I will post a longer review tomorrow when i can process it. There were some things that really bothered me though...plot wise and character consistency wise.
Im way past the "teleportation thing" or "show super athletes" (Jaime, Gendry, NK... or the ravens) but why make the characters dumb? Jon goes to Dany to mine some dragonglass yet, when they hit the north of the wall, no one carries even the smallest shard? How effing stupid is that? Besides, they should just sent off Drogon to bring a mouth full of wights and be done with it . They also trying to ruin Arya character i guess, to strong of a fan favorite or what? Loved that Tormund/Hound talk though
Spoiler As much as I loved that episode I have some critiques. How out of the main 7 out there, only the priest died? If Martin was writing this, at least 2-3 of them would have died. Just seemed very not GoT-ish that only the red shirts died, pretty much everyone made it. A lot of convenient plot armor here. I hate the Sansa v Arya plot line. I hope there's some twist to this, because at the moment its just a pointless plot line created to causes tension in winterfell since nothing is really happening there. We all know they wont turn on each other. My guess is, they'll be a twist and littlefinger ends up dying. Still, not enjoying the arc here. Why did Uncle Benjin have to sacrifice himself? Why couldnt they just both ride the horse and get out of there? It's not like he bought John much time, he died pretty much immedietely. Where did the wights get those giant chains to pull the dragon out of the water? Like those chains just appeared out of no where. I'ved like season 7 but its felt like a different show to me.
This series is one of the best pieces of fiction in any medium. So naturally I am really enjoying the steps towards closing off the narrative. Because of my emotional investment, at this point I can still easily dismiss my critiques of the show. But it is getting more difficult. Really does feel like the showrunners are struggling to fill in the details around the bullet points that they got from Martin about the ending. The logical inconsistencies are getting pretty absurd. Up until recently they've had thousands of pages of material. Now they need to come up with the material themselves while running out of real estate in terms of how much episode time they have left.
I read an article today, I think it was the Verge, that said this season feels like fan-fiction. I think that's pretty accurate, good and bad. I agree with a lot of the criticism here, it's a great show, but it's far from perfect right now. Spoiler Like there's going to have to be a huge surprise twist between Arya and Sansa that they are secretly plotting together to out Littlefinger or the stuff going on between them is.. not so great. You'd think by now they'd be smarter or more clever/know better. I also expected more impactful deaths beyond the wall, but it felt like everyone kept getting saved at the last second yet again. I kinda took it that the death of the dragon was the big impactful death that came out of nowhere and was pretty brutal to make up for almost everyone of note surviving the earlier battle. I was actually glad to see the Wyndham Wizard survive, seeing as he and Brienne need to make monster babies still. I also enjoyed how after freezing up and doing nothing while Thoros was mauled, The Hound made up for it by saving him later. There was for me a ton to like in this episode, I liked so many of the little talks the characters had with one another as they walked to Mordor to melt the one ring in the volcano.
^That's a good way to put it. This season has felt like it was written as fan fiction. I have so many mixed feelings. Lots of great moments, but lots of moments that makes you just scratch your head. It's a shame really. It's still good, but by GoT standards, its fell short to me.
Correct me if I'm wrong but they are clearly using dragon glass. Jorah with dual weilding. Tormund's makeshift axe. The Hound ditches the hammer and pulls a shard out.
Actually if you rewatch the fighting scenes when they are stranded on the island, Tormund's axe is made of dragon glass and Jorah uses two dragon glass daggers. Only person who wasn't using either a fire sword, valarian steel, or dragon glass was the Hound and I think somewhere in the middle of the fight he threw his hammer down and switched to dragon glass.
