$1 says the books will have a much more convincing knot of motives for the same outcome: the remaining lords not being OK being ruled by one person who is a targaryen and a stark and leads a large loyal army of veterans and who was so easily led by that particular woman, when everyone else is so weak, etc. – all while not realizing that Bran is God Emperor of Dune, etc.
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Dany was always a villain. She burned people and crucified people and latched onto any justification that made it seem to be for a righteous cause. We saw, laid out plainly over all the seasons, how an evil tyrant comes to be. We saw someone slowly convincing themselves that they are the savior of the world and that anything they do is justified, and anyone who gets in their way should be crushed.
People cheered her on, and are still unhappy she failed. Thus, the world is the way it is, and will continue to be so.
… and I think Bran melted the iron throne. Bran sent the dragon away, and quite possibly engineered the outcome completely, quietly influencing things toward that end. Why else did he come all that way? What appears to be randomly convenient makes much more sense if you don’t see him sitting there idly doing nothing the whole season.
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Look, man, here’s what’s going to happen. The next book will come out in a couple of years, it’ll have significant differences from the TV show, and at that point, once the “real” source material exists, there’ll be a sudden surge of pressure just to create “special edition” seasons with the same cast. It’ll be gross and horrible and amazing and I can’t rightly say they won’t end up doing it for the kilometer-high wall of money it would generate.
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Long live King Bran the Smug and Useless, First of His Name, King of the Andals, Protector of the Realm, such as it is. And was that the shortest winter on record?
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Fantasize about Hodor and Lady Lyanna Mormont hooking up in the afterlife.
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SSFW
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I think I understand what they were trying to do with Bran as king (the monarchy and throne don’t matter as much as before), but it still felt like the story didn’t earn it. Suddenly the series’ most passive, inscrutable character who refuses to tell the full story to an audience that demands it becomes the monar… oh no, all hail King George RR Martin!
On a related note, I did like Sam Tarly’s “Theodoric of York” bit. Davos taking up the title of Ser Grammar Nazi from his former boss Stannis was also amusing.
Really, the ending was … ok. Definitely rushed and a bit sloppy, though. The last season could have done with a few more episodes, but I understand that they blew the budget on the two big battle episodes. And endings are always difficult to pull of, what with the temptation for fan service.
In general I agree with this article, written before the last episode aired:
That’s not me calling for a re-do like the spoiled fanbois, but pointing out that a satisfying unhappy ending that fit with this miserable and brutal place was possible. We were paying attention, but the story still had a relatively happy ending.
That’s one way for Martin to never wrap up his story.
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One of the plot points of this season we were supposed to accept was “Tyrion Keeps Making Mistakes.” Tyrion realizing Danaerys was a monster so late is just another example of his mistakes and his unworthiness of being a Hand.
The Unsullied were (all?) going to Naath. But the Dothraki? Theres a lot of blood riders who have no allegiance to anyone, who dont speak the local language, who aren’t aware of the local custom of not stealing and pillaging everything in sight. (We’ll leave alone that all Dothraki cavalry were extinguished in the battle of Winterfell.)
Also, Jon was supposed to “go back to Castle Black and The Night’s Watch.” Immediately leaving Castle Black to go north with the wildlings is just as derelict as if he left Castle Black to return to Winterfell. (I guess one could claim that Night’s Watch men went north all the time on sorties, but he’s leaving with wildlings, abandoning the Watch.) Plus, he’s inevitably going to be acclaimed as a new Mance Raydar/King-Beyond-The-Walls. Sure, he won’t use his power to attack the south, but joining the Night’s Watch is supposed to be a punitive limitation on political power, not an advancement.
Arya’s westward journey would’ve been more acceptable if, somehow, they’d had her interact with other naval characters in the story (eg, Davos or a Greyjoy).
The mere suggestion, by Samwell, of some rudimentary form of democracy was played off for comic relief. But it does address the major flaw in Danaerys’ nebulous goal of “making things better” and “breaking the wheel.” Those goals are meaningless, even to her (and much more so to her eventual successor). It merely devolves to “whatever I think is right”, which is clearly a terrible form of government. It seems weird no one of the “smart” people ever realizes this. Varys? Tyrion? Davos? Bran himself? I would think that, in later episodes, Bran the WIse will be instituting some sort of baby steps towards a parliament, a la the Magna Carta.
And, OK, Tyrion suggests this fancy, new system of “picking a leader at the dragon pit” instead of by hereditary succession. But, really, how could that ever work? If someone is an omnipotent king for 30 years and dies, all his/her descendants are going to be infiltrated into every institution of the monarchy-- and every one of them is just going to give up their claim (and their power and their wealth) without a fight? (Also, I can’t think of anything more unhealthy, that would more inspire a cult of personality, than having an autocrat who is literally god-like. Just what sort of transition of power can there be from that? Unless, as before, Bran’s grand design were to dismantle the monarchist system from the inside, so that no one ever again has such ultimate power.)
