It's also such a slap in the face to the series long narratives of overturning traditional power structures. It's every named white guy left alive on the show ruling the realm. Basically every strong female character we've followed has been sidelined and/or reduced to a slave to their own emotions. Our last image of Brienne might be her crying because a boy left her to go back to his ex. That's so unforgivable
There are 4 main characters Martin is using to discuss and critique power and how it’s used: Jon, Dany, Tyrion, Cersei. With this ending we get mad, emotional queens and sane, honorable men. That’s part of the reason why I never felt Dany would go this route. Martin has specifically talked about how Cersei and Dany are foils. He’s exploring the differences in the way they wield power. Well, not anymore apparently. It’s so brave that the woman who rose above her trauma to help the most disenfranchised people in society; who is acutely aware of the stigma around her and Targaryen madness, ultimately just lives up to everyone’s expectations of her going mad. Again, we get the BS “reluctant ruler” trope with multiple male characters who have to vanquish the queen in power who perfectly fits the “ambition is evil” trope. Bran as king is honestly D&D trolling us. He has zero personality, zero motivations, and zero defining characteristics as a king. And we also conveniently get an all male ruling council that includes Bronn. Fucking BRONN, a sellsword with zero ruling experience who is set to inherit arguably the most important region in Westeros. I know I rant a lot about Dany, but Jon is getting fucked hard too. They have stripped him of all of his complexity and personality. He’s entire personality can be summed up in “The NK is coming” and “I don’t want to rule/you are my queen.” That’s it. Even fucking R+L=J is more about Dany and how it drives her mad than about Jon himself. He’s losing his entire family, has to kill the woman he loves, is going to be made a fool for supporting Dany, and is going to be an exiled depressed loner who rejoins a nonexistent Night’s Watch. That’s character REGRESSION. That’s the defining characteristic of this ending: regression. No one grows; no one learns anything.
Lol it’s about breaking normal character archetypes, man lol if you didn’t see this coming, you haven’t been paying attention lol it’s about realism lol
You know, damn enjoyment whatsoever. And I’m not saying what’s happening couldn’t be enjoyable but cramming it into 6 episodes that are about 25% Michael Bay action sequences while ignoring progression wrt the characters that will be left standing or meant to elicit emotion as they depart just robs us all of any kind of satisfaction. Giving us a pile of disappointment while bolting for the exit and ignoring the things that would make any of this meaningful is just flat out cocksuckering of the highest magnitude
Sansa and Arya have progressed, but very clumsily due to their development being put into overdrive. Arya is nothing short of a comic book character at this point. Drives me nuts. Her best ending was to realize she would only find emptiness in a lifetime pursuit of vengeance. The idea that she can’t be a “lady” is stupid to me as well. If she’s the head of a house she can do whatever she wants. I get not wanting to be Gendry’s wife, but she should be a ruler. She can still do all the fighting she wants. Sansa went from a bumbling confused idiot who couldn’t cast aside her own ambition to giving littlefinger a lobotomy and replacing her silly brain with his political genius brain. I like the idea of all of her experiences giving her useful perspective but the pace and the extent that she became the smartest person in the room is just contrived and lame.
Being upset that Arya killed the night king really makes people look at her character irrationally. She’s far from comic book character, her killing the night king was just the logical play wrt where she’s been and what she’s been a part of throughout her journey. As a book guy first and foremost I found it immensely satisfying
I’m not upset Arya killed the night king. I’m upset at how utterly stupid and incoherent the sequence was that led to that moment. There was nothing interesting or rich about what led to his demise. It was just spider monkey Arya with some superhero leap combined with some tricky knife play, and then poof the entire threat was ended. If you’re a book guy I don’t see how you didn’t feel cheated in that moment.
I didn’t. It had to end and I’m glad the character I got to experience most of the world through her eyes while seeing her train with some of the most brilliant minds in death dealing in the world got to do it. Would it have been nice if after the fact they’d have shown how she pulled it off? Sure. Am I ok with how it happened? Absolutely. She was faded into the background, showing her weave around and make it happen would have killed the moment. Her doing it like she did mad it shocking and enjoyable and just about the only stand up and cheer moment of the story for me that involved likely my favorite character. It was fine. Trickery was needed. Jon doing it one on one with a flaming sword would’ve been a bummer
One of the best and worst things to happen to Game of Thrones was Ned Stark’s execution and the Red Wedding. It informed a bunch of edgelords opinions on the series as - shocking deaths! The purpose of the aforementioned events (in addition to the Red Wedding being well foreshadowed) is that it sets the expectations with the readers that characters can’t escape the consequences of their actions. ASOIAF has never been about anything can happen to anybody at anytime or that characters aren’t allowed to be happy. Martin has specific intentions with every character. Their endings, happy or not, serve a purpose within the larger narrative. The show’s ending has...no...purpose.
