Game of Thrones: Who lives, who dies? [SPOILERS]

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The issue here is one of degrees.
Daenerys has one of two alternatives in the last episode:

A) Get the capital intact, basically for free, since they just surrendered
B) Torch it for the lulz, so what is going to be your kingdom half an hour from now starts with no capital and will go into a colossal multi-decades deficit just to rebuild it

IMO, you don't need to be Spock to pick A. In fact, you need to be a completely deranged psychopath to pick B. Any other personality will just default to A as a matter of fact.

Now if they had built Daenerys as a deranged pscyho since season 1 then yeah, I could see it. But they showed her as a competent leader. And even a barely decent one would pick A every day of the week.

Same goes for most of the latest episodes and most of the characters. They have an obvious win-win solution, everyone knows (and talks!) about it, but no one of them picks it for... reasons.

If you need all your main characters to start behaving like dumbasses in order to keep the tension, you should have a long hard think about whether you overextended your plot lines...

Yeah A or B, black or white, good or evil, little miss sensible or total deranged psycho. On a show whose whole schtick has been moral relativism (with multiple povs) since day one I'm not really seeing it.
 
Had a check on the casting list for the last episode, and there may be some interesting contributions:

Episode cast overview:
Peter DinklagePeter Dinklage...Tyrion Lannister
Emilia ClarkeEmilia Clarke...Daenerys Targaryen
Kit HaringtonKit Harington...Jon Snow
Sophie TurnerSophie Turner...Sansa Stark
Maisie WilliamsMaisie Williams...Arya Stark
Liam CunninghamLiam Cunningham...Davos Seaworth
John BradleyJohn Bradley...Samwell Tarly
Isaac Hempstead WrightIsaac Hempstead Wright...Bran Stark
Gwendoline ChristieGwendoline Christie...Brienne of Tarth
Jacob AndersonJacob Anderson...Grey Worm
Hannah MurrayHannah Murray...Gilly
Jerome FlynnJerome Flynn...Bronn
Joe DempsieJoe Dempsie...Gendry
King Davos FTW!
 
Now if they had built Daenerys as a deranged pscyho since season 1 then yeah, I could see it. But they showed her as a competent leader. And even a barely decent one would pick A every day of the week.

They've shown her as an inspiring leader that relies heavily on her advisors... something she's just about run out of, at least ones she's willing to trust. And who's prone to committing fiery mass murder against people she thinks deserve it. And who tends to dig her heels in and demand to be respected rather than to do anything she regards as humiliating.

No, it wasn't a smart move. But if Daenerys always did the smart thing, she wouldn't have walked into a fire because she thought she could bring the dragons back.

Same goes for most of the latest episodes and most of the characters. They have an obvious win-win solution, everyone knows (and talks!) about it, but no one of them picks it for... reasons.

If you meant "why don't we besiege the city?", then the reason was that that wouldn't work once it turned out the city would be able to resupply by sea.

If you mean "why don't they just get married and rule together?", then the reason was that Jon won't do that because he's skeeved out about her being his aunt, and pushing down his feelings and doing something distasteful for the greater good is the precisely the sort of thing that Jon never does, and Daenerys won't do that because he's got the stronger claim and she feels like it'd be signing away the thing she's spent her whole life striving towards just when it was within her reach. Again, this is not them doing the smart thing, but it is them acting like they always do.

And you know what? I really like this. It's good tragedy. The exact things that made them heroic and made us like them - his idealism, her determination - is screwing them over now.
 
Yeah A or B, black or white, good or evil, little miss sensible or total deranged psycho. On a show whose whole schtick has been moral relativism (with multiple povs) since day one I'm not really seeing it.

I'm not trying to convince anyone here. But it's not being "good" or "evil", it's "what's convenient for me". In fact this is one of the reasons I dislike this so much: she blatantly goes against her own interest because the writers have to frame her as "evil" so as to setup the conflict for the last episode. I find it lame. YMMV.

No, it wasn't a smart move. But if Daenerys always did the smart thing, she wouldn't have walked into a fire because she thought she could bring the dragons back.

Eh. As I said, it's a matter of degrees. I can see a misstep. This one is more like "a split personality suddenly appears".

Maybe I project too much. But when I see a show / read a book / etc. and I find myself thinking "ok if I was in place of character <X> I would never ever do this because it's fucking idiotic" my enjoyment tends to sharply drop to zero.
 
