waves of discussions about fan reactions and opinions, but Bran as the ‘Fisher King’; more god than man might have been an inspiration for GRRM.
Here’s the link to that very thoughtful analysis and how it makes sense for Bran to become king in the end: https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/125401-the-winged-wolf-a-bran-stark-re-read-project-part-ii-asos-adwd/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-6823505
(But perhaps I’m not reading the room as apptly as I should by refering to westeros.org – which I never read btw, just this once 😉 )
Edit:
I went back and checked season 7’s open chat numbers. The differences aren’t quite as much as I thought, but more people participated in the open chats in season 7 than season 8, which I find strange.
The number of comments in each open thread:
Season 8:
Episode 1 – 416
Episode 2 – 289
Episode 3 – 658
Episode 4 – 549
Episode 5 – 620
Episode 6 – 503
Season 7:
Episode 1 – 611
Episode 2 – 441
Episode 3 – 561
Episode 4 – 556
Episode 5 – 675
Episode 6 – 556
Episode 7 – 700
Only episode 3 of season 8 had more comments than its season 7 counterpart.
What went down in 2014 might not be the same as in 2019 , we will have to see ……
The season 6 finale and penultimate episode each had over 1,000 comments. In fact, The Winds of Winter had nearly 1,200 comments.
Where did all those people go the last couple of seasons?
mau,
Honestly, the best possible scenario is that the invasion of the cave in the books reveals a completely different story (or only revealed in a Dream of Spring).
Going back to the weirwoodcave.. knowing what would happen ages in advance, Brynden persuades a young Stark (because of their ties with First Men, proximity, and political value) to come North of the Wall and act his apprentice (without ever having that true intention) for if anything ever would to happen to him (he has seen the future, he knows what’s going to happen and what NEEDS to be done.
And here comes the twist, knowing that Bran would grow restless and in naïvity ‘meet’ with the Night King and leading him there, before physically dieing, Brynden Rivers wargs into Bran.
Acting as Bran (who is completely changed as a person afterwards and never explains anything about what happened) the “3-eyed raven” manipulates the events North. Effectively putting everybody in place where they need to be to fight off the Night King at Winterfell (“You were exactly where you needed to be” – said Show!Bran).
In the pre/aftermath of the battle for Winterfell, ‘Bloodraven’ manipulates Samwell, Jon, Tyrion and Sans to sow friction eventually between Team Stark/Targ, leading to the inevidable implosion of Dany. And in that power vacuum – take the Throne in the body of Bran the Broken.
Note: Brynden was a Hand of the King in the shadows, always everywhere trying the best he could – for whatever the cost. Him warging Bran Stark – with clairvoyance of the future, could well be his masterplan to rule for years to come and Bran is just a casualty that needed to happen.
Plus, how epic a twist would that be? Everybody thinks the wheel has been broken, but in the shadows an ancient Targeryen is still pulling the strings. And who knows, eventually fly a dragon.. :O
#tinfoil.
Mr Derp,
I had a LOT more to say after the S6E9 & S6E10, two of the top episodes in the series for many, and I most definitely posted many more times in those threads than after any in S8. That’s probably true for a lot of the people that usually post a lot and swell the count. A lot of things I’d usually post about were also kind of off the table by the time we got to the final episodes, such as theorizing short and long term actions.
Didn’t they say they weren’t going to watch the show or post about it on their site after season 5 because it was going beyond the books?!
Mr Derp,
Exactly..it doesn’t surprise me becausefor many Series ended with season 6..
I think this reaction to the online stream and recap thread alone is a big tell that there was many not feeling the exact amount of enthusiasm in discussing the series..
It shows in series finale where we only have 500 comments…people have lost interest and IMO writing is one big factor that lead to this..
Season 4 and season 5 was the period you should have been in this fandom…it was epic at that time ..but not so much in season 7 and season 8…
Dragonbringer,
I know of at least one poster who left due to the increased negativity on this site, so it stands to reason that other posters did the same. If people had lost interest, the finale wouldn’t have been the most watched episode of the show.
Guys, fans have recently raised over £50,000 and counting for Emilia’s new charity and she made a very thankful response on her Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByFoDvGFXoB/
I just love her. She’s like the real life Dany (the good side of her anyway). When she started talking about changing the world at the end of the video I almost expected her to say that she was going to break the wheel.
Clob,
Yea, I think there’s probably something to this. There was a lot more to theorize about in previous seasons. The closer we got to the endgame, more theories got debunked.
Dragonbringer,
I think it says more about this site than the fandom. WOTW had a lot of spoiler news for S5 and S6. They gave us nothing for S8.
Nick20,
I see you didn’t read anything I said and didn’t saw episodes that were portrait else you wouldn’t have made that reply.
Yes they were innocent. But in Dany’s mind they weren’t. You can say that she think they were innocent, but the fact that she stated just before going into battle, when she talk the battleplans with Tyrion. She stated clearly that the people of Mereen were innocent because they chose their freedom, and she stated with her own words that the people of KL weren’t innocent. She utter that words, not me, I just repeat what Dany said to Tyrion just before going into battle.
The people of Mereen took their own freedom. the people of KL didn’t.
And right at that moment what happened just before she snapped, KL people were screaming:
WOMAN: Tell the queen to ring the bells.
MAN: Help us!
they were asking their queen Cersei to surrender to Dany to save their lives. They didn’t react to Cersei as the Tyrant, but as the savior against Dany.
So in Dany’s mind (not mine) Those people in KL weren’t innocent, they were guilty by keeping Cersei in power. And yes as you stated those people were hostages by Cersei. But how Dany sees it is, the people of Mereen were even more hostages and afraid, less free, and they chose to take their freedom with their own personal risk. They people of KL hide behind Cersei from Dany who is going to save them.
And yes she did liberate the city of KL by murdering them. They are free because they are dead. That’s the whole reason why Jon killed her, why Tyrion throw his pin at her, her way of freedom is death itself. She even admitted to Jon that everyone who doesn’t share her view of paradise need to die.
Dragonbringer,
She even utter it in 5×09 about Mereen, saying those innocents would have died for a great cause.
About Cersei, Cersei would never burn down the city with wildfire that doesn’t make any sense. The people of KL are making sure she stays there in her luxury seat. And it is even less a good reason for Dany turning evil. How does Cersei killing the people of KL making Dany a Tyrant? So that doesn’t make sense at all if they wanted to go to what GRRM wanted for the ending. Dany as the Tyrant.
Young Dragon,
That reason doesn’t work ..
Good or bad people will not just suddenly stop watching the series after years spending time in the fandom no matter how disappointing it was…..I know I did..
GoT has become a global phenomenon that the viewers are going to turn up around the world and watch it…
kevin1989,
One of the great failures of Tyrion varys and jon is how they failed to make the people of Westeros understand the real threat OF WW and how they were on the verge of Extinction…
How dany and her foriegn army provided them the help they needed to overcome the Threat..
Total PR failure by Tyrion and Varys ..
Undead Elephant,
Emilia is amazing 😀
I like this explanation what is happening with Dany, it’s almost the same as what I was thinking, only better worded:
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Daenerys-kill-the-citizens-of-Kings-Landing-after-the-surrender-instead-of-just-attacking-Cersei
kevin1989,
Well that’s the thing right we never get those lines so far in the 5 books that has been released .
Show me one single line from the books where she is like that or acts like she was born to rule 7 kingdoms ..
Cersei is someone who if she doesn’t get a thing she will make sure others will also not get it…
If she is going to die she will make sure that she will take all the people with her..
She will find happiness in that dany only gets to rule ashes..
And she definitely made sure that dany will be hated even if she loses by scaring people and using them as shields..
mau,
Iam not speaking about the Off season though where the stories would have made people speculate and kept interesting..
Iam talking about the day the episode airs…series finale is going to air and people doesn’t find it interesting enough to speculate about the ending ..
Keep in mind people also comment their reviews in the stream thread..
Undead Elephant,
That’s why she is My Queen..Now and Always..
Dragonbringer,
The off season killed the interest in this site. People moved on other places. Some of them are bigger than ever.
Dragonbringer,
Yes, that is exactly what they do. If people don’t like a show, most of them will stop watching. They certainly won’t watch it live, as they will have something better to do.
Guys, Martin said that Bran will become a Day King; kind of an opposite of the NK. The basterds made him an actual king…
Dragonbringer,
This is an interesting quote from Daenerys:
“Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.”
In here she reflects on what destruction and death her dragons can bring. She understands that if she unleashes them, she is likely to be a queen of ashes. Yet, she thinks – not incorrectly – that the dragons are the only way she can hold Meereen and take over Westeros. She makes a decision then, she’s blood of the dragon and she’s willing to accept the death and destruction her dragons are capable of unleashing. She’s owning her and their monstrosity.
Iul,
Where did Martin say this? I find it hard to believe, since Martin himself said there is no Night King in his books.
I’m definitely in the “Dany’s downfall was rushed” camp.
I wish they had a scene in episode 4 or 5 where Varys gets word from Meereen that Daario has been murdered and Slaver’s Bay has fallen back into slavery. That way, Dany could come to a realisation that in order to make lasting change, she would have to first get rid of the people loyal to the old system.
Another way they could have done it would be having Missandei and Rheagal killed in episode 5 as a last fuck-you from Cersei after Dany destroyed the iron fleet, scorpions and golden company, which would make Dany burn the city in a blind rage.
Or even just not have the people surrender at all.
