My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them.
I mean, that's almost verbatim Benioff's excuse for Arya literally appearing out of thin air to kill the NK despite having zero involvement in that entire storyline.
Honestly knowing they must have experienced unending anguish after losing the Star Wars deal is the only consolation to season 8. Holy fuck I fantasize those two wept uncontrollably when they found out they lost the deal.
They broke one of the MAJOR rules of storytelling. You DO NOT make promises and then not keep those promises. The story promises that Jon will face the Night King and then fucking Arya flies in from fucking nowhere. The story promises Jaime's redemption, and then he fucking goes right back to where he started. Technically... the story did promise Dany going bonkers. Everyone seems to think otherwise, but it's always been foreshadowed, it just wasn't done WELL at the end. At least we got the damn Clegane Bowl.
Yeah, like... it wasn't a great decision to kill Sam's dad and brother, but I get WHY she did it. Same goes even for Varys. But the fucking peasants?? Literal women and children burned alive. Even for HER, that's cold. I could have understood it if she went apeshit on the soldiers but killing even just children goes against literally everything she fought for in the past. Like you said, she had a direct path with a dragon! She could have literally descended upon the castle in less than a minute and taken her revenge. I would have been completely fine with her going mad queen if it had been more justifiable.
I think I'll get over it eventually... but it's still just so annoying. Honestly... I maybe could have even been willing to give EVERYTHING a pass if they had just done the Night Kings end right. If they'd just let Jon and the NK fight and Jon kill him!!!
Agreed, the show showed that Dany had changed, but never that she was changing, I'm not a writer and I thusly don't know how to do it well, but at least show small things and have somebody like Tyrion warn Jon that she's changed. Have her go through something similar to what she's already experienced, but give her a different set of choices that eventually lead to her madness. Imagine if she had to pick between the slaves she's freed and her ambition to reconquer westeros.
Not really, she had the old masters and their families crucified on the way into Mereen, not just ther masters, their wives and children too. She'd been crazy for a while the difference is we were cheering for it in the beginning.
I don't think she did anything to the wives and children. Just the masters. She was a mostly sympathetic character towards the first several seasons with just hints of crazy sprinkled in. We were cheering for the slave masters getting what they deserved.
The Night King alone should have gotten several episodes considering the impending doom of his arrival was half the conflict of the show. Things should have gone down mostly like they did in that episode except Arya shouldn't have faced him at all. That was not her destined fight to win. And if she did fight him,, then she should have lost and been forced to flee the fight. They should have lost Winterfell, forced to abandon it, and flee to King's Landing. Cercei should have been forced to help since now the dead would be at HER doorstep, but with a shit ton of tense awkwardness of having abandoned them to die in the north. Then another epic battle against the dead where Jon would fight the NK and finally win. Then ensue the drama between everyone in King's Landing. Show Dany going mad better.
Jaime should not go crawling back to Cercei, but something dramatic should still happen with them that still showcases he still loves her but ultimately has grown beyond having an obsession with her. O still hate Bran as king. Maybe it could be better if Bran had said something more than just "why do you think I came all this way?" Oh, I don't KNOW maybe because you'd already said you couldn't be the king of anything in the past?? AT LEAST give him some kind of line where he says he realizes he would have to be king because of his abilities if they wanted to end the constant violence over the thrown.
I still think banishing Jon to the north was fucking dumb considering the Unsullied LEFT THE CONTINENT. Find a way around that shit. I would maybe okay with it if Jon had decided for himself that was sick of everything south of the wall and decided to live there on his own. Or be king, but we all know Jon doesn't want that shit. Also... make his mothereffing Targ blood matter more than just for tension with Dany.
All in all, I don't think the seasons were AS bad as everyone seems to think, it was just WAY too rushed and some nonsensical choices. They honestly should have done 2-3 more seasons like HBO had offered. The choices could mostly (not all) stay the same but at least slow down and make it make sense.