Maybe I project too much. But when I see a show / read a book / etc. and I find myself thinking "ok if I was in place of character <X> I would never ever do this because it's fucking idiotic" my enjoyment tends to sharply drop to zero.

The problem with that is that projection isn't empathy. It's not a question of what you would do in that situation but what the character would do.

Danaerys, rightly or wrongly, has reached a point where she feels incredibly insecure and believes that she could lose the thing that she has been striving for all this time because, basically, people like Jon more than her. So, if she can't have the love of the people then she'll settle for their fear. From that perspective it actually looks less like a psychotic break and more like a calculated piece of total war strategy - a demonstration of exactly what she's capable of.
 
I'm not trying to convince anyone here. But it's not being "good" or "evil", it's "what's convenient for me". In fact this is one of the reasons I dislike this so much: she blatantly goes against her own interest because the writers have to frame her as "evil" so as to setup the conflict for the last episode. I find it lame. YMMV.



Eh. As I said, it's a matter of degrees. I can see a misstep. This one is more like "a split personality suddenly appears".

Maybe I project too much. But when I see a show / read a book / etc. and I find myself thinking "ok if I was in place of character <X> I would never ever do this because it's fucking idiotic" my enjoyment tends to sharply drop to zero.
I think if you'd just watched your best friend and confidant brutally beheaded just to make you mad, on top of losing the nearest thing you ever had to a father figure, then found out someone you trusted to look out for your best interests had sold you out, as well as finding out that the man you loved was your nephew who had a better claim on the throne you devoted your entire life to winning, you might lose your shit too.

And imagine if you were the kind of person who not only had a dragon, but had a history of using that dragon to burninate people and places that pissed you off.

I think most people in that situation would lay waste to a city in that moment of rage and grief.

The next episode is the make or break point.
 
Does anyone have any opinions on the prophesy Dany hears in the books? (it's not present in the show) My books aren't here, but as I recall it went:

Three fires will you light, one for life and one for death and one for love.
Three mounts will you ride, one to wed and one to bed and one to love.
Three betrayals will you know, one for blood and one for gold and one for love.


Assuming that the show is roughly in line with the way the books are planned, the betrayals seem pretty simple. The blood betrayal was Miri Maz Dur, betraying Dany to avenge her people. The gold betrayal was Jorah, selling her out for the promise of having his lands in Westeros restored. The love betrayal was Jon, revealing his secret to his siblings because he couldn't stand to lie to them.

The fires... I feel like Dany has actually lit three significant fires in the course of the story - the one that hatched the dragons, the one that killed the khals, and now the one that consumed King's Landing. The first is presumably the life fire. Not sure about the other two, they seem to both be about death and neither about love.

The mounts... okay, there I'm stumped. The horse she got as a wedding gift is a much bigger deal in the books, so it's probably one, but she can be said to have ridden to bed and to wed and to love since she and Drogo (who she married and eventually fell in love with) rode off on it to their wedding night. Drogon must surely be another, but I have no idea which one. A third, eh...?

I have also considered a naughtier take on "mount" and "ride." :tongue: As in, she wed Drogo, that sellsword guy was just for bed with no deeper feelings, and Jon was the one she really loved. That works, but in the books, she also married that Mereen guy for political reasons, so now we're up to four hem-hem "mounts" and it doesn't work.

Ideas?
 
Well, I expected Cersei to put up a bit more of a fight, but other than that the overall plot progressed expectantly. I thought it was kind of suiting that no one got to kill Cersei.

What really stood out for me in this episode though, and led to this "aha!" moment in my mind, was a sort of throwaway scene where, in the midst of this horrific slaughter, John Snow steps in and saves a youbng woman from getting raped. It was jarring, in that it was such an obvious cliche scene in an otherwise Unhollywood episode at a particularly unHollywood moment. And that's when it occurred to me why I dislike John so intently, despite him ostensibly being a "Good Guy", the sequel to Ned Stark, Tyrion if he was tall and skillful...

John Snow is living in a Romance novel. The rest of the characters are all in this gritty dark fantasy story, and John Snow is living out the plot of a character from a Highwaymen & Corsets story. Looking back it seems so obvious to me now. This is why I never connected to him as a character, why the rest of the Stark family went through hell but he just stumbled idiotically from one tragic love to the next.
 