But the way it was presented in the episode just didn’t make sense and I very much doubt that it will play out like this in the books (even thought she will still probably burn the city). I think that the script wanted us to believe that it was pre-planned. This is made clear by the line, “let it be fear”. She want to nuke KL as an example to the rest of Westeros to get in line and bend the knee, so that she can remove the widespread injustices of the unfair class system.
But on the other hand, Emilia said that it wasn’t premeditated, she played it as pure grief and anger. This is also supported by her loosing Jorah, Missandei and Rhaeal and Jon rejecting her. A solid explanation was not given either way.
I think that George will present her as a grey character in the book, burning KL because she believes she has no other choice. But in the episode, she did have a choice. The people surrendered, and she burnt them all anyway. A solid explanation for her reasoning was not given, just a sentence here and there with vague hints. But the whole ending hinges on Dany’s decision to burn King’s Landing, so a lot more time should have been spent exploring her motives. Dany doesn’t even feel like a POV character in this season. I just don’t believe that the same character that we have been following for these 71 episodes would have made the choice that she did without a very good reason. When it happened I didn’t ask myself “why did Dany burn King’s Landing?”. I asked myself “why did the writers MAKE Dany burn King’s Landing?” That is a failure of the writers in my view as it really didn’t feel in character to me. They didn’t carefully develop the character’s decline from point A to point Z. They went from A-Z in 2 episodes with very little explanation.
This is my only real problem with the season. It’s just a shame that the ending hinges on it so much.
And please stop using the Qarth line as an example people. She had 4 long seasons of character development in Slaver’s Bay after that, learning to become a better ruler.
Dragonbringer,
What we saw in 8×05 show us that what you said about Cersei is not true at all. Once Dany destroyed all scorpions all she though was keeping her child save. And as one of her brothers (forget which of the 2 said something about that), that she went this far is because of her child. I think it was jaime that the child is the reason she will not bow down.
Once the city surrendered Cersei did not do one single thing to harm them. Yes she doesn’t care if innocents will die if she can get to her enemies that way (WoW). But as we saw she will not turn into a mass murderer. Dany murdered in one single day more than Cersei and her father did in a life time.
Cersei’s powerful stance this season was nothing more than a farce to keep herself together, She already knew she was probably going to lose, her whole plan was the scorpions.
Danny,
Well the very fact she reflects on this shows that she is not mad..dragons have been used to take control of Westeros before …
Kindly find the quotes like Iam the queen and I was born to rule westeros…
I will break the wheel…I will answer injustice with justice …I will burn your cities to the ground ..where are my dragons..
Let me be very clear Iam not saying dany will not slaughter a city but i cant see it happening the same way it happened in the show…
When the red keep is clear in the view she takes out street by street burning children and women and people…that’s not her ..
In fact all her victories have been with very minimum amount of bloodshed..
My only issue here is that how other characters are getting away with what happened with dany ..like I said earlier the actions of those 5 characters is what caused most damage here..particularly Tyrion and Varys’ s complete and utter failure as advisors they didn’t help her one bit..
Take tyrion for example…Tyrion is so much vile and hateful in the books but he is not in the show ..varys is not a good person in the books like he is in the show..
there are difference in the books and show..
kevin1989,
Where did he say this? Source?
kevin1989,
Well she already did the damage when she used them shield and filled them in KL..
It’s the very thing that is disappointing that they are humanizing cersei of all people and tyrion and jamie still being in love with her after all she has done.. I guess being writers favourite helps a lot..
If she really care about her child she would have helped in the war of dawn instead of sitting it out ..would not have dared dany to come against her by killing Rhaegal and missandei in front of her…there was no reason to kill missandei yet she did and dared dany to attack…
Cersei and Dany are both mass murderers. Remember the Sept explosion?
Undead Elephant,
In season 6, she talked about returning Yunkai and Astapor “to the dirt.” She would have done it, too, if Tyrion didn’t talk her out of it.
Dragonbringer,
I forgot the books part, why do people think 99% of the character progression in this casa Dany going from liberator to evil need to happen in the first half of the saga is beyond me. It’s called progression. What we got is
step 1: Gaining a sense of power by the death of her brother, and her husband wanting to go to war for her, and her world view
step 2: Gaining dragons that gives her a sense that the gods help her on her quest to liberate the world of evil
Step 3: Getting her first defeat and life lesson in not trusting people. (Qarth) and learning about her destiny through visions, up her feeling of being right and her duty is liberate the world
Step 4: Liberate people who can’t defend themselve from evil man with an evil system (system is needed for her arc that word, it’s not just evil man it’s the system)
Step 5: Try to rule one of her freed cities under the influence of her world view, fail and succeed.
Step 6: losing that control (we are here now in the books)
What needs to come next is
Step 7: Losing control of herself psychically (vaes dothrak)
Step 8: Getting that freedom back, I think in the books this will not be herself doing but drogon, so the gods onces saved her again.
Step 9: Free the people of Mereen from the evil that tried to take control over her city, with the help of good advisors that keep you from burning the city down to ash. And learning about the prophecy being told about you, she is the princess that is promised, hey so her quest is her destiny and it need to be filled no matter what.
Step 10: Now off to westeros with the feeling that 1. You’re intentions result always in peace
2. Feeling the Iron throne is your destiny because it will free the world of evil (prophecy about the WW told by red priesters plus her house of the undying visions, plus quathe talking to her.
3. Feeling everything that stand in your way will be someone that bring the darkness, and you are the savior, so they need to go.
(I think book 6 will end here roughtly)
Step 11: Liberate the people of the WW, how the reaction of the north is in the book I don’t know so I will keep that as a maybe and is only adding up the fuel.
Step 12: Now liberating Westeros of Evil sitting in KL, the victory of the WW shows her that she is the one to bring the light into the world.
Step 13: Seeing the people already have chosen Griff to be king. (I think this will happen) And this will add the fuell plus I think we get a short romance with Jon in the books which also had the Aegon reveal. She will feel evil is all around her.
It’s a bit simple how I put it, but once GRRM also trimm the many characters and downgrade them to that many that were in book 1, I think we can have a lot of Dany chapters. We are already halfway her journey of going “tyrant” and I think next book we are there 80%. I think for the show it will flow better because we can have inner dialogue that is missing on screen, we can feel her change next book more then we saw on screen.
LatrineDiggerBrian,
https://m.ign.com/articles/2019/05/21/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-bookshow-ending-differences
“I don’t think Dan and Dave’s ending will be that different from my ending because of the conversations we did have. But they may be on certain secondary characters, there may be big differences.”
Danny,
+1
Dragonbringer,
True Dany is not Mad not at all. But I think the problem is more that D&D had whitewashed (is that the right word for it?) many characters. Tyrion and Dany for instance are both less good in the books. They have their very dark thoughts. I think D&D had omitted on purpose so we can have Dany feeling like a hero of the story. She fuck up a lot more in the books. Is more grey already in the books then she was till season 5.
So where GRRM will probably turn her into a Tyrant more slowly chapter by chapter, every chapter more dark thoughts and I think we will have a Dany at the end of book 6 that is 60% bad and 40% good. If she lands in the books we already feel like this is not good for westeros. But in the show she was portrait as a savior going to Westeros. the problem is D&D needed to make her decision more out of the blue. Because they were afraid if we saw Dany as something bad at the end of season 6 we would have stopped watching (but maybe they should have)
LatrineDiggerBrian,
His blog. It was even a post on this site.
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/1129931/Game-of-Thrones-finale-books-George-RR-Martin-end-differently-same-Winds-of-winter
And a while back he and D&D stated that the ending of the main characters are the same, but the way to that ending is different, and probably a lot about secondary and tertiary is different.
Dragonbringer,
I don’t think she went mad in the show, in fact I think they made it clear that she wasn’t mad. She was deliberately choosing to be a dragon because 1) she understood that at this point, she could only hope to rule by fear – at least in the beginning. She was not wrong, if given a choice between Jon/Aegon and her, people were going to choose him. For one, under the succession rules, if we are arguing that House Targaryen are the rightful rulers, then Jon/Aegon has the legitimate claim. Daenerys is his heir. From the perception of the people of Westeros, Daenerys is a foreigner with two foreign armies. Jon was born and raised in Westeros and he is part of House Stark, a house that has claims to Westeros for about 7,000+ more years than the Targaryens. Daenerys saw that her support would be limited, she had the strength to conquer the land but would need to submit her subjects, they wouldn’t just bow and bend the knee. Her strategy was sound in theory, she just didn’t truly understand the consequences of her actions. 2) She thought herself infallible. And that’s another major problem with her. She bought the kool-aid. And if you were in her shoes you would too, wouldn’t you? You walk into a pyre and stay there all night and come out of it alive with three creatures that had gone extinct long ago. You survived hardships you think others would not. You’ve grown up hearing about how your family is the rightful ruler of a land and how everything was taken from you unfairly by evil men. No wonder Daenerys thinks she’s is destined to conquer and save the world.
Daenerys did not go crazy, she just allowed her self delusion and instincts to take over. She chose and in her choosing, she also forced a choice upon her parallel character. In the end, they remained true to their essence – fire and blood, doing whatever was right, no matter what.
As for the other quotes, I would have to look up the books which I have at home and not nearby at the moment. It’s been a while since I last re read them.
Of course it was GRRM’s resolution to the story. Why would people think any different?