(Personally, one question I’ve never seen asked, let alone answered is: since Jon has Targaryen blood and, like Dany, has natural association with dragons, does he also have her fire-resistance? I was sure they were going to test that when Drogon melted the Iron Throne.) Uh, the other one is: whats with this high-explosive dragonfire? Even if you say “Well, we’ve never seen it before because only fully mature dragons attain it”-- it still doesnt explain Harrenhall, which was defeated by dragonfire melting (and not fucking-blowing-apart) all the numerous castle towers. Not to mention, why doesnt Undead Viserion use his ice-fire to blow apart Winterfell? Remember that: Viserion leveled The Wall.
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I have zero doubt GRRM coyly gave D&D some inkling of ideas on where to bring season 7 & 8 and figured “If folks love it, I use it…if they hate it I go a different direction…win/win!”
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Yeah I was thinking bout Bran too, you talk about how choice it was for Sansa to tell Tyrion and what she knew she was stirring up, well, also Bran.
Danaerys was always down for some slaughter, and was always talked out of it by folk she trusted, like Selmy and Mormont. So why couldn’t Tyrion and Jon talk her out of the last one? She couldn’t trust them, “Let it be fear then.” I think if Jon never gets Bran’s memo, he never stops the sweet, mollifying, steady supply of bone, and she never ignores the bells. And then we never get King Bran.
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Well, yeah, in theory, presuming he has the ability to do so. Which doesn’t seem to be the case, unfortunately.
But it still won’t have an ending, or anything close to it. Martin is never going to finish these books, so at best he’ll get them to the point in the story where Dany comes to Westeros and we actually see the first WW, but he has a dozen plot threads that are keeping him from even beginning the last phase of the story as a whole. Griff! Dorne! Lady Stoneheart! Mance & Ramsay! Euron! So much stuff that he’s thrown out there aside from the central story that was in the show, and no indication that he can begin to tie it together to even begin to bring the arc to a close.
God bless GRRM, but this is almost certainly the only ending we’re going to get out of the story.
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Yeah. I’ll give him one more book so I can get some of the background details, but that’ll likely be it for me.
My beefs (mostly for GRR at this point should he need a hand):
- If major characters are going to survive what’s basically a rout at Winterfell - make it mean something (other than write obits about their one-night stands, or just show up later unscathed).
- Speaking of being unscathed - shouldn’t more people have serious PTSD after facing the army of undead? This alone can be used as a plot point to drive character decisions.
- If Arya is fated to kill the Night King give her a means to do so (vs apparating from thin air). Many people posited the idea of her taking the face of a walker to get close, but she also needs specific advice from someone on how to kill the night king and what that would do to his army. Bran could have been a bit more explicit here. Hell - even one of the Children of the Forest could pitch in.
- Do the math. If all the Dothraki and Unsullied died at Winterfell there really isn’t an army to invade Kings Landing. Would have been more realistic to lose Winterfell and retreat (on a hot day to slow the white walkers down lol ), regroup somewhere like The Twins, join forces with the rest of the Armies of Westeros and make a final stand. Dany can still go bad (but a bit more gradually), treachery and intrigue can occur, heroes can fulfill their mission or die trying, etc etc
Whew! I needed to get that off my chest.
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I keep thinking about the last two seasons of Battlestar_Galactica(2004). A similar sense of, “whocares, fuckit, can we just end the damn thing already!?”.
I would add Lost to this list, but that show never really had a strong story arc to begin with.
By last night, I cared about who would be king of westeros about as much as I cared who was actually a cylon. It just didnt matter after a while.
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I never figured you to be such an optimist, dear sir!
Sorry, ser. Gotta go with the times and whatnot.
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It does seem to set up a situation not unlike the Holy Roman Empire more than anything else, where the seven historical Electors and many of the lesser lords within the HRE still did as they pleased. It took Napoleon to finally kick the supports out from under that rickety old system.
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Do the Unsullied reproduce asexually? Where the hell were they when the undead were wandering the halls of Winterfell? For that matter the Dothraki sure came out a lot better than you would have expected had you watched the battle of Winterfell. Was the Night King taking prisoners? Or maybe it was so dark out that the Dothraki never actually fought the army of the dead and instead got lost on the way to the battle when their spell of “flame sword” went out and never actually fought. All the yelling was just them freaking out because they lost their light and were afraid of the dark.
All in all the finale put a neat little bow over everything just so long as you don’t stop and think about it at all.
I had to wonder when Sansa declared the north Independent that Yara didn’t go “Wait, we can do that?”
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I do remember, in the books, the dragons’ hunger, and their happiness to snack on humans was a bigger and bigger issue as the dragons got larger. Clumsy but apt metaphor for leaders who fight, initially just for survival, then gradually get insatiably hungry for power and blood.
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Dany’s brother Viserys was Targaryen, but couldn’t take the heat.
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and so my watch is done.
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