If they never even develop a Night King character, I feel like that fundamentally changes The Long Night. They don't have that auto-win strategy of taking out a single figure to win the war (unless I'm missing something) so they'll probably have to deal with that in a different way. They would also have to deal with the WW grudge against 3ER. They would have won the war no problem had NK not been super arrogant and weirdly obsessed with being the one to take him out with his own hands.
The inhuman death machine falling prey to hubris and human arrogance was certainly a surprise. Never knowing the true extent of his sentience and having evidence pointing to any number of answers is as much of a headscratcher as anything else. I guess marking it all down as rule of cool is as good a guess as any, because he certainly was.
Like a lot of things with this show, you kind of just have to accept that the rules were very loose. He was made from a regular human so he still has some human traits I guess, but they mostly just pick and choose which of those traits to show...mostly out of convenience.
The more we talk about all the different possible threads in the books, the more i realize I legit have no clue where the story is going to go. It made some sense that the Long Night battle happened first in the show because the WW broke the wall down and everyone was already in the North, so they were closer. But in the books, KL is in decidedly more peril with the wall still standing, no mention of the NK yet, Young Griff and the GC already in the stormlands+Arianne and Dorne possibly joining him, and Dany seemingly being on the verge of moving on from Mereen after George figures out how this battle is going to get settled. It's def possible that the throne stuff gets semi-sorted out first, Cersei and company disposed of, Jon's parentage revealed as Dany/YOung Griff claim the throne, they Dany marches her armies/dragons north to attack Jon and the Northerners, they meet at the neck where Howland reveals all, Jon says there's no time we gotta get going to the wall the NK is coming, and then the battle for the dawn commences. But seriously no idea how this plays out. Gimmie that damn book George.
I think his exact reasoning for going back to Cersei was supposed to be ambiguous. You could make the case he was going back to be with her just as easily as planning to kill her himself. I think maybe he even went back and forth himself, up until the end.
I think at the end of the day, he loved AND hated her, and he hated himself for that. He couldn't get beyond the fact that he was a 'hateful man', and the knowledge of her impending death pushed him over the edge of thinking he also deserves to die. He wasn't gonna let her die alone when he was just as terrible as she is, basically.
I guess you can make that the case if you want to see it that way, but I don’t know that there’s anything to imply that once he left Winterfell. He actually seemed pretty certain talking to Sansa that Cersei was going to die regardless so I did not read it as being ambiguous. He wanted to save her or at least be with her. I also would have assumed he would have pleaded to the Unsullied that he was going to kill Cersei instead of letting them capture him. Haha. To be honest, once this season started, I became pretty confident that Jaime would not kill Cersei. They were kind of leading us that way, but I knew they had to have side-stepped the Valonqar prophecy for a reason. I also didn’t think killing Cersei (as well as his unborn child in the process) was probably the way they would take his character.
I like this explanation. He was trying to do the noble thing by being accountable for his actions instead of pushing it all on Cersei. I think that’s why it took so much convincing from Tyrion to actually run away with her instead of accepting their fate.
SPOILERS SPOILER the spoilers on /r/freefolk were updated and have a lot more detail and rundown of the episode
Judging where the books are, with the plethora of characters there are, I almost can’t comprehend how we get to where we are in the show. Like Griff, Dorne and Stoneheart have to play some major role.
Same....it's no wonder GRRM is taking so long to write the book, there's like a thousand stories going on right now haha. Not sure if Lady Stoneheart plays a major role honestly, unless she moves North and fast. Griff/Dorne definitely will have a role here, even if it's just weakening Kings Landing. Dany may arrive in Westeros to a throne already occupied by someone claiming to be a Targaryen, and not Cersei.
I always kind of thought that the last two books were either gonna just randomly off a bunch of characters or never close storylines because even with 2,500(ish) pages to go, GRRM has more to wrap up then the show and I honestly don’t think he can do most of it in a satisfying manner
“I want to eat the skull keeper” I forgot how humorous Tyrion’s screwing up a language was in the last episode
George RR Martin finishing the GoT books and Patrick Rothfuss finishing up Kingkiller Chronicle are my two biggest book wishes. One seems much more likely than the other...
Really hope the final episode has some awesome music attached to it. I feel like the last two seasons have been really great on that front (could say the same for all of them really)
Willing to bet stoneheart gets knocked out p quick and jaimes pseudo trial in winterfell is similar to how that storyline plays out
Just reading through this thread because I finished episode 5 tonight. I feel that Dany did have a bitterness for the people. Her father was killed, her family was exiled, and she had been hunted by the crown. She hated those people, and their entitlement. She related more to groups who were struggled and oppressed. The choice to burn the city down may have not been premeditated, but unlike Tyrion, she had not affections for the city/and citizens. Her father was called the Mad King by those people. In feeling defeated, she chose to defeat. Most characters on GoT fail to meet our expectations, because they are meant to be flawed. It the same reason why Jon failed to kill the Night King, Tyrion failed to save the city, Arya failed to save a life and can only take them, Cersei failed to rule, Jamie failed to overcome his addiction to his sister, Grey Worm failed at becoming more human, Sansa failed at keeping her family loyalty and on and on. It’s really just a matter of who can survive and navigate through their mistakes.
No matter how many times i watch, Sandor asking Arya if she wants to be like him, then putting his hand on the back of her head/neck and choking back some emotion as he tells her she'll die if she comes with him, is so heartbreaking. Especially since it works and he gets through to her and then she thanks him and almost inches forward to go after him as he walks away.