The problem with the final season is that they wrapped up so many major story lines in about 10 hours of programming, tops. Each plot point in S8 would have warranted its own season, if they had followed the pacing of the previous seasons. Each battle would have been the penultimate episode of the season, followed by a big revelation. Jaime and Cersei might have had their own. Jon and Daenerys. Sansa and Arya. The last 7 seasons were like Chinese water torture, and S8 was like getting a dumpster of ice water poured on you. Also, I had read that B&W had planned for the last season to be 13 episodes and HBO split it up into 2 seasons. Maybe it would have been paced differently if it had been one long season. It would have been more satisfying, I think, like we were getting something extra instead of being tortured with 2 truncated seasons.
Dragonbringer,
You’re right of course, Cersei should have. She’s smart but she should have saw that coming. I think what went on in her mind was: Dany will never let me live.
So she went all out, put all her cards on the table, tried to scare Dany to back down. And unfortunately for Cersei, Drogon wasn’t kept in close space for a long time, he grow larger and stronger then Rheagal. So the bolts could kill Rheagal but not Drogon.
As for humanizing, isn’t that what GoT always did. for me it’s better that she died as a vulnerable woman. As the prophecy stated, the younger queen that cast her down takes everything she hold dear. Dany took Cersei’s power.
Mr Derp,
You failed to see my point and the point D&D tried to make, I never said Cersei wasn’t a mass murderer. I stated like Tyrion stated that even if you combined Cersei’s and Tywin’s killing of their whole lives, Dany still outnumber it in a single day.
They are both wrong, but what Dany did is many times more wrong that what Cersei did. Saying that what Cersei did can be forgiven, is something I will never do. But at the end of the day, Dany had more to be forgiven for than Cersei ever did.
Isabelle_M,
I disagree. I think season 8 was much better paced than seasons 2, 3, 5, and 7.
mau,
Huh? Killed the site, people moved elsewhere; geesh not only do I have imaginary friends in RL I must have them on line (I beg to differ, there was a ton of people discussing, you among them
Danny,
One thing that made it clear that she wasn’t completely mad but still very strategic about it. She knew Jon had the love, she did not. Jon would win of her if the people knew his past. in episode 5 she was very angry at Jon for it. but more over, she was scared to lose the throne.
And in episode 6 it seems she felt liberated herself. Her fear for losing the throne was gone, no one will dare to appose her now. And she could talk more “sane” to Jon now.
I hope I worded it right.
Isabelle_M,
I think they should have gone with the horn of joramun in the show. And not having the beyond the wall episode. Yes it was beautiful episode but I think if they structured it so that season 7 were almost the same for the first 4 episodes, and have directly go to winterfel in episode 5 just take Jaime, LF demise etc. Having what was episode 8×01 to 7×06, Having jaimes trial and Having the wall going down in 7×06. season 7, 6 episodes. Having Jon learn the truth.
Season 8: Episode 1 what episode 2 was of season 8 + some WW drama. And Cersei drama. 8×02 and 8×03 Long night + part 1 of episode 4. And the rest the same what we already talked about. I don’t think more episodes were needed maybe less would have been better.
Does it really matter in the end though? Cersei killed hundreds, Dany killed thousands. It doesn’t make either one of them better or worse. It makes them both mass murderers. It’s fairly pointless to consider one better or worse than the other.
Reddit warriors lmao.
kevin1989,
The big diff you’re forgetting is that Damy isn’t riding a horse. She was riding a big ass fire spouting dragon. If you never saw anything else then rats, pidgeons and maybe a horse.. AND then this DRAGON shows up.. Whaddaya think is going on in their brains? “Oh hell yeah! Our liberator is here!”? Hell no. They’re pooping their guts out out of sheer fear..
Fake it till you make it.
Not unlike a certain elected official in the western hemisphere.
I am hoping WoW will set up the “Bran the Broken” story line better than the show-runners did. I found Bran becoming king very anti-climactic and a bit ridiculous, but I will hold out hope that GRRM will make more sense of such a resolution to the book series.
While we all wait for the release of WoW, I suggest checking out “The Last Kingdom” on Netflix as an replacement for Game of Thrones. There are no dragons, but the the story is compelling and the characters just as amazing.
I am looking forward to reading how Bran will advance as his are some of my favorite chapters in the books. But I am very surprised that IHW spilled the beans on this as I thought there was an agreement between HBO and GRRM that they would not disclose which pieces are in the books and which are D&D inventions. Hmmmmm
princessmara,
Hey – I was doing some genealogy research today and found one of my ancestors is Uhtred the Bold of Bamburgh (Uhtred of Last Kingdom is based on him)!!!! So excited – 😜
Someone (sorry, forgot who) posted this link in another thread. It is about book!Dany (and posted before ep5), and a good read, IMO. It is interesting to think how the showrunners have adapted her arc (having no POV, dreams etc) :
https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/
Like she did with the Tarlys (they had surrendered). Different scale, same logic.
That is terrific! How thrilling! I really enjoy the shows and books. Bernard Cornwell is one of my favourite authors. He also wrote the Sharpe series which was turned into a program starring a sexy, young Sean Bean. 👍🏻
We all should have known once they started heavyhandedly playing up the, “I can’t be a lord/etc” stuff. They love to lay it on thick before they pop their “surprise(s)”.
It’s one of the reasons I was kinda surprised Dany never got pregnant. I don’t understand the repeated bringing up of her being barren in S7, then to top it off what was the reasoning for having the conversation between Jon and Dany in S7 about Mirri Maz Duur not being a reliable source? Heavily foreshadowed Jon was going to put some of his own fire in her.
Iul,
What the hell are you even talking about, every comment of yours makes no sense, i think you’re just blatant trolling at this point !
In my dreams, Howland Reed takes Bran to The Isle of faces, where he connects with The Order of Green Men and perhaps CotF survivors. When Dany legitimized Gendry, I was sure that he would be the next king, since his father overthrew the Targs by conquest. With Tyrion as his Hand, it could work! Oh well…
Dragonbringer,
When the party at Wintrrfell is going on
I recently re-watched that episode, it’s the only one besides episode 2 that I’ve done that with but I just wanted to say Emilia blew me away here with her acting. I felt her alienation and indignation at the feast and then her longing followed by desperation in Jon’s chambers. I hope she wins Emmy this year. She’s become a great actress.
Bran? Bran?? That total cheese pudding?
Dragonbringer,
I agree and maybe there would have been more commenting if some of the events meant to be shocking were more thought provoking or speculation-inducing rather than just- Arya stab the NK (not who we thought but who cares cause-poof he gone. Red woman light some fires that helped for few moments then poof she gone. Bran sits in his chair saying a couple lines but nothing really magical or revealing like we assumed he would-I mean, they had to wrap it up and in such couldn’t leave that many loose ends but the way it got wrapped up was lackluster for those of us who simply wanted more payoff of what had come before. But that would have meant a full 10 episode season I guess 🙂
That’s the thing for me episode 2 is amazing, one of my top ten favourites and clearly has been downvoted by trolls to get such a low score (compared to other GOT episodes). I’ve been half tempted to create an account on IMBD and give the episodes 10/10 just to counter balance in a small way.
Young Dragon,
I was kidding. Of course he did not say this. There is no leader of the white walkers in the books. At least not yet.
If anyone believes that Bran’s journey leads to him being king, it is their opinion. He was as far away from ruling as anyone can be. They could not spoil in the TV show Brans storyline. For me, Bran’s
purpose was clear after season 6 and I haven’t see anyone having a more logical one for his character.
I don’t think it’s explicit as GRRM only told them two things about Bran (we know they spent days going through the rest of the story at their initial meeting) but they were the two big twists which were to come for Bran.
Yeah I read and understood that, which is why I wanted to be clear I wasn’t one of those people before giving my opinion.
Honestly, I’m confused by this. I’m sure you’ve been getting a lot of heated people arguing so I want to make it clear I genuinely don’t understand where you’re coming from here, but would like to. How is Bran’s insistence that he’s not fit to rule due to his state as the 3ER a counterpoint to him ruling on a larger level?
Maybe he turned it down because he knew he had to be king, but that opens a whole other can of worms about him knowing things and not telling anyone (including allowing Dany to burn King’s Landing). And then again, maybe it was a Dr. Strange “1 in 14 Million” where those things were the best possible outcome, but that wasn’t addressed at all.
I just can’t help but feel something was missing. Or was I the one missing something?
Mr Derp,
Of course it matters, why do you think we remember Hitler in our lives, but not the many mass shooters that happens in school in America.
Cersei maybe killed a couple of thousand by her hand, yes that is much, Dany if we believed Tyrion (You slaughtered a city), a clear sign she killed almost the whole city. She killed 100.000s. At the end of the day, Dany did 10x more harm to Westeros then Cersei ever have done.
Does this make Cersei a good person: No, she still as you said a mass murderer. But History will remember Daenerys as a Tyrant and Cersei a ruthless ruler.
And saying that the numbers don’t matter is also very strange, that means if you kill one person it’s ok for the next, because it weight the same. It doesn’t. Every person counts as a weight, the more you kill the worse you are.
Ser Oromis Locke,
You’re right, and Dany should have know that. It’s not the people’s fault. It’s her fault for not seeing why they fear her, and that she could turn to to her side if she would have played it right. But the people in Mereen didn’t fear her dragon, so she never learned people are afraid of her Dragons. In her mind, they should have acted with love like the people of Yunkaii.
What she should have done was park Drogon outside the city wall, going in with a horse. Let herself be protected by Jon, Grey worm etc. Take the lannisters prisoner (decide later what to do with them). Talk to the people that they will free them from Cersei. After that take her home back. Cercei has no where to run.
Looper,
Walder Frey: Everything is fine King Stark, king in the north. Let’s celebrate.
Walder Frey 3 hours later: You promise me he would marry my daughter.