So, halfhearted prediction for the end - John and Danaerys kill each other, Tyrian ends up on the Iron throne. He's still technically married to Sansa, so that unites the North and South
 
Yeah, good luck with that one... Have you noticed, in the eight years the series has run, that the characters are almost universally not very clever? :tongue: If people suddenly start acting like rational adults in the very last episode, then I am going to be the one crying copout!

If characters in any story did the 'mature and rational thing' we wouldn't have any interesting stories. Hell the Greek myths are all about people doing the wrong thing because their passions and hubris got the better of them. I'd also say history tells us that people don't act that way in RL either.
 
Heck yeah...Tyrion sits on the Iron Throne. I wanted that from the very first episode (well, and ok, after reading the second book). He has been my favorite. He tries to keep his promise and give it to Bronn...but no..Bronn wants a castle that's not destroyed. I got this weird feeling...and not sure why...that Bronn kills the dragon to save Tyrion. Far fetched?? probably...but you have heard it here first!!
 
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I think the love betrayal is Tyrion for Jamie.
 
I don't think any ending for this is going to be satisfactory. That's been my problem all along.
If you go I’m expecting dissatisfaction, that’s what you’ll find. I’m holding out for a closed ending, not an open ended one. A finish to it all, rather then a cliffhanger shock final shot.
 
Folio Society has a gorgeous new GoT set

 
Folio Society has a gorgeous new GoT set

I'm not pay ing that much for a set of books. But wow!
 
Ultimately the one who ends up on the throne makes obvious sense but I don't recall anyone online predicting it.
 
Welp, this is the way the series ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
 
Ultimately the one who ends up on the throne makes obvious sense but I don't recall anyone online predicting it.

My GF's mom stood by this as her prediction, so props to her.
 
Welp, this is the way the series ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

You got plenty of bangs last week. Everyone complained about those, too. :tongue: Honestly, I'm relieved it's over because now I will no longer have to be this guy once a week ten weeks per year:

9388

That aside, I notice that my predictions were almost universally wrong. Oh well. I did say I had no knack for making them.

I will make one complaint:

If Bran gets to be king because "he's got a good story," then the show should perhaps have taken a little more interest in telling that story instead of pushing him out of focus all the time.

A creepy seer as king... this will either be the best thing ever or a complete disaster. I suspect that that council meeting probably sets the tone for his reign. "Ooooh, I just found something interesting to look at half a world away. You guys have these boring mundane details covered, right?" At least he won't get paranoid and start to think everyone's plotting against him. He'll always know exactly who is and is not plotting against him.
 
You got plenty of bangs last week. Everyone complained about those, too.

I've enjoyed almost every episode of the entire series, despite criticisms, though I have noticeably less enjoyed it since they went off-book.

My statement regarding this episode was that I thought it was way more of a coda than anything. I really expected them to drag out John's decision to kill Danni, but they got right to it. In one way that was good, it left room for another ending, but it turned out that pretty much was the ending and the rest of the episode was nostalgic wrap up. Which was fine, but I think it undercut the "Big Ending" 's weight, because I knew we had a lot of episode still to go, so I was waiting for the climax until I realized...oh, that was the climax back there.Even the council scene lost all weight once it was clear that there wasn't going to be any fighting over John. Then everyone got doled out their happy-ish endings. It was fine, as a wrap up to a very long, very intricate story. Kinda like the endings of Return of the King. You get that an inordinate amount of time in the movie is spent on the coda, because it's not ending a three hour movie, it's wrapping up a 10 hour film trilogy. Yet at the same time, the story is over after the Ring is destroyed in Mount Doom. And that's essentially how I felt watching the finale tonight. The story was over in the first act. It felt, looking back, like it belonged at the end of last week's episode.



No, I totally agree , and that's one of the reasons I actively stay away from most online fandom regarding stuff I really love. While it's not universally true (Skaven and Hellboy fandom are mostly pretty awesome folks), the cesspool of negativity that seems to infect most online discussions of pop media was something I started to become wary of way back in the AoL days. I really enjoyed Game of Thrones. I think, overall, it's one of the best television series I've ever seen. I'd put it up there with the first few seasons of Buffy, Farscape when it was really on the mark, and the first few seasons of Dexter. Just really well-done movie-TV. Yet I'm not a fan of the way I am things like, f'rex, Hellboy. Where it pushes some specific button in my brain and I am just in love.

In other words - I never fell in love with Game of Thrones, but she was really good in bed.