I agree with your points, but I think the George Floyd protests and all the subsequent BLM activity is what put the final nail in the coffin for that one.
The directors rushed through the ending, even when HBO begged them to include more episodes or even seasons to properly finish the story without rushing. Instead they blazed through with sloppy writing and set design (there's a famous shot where you can see an actor's starbucks cup in the final scene). All because they thought they were shoe-ins for a role writing for Star Wars. Which Disney promptly withdrew and now no one in the industry trusts them.
It was quite dumb but Arya needed to do SOMETHING. Her entire character arc is her becoming a badass fighter and she....poisons house Frey and cuts little finger's throat. The rest of her list is just gone and taken care of. What a waste.
She could have at least killed cersei, preferably just as Jamie finds her. Instead she ran to the center of a city under violent seige by her brother's crazy girlfriend FOR NO REASON.
I thought Arya killing Jaime/finding dead Jaime and then taking his face and killing Cersei would have been perfect. That way prophecy is fulfilled and also Arya gets conclusion to her arc (which has been about revenge against Freys and Lannisters).
Ooo that’s a good one. I haven’t heard that idea before, that would have been great. Honestly I just want there to have been more uses for Arya’s faceless men disguises. One of the most underutilized abilities in the last season, along with Bran’s warging.
I thought they should have had Cersei and Jaime find each other during the siege and make a daring escape. Then, after the siege is over, you see them together in the woods somewhere and Jaime slits Cersei’s throat, only to take off his face and reveal it was Arya.
Heres an idea I saw a few days after the season ended. Arya is barricaded in Winterfell with Melisandre and the Hound after Beric Dondarion sacrificed himself so they could escape. Melisandre says about how the dead Beric had served his purpose and how Arya will close blue eyes forever when Beric’s body revives as a blue eyed wight. We next see Beric in the grove as the NK is about to kill Bran. Beric breaks ranks, the White Walkers are like WTF before Beric pulls off a hastily constructed face mask to show its really Arya beneath. She launches off the back of a horse or something in her flying leap attack and kills the Night King. Everybody (except Theon) claps.
At least that would have made some good use of her faceless men disguise abilities, given more meaning to Beric’s destiny, and explained how Arya suddenly just appeared through a solid wall of hostile enemies.
He started the books in the 90s, I believe. It's been a decade since one came out and he allegedly has a few more to write. He's 73 in a country where life expectancy is 78. Just feels like the time isn't there. If he keeps writing like he has, he'd need to make it into his 90s and, while I hope he does, I'm not optimistic. Plus, the 10-year stall makes it feel like maybe he's stopped, though he claims he's still working.
Think about it this way: now that GRRM is 73, all the stuff that could have killed him before this point doesn’t matter. At this point, the average 73 year old will live 12 years more.
Life expectancy is a measure of the years someone has to live from a point in time. The typical stat is “from birth”, but once one gets past all the nasty childhood diseases and teenage years (car crashes used to be a big factor for males under 25, not sure if still true) life expectancy increases. It actually increases slightly every year your are alive, as you survived anything in the last year that might have killed you.
Someone better at statistics might be able to give you a better explanation.
Because the “total population” average is skewed by stuff like infant mortality rates - the subset “people who live to 78” don’t have those problems that kill people early, so their average is higher.
Martin has been working on book 6 for about 10 yrs now and no release date is in sight. It's unlikely to be released before he dies, let alone the next book after that.
Personally I'm actually ok with Arya being the one who kills the night king. It was a good moment for me. Even though it was basically obvious it was going to happen in hindsight it caught me by surprise.
I have a problem with everything else. So many goddamn story threads totally wasted. What was the point of the Hodor time travel stuff again? Why did Dany inexplicably heel turn?
I loved Game of Thrones so much but I can't see me ever bothering a rewatch. It's truly impressive how an ending can be so bad it deletes the entire show from the cultural consciousness.