See, not everything is always said what they want you to believe. Or did you think it was strange that Walder change his mind? Or maybe just like Bran he had a plan.
Arya snuffed them in the cold open to S7.
Thanks for this Luka! Also are we getting a recap of The Last Watch at all? I am LIVING for the café manager’s shout out to Tesco’s tiger loaf for her “wee toastie.” The tiger loaf at Tesco is one of my favourite things from their bakery. 😂😂😂
Anyways, it was sometime during or after reading AFfC that I speculated that the Iron Throne would be destroyed and that the Great Council would be enacted (I was hoping for a complete destruction of the monarchy but I do realise it’s asking too much too soon haha). I’m fine with Bran becoming King however I do wonder about the future of Westeros and the Great Council. I do envision a few civil wars to happen in the future.
Isaac: It’s definitely a nice parallel to Game of Thrones. Episodes and seasons come and go and the show has ended, but stories never die. Great experiences and memories of watching something and loving it and being involved in characters and storylines are things no one can take away from you.
How meta. We have the stories within the story, and then how the overall stories speak to and affect us as viewers. I love it.
While both are terrible, I do fail to see your logic here. One murdered thousands of innocents to get rid of only a few enemies who wanted her dead and to secure her own power (evil, I’m sure we all agree), but the other “slaughtered a city” (hundreds of thousands of innocents) either out of vengeance and grief, or worse, out of a desire to instil fear in a population she had just defeated and had no other reason to kill. What Dany did is much, much worse than what Dany did. Cersei was an evil woman, but Dany took it to another level in the end. I don’t know if simply saying they are both mass murderers means that you can’t compare who was worse between the two characters. The killing of thousands compared to the killing of hundreds of thousands isn’t a moot point. It’s relevant. What is also relevant is that Cersei had the means to destroy the city as there is wildfire buried beneath all of it. If she wanted to, she could have destroyed them all, but she didn’t. It doesn’t make her much, but it makes her better than Dany (to paraphrase Jon).
Like everyone here, I don’t doubt that Bran being king is straight from GRRM’s outline. There is no way D&D would go rogue and conclude the game if thrones with a different victor.
I do wish though that they had developed his character more since he went into that cave… or rather, since he came out of that cave, seeing as he was still Bran while he was learning with Bloodraven. Since season 6, it seems that they didn’t really know what to do with Bran and they only literally wheeled him out as a plot device when the story required it. His non-emotionality became unpleasant to the other characters, who we love (Meera’s dismissal, Bran’s odd recounting of Sansa’s wedding day misery), and so he acquired a slight negative tarnish. He wasn’t a character that we were all that invested in anymore because he had been robbed of his humanity, his screen time and his personality and it became pretty hard to root for him.
Him becoming king would have worked so much better if they had actually taken time to show Bran of old rising out of the flood of 3ER knowledge that had robbed him of his character. Perhaps that wouldn’t have worked with the greater point that this new king is effectively an emotionless, characterless, desireless walking (or um, not walking) memory of all of the past king’s and queen’s mistakes and evils… who knows. It just feels like a hollow ending in that regard. Bran, someone who has shown no regard for the feelings of those who cared about him and sacrificed everything for him, someone who seemed to manipulate the events that unfolded by insisting Sam told Jon the secret of his birth at that point, someone who seemed to know what needed to happen to secure his place on the throne, someone who was willing to let his honourable brother-cousin be sacrificed for his own power-grab… it feels more than hollow if I’m honest, I really don’t like that part of the ending.
Even weeks on, I’m still saddened by quite a lot from the ending and from the last series. I find the brutal negativity it is facing ludicrous and enormously insulting to D&D and the crew and cast who poured their lives into this show. I still love GOT and even though the last season (and season 7 to a certain extent), in my estimations, is rushed and nowhere near as good as the preceding seasons. I still enormously admire D&D for having the courage to take this enormous saga on and for then having the courage to end it when they ran out of source material. I do wish they had taken HBO up on their offer and just done more episodes to let everything breath. The last few seasons have felt like we were racing towards this end goal. It felt like characters were just moving chess pieces around to get to the end of the game, rather than us staying with those characters in those moments to explore the human condition as we have done in the past – a big example of this is the enormous build up to Jon’s parentage reveal and then not one single moment where we got to see how Jon felt about it, how it changed him internally or how it didn’t change how he felt about himself. So many, so many, unanswered questions. And this, for me, is the saddest part about season 8. Making seasons 7 and 8 full seasons might have done it. Or, a short season 9 might have concluded things better. Spend 6 or 5 episodes of season 8 on the AOTD threat and its aftermath (the political manoeuvring north with Sansa and Dany) and give Cersei something to do (it’s a tragedy we basically didn’t see her this season). And then spend a 6 or 5 episode season 9 on Dany’s downfall and the end of the game of thrones.
Oh well.
No. Dany did far more good than bad overall. She saved every single person in Westeros from the White Walkers with her dragons and army.
Cersei literally chose herself over every other person in Westeros when she chose not to help at the Dragonpit.
AnnOther,
But unlike King’s Landing, the Tarly’s refused to surrender.
I don’t recall any article on Watchers having over a thousand comments, usually anything over 500+ is very popular and I’ve been here for several years now. I’d say S8 was as popular or even busier than normal potentially due to the divisive ending.
Regarding the live episode articles my take was that people were concerned about spoilers considering episode 2 leaked and episode 4 there were major spoilers leaked before hand apparently. Not sure if the long night or bells leaked as I was not looking so perhaps compare those.
Yes Elio stopped following the show as he didn’t want to be spoilt for the books but Linda continued to watch it and posted reviews on her youtube channel which were largely very negative and almost trolling. She also very famously posted spoilers from the fifth season finale on twitter because she was upset that Stannis died at the hands of Brienne (she had seen the episode as she was working as a translator for HBO).
People have said here that as time goes by, season 8 will eventually grow on people, it had the opposite effect on me, however I’m not going to drag the show through dirt, I’m aware so many people worked so hard on it, but based on season 6, I KNOW D&D are capable or writing good material even when the show has surpassed the books (maybe not in case of Varys and Littlefinger since only Martin can write such sophisticated characters) but I think they mentally moved on, the series wasn’t over yet and they were already thinking of Confederate and Star wars, they were ready to move on, I only wish if that’s the case, they had left it to Bryan Cogman or somebody who cared more to finish it and to do it justice, to close all that questions that ended open ended.
However, I’ve made peace with it, it’s the journey that mattered not the conclusion
Jon Snowed,
Linda is just a bully, why George Martin continues to associate himself with them is beyond me.
Undead Elephant,
Yes she saved Westeros from the WW, not because she wanted to save her people from them, but because she helped Jon’s war, so now she need to help her war.
I mean look at how she reacted to Sansa etc in episode 4. And I can’t understand Jon at all there. That he insisted that they needed to help Dany on the throne because they are oblight to because Dany helped them defeat the WW.
No, If Dany wanted in fact to be the queen of Westeros and the queen of the people of Westeros. She did not help Jon with his war with the WW. No, what she did was her job as the rightful queen to protect her people. So that means Jon and the north didn’t have no obligation to Dany to fight her war. Because Dany didn’t fight the northern war, no she fought her own war in the north for her kingdoms.
And yes Dany did save Westeros from the WW, which was her job as a queen of Westeros. ( In fact Jon helped her with the war of the WW not the other way around, the job is of the queen or king and the rest obey.) but that doesn’t give her the right to kill a couple of 100.000 of people. And after that, it doesn’t matter that she saved the people of Westeros from the WW it matters what she did after that.
What Dany showed is that she is in fact a horrible queen. In Essos she destroyed a system without implementing another one (which in the books was even more horrible when people died by the hour by the bloody flux), people were starving, the young prayed on the old etc.
the WW treat which she should have acknowledge as her own war, which it was as the queen. The WW were going to harm her people, her kingdom, it’s her war. But no, she help Jon win his war. Didn’t Jon bend the knee last season to her, so now it’s her war, not his anymore. She lacks understanding the job of a queen.
And of course the whole KL debacle. She expected love, which something you should never do, you should have have satisfaction enough with the notion that you just saved the people, even if they don’t see that way. Look at Tyrion in season 2, even when the people called him the Demon monkey, he still tried his best to make their lives better, even when he didn’t get any recognition from them.
Jon Snowed,
Every episode has leaked from season 8. That helped with it. Many people stayed away because of that.
What the hell, and she didn’t get fired and got a fine from HBO. That’s breach of contract. And I don’t see why HBO wanted to give her a job anyway.
Stoneheart,
I don’t think the problem lies with they wanted to move on to the next project, they are very professional. I think more likely it has to do with them taking to much work onto themselves. They are producers do much work with that, they need to write at the same time the episodes which they did 4 out of 6 this season. And they directed the final. I think they did to many work themselves instead of delegate some.
And at the same time, people are complaining about stuff they didn’t understand the hard work needed to be done by the crew, which D&D take into notion. We wanted to have more WW scenes. But that means that the crew needed to do more with them, and that would have broken them, the constumes, make up etc is very much work with them. And also directors cut things, look at the long night, the script reads that Arya dropped from a pile of dead wights onto the NK. The end product didn’t have that, because it didn’t work with filming.
Because what Hitler did affected the entire world whereas a school shooter didn’t.
I mean, would you say that a school shooter is a better human being than Hitler was? Personally, I think it’s a moot point. It’s just two different types of evil manifesting themselves in different ways.
