The Game of Thrones Thread (With Spoilers)

Rare footage from the new documentary: Origins of the Night King.

 

Was it my eyes, or did that spear in GOT not follow a parabolic path? Need a re-watch. Poor Dany.

 

The Night King's got quite the arm

 

While it was a sad to see Dany lose a child, from an overall fantasy war perspective, and ice dragon definitely makes things a lot more fun. This also basically kills the "Tyrion as Targaryaen" theory and we now have the Knight King as the third rider.

Thoroughly disappointed in how dense they have made Sansa and Arya - especially Arya. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I hope they just resolve that plot line however they are going to quickly so I don't have to watch dumb people being dumb.

Also surprised that not more of the Wight claiming party died. I was screaming when Tormund almost bit it because I love his character, but was actually disappointed that they didn't kill off a more popular or important character (dragon notwithstanding) than fire priest. Random Benjen save was random.

Things are certainly moving, but the amount of time warping and plot driving the characters instead of the other way around is getting harder to deal with. I guess when they decided on so few episodes to finish things up, this was an inevitability, but it feels like a small let down despite not quite being over yet.

 

Rather than a chronological order of things/events, I think GoT is better viewed at the characters' perspective of their respective events/stories (w/c are puzzled together in creating a whole).

 

True enough, and as far as the divergent story lines, it was easy to do that. But now that all the story lines are converging, it is really starting to stick out. I mean, a good portion of the episode was showing how long the trek north was (days?), but once stuff started to happen, it all happened in 10 minutes - almost real time. I loved the dragon air lift, but how long were they on that rock in the middle of the pond? Hours? Days? Gendry had to run to the wall, get a raven out, Dany had to receive said raven, then prep her dragons, fly north of the wall, and then some how find them while the white walker army literally just stared at them. I usually yell at people for expecting realistic things from fantasy, but all the time bending and teleporting armies is getting hard to take at face value.

 

It was almost too easy. I mean let him at least let him warm up and stretch for a little bit before hitting his first shot in centuries. I would have liked it better if Zombie Wun Wun showed up and did it.

 

I hope that will not be the case when Jon and Dany goes to bed.

 

I really did not like the expedited story telling in this episode, but for the sake of arguing other aspects of the episode, I'll give the show the benefit of the doubt and say they were stranded on that rock for 3-4 days. It takes Gendry most of the day to run back, it takes the raven 3 days to fly down to dragonstone, and it takes Dany a couple hours to fly back up (dragons be fast, yo) Also this: https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/6u75t3/lets_do_the_math_on_how_long_it_would_take_a/

How does the Night King get free access to walk up onto the frozen lake and use his cannon arm to effortlessly kill a dragon that's not flying straight at him? It took Bronn utilizing a massive ballista two tries to hit the larger Drogon on a direct patch towards him.

Jon and company recognize the white walkers on the cliff, why not instruct Dany once she's landed to go set them ablaze? As powerful as the night king is, there's no way he's evading 3 dragons worth of fire.

If Beric and Thoros can wield magical fire swords, why don't they use them to keep warm while on the rock? Thoros wouldn't freeze to death if he was kept warm by two flaming swords flanking him.

If the wights can't swim or walk underwater, how did they manage to chain viserion up? It's not like they would drown in the water-- they're already dead.

 

These undead are great forgers of big chains.

 

Nite Pimp is just so evil. Bad boy.

 

Also the speed of Gendry's Iron Man followed by the supersonic raven and Dany's dragons stretched credibility somewhat...

 

Assuming the map of Ice and Fire is based on actual United Kingdom, then we're talking a total time of a couple days for gendry to run back, raven to fly down, and dany to fly back up. It seemed to have been a a matter of 1-2 days that Jon and company waited on that rock.

It seems somewhat plausible, but I still question it.


One thing I didn't bring up in my earlier post: Jon is very aware that Thoros will turn into a wight after he died, and instructs his body to be burned. He's aware that people who die north of the wall turn into wights. Why, instead of venturing on to find an entire wight army to capture one, didn't he just wait for the guy who got killed by zombie polar bear to turn into a wight, and capture him? That's a completely safer and more sane option. In fact, he wouldn't even have to wait, he could just get the guy once he died and start making his way back to Eastwatch, and have him turn there. Back in an earlier season, he had to fend off a wight after he was brought back to Black Castle upon dying north of the wall.

It also makes more sense for The Night King to throw his magic javelin straight into the stationary Drogon right in front of him instead of the much further away and flying Viserion. We'll just chalk that up to him being cocky, I guess. With an arm like that, who wouldn't be cocky?!

 

There was a lot that bugged me about this episode... most has already been mentioned here. One of the things I just can't get past is the ice spear just demolishing the dragon like that. In some fantasy lore Dragon scale armor is some bada** armor. For a fancy icicle hurled by arm to just rip that to shreds bothers me. Also the dead army just happening to have some massive chains just laying around that far north... yea ok.


I did enjoy the episode though.