Agreed with pretty much everything in your post, but I love this last point. It makes me appreciate what happened last night even more. I'm 10% bummed because I was hoping for one more episode with the Night King as a threat, but I'm satisfied with how he was defeated. He served his purpose and now it's on to the true villain of the show. While I think maybe a couple more characters could have bitten the dust during the battle, I've also never really felt death for death's sake actually creates real stakes. There were big consequences of the battle, namely Dany's losing all her forces.
i think ultimately the beauty of the books is martin's ability to balance all of those things and having the bold choices feel justified and 'done well.' i guess its probably too much to expect basically anyone but him to do it that well but yes 'stands out' is a good way to put it.
Golden Company? EDIT: Unless you mean that major characters secretly died offscreen, which would probably be the most criticized decision ever and the internet would implode.
The only big moment the show got better than the books was the Red Wedding and that's only because of how the medium of literature works vs. television.
I'm assuming we've seen the last of Meera. Would have been nice if she was one of Bran's protectors with Theon, though.
There was one scene where the wights were ramming into one of those giant Xs on the ground covered in dragon glass and being ripped apart on contact
Yeah those I noticed, I rememebr saying “ooo those are working!”, but on my rewatch tonight I noticed that bar hanging on the outside of the wall and thought wow that’s pretty cool and innovative. I wish we saw it take one of them out
They should have had a mini dragonglass (the maesters call it obsidian) wall scythe similar to the scythe on The Wall
I already feel terrible for these characters, but I just keep thinking about the millions of people still left in the world who will probably never know that these guys saved their lives. And they’ll all probably end up fighting against them.
Fucking AMEN. Jorah's entire purpose, from the pilot to the moment he died, was to protect Dany. He's absolutely a major character. Theon went from being a pompous teenager to a tryhard edgy Ironborn to being tortured to a fragile PTSD-ridden mess to a man born again. Alfie should get an Emmy for how many times he had to completely repurpose his role. this this this this lol
Yeah exactly. One thing I was thinking they could do at first is use the story of this victory to rally people to their cause against Cersei, but then I realized that literally nobody in the South is going to believe any of this happened.
Or have them eat a bunch of dragon glass and melt it down to shoot with their fire. They need us on the writing team
What about dragonglass catapult balls that shatter when they land and scatter shards all over the nearby wights that avoided the initial impact
Can Daenerys legitimize Gendry since he's the last Baratheon? I wonder if that would rally some houses to her side.
Wouldn’t legitimizing him be equivalent to giving up the throne for herself? I guess she could marry him, but she’s def more ambitious than that.
I keep forgetting next week's episode is basically the same length. I'm assuming the first half will be the aftermath of the battle (survivor reunions, funeral proceedings, etc) and the second half will be setting up the battle for King's Landing I definitely think E5 will be the real climax of the show and 6 will be more of an epilogue
The king/queen can legitimize bastards. If he pledged loyalty to her it would be smart to do it but the challenge would be convincing the Stormlands bannermen to believe that he’s really Robert’s son.