It doesn’t mean it’s ok to kill another person. That’s misinterpreting what I said. What I mean is that killing is an evil act, period. Obviously, killing thousands is worse than killing one, but I think at some point killing is an evil act no matter how many people you kill and there’s no point in figuring out some kind of grading scale on who’s better or worse. Once you kill, it’s evil.
Osama Bin Laden was responsible for killing thousands during 9/11, but wasn’t responsible for the millions of deaths that Hitler was. Does that somehow make Bin Laden a better person to you? It shouldn’t.
kevin1989,
They are professionals, they did give us the mind blowing previous seasons, but I just can’t help think that if they had done seasons 7 & 8 in 10 episodes, the series would have had more room to breath and it wouldn’t have seemed rushed. they wanted bigger episodes, if they had cut down on the magnitude of each of those episodes, it was possible to be done. personally I didn’t have a problem with many of the arcs that people complained about ( like jaime’s and Dany’s), but considering the ultimate conclusion, I think many of things that were set up during the entire show and had many people debating weren’t really addressed. and D&D did their jobs and were pros about it, however the mentality that they had for the first 6 seasons,IMO wasn’t present during the last 2 seasons.
Che,
I get what you’re saying, but let’s not get carried away and start rewriting history to act like Cersei wasn’t the worst kind of terrible.
I guess once you reach the point of killing hundreds of people it really doesn’t matter to me anymore if you should be considered better or worse than someone who kills thousands. It’s a special kind of evil either way.
Is Stalin better or worse than Hitler? Does it matter in the end?
Is Saddam Hussein better or worse than Mao Zedong? Does it matter in the end?
Etc…
And as a follow-up to this, some of the worst mass shootings in U.S. History ARE remembered here on a regular basis. I.E., the Columbine shooting.
History also remembers Jack the Ripper as one of the most evil English killers of all time, someone who was confirmed to have killed 5 people I believe. However, Harold Shipman was suspected of killing over 200 in England, but barely anyone remembers his name, even though he was convicted of killing 15.
Who we remember and who we don’t really has no correlation to anything, other than how juicy the story is to the press, and the public who eats it up.
Mr Derp,
Not a better person no, but less evil. In the end it’s not if you as a character (person) are a good person or not, it matters if your actions were good or evil in the end. And how severe those actions were. Dany did 10x more damage to the world then Cersei did. Yes Cersei is maybe a worse person, but dany in the end was the one who did the worst action of them all.
Both are evil indeed. But I think going back to GoT itself, I think it matters that Dany killed more people in a single day, in a couple of hours (Did it took that long even maybe it’s still an hour only) than Cersei did in her whole life that is about 40+ years. That say something.
kevin1989,
I sometimes wonder what other characters in this show would do if they had a dragon at their disposal. Jon was the only other one and he never wanted to burn people or felt the desire to abuse the power, but that fits in line with his character.
I can’t help but wonder what Cersei as well as others would’ve done if they had access to a dragon.
stoneheart,
I think 10 each is to much I think only 2 to 4 episodes extra were needed for season 7 and 8. And I even think they could have done it with one less. but more about that tonight when I have time to write it all. It has to do with missing 1 storyline in season 5 and 6, and having two aspect of the story missing that could have helped.
Mr Derp,
You’re right there, but still in the end, the people of KL were better off with Cersei. They had their jobs, like we did. And it seems food for a change.
You mean like the leftover food from the royal wedding that was meant for the common people, but Cersei ordered to be fed to the dogs instead? 🙂
Dany only saved Westeros from the White Walkers because she wanted Jon’s help? That’s ridiculous. She didn’t even need Jon’s help until she lost most of her forces (and a dragon, earlier) saving Westeros in the Battle of Winterfell. She could have easily taken out Cersei without Jon’s help before heading North, but she didn’t. As soon as she saw that the threat was real, she put the war with Cersei on hold and agreed to help.
And of course Jon agreed to help defeat Cersei after the White Walkers were defeated. He pledged to do so at the Dragonpit, so of course he was going to honour that pledge. And even if he hadn’t pledged that, he had bent the knee to Dany, which gives her the right to call the banners to war. Like Robert did to the other kingdoms during the Greyjoy Rebellion etc.
And I never said that saving Westeros excused her of burning King’s Landing. I was just pointing out that overall she did far more good for Westeros than bad. If Dany had gone back to Essos instead of Winterfell at the end of Season 7, there wouldn’t even have been a King’s Landing for her to destroy. Everyone would be a wight. So if you balance the lives she saved (the entire population of Westeros) against the lives she ended (population of King’s Landing), it’s clear that she did more good than bad. I’m not excusing her actions in King’s Landing. She made a huge mistake there. I’m just stating a numerical fact.
And say what you will about her actions, but Dany herself is not evil. Anyone that says she is clearly doesn’t understand the definition of evil. Joffrey was evil. Ramsay was evil. Euron was evil. They did the things they did for sadistic pleasure. Sure, Dany’s actions in King’s Landing were morally wrong, but she did the things she did because she honestly believed that they would make the world a better place. In the same way I don’t see Tywin as evil. His actions were also morally wrong but he didn’t do the things he did for sadistic pleasure. He did them to ensure the survival and legacy of his house.
kevin1989,
Out of ‘morbid curiousity’ I nipped over to westeros.org and watched Linda’s review of the finale episode. As expected, she had very little positive to say to about it. The same old crap and whinging one expects from her episode reviews! She really is a despicable person 🙁
As always, saying the final books will be better… That is if George ever finishes them!
I never knew that!
When I used to follow that site (before I found WoTW) I found Elio’s comments were not unreasonable and respected his wish not to participate in further video reviews. However, when Linda decided to do them alone, it was pretty obvious the only reason was to slag off the show runners and some of the actors – Cersei/Lena Heady especially!
I’m surprised HBO and more so GRRM still has anything to do with her!
I don’t see it like that: for me, they surrendered (since they were caught) but refused to bend the knee (stand for Dany, take her side). So she made an example for the others to fear if they wouldn’t embrace her cause and would prefer to be prisoners, ie just defeated. At least, that’s how I understood the scene (and Tarly’s saying she can’t send him to the wall). They surrendered to her power but refused to choose her as Queen. It is in this view that I see a parallel with KL (though, of course, the population is not soldiers and the numbers differ too). She doesn’t only want to win and conquer, she wants to be embraced and confirmed as the Chosen one.
Jon Snowed, the whole thing leaked, and we were desperately hoping episode 6 was a fake out because they had kept it too well under wraps. Nope.
That was the feud between her and Margery, that feud is gone. And I think Cersei is smart enough to use that now to her advances.
And still I think the people are more happy and better off, alive then death, but that’s just how I look at it.
Undead Elephant,
Didn’t you watch the show? In episode 2: I’m here to fight Jon’s war.
She utter that words. She is there for Jon. Not there for saving her own realm, no there for Jon. And Sansa looked right past the farce Dany was doing there.
And later in episode 4 she claimed, I and my Army helped you defeat the war and no you don’t want to help me.
It was not a deal off: I help the north with the WW and they need to help me with the Iron Throne. That’s not how this works. The seven Kingdoms is in her name, as she states many times, she is the queen. Meaning it’s her job to save those people and protect them, that means everyone helping her with the WW is in fact helping her to save the realm.
And yes she did good in WF, as I stated many times before, for me Dany was there Hero nr 1. Not Arya but Dany.
As for evil I have to disagree, for instance Stannis saved the NW (makes him good) but in the end he killed his daughter and other evil things. That makes him in my book evil.
Same with Dany. She is evil, that’s not an opinion but a fact if you look up the definition of evil. Somebody who deliberately killing 100.000s of people in a couple of hours, and later said that that was needed for her ideology and that she will liberate the whole world and everyone not following her world view needs to die. Yes in my book that’s the definition of evil. She’s in the books the biggest evil being, the most dangerous one.
Evil: Harmful or tending to harm.
Tell me was Dany harmful in 8×05: If yes she is evil, if she wasn’t harmful you’re right she is not evil.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/evil
She’s also immoral, you can’t say I’m wrong, but anyone murdering that many people in that short of a time for a ideology (I don’t even need to add that last part), is evil. You can even call her a terrorist because she use that action to inflict terror on the people to obey her and it’s political associated.
Black Raven,
You’re right, and it’s not for me that she dislike the show, not everyone liking the same. But it’s more her always being negative and transfer that to others. And attacking others if they don’t agree with her.
For me this site is much better, all the mods are very positive people. They say when they dislike something but always objective and always looking for the good that has happened. And so now and then a good joke is coming by.
AnnOther,
You understand it.
AnnOther,
And she could have played it much smarter. She could ask him who he thinks will sit on the Iron Throne at the end of the year. Her with 3 dragons or Cersei with only one weapon against her dragons, who Randyll just watched not good enough to kill her dragons. Let him now that when she finally sits on the IT, Randyll gets another chance to swear fealty to her. If not his family will be stripped of all titles. Then throw him into a cell.
Or worse once learning about Samwell say he will be lord of Horn Hill.
And I though just about one thing, Jon last season were constantly talking about “We have no time, the war with the death is the only thing matters.” Then he sailed to Eastwatch, taking a wight, going to KL, then going back to WF. I think the whole journey covers more then 6 weeks (Weren’t they on foot from White Harbor to WF)
But wouldn’t it be faster if they first just defeat Cersei and only need to go to WF then. I think that would have been faster then 6 weeks.
kevin1989,
Indeed, and why I dropped checking out westeros.org several years ago. There is no vitroil whatsoever from the people who run this site and the articles they write are first class and thought provoking. I have watched the series many times, but still missed the odd things which others in the group pick out and comment on… I put it down to my age as my hearing is not as good as it was 😉
As for the ‘Dynamic Duo’ over on westeros.org, I doubt if they would have been happy even if the TV show followed the book canon to the word? An impossible task of course. Not forgetting to mention GRRM procrastinating on finishing the final two novels!