So I can enjoy and criticize, poke fun at and still praise it highly. Because I don't care enough about it to be affected by the criticism. But that's not true of everything.
 
I felt a bit sorry for Jon, who became the 'Queenslayer' and got shafted as a result. Everyone else pretty much got a promotion.

I liked Drogon's "oh, wait, you mean this throne" moment.

I liked the writers playing with the fandom - Edmure putting himself forward for King. Also - "Democracy? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

I found myself wondering about the practicalities of a group of castrated males 'settling' a region. It seems like it would be a somewhat short-lived endeavour.

So GoT:TNG? "these are the continuing voyages of Arya Stark..."
 
I felt a bit sorry for Jon, who became the 'Queenslayer' and got shafted as a result. Everyone else pretty much got a promotion.

I thought he got off really light. I've been expecting him to die once he got brought back by the Fire King.
 
I felt a bit sorry for Jon, who became the 'Queenslayer' and got shafted as a result. Everyone else pretty much got a promotion.

Getting shafted for the greater good seems to be Jon's lot in life. :tongue: I think he probably ended up in the best place for him, though. He never did seem to quite get the whole feudal hierarchy thing, regardless of which end of it he happened to be at at any given time.

Honestly, I fully expected Drogon to kill him. It was exactly how I imagined it ending - him stabbing Dany, and then being incinerated a second later. But otherwise, I did think that scene was perfect. I loved Dany essentially saying, "don't you see, this is how the story is supposed to go! The exiled heir to the throne and the nameless orphan with a secret heritage always defeat all the villains and live happily ever after!" And even then, you kind of want to believe her, or you can at least understand that Jon would want to. You feel like, yes, why can't we just have the plucky underdogs win and then go forth and cleanse this piece-of-shit world with fire? That is how it's supposed to go!

But of course this isn't that kind of story, and in between the utter assholes and the pristinely innocent there are the likes of Sansa Stark, who're a bit messed up and over-cynical, but absolutely don't deserve to die horribly for failing to be perfect. So stabbity-stab it is, and so dies the last of the Dragon Lords, at the foot of the throne she spent her life fighting her way towards...
 
Well that just happened.

I suppose it's as good a final as can be expected. A very well produced show, but for me overly sensationalised and macho for my liking. It didn't know whether it wanted to be soap opera or action movie.

The only really good bit in th efinal was tyrion smashing the bricks after uncovering the corpses of cersei and jamie. It reminded me of the bit where, in prison, before Oberon fights on his behalf he talks about the guy smashing rocks on the ground. Whether that was an intentional call back I don' tknow.

TBH I stopped caring about these characters ages ago. There was no way this show could have a satisfactory ending. They didn't do enouggh to make Bran's ascension meaningful. I had assumed Sansa, but the macho bullshit in the show precludes that obviously. A shame really, even though she has taken the north out of Westeros.

Really the whole story of Danaerys just feels meaningless to me. Ok she's sort of achieved what she wanted, bringing a sort of new order to Westeros. But it felt incidental and forced.

I've no doubt that, as ever, one is better off just sticking to the books. I'm rather tired of the likes of HBO over sensationalising things and these TV adaptations. I gave up on the TV version of the Expanse as it was, bascially, shit. The books are a million times better, the tone of the prose is a character in itself that the tv version can't have, plus it's largely miscast.

I do hope we see more fantasy on TV. God knows what the LotR will be like. Hopefully not utter shit, but that seems a forlorn hope. Why not try something original and leave the world of books alone?
 
It didn't know whether it wanted to be soap opera or action movie.

I'd say it was pretty sure it wanted to be both, and got as wide an audience as it had because it delivered gratuitous violence side by side with gratuitous angst and sentiment.

Of course, if you don't care for things being gratuitous, then that's not going to be your cup of tea, no...

I've no doubt that, as ever, one is better off just sticking to the books.

I've read those books. I, ah... have some doubts. :tongue:
 
I'd say it was pretty sure it wanted to be both, and got as wide an audience as it had because it delivered gratuitous violence side by side with gratuitous angst and sentiment.

Don't forget the tits... lots and lots of gratuitous tits...
 
