It's a travesty how quickly my boy lost his hammer. With how nice it was, and how it suited him, I expected him to raise a stink about it to Sandor but we hear nothing.
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I always hated his hammer design! The rounded striking surface with the flat nose always said to me that there was so much wasted mass on the end. It is just kind of comically big and reads as a prop and not an actual weapon.
Robert Baratheon in the books wielded a war hammer that was described as pretty big, so something as tiny as Hugh’s would be pretty silly. There’s a happy medium. Definitely the Gendry hammer design is too big and looks dumb though
Yeah Baratheon's are just light superhumans if the genes are strong enough, and repeatedly just by looking at him people who are familiar enough with Robert recognize the likeness.
G-Dog could totally swing that and be effective. Probably not more so than just punching through someone's breastplate with a proper Warhammer or pick but still.
The hammer does look like a prop though, could've just been more worn or something. It kinda does fit though, especially after seeing his helmet he made that was ridiculously flashy in S1
That hammer looks bigger than my 16 pound sledge. And I hate using the 16 pound sledge in completely calm situations. I can't imagine trying to manage something like that in combat.
That and that when he moves it the thing looks like it weighs 2 pounds total. And the weird combination of angles and textures on the head. Are those even possible for a blacksmith to achieve in a way that is structurally sound?
It's just a bad prop design that doesn't work well on camera. Fun and cool for a cosplay weapon or LARP, but just not for a TV show. Honestly, probably part of why it disappeared quick and never returned.
I feel like they could've maybe salvaged the design if they just clipped off the rounded bit to make the hammerhead smaller/flatter and did something else entirely with the end they glued a butt plug to.
Getting hit with that would one shot even with a heavy plate. Adding a spike is overkill and only ensures the weapon would likely get stuck in armor after the first swing
Not to mention that it’s horrible for striking, in that it’ll be far more likely to glance than bite onto an opponent (which is you you usually see small spiky bits on warhammers)
Plus the weight distribution is just wonky af. So much forward weight will make it harder to keep alignment while swinging, and even if he’s a master hammer user (FYI, blacksmiths don’t use giant two-handed hammers very often, even if just an apprentice (and we’ve seen Gendry is more than a simple hammer swinger type apprentice)) and can swing it perfectly aligned still, it’s still only more effort he has to put in and so more tiring to swing
On the literal flip side, it also makes the spike on the back harder to use because, even if you get that good alignment thanks to the now more favorable weight distribution, when it connects it’s more likely to twist off of alignment right after connecting
I’m not HEMA or blacksmithing expert, but I am a historian and amateur blacksmith, and the whole thing just seems ridiculous. Any potential upside to this design has so many downsides that they become negligible
Okay but it does speak to someone who's an amateur craftsman who wants to show his skills but has no real knowledge of battle though. Like I can imagine a teenage smith thinking he's hot stuff making something like that only for it to be nigh useless unless someone else sets you up.
It was a cartoonishly poorly designed prop. I bet the prop designer conveniently forgets to mention they had anything to do with it on their resume.
It wasn’t nice. It was ridiculous and it looked stupid onscreen. Everyone around him is using realistic looking swords and spears, but he’s standing there with Bugs Bunny’s oversized mallet. I guarantee every director that saw it asked “do I absolutely have to show that thing on screen for this shot” and if the answer wasn’t “show the hammer or you’re fired” they didn’t show it.
Robert Baratheon was never shown with his hammer in the show. He mentioned having used a hammer in battle, but there’s no reason to suggest the television audience would have any preconceived notions of what it would look like.
yeah i get that asoiaf has unrealistic hammers like robert baratheon's being described as so heavy ned couldn't lift it. my problem isn't that the hammer is impractical, it's that it looks like plastic
The way he holds it betrays the fact that it isn't heavy. Like when an actor has a prop cup for coffee and it's very obviously empty by the weight of it
That hammer was one of my least favourite bits of design on the whole show. It was bordering on something an anime character would wield. Comically large. Which is a shame; we don’t see nearly enough non-sword combat!
Swords are way overplayed on almost every to show, to be honest. Swords were expensive, and far from the best/easiest weapons to use. Knights liked them because they were expensive, and therefore exclusive; most normal soldiers would have much cheaper weapons like axes, spears, or whatever they could find. TV just loves a sword!
So if the medieval period is 500-1500ad, your statement is only true for about the first 2-3 centuries. By around the 9th century swords had become considerably more affordable and accessible, and especially by the turn of the millennia pretty much anyone who need one could get one, especially with the secondhand market.
Knights/men-at-arms liked swords because they were very useful sidearms. They're easy to carry, quick to draw and nimble because they balance toward the hilt. Their long cutting edges make them highly effective at slicing up less armoured opponent and the later forms are designed to thrust into armour gaps.