Now back on something I talked about, one storyline that could have helped (which I think I understand the reason why it is in the books) is Young Griff storyline.
And 2 aspects that would have made the story easier if they had include that: 1 Dany’s visions. 2 horn of winter.
Now why: first start with the last because it is easiest to explain. The horn of winter if in fact it will be the reason the wall fall in the winter would have made it easier to make a reason to why the wall falls. Just make Euron the one doing it, had made him more interesting (or how it was used in the books). Or just had used the Bran-mark make it so the NK could destroy the wall like he did with the defenses of the cave.
Now going to dany’s visions. I think her vision could have helped by sending her directly to Jon snow, to fight the WW army. Like Stannis saw in the flame that that was needed to get on the throne, Dany could sense that through that vision. Which would have left much room in season 7 and 8.
Now to the last point: Young Griff Which is Aegon Targaryen the supposed to be death son of Rheagar, the question is, is this fake or not
Why I think he would have been important. many reasons:
1. It gives us the battle with Cersei we longed too, and I think he will win in the books against her. That means Dany can go directly to Jon. The downside of this are 2 things: 1 it would have ended Cersei much sooner in the story. And 2. We really wanted to have a war between Dany and Cersei. But another upside it would have had: It would have made Dorne story better and Varys character.
2. The reason why we also needed to have the war between Cersei and Dany in season 7 was of course finally seeing 2 parts of Westeros that still needed to be seen. Highgarden and Casterly Rock. This could have been through the eyes of Young griff. In season 6.
3. As stated it would have made Dorne better and Varys better.
But I think it would have helped the story a lot.
They could have shown his story in season 5 the following:
1. First with Tyrion: meet-up. Stonemen. Tyrion gone. It would have needed 15 minutes for this. (episode 2 and 3)
a. Episode 4 could have been Tyrion being taken prisoner by Jorah and their episode 5×04 scene moved to episode 5×05 and after 6 it could have been the same for Tyrion.
2. Him taking up arms like in the books and moving to westeros. Maybe 8 minutes.
It would have been a story of 23 to 30 minute of screentime, a short story compared to Jon and co.
(next post season 6 and beyond my thinking, before the post is too long to being send)
kevin1989,
What she said to Sansa in episode 2 about fighting Jon’s war was to make her see that she wasn’t manipulating him like Sansa suspected. It didn’t mean that she was ONLY doing it because of Jon. Quite the opposite; Dany has shown throughout the series that she wants to help people. That’s why she stayed in Meereen for years in order to end slavery when she could have headed straight for Westeros. Because she cared about the people living in slavery.
And I agree that as queen it was Dany’s duty to defeat the White Walkers. Dany clearly agreed with you too, because she agreed to fight them BEFORE Jon bent the knee to her. She agreed to fight them BEFORE he promised to help her defeat Cersei at the Dragonpit. But the point is that Jon did bend the knee to her and he did promise to help her take the throne after dealing with the White Walkers, so of course she expects him to keep this promise in episode 4. To be honest, Sansa and Arya were being ungrateful and dishonourable by suggesting that they shouldn’t help her after Jon had already agreed to do so. And because Jon had bent the knee to Dany, she had every right to expect their help. Just like every other lord and monarch in the series has every right to expect the help of their bannermen in battle. Dany expecting help from the North is like Robb Stark expecting help from the Umbers when he rebelled against the Lannisters, or Robert Baratheon expecting help from every other kingdom when Balon Greyjoy rebelled against him.
As for evil, I think we will have to agree to disagree as different people have different definitions of evil. When deciding if a character is good or evil I don’t look at their actions. I look at their intentions. For example, I don’t see Stannis as evil. Yes, he agreed to burn his daughter alive, but you have to ask yourself why he did that. He honestly believed that burning his daughter alive was the only way to win the battle, and winning the battle was the only way to win the throne, and winning the throne was the only way to properly prepare Westeros for the invasion of the White Walkers. So I don’t consider him an evil person. Were his deeds evil? That’s a different question. Every major character in the show has done “evil deeds” at one point or another but that doesn’t make them evil people. What matters is their intentions.
Was Theon evil when he took Winterfell? No, he had been experiencing an identity crisis his whole life and he thought that this was the only way that he could prove himself to his father. He was obviously very conflicted about it and tried as hard as he could to avoid casualties. His deeds may be considered evil but I don’t consider him an evil character, because his intentions are not evil. That is why I do not consider Dany, Theon or Stannis to be evil despite their “evil deeds”.
Look at Ramsay or Joffrey. They may have killed a lot less people than Dany. But their intentions were pure evil. That makes them evil characters, unlike Dany who does not have evil intentions. In fact she has good intentions, which means she is not an evil character in my book.
kevin1989,
cont.
Season 6:
First part of the season he could take some Westeros army like Stannis did in season 2. Having the season ended with his army taking KL or big enough to take on Cersei. I go with the last one because it would breathe Cersei’s ending of season 6 and it the most difficult to handle for season 7 so interesting for me.
Now Dorne: Season 5 could have been shorter then we saw in the books. Just like the books Trying to crown myrcella, but she dies at the end of season 5 (instead of injured like the books), and the season could have ended with Doran: Fire and blood.
Season 6 could have been their partnership with Young griff, and taking on highgarden and the rock. or something.
Jaime: Have his story more faster. I think he should have taken Riverrun much sooner in the show in season 5. In season 6 his Brienne Jaime romance (only thing is Brienne is in the north but just like the show give her a reason to go south).
Nothing forgetting for my changes for season 5 and 6.
Then season 7 could have been easier.
episode 1 could be setting up the tables. Having a scene with Dany on water like 3×01. (Maybe sailing past Valyria) she could have asked to drop it and she could have had a vision here about the WW.
Episode 2: Young griff taking the Iron Throne. Dany arriving in dragonstone, says she will go north, to take the throne she needs to get rid of the death. (having her believe in visions would have made the notion she could go mad even bigger)
Episode 3: Starks meet-up in WF. Ending episode with Dany arriving. Setting the table for the WW treat. Griff is getting to know the people they adore him.
Episode 4: The romance between Jon and Dany is being formed maybe enough time to explore it in many details. They fall in love. and they get news about Aegon being crowned. Sandor and Thoros and co are arriving in winterfell, that they will help against the WW.
Episode 5: We learn about the prince that was promised prophecy. Battle plans are formed against the WW and NK. Dany stated she is the PtWP. Some problems arise with her and Sansa. Sansa doesn’t want to give up the north. The wall comes down, but is seen through the eyes of Castle black. People are getting slaughtered there, Bran sees it happening with his flying bird power.
Episode 6: Setting up the battle against the death they are coming and need to be defeated. We see the death killing people and visit a camp just being murdered through the eyes of Ed fleeing to WW. People arriving in WF taking shelter. Griff is getting more powerful in the south he is being married with Arianne. People arive in WF for the showdown with the WW.
Episode 7. could have been like 8×02 was minus the Jon bowed to Dany part.
Episode 8: WW battle. End with the feeling the NK won
Episode 9: WW battle part 2. Now they have won.
Episode 10: What part 1 was of 8×04. Bowing of Jon to Dany, and Sam and Bran finding out about Jon’s true parentage, which had a sense of doom for the final season. We see a dark side of Dany coming out by how she words things. Sansa Arya, Bran and Sam take notice. the audience think, not that she is evil but feel Dany is going astray.
kevin1989,
season 8:
Episode 1. Revelation to Jon about his past. Making plans to go south to defeat Young Griff. But now we feel the Starks and Dany our heroes are going to destroy a peaceful King who for once is doing his Job right. Dany does not ask for the help of the people going south, she forced them and obbey them to go south to take this pretender of the throne. We see the soldiers being worn out and that Dany should have waited, they’re tired of the Long Night. People are moving south.
Episode 2: On the kings road Jon tells Dany the truth. Dany reacts that he should keep it to himself tell no one. (that part of episode 4). The whole ball of the truth will role and Tyrion finds out the truth. Tyrion feels Dany is becoming more darker, they don’t know what to do. Episode ends with them being close to dragon stone. But they are ambushed. Griff is not stupid and layed a trap in Dragonstone. Dany wins with her help of her dragon, but Missandei died. Griff could have had a much realistic Scorpion design on land. This will set her off like she did at the end of episode 8×04.
Episode 3: We see Dany decline into depression and madness, becoming paranoia Jon will take the throne from her, he is a pretender like Griff. Plans are made to take the city without harm, just like the aired version Dany could say the people are not innocent for following a pretender. And it’s her destiny, same as in 8×05. Dany takes Varys prisoner. Ends him like in the show. End the episode with, Aegon and Jon have love, she doesn’t then there will be fear. (ending of episode) we also see Griff taking the Cersei route with arming his city. Getting love from the people.
8×06. Same as 8×05 minus the clegane bowl. And Arya Sandor moment because that should have happened earlier.
8×07: Part 1 of the final. Ending with Dany’s death.
8×08: A new plan for Westeros. And ending like the show did plus Dany being burried.
This was just all for fun nothing serious. I like writing what I see in my mind about the show and books.
ygritte,
You two should change your usernames to “Trying very hard to reach using incredible and illogical facts to justify my hatred for the season”, it would fit you much better, i do have to say though that using comments on articles as examples of people being disinterested in season 8 when all sorts of charts showed that this was the most watched season of any tv show this year regardless of the debate of quality is amazingly hair reaching even for you, but then again nothing surprises me with this so called fandom .
