Just thinking about the last parts of the episode again...
Hand meeting on who to appointment for the missing positions and general day to day business of the realm. Bran, in classic Bran fashion, smurfs off to go worg into animal (this time, a Dragon... quite why he didn't do that during the Long Night we'll never know). Classic Bran, shirking the responsibility to someone else. 10/10 King.
In the Game of Memes, you post, or you die.
bran is king.jpg
keep your secrets bran.jpg
arya go west.jpg
In the end, reverse engineering the story to go from the end points to give some sort of coherent reasons why proved just too much for the lack of time afforded. It got where it needed to go but essentially felt like a wikipedia page explaining the plot by the end, "Jon and Dany fall in love, Jon finds out his secret, Dany doesn't like it, Dany gets mad, goes mad, Jon kills Dany".
My only real qualms about this logically were twofold: How in the heck did Grey Worm and the apparently THOUSANDS of respawned Dothraki not gut Jon the instant he came out of the throne room? Suddenly, they show him mercy and just lock him up when they've been slitting throats of anyone that looks at them funny? Then, how does Jon's background not even come up at all in the Dragonpit? No one there thinks that maybe Jon, like most every other leader in Westeros' history, should be the next king because he killed to get there? Jon wouldn't have accepted it of course, but just banishing him instead of him choosing to leave took the agency out of the character's hands and felt so strange after all the years of buildup.
Plus, I guess we're meant to understand the point of him coming back to life was to take down Dany? Tough break for those star-crossed lovers.
Most characters finished in places that felt true to them, save Bran, who the show so horribly bungled and frankly made into the least interesting character on the show bar none. I would have to imagine that those mythic still to come books will flesh this out more and explain what the heck is up with him.
Though Game of Thrones has ended, it's only for now. This is some powerful IP that I fully expect to be used over and over again, not just with prequels but with some more one off stories down the road. We joke about the Adventures of Arya, but don't doubt HBO or Apple or Netflix aren't already scheming how to make that into a limited run series.
Take care all.
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"Look, I'm not much good at big speeches, and I know GoT hasn't been an easy show to get on with. And I know that given the choice, I probably wouldn't have chosen Bran for king. But, I just want to say... that over the years... I have to come to regard it... as... a show... I watched."
If anyone is interested, here is the full joke that Tryion never got to tell...
(SPOILER)
Tyrion walks into a brothel with a honeycomb and a jackass.
Madame: What can we do for you?
Tyrion: I need a woman to lay with, for mine has left me.
Madame: Whatever for? And what's with the honeycomb and the mule?
Tyrion: My woman found a genie in a bottle and he granted her three wishes. The first was for a house fit for a queen, so he gave her this damn honeycomb. The second wish was that she have the nicest ass in all the land, so he gave her this damn donkey...
Madame: And what about the third wish?
Tyrion: Well... she asked the genie to make my cock hang down past my knee.
Madame: Well that one's not so bad eh?
Tyrion: Not so bad!? I used to be six foot three!
HBO's airing a documentary tonight called "The Last Watch", trying to milk that one last weekend of Game of Thrones viewership.
Looks to be full of behind the scenes, table reads, make up, set building, things of that nature.
If anyone wants to squeeze one more weekend out of this thread I'll be watching this and I'll be here afterwards to talk about it with anyone else who does.
And then my watch will end. But you know. Until the prequels start up.
The set creations are so amazing. It's wild that it took 7 months to build King's Landing from the bottom up. I figured they might have used some pre-existing cathedral type building somewhere or something.
It was really cool seeing the table read and seeing the cast's reactions as they read what would happen to them for the first time.
The head of snow said that they basically just used wet paper in their sets. That's a really cool effect. Obviously it's real snow when they shoot in places like Iceland.
Vladimir Furdik/The Night King is so damn awesome. He's a man of many hats. Helping with the choreography and stunt work when he isn't behind the mask.
Overall it's a cool documentary, but at a 2 hour runtime it could have been cut in half tbh. There's a lot of neat stuff here but there's only so much I need to see of like seeing the extra's tent get built or w/e. Part's like that were just general behind the scenes stuff that really could have applied to any show and wasn't GoT specific.
So, after this season left me unsatisfied I started re-reading A Game of Thrones. My god, this book is so good. I'd forgotten how wonderful it was. The pacing is superb and the way Martin keeps your interest in so many plot threads is excellent. I think I am enjoying it even more from the perspective of knowing how it turns out and who all the random side characters are because there's so many little nuances and subtleties to pick up on. If anyone is bored I really recommend doing so (and then we can nerd out and share our thoughts together )
I think the failure of the last season or two of the show has kind of put Martin's struggles with TWoW into perspective. It must be a nightmare to bring all of these threads together neatly. I wonder how much of the final two seasons will happen in the books. I suspect a lot of the fan service (Gendry x Arya, Brienne x Jaime, Lyanna, Arya in general actually etc) will not make it. I'm entirely convinced the Night King as we knew him in the show won't be in it.
I'm actually rereading the series now too. You want to maybe make a discussion thread for it?
And yes, it's so smurfing good. Like you said, it's interesting reading it through the scope of what we know now. I can see some possible hints about Bran's fate especially, in Ned's musings.
I'm really interested to see what happens to book Tyrion, since they white-washed the trout out of him in the show. I understand they did it because Peter Dinklage made him so beloved, but I would have liked to see him go dark. He has the acting chops for it.