Spoiler Arya: What in the blue hell happened to her? Like Weezy was saying, I hope this is some long play, because if not, she is a total imbecile at this point. Katelyn, Robb and all the Stark banner men realized that Sansa did this letter with a proverbial knife to her throat and thought it was the only way to save her Dad. Yet Arya after surviving the God of Many faces training, making her way over here from Bravos, etc, etc. thinks the world is so simple that you just say, "Nope. Not writing that." Why can't she use her "talent" of seeing if someone is lying (if she even possesses it) to ask Sansa, "Did you betray father or did you think it was the only way to save him?" And the personality shift? She went from being a fiery, rebellious little hell raiser to being an emotionless sociopath. When she left Bravos, she was still Arya. Now that she killed the Freys she's more like Vivki from Small Wonder. The Idiotic Plan: The plan was awful from the get go. I was watching an aftershow and someone brought up a great point. The giant previous battles earned their confrontation. With The Battle at the Wall, Battle of the Bastards, Blackwater, even to an extent the Dothraki and Drogon vs Lannister slaughtering, it felt like tons of other stuff led to this. The battles felt like they had to happen and there was no way to get around it. But with this? All of these characters that have made really smart decisions for 6+ years all of a sudden lost their minds and executed a plan that had ZERO, I repeat ZERO chance of working as it was initially laid out. So the entire time they were out in the snow I knew they were going to get bailed out by Dany. There was really no other logical way to do it. So why not just have her join them from the get go? Her and Jon can head over there on Drogon, and like Kenzo suggested grab a couple wights in his mouth and take off. The battle, like what appears to be going on with Arya and Sansa, is completely manufactured drama. I have loved this show from the get-go. Even the weaker episodes usually end up having something in them where you look back and realize what they were doing. This episode, and even a little bit of the last episode has me wondering where the leadership went on the show. It HAS become fan fiction. Martin's absence (in terms of no book to pull the story from) is really showing right now. That worries me because the further we get from his last book, the more predictable this show seems to become. I did enjoy last night's episode, but Game of Thrones has set the bar so high, that making something that is enjoyable, is a let down. Oh and don't get me started on Gendry's run/Raven Flight/Dragon Flight happening in what seemed like a 24-48 hour period. I can look past the time jumps and quick travel when it is essentially just speeding things along and the cut from scene to scene could be days or weeks. But this was a "clock ticking" type scenario.
Spoiler: Benjen I read somewhere that while lost North of the Wall when he was with the Night's Watch, he was actually killed and saved by the Children of the Forest from becoming a wight. Ever since, he was kinda in between life and death (probably like Jon and Beric are) and didn't know what to do with himself. Being able to save Bran and Jon was like his release as to why he was saved, and he was ready to go at that point.
Spoiler Arya is at an 11 right now and needs to dial it down. She has become annoying with this teenage angst, just go ask your brother what happened, he sees everything! I disagree with Dany just joining on the mission. She has shown reluctance in believing Jon and probably needed the the white walker as much as Cersei does to believe in the threat. A better plan, assuming if you die north of the wall you turn, get a red shirt and kill him wait for him to turn and then take him. The whole raven/gendry time traveling thing would have been explained better if we had a scene that showed time was passing instead of being what seemed like overnight. Something simple like them using the last of their rations would have worked. But yeah a lot of this is on the writers, it shouldn't be left to the viewers to explain things. A lot of this can be chalked up to time constraints but didn't they put that on themselves to begin with? I've enjoyed the previous few episodes more by suspending my disbeliefs a bit. Still one of the best shows on TV right now.
One more note... Spoiler Our "heroes" weren't the only idiots tonight. The Night King had his first spear in hand and started walking towards the battle. On the ground and motionless is Drogon, a huge freaking target. A target that is carrying the Dragon Queen and is about to be boarded by Azor Ahai. What does he do? He opts to hurl his spear at the smaller target that happens to by flying a hundred miles an hour, in the sky. Again this is because the show needed to check a box (weaken the OP Dany while at the same time making the enemy stronger). But if you have to do this, don't make the Night King look like an idiot.
Spoiler: Chains From an ancient building in the north? Or they are by the ocean and probably back in the day there were chains for boats at the docks. Old chains but could be reinforce with ice magic.
Spoiler: Surprised When the dragon initially got hit and died I was hoping that it would land in the icy sea so they couldn't resurrect it because I thought if they couldn't resurrect the dead that fell through the ice they couldn't do so with a dragon. So I was a little happy about that. Then at the I was shocked that they could do that. But I guess the King of the White Walkers knew it would be a powerful weapon and ordered his guys to try and bring it out of the water. I wonder if it will breath ice or what....
Spoiler When Jon came out of the water, I thought Rhaegal was going to be the one that saved him, not Benjen. How much more epic would it have been (while also sort of bringing things together from a lineage perspective) if not only does Jon ride a dragon solo, but the namesake of his father comes back to save him?