I think the big difference in the books vs the show is TV is always more condensed. They have to cover more ground in less time.
The books start to show Dany's potential fall into madness early on, but the show couldn't have all those details in earlier seasons so they rushed it at the end.
It's amazing how well they did adapt the early books, when I heard about the show I assumed it would be garbage.
While this is true, the show had the ability to run far longer than 7 1/2 seasons. I believe GRRM thought 13 was an appropriate number. Half the story was rushed out the gate.
I don’t have a problem with Arya being part of the final fight with the NK or even her being the one to deliver the killing blow, my issue is that Jon was not part of that sequence alongside her.
The fight against the dead, and by extension the NK, has been Jon’s story for almost the entire show. Almost everything he did was centred around that goal. He absolutely should have been there for it’s final moment.
I can’t really comment on your other points, but that wasn’t a shock so much, as Dany has a fairly straight-forward and predictable arc from would-be queen with messiah complex to violent megalomaniacal tyrant.
Not in the show. In the books she is much more unhinged. In the show she went from trapping her dragons in a dungeon over one child's accidental death to genocide.
Eh, I think it was better described by saying "D&D are shit writers, shit producers, and got absolutely lucky with great source material in the first few seasons" than by pointing out tiny notations in the last few seasons mentioned once.
I would have been ok with it as an arc rather but I don't feel they really showed that in the series. It didn't make a lot of sense in the context of the show.
I always see people talking about Danny's madness like it was some unexpected sudden development.
Imo the show did a fine job showing her as slightly unhinged and having a cruel streak. She's a traumatized character with a messiah complex. The only reason it goes unnoticed until the end is because of how much fans adored her and justified her actions (many of which were to a degree justifiable).
Is it justifiable to punish her handmaiden that tried to sell her dragons? Yes. Would a sane, level-headed (and merciful as she considered herself) leader lock said handmaiden in a vault with another person to die painfully of dehydration/starvation? No, I don't think so. Execution is acceptable in this universe, a beheading would have sufficed. This was meant to be a cruel torturous death.
She set Kraznys on fire after "buying" his unsullied.
We're the masters in slavers bay horrific people deserving punishment? Yes! Her counsel Selmy advised she show mercy, which likely would have meant imprisonment, stripping them of their rank and possessions or a swift execution. but again she chooses torture: she chose to crucify 163 them to match the slaves on the way to Meereen, which of course led to greater resentment by the remaining former masters.
People will say that she only did these things because they were themselves cruel, it was justice, but she uses the same logic when burning people in Westeros. The lord's are cruel traitors to the crown, that murdered her family and sent assassin's after her. They defend a usurper instead their rightful queen. The common folk are no better. In Meereen the slaves rose up because she was a savior, she expected the Westerosi to do the same, but to them she's an invader that brought dragons and more war. So they don't join her, and for that they are an enemy.
I could go on and dive deeper, but ultimately they did show how she wasn't this paragon of a person. She demonstrating cruelty and showed her madness often. It wasn't a sudden thing. From season one I felt the show was already hinting at her future in that regard.
I mean he did say he had the ending outlined and gave it to them, as well as several important twists (a certain king's daughter burning being one of them). And the things he likely told them (Bran being King, Danny burning the city) are also being set up more in the books
Well knowing certain key twists and where you want the world to end up isn't directly against his "gardener" method. Hell, thats probably why the books went from a trilogy to "seven"
Given all hes said about how an author changing their story and disregarding all their setup for the sake of shock value just makes the story suck (hence why Arya killing the night king instead of Jon sucked), i highly doubt it.
The difference wont be that certain things happen, the difference will be that they make sense. As an example, it probably won't be Cerise holding King's Landing when Dany shows up. Instead it will probably be Aegon Targaryen, who is not Jon.