Ygritte,
And i suppose it’s also somehow the show’s fault for making you read the leaks and ruining any surprise you could have, right ? I mean since you’re comparing comments on articles, why not also go there while you’re at it ?
kevin1989,
Dorne was also terrible in the books and every character part of that storyline wasn’t only dull, but were incredibly stupid. The best thing Martin can do is to axe the Dorne storyline like the show did.
Varys’s plan in the books never made sense to me. If his plan was to put Aegon on the throne, why would he give Viserys an army of 40,000 Dothraki and Aegon an army of only 10,000 mercenaries? Personally, I really enjoyed Varys in season 8. I particularly liked his scene with Tyrion regarding replacing Danerys with Jon. It was very well written and well acted.
Young Dragon,
For me I liked Young Griff very much in the books. The Dorne plot in the books is one of my favorite parts of the books. And I think it add fuel on why Dany will turn mad in the books, out of nowhere 2 characters having a better claim for the throne has emerge, both the sons of her brother. And also Martin needs to bring Dany directly to the north once arriving in Westeros, else there is no time to finish it in 2 books, she will probably arrive at the end of next book, and the last needs to be the defeat of the WW and taking the throne. I think young Griff is put in the books to explore unseen parts of Westeros that dany did in the show. Those things need to be done before the end of next book. Else the last book will be even more rushed than the last season of the show if he want to put season 7 and 8 storyline into the books.
And as I said I think in the books if young Griff sits on the throne, he will be shown as a good king, a king worthy of that throne a king that bring peace. That means that the heroes of the first books will be put in a dark light, and we don’t want them to succeed. Somehow I think that’s where GRRM is going, flipping the story.
kevin1989,
My problem with Young Griff is that he simply isn’t an interesting character to me. I know very little about him or his personality, so even if he were the best candidate for king, I wouldn’t want him to succeed because I relate more to Jon and Danerys. If Martin wants the reader to feel conflicted about Jon and Dany vs. Young Griff, he has a lot of work to do. I don’t think the story really needs him and he has only convoluted it.
Also, do you understand what Varys’s plan was in the books? I can’t seem to work it out.
Firannion,
This! Thanks, Firannion, for saying what I’ve been too lazy (or maybe busy and not sufficiently caught-up) to say!
If I’m not mistaken in their final thoughts on their S5E10 Elio & Linda said they considered not watching due to spoilers, but that isn’t why they stopped, it was just a thought they had prior to S5.
Elio stopped watching because they butchered S5, and they had zero faith with show-runners going forward. They were extremely disappointed with the show to the point it made it not worth watching. I haven’t seen the video in a while, so forgive me if I put words in their mouth, but from my memory they were extremely disappointed with not understanding the character motivations or the story. I remember specifically them discussing D&D not understanding what drives Stannis (who Elio even said he wasn’t even a huge Stannis the Mannis fan) in that same review. It was a huge issue to Elio, he didn’t bother the cutting on compressing, but felt they completely missed the point on some of the stories (ie Stannis).
I also could have sworn Elio, whether he watched it himself or just heard from Linda/other/etc., he wasn’t completely avoiding the show due to spoilers. Not sure that’s even possible in this day and age. He also edits the videos Linda was doing so at bare minimum he hear the episode synopsis.
Without getting into more modern politics a lot depends upon the eye of the beholder. If you asked the people of kings landing who was the tyrant I suspect they would say Dany. In a similar way if you asked the people of Iraq who was the bigger tyrant of Saddam or Bush/Blair I suspect it would be the latter two, after all they killed hundreds of thousands to liberate Iraq with their vision and if course steal the oil. History will be littered with such similar comparisons.
Of course we readers/watchers also know Dany was capable of kindness as well as mass murder so we are more conflicted by her actions to the extent we even supported it in Mereen.
Well said. And as a result, she did not conquer. She only died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlf09nVgWk
🎵”And though you came with sword held high
You did not conquer, only die.”🎶
– Conquistador (Procol Harum)
Young Dragon,
That’s why I think young griff will be very important. Varys is there since book 1, and his seems to be about Young Griff. I think they send Dany to the Dotkraki in the hope that they will not succeed. I mean Varys (book and show) put a hit on Dany, meaning that Dany was never the plan for Varys and Ilyrio. Else why share that information so that Robert could put a hit on her.
kevin1989,
I can’t post the second part of my comment so I will do that later on.
Luka getting scared af and defensive about his writing when Looper said an innocent little opinion of his own. He is definitely the angriest of the writers on this site though. I haven’t seen one article where he didnt jump onto a commenter for something.
You’re too attached bro, you cant be the creator and audience.
While I agree Daenerys had a duty to defend the North once it was her kingdom and it was also in her interest as well because the NK would be coming for her and her people eventually (just got to wait for those seas to freeze!), Jon did have an obligation to help Daenerys in her war for the Iron Throne because he pledged allegiance to her. As Undead Elephant explained, Jon is her vassal. However, there’s also Jon’s 707 scroll to Sansa in which he writes, “And if we survive this war, I have pledged our forces to Daenerys as the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”
Agree, I kind of respect Elio in that he made a decision to stop watching the show and since then he’s not commented on it. Linda though just feels like she is trolling and behaving like a spoilt brat because the show has moved ahead of the books. She consistently blows up when things happen that won’t in the books (like Brienne killing Stannis) or she does agree with them like Bran becoming king. I stopped watching her reviews in S6 when she criticised the Winds of Winter (which in my view is the best episode of the show).
I had no idea it had leaked although I enjoyed the finale and don’t see what the big issue was with it? I can sort of understand people criticising episode 4 (as it was like two episodes combined) and episode 5 if they didn’t see the Dany becoming a villain thing coming but episode six for me at least was largely very well done.
Regarding Young Griff at first I was quite excited by his plot line but now having seen the show I feel it’s quite clear he will be killed off in Winds of Winter, likely by Cersei or early in Dream by Dany. I don’t see him winning and defeating Cersei as that would be a major deviation from the show and the Valonquar stuff.
Adrianacandle,
You’re right there half, yes Jon did bow, but when he bow Sansa became warderness of the north under Dany’s rule, not Jon. And means that Sansa saying they should prospone should have been listened to by Dany. So you’re right they should have helped Dany but I think not that soon.
But still I have a problem with the tone Dany made. Saying it’s Jon’s war not her’s. Saying she helped them but in fact she also helped herself by not having a kingdom with no living citizens. etc.
And it’s made clear for me that Jon bowing to Dany made a lot of horrors happened. I think if they had planned that after the AOTD was defeated the north would have followed her.
Jon Snowed,
Volanqar could be Young Griff, there’s a theory on that he is the Volanqar. And it make sense Cersei will be defeated in WoW. Dany needs to go directly to Jon to finish the books in book 7, meaning there can’t be a Dany/Cersei show off in the books.
And Arianne is going to Marry Griff in book 6 for the Alliance with Dorne, probably high-garden too. I think the battles we got with Dany vs Cersei will be moved to Young Griff. And I have a 99% feeling Cersei will not survive WoW.
kevin1989,
Also having another Targ alive could really push Dany into the madness she needs to be in the end.
Also, Cersei/ Jaime’s storyline moves faster in the books than the show. Which I think will get his end point in WoW. Book 7 is all targ and Starks.
And also to think off it, it does make sense once Tommen is death and there is chaos in KL because of it, Griff will attack. I think the gates will be left open by Varys and there’s no defense for Cersei.
There’s a reason why the volanqar part was left out of the show, it could not happen in the show because the volanqar is not in the show, and only in the books.
kevin1989,
I still can’t add my comment I wanted to post, so I will do it shorter. I talked about Varys thinking Griff is a just ruler with a good heart. He could be playing another game but why tell it to a dead man standing if you’re going to lie about it. So I think he speaks the truth griff is good. Can go two ways, Griff is in fact evil without varys knowing. Or more likely he is in fact a just ruler.
Which makes it interesting if he sits on the throne in book 7 and Jon and Dany are going to cast him aside. in the show Dany changed from good to the villain of the story. What if we in the books sense that darkness already there at the end of Winds. Where in book 1 we wanted her too succeed, now we want her to fail. what if peace finally restored in KL and Dany and jon will be the result that it’s over. For me that’s more interesting than what the show got. Casting aside a villain to replace another villain.
kevin1989,
And I think the beautiful queen that cast Cersei down in the books is in fact Arianne.
And I really hope the books go that route, not another Red-herring where a whole storyline was only there to show us that part of Westeros. It needs to be part of the bigger scheme.
And I said that I think the books needs 2,5 books not 2 books, with books like Dance. So I think we get 3 books like Game of clash.
Whilst recognising and respecting that you make valid points we know the ending for the main characters will be the same as in the books and surely Cersei is a main character being a POV? Griff also isn’t a point of view and relies upon Jon Connington which makes me feel he’ll be a red herring like Quentyn is.
kevin1989,
Sansa was never the Warden of the North. Jon was King in the North, and when he bent his knee to Dany he became the Warden of the North.
Jon Snowed,
I think the ending of Cersei can be the same, only it will not happen in the last book. And the books has the volanqar part meaning she will die more cruesome in the books. And I think Cersei is a secondary character for GRRM, her first pov is in book 4 not the first 3. And not all pov are main characters. Theon and Yara for instance are also secondary characters still a mayor part of the story.