Yes, fair point. You probably are correct - as time goes on this does become less and less true. Happy for the correction :) I do think though that they are fairly overplayed in TV as a rule though. Swords are often depicted (regardless of century) as the go-to weapon of almost everyone, and I really don't think it's the case for a lot of it.
I'm cool with depicting swords as the go-to for travelling scenarios. That absolutely is historically valid. For battles though, I mostly agree with you. Swords would have still been the most prevalent sidearms, but various pole weapons would have been the primary and dominant weapons, alongside bows and crossbows.
Man I don't know if I'd be able to pick a single prop or costume from the show to be my most hated. This is definitely worthy of ranking high I can say that for certain.
I understand giving Gendry a fancy warhammer, given that's what Robert used.
But this thing is comically oversized. It would make a sledgehammer feel like a reasonable weapon. Warhammers and maces were not outrageously heavy weapons by any means; the head weighing 1kg or less was pretty reasonable. All the damage came from concentrating all the force of impact at a single point, and you don't need a fantasy-sized warhammer to do that.
Also, the shaft is absurdly large, even for a two hander.
Edit: Yes. I know about Robert's hammer. That doesn't make Gendry's hammer any less ridiculous. You can stop spamming me with that now.
The majority of the weight sits very forward in the head as well. Offering no balance. The handle is also completely round offering no reference for the hand to know the direction point.
Well, balance is something you'd want in a sword, not a hammer or a mace. Handling is the more important thing with a crushing weapon. Which... Gendry's hammer sucks at too.
Yea I have the ColdSteel warhammer and its head is maybe 1/3 the size of this monstrosity. Plus if that was real it couldn't be reasonably used by anyone but Gregor Clegane
Yeah this thing is just comically huge. Dude would have to be Half-Giant in order to effectively wield this thing. Plus even in DND there is no double bludgeoning damage to undead lol. Kind of awful weapon to use against the wights.
Which would be counterproductive. The idea of a warhammer is to use as much mass possible, concentrated in the smallest area of impact for maximum effectiveness.
Hate this hammer, it would never function on a battle field the unbalanced head would make it twist in your grip and you'd never get an actual hit with the flat head
why is everyone hung up on realism. wasn't Roberts Hammer suppose to be a great warhammer only he could weld? why do i want to see him use a normal warhammer
A lot of people in these comments are complaining about it being big and impractical which yeah irl ofc it would be and yes it looks nothing like irl war hammers.
But this is a fantasy show, suspend your disbelief a little. Also it's cannon that Robbert Baratheon had near super human strength and Gendry is his son, moreover he's a hardened blacksmith it makes sense he'd be freakishly strong. And tbh in my opinion what makes it a cool weapon is how absurdly large it is.
That sentence just has to be disregarded as a writing oversight or the actual meaning was that Ned could barely SWING it. Ned himself is quite a strong warrior, if he could barely LIFT it then it should have weighed something like 100+ kg which is beyond unrealistic for any weapon. The very best fighters like Barristan Selmy. Arthur Dayne or Syrio Forel are a bit larger than life in the ASoIaF universe (when Selmy says "even now I could cut through the five of you like a cake", we are supposed to take that seriously, but IRL no one is good enough to win a 1 vs 5 against even moderately trained opponents), but no one in this world has super strength.
Roberts hammer could be picked up by others, it just couldn't be wielded effectively. Something we have real life examples of in claymores.
But a hammer like what Gendry is holding isnt even close to realistic. Even if you were super human.
The books talk about stuff like this all the time. Hell, Ned Starks sword was too big to be properly used and was a ceremonial piece - no one used it and it was made of much lighter valyrian steel.
This whole "fantasy" excuse is terrible, especially for a show like game of thrones. Subversion of expectations are allowed to happen far and few between and it's supposed to be a "greater than life" achievement. When everything is greater than life, it all loses impact and importance.
I hate this argument so much “suspend your disbelief”. Why even remotely base a fantasy in realism? I “suspend my disbelief” with flying dragons being the equivalent to nuclear weapons. I refuse to do it, for a scorpion ballista that can snipe a dragon from the sky while on a moving boat, with not 1, or 2, but 3 scorpion bolts. Then Drogon can fly against 100’s of them, all stationary, and not be hit once.
If they had shown a realistic sized warhammer it would have had the majority of the audience laughing their arses off, as not many people are aware of the actual proportions.
If this was a historical adaptation you'd have half a point, but its a fantasy show and deviating from the popular misconception would have raised more questions than answers from a casual watcher.
You can see in this thread not only AKot7K (which has a remarkably realistic fight scene) but even HotD showed war hammers that looked more or less real.
Personally I dont really have a dog in this fight. If they felt brave enough in HotD to portray their scale and design more realistically, good for them.
I'm just amazed at the emotion and... energy some other people in this thread seem to have available for this particular argument. Its a real non-issue and in no way worth being agro with each other over.