This. The only real excuse for how simplistic the characters decision making is at this point is that everyone with a decent mind has been killed. If you have Jon, jorah and Tyrion as your battle commanders maybe the best you can come up with is "Dothraki....form flaming swords and charge whatever's over there."
Spoiler ‘Game of Thrones’ Spoiler Alert: A Spanish Doctor Will Tell You How It Ends A Madrid surgeon turned into a royal pain for HBO after sharing plot details about the hit show An early tip from Jose Señarís Romay: Jon Snow would be brought back to life in season 6. HBO Jose Señarís Romay was at work at a production studio in Madrid in late March when he received an urgent text message. An attorney representing HBO was outside with a contract for him to sign. It said, in essence, stop divulging plot twists of the final season of “Game of Thrones.” Filming for the HBO series—the show wraps up Sunday after eight seasons—has been shrouded in secrecy. Cast members say digital scripts disappear once a scene is shot. Actors who dub the show in other languages say they had to watch their characters on a mostly blacked-out screen for one episode, obscuring the action. “We could barely see the character’s mouth moving,” said Eduardo Bosch, the Spanish voice for Jon Snow. Yet Dr. Señarís, a 47-year-old surgeon and part-time television writer from Spain, managed to breach the show’s wall—turning him into a royal pain for HBO as well as a divisive figure among the show’s rabid fans. Since 2016, he has been posting videos on YouTube in which he has dropped key details about unaired episodes he said were fed to him by a source inside the production crew. Spoiler-hungry fans say Dr. Señarís is unusual among leakers for being consistently right. He is also the only spoiler they know of whom HBO has tried to stop. Perhaps most crucially, he also has ideas about what happens in the final episode (don’t worry—we won’t tell you here). Dr. Señarís with his ‘Game of Thrones’ books and memorabilia. PHOTO: JOSE SEÑARÍS ROMAY “For obvious reasons, we never discuss what we do to protect our intellectual property,” an HBO spokesman said. Dr. Señarís said he didn’t want to spoil the show for anyone. In his videos, he counts backward before revealing details, giving viewers a chance to bail out. He still loves finding out what will happen, he said, and cites a 2016 study that found spoilers actually enhance a viewer’s experience. “I’m not the one saying it,” he said. “It’s science.” Dr. Señarís is a gastroenterologist who performs surgery three days a week. He is the in-house doctor for the Spanish variety show “El Hormiguero,” which means ant hill. And on the side, he writes segments for the show about Japanese gadgets. Online, he’s known as “Frikidoctor”—“friki” is Spanish slang for geek. He owns three different sword replicas, a set of dragonglass daggers and a figurine of Tyrion Lannister signed by Peter Dinklage, who plays the character in the show. His “Game of Thrones” obsession started in the first season, eventually leading him to post some videos on YouTube discussing the show in season five. Before the premiere of season six, he got an email at work from someone who claimed to work there, with details on plot developments. The source told him Jon Snow, who had been stabbed to death the previous season, would be brought back to life. Dr. Señarís relayed the tip on YouTube. Two days before episode 1 of season 6, Dr. Señarís correctly revealed that the character Melisandre is actually centuries old. PHOTO: HBO “I wasn’t sure if any of it was true,” he said. Hours after the video was posted, HBO filed a copyright infringement claim and it was taken down. “That’s when I reached the conclusion that what I said in the video was correct,” he said. After HBO removed two more of his videos that season, Dr. Señarís started getting more attention in “Game of Thrones” threads on the online forum Reddit. For season seven, Dr. Señarís again began posting videos with plot twists. This time HBO did nothing. The upshot: Season seven was the leakiest, said Stewart Ward, a 23-year-old journalist in Scotland who moderates Reddit’s main “Game of Thrones” thread. Mr. Ward has adopted the role of protector of a leak-free realm, and bans anyone who tries to poison the community with talk of spoilers. “We definitely joke in private about going after Friki,” he said. Another Reddit thread called Freefolk—they are characters in the show who refuse to kneel before any king—welcomes spoilers. Users there have discussed the doctor’s tips, and he sometimes jumps into discussions himself. “He has proven himself credible,” said Stephanie Bailey, a 38-year-old programmer who moderates Freefolk. A spoiler from season 7, episode 4: Jaime Lannister is almost killed by dragon in a war. PHOTO: HBO In late March, three weeks before the premiere of the final season, Dr. Señarís posted a video with detailed descriptions of scenes in the first episode. HBO immediately filed a copyright claim with YouTube and the original video was taken down. Links to copies