And also I think george will not drag Cersei’s character that long without doing anything significant her story is almost at the end. It’s possible of course that Cersei will win against Griff, but storywise it would be very bad in my book. the whole Varys character will fall short, his plan fail at first attempt. He can sneak into KL unnoticed, if he can’t open the gates unnoticed it will feel inconsistent.
Also Dany needs more paranoia for her to turn dark in the books, she already has visions of Griff: the mummer’s dragon. In that vision the common folk are cheering the mummer’s dragon. (people of KL cheering for Griff).
All the prohecy’s visions of the books already foreshadow Griff’s win. And Dany needs to fight him. Dance of dragons part 2.
Just look up the prohecy’s of Dany.
As for winds, what I think will happen is:
– Jaime will have his romance with Brienne, I’m wondering if they will defeat LSH or that Jaime will die by LSH hands, I think they will win. That will be the reason for the romance. I only wonder if Jaime will go back to Cersei after that like the show. If he is the volanqar then yes, if not then no.
– Cersei will battle the high septon like in the books. What I’m curious about is if in the books Cersei will in fact win this or that it will abruptly ended by Griff and co. One thing is clear that Varys created chaos at the end of Dance in KL. Cersei will become paranoia about tyrion. She will slip because of it, will she become ruthless or is she going to make mistakes because of it. Varys does it for a reason, to create an opening for Griff to enter. He knows Cersei, and storywise it doesn’t make sense if his plan fails.
– At the same time, Griff will gain allies. The stormlands, dorne, the reach.
– I think like the show Cersei will kill Margery that will kill Tommen, or her action will be the result of his death in another fashion. Once Tommen dies, I think Cersei will commit an act of violence killing innocence like in the show.
– that’s the reason why Griff/ or which one is the volonqar kills her. Making place for the just ruler of Westeros. End book 6.
https://www.quora.com/Will-Daenerys-fight-Young-Griff-at-the-end-of-ASOIAF-How-do-you-think-it-will-go-down
Undead Elephant,
You’re right, I looked it up. I was more under the impression that Sansa was it, because she somehow spoke for the northerners. And that Dany tried to pursued Sansa.
kevin1989,
I think Sansa probably was representing the Northern lords’ views because she has been dealing with them while Jon was on the AOTD defensive mission (Sansa’s views and the Northern lords’ views do solidly line up where Jon giving up his crown and Daenerys are concerned; had they known Jon had a better claim to the Iron Throne than Dany, they may have followed Sansa’s lead there too but I feel that is hard to know, given how they feel about Targaryens — I think it could go either way or be a mix of both). Still, Jon is ultimately the Warden of the North and he has the final say where military matters are concerned.
I’ve been sad about some of Jon this season (so sidelined, uncharacteristically passive at times), I was definitely heartbroken by Dany’s dark turn, but I was disappointed in some of Sansa’s political characterizations too (alienating Dany, somebody who’s come with everything she has to help defend her home, which contrasts Book Sansa’s “courtsey is a lady’s armour”; telling Jon’s secret and helping kick off that conflict). Still, Sansa gets some credit: she’s in tune with the Northern lords and she was 100% right their forces needed some time to recuperate. What’s the rush, Dany??? You got dragons! Dragons Cersei’s forces can’t access if they stay and heal up North! I think Dany could have definitely afforded some time to let everyone heal up before marching south — she easily took out the GC and Lannister forces with just one dragon. The Unsullied/Dothraki/Northern armies barely had to fight in order to get that surrender.
I think Dany pursued Sansa because she genuinely, truly wanted Jon’s family to like and support her — and then when Sansa brought up Northern independence, that instantly put a damper on the rapport they were starting to develop. I don’t know if Dany approached Sansa because of her sway with the Northern lords – maybe? But it seemed more an olive branch on a personal level, trying to connect with the family of her love.
Undead Elephant,
Something I always liked about Dany was her ability to turn a rough situation to her advantage and her willingness to put time and effort into that. She took time to learn the Dothraki’s ways and put effort into winning the people’s love. She made compromises in Meereen, forcing herself to swallow her moral disgust at some of their customs for the sake of peace. She really tried to understand their culture and how to rule it.
When Dany came to Westeros, these abilities were suddenly forgotten and she seemed to depend entirely upon a rightful claim, believing people will see her better than Cersei. Maybe this will be part of her book counterpart’s character progression? But I don’t think it was smoothly done in the show, it seemed abrupt and sudden. Perhaps it’s because we don’t get access to Dany’s thoughts in a visual medium? I remember Dany’s lines at near the end of ADWD, after her growing frustration in Meereen at having to accept terrible customs for the sake of peace:
I think thoughts like these can perhaps better guide Dany’s turn into the dark (sob) but on the show, it seemed like a lurch from the naval, like suddenly falling down a steep dip on a roller coaster. I couldn’t reconcile the Dany of 805 and 806 to even the Dany of 804. Too much, too soon.
But for all of my complaints about the writing, everything else — everything — was so spectacularly done, everybody brought their A-game.
Adrianacandle,
I agree that Dany felt very out of character in 805 and 806.
Compare Dany’s turn to Theon’s and Stannis’. When Theon decided to take Winterfell from the Starks, and when Stannis decided to burn his own daughter alive, it made sense to their characters. The viewers may not agree with what they did but they understood why they were doing it. It was true to their characters.
But Dany burning King’s Landing AFTER the people had surrendered is very out of character and just doesn’t make sense. It could have made sense to her character if the people (or even just Cersei) had refused to surrender, or if Rhaegal was killed during the KL attack and sent Dany into a blind rage. But the way that it happened in the episode (and Dany’s dictator speech in the finale) just paints Dany as a 100% black villain, which I doubt GRRM will do. I think she will still burn King’s Landing in the books, but she will have much more of a reason for it and she will be presented as a grey character.
While I agree it’s definitely out of character for Dany just to burn the people of King’s Landing after surrender, I hesitate to agree there’d be any good reason for her to do so. Even if it were out of blind rage, vengeance, or because the city refused to surrender, I don’t think that’d make Dany’s actions grey but still pretty black because she’s going after a mass of people who have (to her knowledge) committed no crime.
I agree with Dany’s individual executions – she was punishing them for individual actions they themselves are responsible for. The Tarlys, Varys, Mossador, her reaction to Viserys’s death- I think those are pretty justified.
The slave masters, I go back and forth on. It’s a good thing she’s seeking to end slavery and she is punishing the people who have treated the slaves so horrendously (the crucifixion of children) but she ended up executing at least one man who was against crucifying the slave children (“My father spoke out against crucifying those children. He decried it as a criminal act, but was overruled.”) This is where mass executions based on just a few attributes (such as title and status) can get tricky — this is what I’d classify as a grey action. I think Hizdahr zo Loraq’s father deserved punishment for owning slaves but not to the extent as the ones responsible for crucifying innocent children.
If GRRM does decide to go down the Burn King’s Landing route, it may be in line with, “Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories,” where he builds Dany up to that slowly. Dany really does believe — somehow — that purging the world with fire is the way to build a new world under her rule. This idea isn’t new and it might even borderline fall within the trope of a Well Intentioned Extremist — but I don’t know if that can make the action grey. Dany’s not having to choose between the lesser of two evils, she’s not saving any of the people she was once so devoted to protecting by killing them all so I’m not sure if GRRM can make this a grey action. I guess he could make her motivations more sympathetic? Or at least build a better bridge from “The blood of my enemies, not the blood of innocents” to “f*ck, burn the city down!” But I don’t think the mass killing of civilians can ever be seen as grey.
And it kind of shatters me. Dany was the character who sucked me into the books and show and during a very lonely time in my life too. I hope it goes down differently in the books. Dany may go dark but maybe not that dark, maybe not war criminal dark, Jon may kill a willing Dany to fulfill the Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa prophecy, I don’t know and I totally expect to be wrong about this.
But Dany burning King’s Landing AFTER the people had surrendered is very out of character and just doesn’t make sense. It could have made sense to her character if the people (or even just Cersei) had refused to surrender,
Dany is a monarch. She would not think of smallfolk ringing the bells as the “surrender of the city” because, to a monarch, only another monarch — in this case, Cersei — has the power to order surrender. (And, of course, Cersei would never surrender.) Indeed, it was the bells ringing in the city, but NOT in the Red Keep, that helped push Dany over the edge. The populace was NOT rising against Cersei, and they were not slaves, so, to Dany, they were responsible. (GW even says this to Davos and Jon.) All their ringing of bells said to her was that they wanted her assault to stop. She had completely forgotten (or rejected) Jorah’s early advice, that the smallfolk don’t care who sits on the throne. As Amanda Marcotte noted, Dany didn’t just want to rule, she wanted the love of the people she ruled. No one in King’s Landing has ever had a reason to love a monarch, and since they didn’t love her, she burned them for it.
“I guess he could make her motivations more sympathetic?”
Characters in the books tend to be morally darker than in the show. We know Jon will take Dany down, but I expect his motives will be FAR less pure than the perfect “save the world from a tyrant” reason Tyrion gave him in the show. (And we can see their fatal collision coming further away, due to their POV chapters.)
“And it kind of shatters me. Dany was the character who sucked me into the books and show and during a very lonely time in my life too.”
I’m sorry for your feelings of loss. One of the reasons humans make and enjoy art is for our feelings. If GRRM and D&D have you feeling this intensely, then they did their jobs well. I thought Dany going full Targ’ was very well done. There was no way the story was going to end with her ruling from the Iron Throne — her visions in the House of The Undying had told us that — and her going out with full Fire & Blood was well foreshadowed (at least to this watcher/reader).