Well, it wasn’t brilliant but it wasn’t terrible either. There were some satisfying character send-offs i thought, mixed with some very lovely imagery again. Didn’t the iron throne just happen to get caught in the crossfire of drogon’s temper tantrum? That’s what i thought anyway.
I’m going to miss the show though, it’s been such an integral part of our culture.
And now our watch has ended…
Never seen it, or read the books, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around a TV series based on an unfinished series of books (that are meant to be finished eventually, yes?) that just keeps going past the point the books have been written like it’s no big deal. It seems like such a weird choice, and I’m not surprised that it didn’t turn out well.
I tend to think people have agency. I don’t believe anyone is born to be anything, nor do I think we are made into anything. We make choices in life and our inclinations over time get reinforced, positively and negatively. We steer ourselves along a particular route, eventually making us what we are.
The GoT world, and ours, is pretty vicious to all women. As Tyrion pointed out, not everyone, perhaps even most, wouldn’t become a genocidal tyrant. Another good example is Stannis Baratheon. Overall a disagreeable guy, sure, but add a prophesy predicting he will be the savior of the world and he is willing to burn even his own daughter.
Martin isn’t kind to these types, and I think he is making a point. With Dany, it was a slow, very patient attempt to show the entire life cycle of such a person. Sadly, so many are seeing it as sloppy storytelling, mostly because we just insist on still believing in “the chosen one” is coming to fix all our ills. As I said before, thus the world we live in.
I feel quite certain that Bran was controlling the dragons at several points in the story. The behavior of the dragons at certain points became very lucid, especially when Jon was there.
Bran was the one that “broke the wheel” by melting the iron throne, and sending the potentially rampaging dragon away.
Grey Worm & Ghost didn’t die; even though scores of people were predicting/rooting for the death of both.
I’m okay with that,
Nope; the Night’s Watch rule was explicitly ‘no title. no marriage, no kids.’
Getting some action was frowned upon, but it didn’t technically break any rules.
That wasnt a wildling, it was a night’s watch deserter. But then military service has all kinds of loopholes in the rules against slavery.
This is the sequel I want. Pirate Arya.
There are good characters badly written, and there are evil characters who are well written. People tend to get good/evil mixed up with quality/shabby. A quality depiction of Dany going off the deep end, I would have liked to have seen that. Dany being bad, would have been good. But after having struggled with the problems of freeing slaves, she stopped having any nuance at all to her character. Its like the writers flipped a switch, and anyone who isnt a dragon, isnt unsullied or isnt one of her dothraki, deserves to die. Thats the kind of moral choice I expect from Cercei.
not a criticism just a footnote -
I’m always very careful to parse Riefenstahl’s visual and cinematic abilities from her enormous contribution to the Nazi propaganda machine.
Lest we forget and all.
I thought a good ending was every single person dies and goes beyond the north wall to be a zombie or whatever.
Then camera zooms in on an egg in a desert market and it can start all over again. The people should now have bright blue eyes.
You know, I don’t think it was all there in the open, and if anything fits in with how interviews after killing sprees go: “but (s)he was such a nice, helpful person, I can’t believe (s)he actually did that!” You could see especially in Episode 5 how she didn’t so much go mad as go postal, snapped when her history of suffering and being abused met the bitter reality of not getting the love she felt she deserved. Of being snubbed yet again.
In my view, the lead-up and her rampage were realistic: swallowing down all the rage because a queen has to be strong and gracious, and, and… fuck it, let those ungrateful wretches burn and feel my pain!
Yeah, I also thought why Targaryans usually burn their dead in Martin’s stories. Mayhaps some old thing out of Valyria. Maybe they tend to have comebacks of one kind or another.
(We still haven’t been told about the origin of the Night King, have we?)
Oh, I forgot about this completely.
ETA: interesting, you deleted your post. Guess that this will eat my response, too.
We might not know if the Night King was a fireproof dragonrider when he was alive.
I don’t remember whether Bran’s research at Magic Tree University went into that kind of detail.
And really, I agree with all the final plot points - I expect they are pencilled outline for Martin and if I think over the possible arc that happens, it can happen over a period of time.
They might as well have not ended the show right now, and let it be at season 6 or 7. Fans would be disappointed, but not left with a bad taste in the mouth (after a 2yr wait, no less)
Also, tell me please, at this point isnt is just the “Song of the Lone Wolves”? Wheres the ice and wheres the fire? The Starks rule the world afaik.
Only because Yara couldnt start with “I love you little brother” /s
That was my reading too. Basically the whole of Westeros is left (for now?) Stark controlled.
You’re right. The Stark kids (and me) first thought it was a wildling, because it probably would have also been totally unremarkable to summarily execute them too.
The story ended when there where no more Ice zombies, and no more Dany-in-charge (who was mostly written as the literal Personification of Fire, that people fell in love with, but when used in war could get out of human’s hands and destroy everything. A nice metaphorical arc, but they failed to nail it on the human scale at the end.)
Something I haven’t seen said, is how Bran has now essentially Hodored all of Westeros, by stage-managing destiny threads until he sits on top, with his chosen people around him all locked in to serve him.
Whether or not this was a “happy ending” for the non-Starks of the continent, now depends entirely on whether the Three-Eyed Raven is good or bad at heart.
Thanks for the link. It seems this show knows no limits when it comes to toying with the expectations and projections of all sorts of viewers!
These days the best way I’ve found to maximize enjoyment of film and TV is to temper expectations and remain open-minded to the story-tellers vision. The linked author obviously has a totally different approach…
“But I don’t think George R. R. Martin, or the showrunners, fully understood the kind of story they were telling.”
The argument could be made that from a certain point forward in the series Dany got to a point where no one told her no anymore. Or more specifically she got what she wanted or was given what she wanted…period end of story.
“How DARE you pull away from me Jon Snow. How DARE your sister not bend the knee to me.” Etc.
She has zero understanding of the customs of those from the north. No real knowledge that Jon while a Targaryen…was also a Stark and raised in the North. Romantic love between family members was not their way. And her attitude to him was “this is my way and what I want. Do it without question”.
