Game of Thrones

[Rinel]

Am I angry? No. The show has been rolling downhill too long for me to be angry at this point. I was angry last season. I'm just sad that two showrunners with more ambition than ability rushed the ending to a story that I cared about. It's not the destination that matters. It's how you get there. I feel like I just read a six part book series where the sixth book got skipped.

Because that's exactly what just happened.

[mietze]

Honestly it wasnt as bad as I thought it was gonna be!

[Three-Eyed Crow]

Yeah in the end I was mostly fine with it. I'd prepared myself to be viscerally angry (the last two episodes had done that) and nothing in it was all that bad. It was WEIRD in places but it was a kind of weirdness that seemed to come with scrambling to follow certain bullet points it does feel to me like they probably got from Martin, but without the connective tissue that might've made them more resonant/coherent. It makes me more interested in certain plotlines from the books than I previously was, but those books will probably never exist. So it goes. It was an often-glorious ride with a sorta-fulfilling and also sorta-strange ending that was probably inevitable given that its source material is unfinished and will likely remain so.

[Sparks]

Satire article, presented without further comment: https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/campaign-finishes-three-year-run-without-dm/

[Dreampipe]

The best way I think I've heard this season described is like you're watching a Wikipedia plot synopsis of the show.

The bullet points for the plot are all there, but the journey from A to B that makes it a story aren't. It's a shame, especially knowing that HBO was willing to go extra seasons and extra episodes to fill out those gaps.

Granted, I'm not sure it would've helped given the quality of what we got. But I certainly don't think it could've been worse to have more time to develop stuff.

[Quinn]

It could've been worse. All the remaining Stark children could've gone off to become lumberjacks.

[Coin]

gigglesnorts

[Autumn]

***=NSFW content***

click to show

I would argue that not only does Jaime's fate respect the evolution of his character over the previous seasons of the show, but that his evolution is what makes that fate the right and necessary one.

He's been in this situation before, after all; Cersei's situation is a mirror image of the Mad King's before opening the gates to Tywin Lannister. There's a vastly superior force outside the gates, there's a mad monarch, the life of someone he loves is threatened. Maybe that callback is an accident, but I really, really doubt it. I think it's entirely on purpose, and I think awareness of it colors Jaime's in-character response. And he responds by trying to save lives, rather than trying to take them. It's a quixotic, hopeless, suicidal response, and that's kind of the point: the old Jaime, the Jaime we met at the start of the series, would never in a million years have responded that way.

Jaime's done some terrible things, and he knows it. If he stays at Winterfell and waits for news of the city to fall, he's going to have to live with the knowledge that on top of all those terrible things, he not only betrayed the king he'd sworn to protect (no matter how justified it might have been), but also failed the woman he loves in her hour of greatest need (no matter how undeserving of that love she might be). Old Jaime could have lived with that, but the new Jaime would be destroyed by it, and he knows it.

He doesn't go to King's Landing for Cersei, he goes for himself and his own conscience, and the fact that he even has a conscience is evidence of how different he really is now. He goes because he needs to be able to tell himself that everything he's been through taught him something, that he wasn't just a weak, vain man entirely defined by his family and his fighting skill and worthless without them; and that when he was put to the test, he did the best he could no matter what it cost him -- just as Brienne, the catalyst of his transformation, would have in his shoes. The irony in the woman who loves him being the one whose example he follows into death is pretty delicious.

It's a wonderfully tragic end, and I'd argue that he is, in the end, redeemed by it. It's not a happy ending, but it is exactly the kind of bittersweet ending George Martin would write for a character like this.

[Lotherio]

Yeah, spoiler and all that is coming up.

***=It was a good ending***

click to show

My only disappointment is that GRRM made the allusion to Bran as Arthur and tried to say it would end different or something. But alas, Bran was young Wort (Once and Future King) and in hindsight, this is the Arthurian work he borrowed from. Others called Bloodraven (Three-Eye Crow, another Targaryen) as Merlin and, alas, he was. More painful, the animal transformations from Once and Future King and the tie to Bran is more painfully obvious now.

It was a good ending, nothing surprising. I look forward to reading the books to see how it really gets to that point, I predict Cersi dies sooner, and the Faux AEGON is more holding the throne with the Golden Company, but otherwise pretty close (ETA, the transformation into animals, those not familiar with Once and Future King, Disney did the first parts of this as Sword in the Stone where Merlin and Arthur transform into different animals to learn about the world - aka Bloodraven teaches Bran how to worg into other things and into the past to learn about the world).

Arya, I suspect, is fan service, I suspect that's the attempt at the next GOT series, following her journey's on the Dawn Trader with Bilbo off to the mythical west.

My Arthur was off alas, Jon lived. The kingdom isn't splintered as much as I thought, but the North is its own kingdom.

[Kestrel]

It's a real shame that the producers weren't able to finance the budget for an eighth season, but I'm glad the show ended on a high note with the season seven finale.

[cocopuffs]

@Kestrel They did.
https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/2019/05/13/how-long-game-of-thrones-final-episode-length

HBO offered them a full season of episodes and the writers said no.

[Aria]

@cocopuffs said in Game of Thrones:

@Kestrel They did.
https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/2019/05/13/how-long-game-of-thrones-final-episode-length

HBO offered them a full season of episodes and the writers said no.

I think that was a round-about way of her saying she's pretending Season 8 never existed.

[Arkandel]

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

Uhm, about that.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said in Game of Thrones:

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

Uhm, about that.

Robb = Lone Wolf.

It's a stretch, but that's literally where they went with it.

[cocopuffs]

@Aria gdi I completely misread their post. I get it now. I'm off to snort my caffeine.

[surreality]

@Coin There was the youngest sib, too, whose actual name I forget off the top of my head, Mad Dash Pincushion Stark.

[Coin]

@surreality said in Game of Thrones:

@Coin There was the youngest sib, too, whose actual name I forget off the top of my head, Mad Dash Pincushion Stark.

Rickon, iirc.

And yeah.

[Arkandel]

***=When it comes to this season now that it's all said and done the thing I disliked the most, and perhaps primarily,***

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... is Jon Snow's complete lack of agency.

They had spent seven years showcasing him as a reluctant but respected leader with a strong moral compass yet he spent the last season with the same few lines written for Kit Harington over and over again: "You're my Queen" and "I don't want it".

They did nearly nothing with him even took away the reactions to some of the most important moments he had; revealing his parentage to the other Starks or even killing Daenerys. I don't care who killed the Night King, but this was really not to my satisfaction.

[Kestrel]

There is one thing I liked about the finale.

My favourite character survived.

***=Spoiler***

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Sorry fans but Drogon is the goodest boi

[Arkandel]

***=Perhaps, but then again your favorite character***

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destroyed the furniture the moment his mother wasn't around. BAD dragon.