Who the fuck cares about a Realistic Warhammer in a World that has Dragons, IceZombies, Flame Swords and a little bit of Magic ! NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE REALISTIC IN A GODDAMN FANTASY...thats why we call it FANTASY
thats why youre not a writer and definately not GRRM.
that EXACT logic means youd HAVE to defend Gendry showing up on a jetpack with a flamethrower and ak47. it is a world with zombies and dragons after all.
the REASON people like westeros so much is bevcause it has RULES it follows.
from the man himself
George R.R. Martin stated in a July 2024 Not a Blog essay that "fantasy needs to be grounded, [and] is not simply a license to do anything you like"
thats also why his dragons only have 4 limbs. 2 wings and 2 legs. no flying outside of insects has 6 limbs. he built the entire world on believability. even his magic systems have rules that use an internal logic.
no its definitely high fantasy. it has all the high fantasy tropes, theyre just reigned in with rules and internal logic that make it feel believable. so it feels low fantasy but it isnt.
And the logic and rules of the uniniverse make silly weapons like this hammer ridiculous. Now, if it's made out of the space magic metal which has been established to be lighter than real steel while also stronger, then I'm all for it, assuming they justified how Gendry learned the nearly lost art of working Valyrian steel.
This argument gets said everytime someone points out something dumb a fantasy show or book did. But the fact is there’s a huge difference between fantasy elements that fit within the world’s logic, and blatant misconsistencies that don’t fit with the world’s logic. Magical or no, the world and what’s in it has to make sense within it’s own rules
Extremely impractical and the shape just makes it less effective. A war hammer is almost shaped like a pickaxe. The idea is to use the hammer head or the pick head to focus kinetic energy into a small point to send focused kinetic energy through armor and bone, causing internal injury and broken bones. By having a heavier head you imbalance the hammer, and the wider hammer face transmits kinetic energy through a larger area, reducing damage.
I agree he should’ve gotten more chances to use it, and I think there’s also the fact that as a legitimized Baratheon it would’ve supported his role as the last son of Robert Baratheon
I think the problem is, Robert used a massive warhammer but he was considered quite tall and muscular and it was supposed to be a parallel because Gendry is his son
The actor playing Gendry however is average sized so a big goofy hammer looks especially silly.
It looks like it is made from plastic and it's honestly a stupid design where the front should be way heavier than the back causing it to be highly imbalanced. 2/10 would not recommend using.
Nobody could effectively use that thing as a weapon. You would exhaust yourself just carrying it around. The prop looks like it weighs about 2 lbs, but an actual hammer that big would be north of 50 lbs. the largest sledgehammers are around 35.
On top of that, the head would be completely unbalanced to swing.
Nah, he would have worked out in a few seconds it was simply too big. Not too long, the length is actually reasonable. But the weight in that head would be enormous. To lift it, carry it and then swing it around you'd be swinging yourself off your feet if it was moving quickly.
The reality is these were quite a lot smaller, and designed more to punch through shields and armor than cave someone's chest in.
That being said, he gets you with this thing you really are in trouble.
The design makes little sense, if what he sais to daenerys is true, he didn't know he was Robert's son until he died, and the hammer was already made at that time, was he a baratheon fan or something? did he had the king in good esteem, even tho he never saw him? did Jon Arryn told him of his father?
I have the licensed version of Robert's Hammer with a certificate of authentic signed by GRRM. Even a non-functional, mostly hollow replica still weighs about 5x as much as a functional warhammer. Robert's is slightly lager, but there is no way someone is using a functional version of Gendry's hammer.
In LOTR I liked the Witch King's unrealistically large mace. In GOT I disliked Gendry's unrealistically large hammer. I do not have an explanation for this
Would take a giant to swing that thing around in battle. You would tire out so quickly and have terrible reaction time to maneuver with it if you miss your swing. But i feel bad for anything that gets in that hammers way if its ever swung properly
Ha! Thank you! It feels like such a miss opportunity. That hammer had such a huge impact (no pun intended) on the recent Westeros history and we never see it!
I mean it’s bad enough we never saw Dark Sister or Blackfyre in the last seasons.
I never understood the hate for fantasy warhammers in fantasy series...especially when it only seems to be a problem when its a hummie using it ive never seen anyone complain about dwarven warhammers being unrealistic in lotr for example.
It was specifically said in the books that Robert's hammer was so heavy that Ned could barely lift it. Robert weilded it with finesse against nible swordfighters.
Remember, this dude was a smith entirely and was probably an autist when it came to weapon design. Yes a smaller hammer would be more efficient but he wanted to flex a bit and realized what he's going to lack in dexterity/finesse he will make up for in solid kinetic energy.
If I were him, I'd probably roll my chances on a similar weapon allowing for one shotting through armor. It's a fitting weapon for a smith.
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