Some thoughts...
  • It’s been going downhill since the moment they passed the books.
  • Why, in the name of god, did they have to rush this season? Not enough money? FFS.
  • I knew in my bones, the last couple of weeks, that Drogon was going to melt the Iron Throne, but I thought it would be Dany that did it.
  • I don’t buy Dany as “The Mad Queen”. There’s a very good argument you could make that she was Right. The only way to truly break the wheel was to burn it entire.
  • Best line by Tyrion “Ask me in 10 years.”
  • Drogon still lives. Jon is a Targaryen and could ride him, Bran is a Warg and could warg him...and wants to find him.
  • Tons of sequel content. Arya in the West, Grey Worm in Naath, Jon in the North, Queen Sansa, King Bran, etc.
  • Post-ASoIaF Westeros is great adventuring opportunity. Tons of rebuilding, Magic may be still rising since Drogon lives and is getting stronger, a few hundred nobles and bannermen to replace, Dothraki who will probably go back to being Dothraki without Daenerys, etc.
 
Some thoughts...
  • It’s been going downhill since the moment they passed the books.
  • Why, in the name of god, did they have to rush this season? Not enough money? FFS.
  • I knew in my bones, the last couple of weeks, that Drogon was going to melt the Iron Throne, but I thought it would be Dany that did it.
  • I don’t buy Dany as “The Mad Queen”. There’s a very good argument you could make that she was Right. The only way to truly break the wheel was to burn it entire.
  • Best line by Tyrion “Ask me in 10 years.”
  • Drogon still lives. Jon is a Targaryen and could ride him, Bran is a Warg and could warg him...and wants to find him.
  • Tons of sequel content. Arya in the West, Grey Worm in Naath, Jon in the North, Queen Sansa, King Bran, etc.
  • Post-ASoIaF Westeros is great adventuring opportunity. Tons of rebuilding, Magic may be still rising since Drogon lives and is getting stronger, a few hundred nobles and bannermen to replace, Dothraki who will probably go back to being Dothraki without Daenerys, etc.
A post-GoT game set in Westeros using a fairly grounded system could be a belting setting.

Have to say, I agree with most of this, though there were some choices that I felt were a bit odd to say the least. Certainly I'm less bothered by Dany going all hard faced burninator than a lot of people. She's been getting harder and harder and more convinced that she has to eliminate dissent by way of dragon fire for a while now. I don't think she was 'The Mad Queen' as much as she was the more and more polarised queen. You were with her, or she would kill you. No compromises.

That said, I still say the real threat should have been the Night king and his Army of the Dead. Imagine how much scarier that would have been coming after King's Landing. All that petty feuding and killing for what? To add to the Night King's army, that's what. To suddenly realise that actually, there's a literal world ending threat coming right at you.

Would have been a much better, much more visceral ending. And would have brought the story full circle. It started with the discovery of Wights. Ending it with the defeat of them, or their victory, would be much better in my opinion.
 
  • I don’t buy Dany as “The Mad Queen”. There’s a very good argument you could make that she was Right. The only way to truly break the wheel was to burn it entire.

I thought Tyrion made a good case about how Dany was prior to the Bells episode to Jon. It was actually a bit eerie seeing it paralleled a bunch of arguments that raged after the Bells episode.

However the last two season were rushed. It needed to have more breathing room.
 
I thought Tyrion made a good case about how Dany was prior to the Bells episode to Jon. It was actually a bit eerie seeing it paralleled a bunch of arguments that raged after the Bells episode.

However the last two season were rushed. It needed to have more breathing room.
A 2 year gap between seasons is 'rushed' only in the very loosest of senses.
 
Could be 25 years between seasons, what matters is that the storytelling was rushed in a truncated season. They had some very important points to make both for and against Daenerys and they didn’t spend much time on them at all. They spent what seemed like half our lives with Dany in Meereen moralising and debating philosophies, if they gave us a fraction of that this season, it would have gone down a lot better.

They told us through new explanation for past events instead of showing us more the last two seasons.
 
I don't understand all the "it went downhill after the books". The last 2 books are shit. There's maybe 200 pages worth of content between the two of them. Unreadable crap.

The show started great with the first season because they had the script already there from the first book (by FAR the best of the whole series), then it started going down following the decreasing quality of the books, then it went up again after they overtook the last book although it never regained the quality of the beginning.

But this last one and a half season is just crap. Lazily written. If any of us had a GM pulling even half of these stuns we'd pelt him to death with dices for being a crappy railroader. Very bad writing.

Hopefully their mind was absorbed by the incoming SW trilogy. Because if this is the quality they want to adopt for that work, well...
 
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