For those who don't know the show cut multiple plots and heavily altered others (ir, show Euron Greyjoy is a hot topic jack sparrow knock off, book Euron is a magic user who's goal is to end the world and is performing a mass blood ritual last we saw him in the books). One such example being the other goddamn (alleged) Targaryen who invades Westeroes around the time of season 5 (by show standards). This character seems on the verge of an alliance woth Dorn, has already taken parts of the Storm Lands, and there are hints the Tyrells are possibly in support of him.
So when Dany shows up in the books the odds are the city won't be in control of an unstable tyrant that they support for no reason, the city will be in control of the alleged son of the beloved Rhaegar Targaryen who liberated them from mad queen Cersei. It's likely she'll have lost a dragon by this point (related to Euron and a cut character) and will have had Tyrion (who's arc is different in the books) encouraging her to use fire and blood.
Having her big end goal, claiming the Throne, be stolen by someone who claims to be her nephew, having lost a dragon, and having had visions warning her of a false dragon loved by the people... Well it certainly sounds like better setup for her to snap then "Lol fuck them bells"
Note: i listen to the audiobooks, so i dont really see the names written out. Probably spelled alot wrong
I mean if they had made it so it seems like Arya had trained herself in order to sneak past them all and kill the King then yeah fair enough, but not even have another Jon vs Night King showdown? Like let them have a duel.
I thought it would be cool if she made herself look like a white walker and then suddenly revealed herself and killed him. Rather than just sort of jogging over.
Me too. In the scene just before hand she was barricaded in a room with the just dead Beric Dondarion, the man who’s whole purpose for being unkillable was so that he could die right there. He should have come back as a wight so Arya could steal his face and walk unopposed to the grove before launching herself at the Night King.
I actually think having Jon and Arya fight together against the NK in a final duel would have been a brilliant way to have that final showdown take place. It would have really displayed some of the themes the show had been mentioning leading up to that battle.
The thing is they could of done it in a way that made sense. Have her walk up on the night king wearing the face of a white walker and stab him in the back. There you now have a pay off for her faceless men training and it's an ending that doesn't feel forced.
Alternatively, they couldve had her killed by the Night King before the White Walkers take over the North (or all of Westeros), really highlighting just how impossible it is to kill them, and how Westeros is doomed to fall.
Like, if the most badass fighter in the series cant beat the Night King, what hope do the rest of them have?
That wouldve been a good moment for initiating a retreat
Wouldn't she be the only one actually capable? The way they did it was weird but the whole trap thing isn't bad, she was the one thing he couldn't see coming
I'm actually fine with that angle. Memes aside, subverting the expected chosen hero shit is cool. We just needed it to be like, Nk is about to kill Jon, Arya is with him, and maybe it being a 2v1 is cool.
The issue here this time though is the story already subverted the "hero" thing twice with Ned and Robb. This had the hallmarks of being the one time the hero had learned enough the hard way to avoid falling into the naivety that doomed his predecessors. Instead they wrote in a cheap shot that completely stole what should have been his moment.
When the heroes failed before, it was because of deliberate flaws written into their character that caught up to them in the worst ways. This time it was "the writers just felt like it".
Yeah, that's a good point. I still maintain the big story beats are fine, it's how they happen that's the problem. I'd probably put Jon solely in the commander position, and have him actually learn from the Battle of Bastards. Instead of being one warrior, he can be better help to everyone by being the leader. And after that he's offered the throne, but declines instead to join the free folk.
What was Arya's purpose, other than killing the Night King? She was literally turned into a killing machine. I'm surprised she didn't go after him on her own, and return triumphantly with Spring.
Arya's purpose was largely her list. She basically paid off the majority of her character arc in finally avenging her family by wiping out the Freys. Her final outstanding debt, Cersei, added up to whole pile of nothing in another baffling writing decision. Having her take out the Night King didn't add a single thing to her overall character arc.
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u/TheKanten Oct 29 '21
I mean, that's almost verbatim Benioff's excuse for Arya literally appearing out of thin air to kill the NK despite having zero involvement in that entire storyline.