of the video instantly started popping up on Reddit. “If someone’s got a valid link then, hell yeah, we’re going to post it,” Ms. Bailey said. “HBO can try all they want, but the genie is out of the bottle.” A few days after that video was taken down, Dr. Señarís said he received a call from an HBO executive who said the network wanted him to sign a contract that stopped him from leaking details about the final season. Two days later he sat down with the executive at a Madrid hotel wearing a T-shirt that read “Spoiling is not a crime” in the show’s signature font. HBO, he was told, was conducting an internal investigation to find his source. For episode 1 of season 8, Dr. Señarís shared that Sam Tarly would tell Jon Snow he is the real heir to the Iron Throne. PHOTO: HBO The executive handed him a document. He refused to sign, Dr. Señarís said, because it read like a confession that he had committed a crime. The next day, an HBO attorney showed up at the studio where “El Hormiguero” is taped with a new draft. Dr. Señarís again refused to sign. He asked to have a new one drawn up in which he committed only to not disclosing more details of unaired episodes. He signed it on March 30. By then, it didn’t really matter. Months before the season started, he had posted a video in which he revealed what he predicts will be one of the most important plot twists in the final episode. Since its posting in September, it has gotten more than 79,000 views. HBO hasn’t filed a claim to get the video taken down. Dr. Señarís has a theory why. “If they took down that video months ahead of the premiere, they would be admitting that it’s the end of the show,” he said. “They would ruin it themselves.”
She's been a caricature for the past few season. The chase scene is Braavos was straight out of a Michael Bay movie and among the worst sequences they've done in the series. They fell in love with the character and completely took away any real complexity to her. In a way she's the prefect symbol for how the show's devolved since the source material ran out.
I'm still trying to understand why Jon would turn himself in and have to take the Black for killing Dany? He's technically the rightful ruler so it's not like he killed the King/Queen. even if he didn't have claim to the throne killing a tyrant to bring in a new regime has never been punishable crime in this series. I know the rumor is he's going there to defend against the next NK (which doesn't make sense with no wall)
It's pretty tragic when fan theories are better than the product we are getting on screen. Especially given the quality of the show when it still had the books as source material.
I’m still trying to figure out why they and by extension GRRM thought Bran being the ruler of the 7K in the end was a good idea. That’s just straight out of left field
Another great question is how does Jon survive killing Dany? Feel free to check my math, but I’m not quite sure the Dothraki, Unsullied, and fucking Drogon are going to think Jon is justified in killing her.
Ever see The Fifth Element? Dany is like the lead Mangalore. Once she’s dead, they’ll all just give up.
I mean, I feel like Dany should sit on the IT solely for the fact that she can do what no other character can... re-spawn entire armies.
They better not pull no shit where she regains her sanity after seeing the results of what she did to innocent people and she wants to die because she knows the madness is setting in and makes Jon do it.
I don’t think they’ll do that because I think the show is beyond humanizing Dany. I think that is the specific reason Dany’s face was never shown after “the bells” because they didn’t want us to think about anything from her POV. She became less of a character and more of a faceless force of destructive nature for Jon and Tyrion to look sad about. They are going to get eviscerated when Jon kills Dany regardless. However, they’ll try to make it palatable by having her too far gone. I think the leaks say that Jon tries to reason with her but she justifies her actions.
So if the night king is dead and the wights are too, and that means most if not all of the wildlings are dead and the wall is destroyed etc, why the fuck would jon go back up north when it's not needed?
Did they say he takes the black or did they say he goes north? I could see him just going and living with the wildlings
Yeah and I’m not sure how that works if Arya killed the original. I’m sure they’ll make no effort to explain this.
Jon gets sent to the nights watch as punishment for killing Dany, and he ends up going north of the wall with tormund and ghost. Bran is democratically elected as king, he chooses Tyrion as his hand. Sansa rules winterfell. Arya goes to the west where no one has ever been. JY commits ritual seppuku.
Haha how could I forget. The sellsword with zero background in anything except killing people will be running the kingdom’s finances.
The Bronn thing from the leaks always stood out to me as something that could be hinting at them being wrong or a troll but they've been spot on so... yeesh.