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Game of Thrones - Season 8 (spoilers)

 
 
 
How many characters had an ending that you actually thought worked?

Tyrion seemed okay as was Sansa's ending. But Arya's send off didn't feel gratifying at all, and I wanted her to survive the absolute most. The Hound's epic Bro-battle out of the blue (alright... we are at the castle, I'll just unlikely find my brother Grimace) seemed very likely, but even that seemed a bit ridiculous. Battle on the stairs, then through a stone wall?! Couldn't they have been battling on the ground and then The Hound who has been mortally stabbed, looks up and sees the dragon coming, about to toast both of them. A couple words to his brother, then points up... TOAST!!! Cercei's medicine man... that is how he goes?! At one point he has assembled an army of children... and that just never gets used again. Uron... even Euron, dumbest fucking plot insertion character in the show, has an ending that is just dumb and nonsensical. Cercei and Tywin... smooshed to death, by apparently a collapsing castle that mainly collapsed from the bottom, and just barely covered them. Brienne gives a nice send off to a man that had no soul.. as her send off. Bran... yeah... *sigh*. Varys's death seemed a bit inserted. Yeah, it gets foreshadowed like an anvil to the head in an earlier season, but his epiphany regarding the Mad Queen seems inorganic and they don't really explain how Tyrion knows Varys tried to kill Dany. Jon Snow, fine, I can get banishment because even Westeros has 5G, so he can't stay there, but, why the fuck does The Wall still have a Night's Watch?! It seems more like a prison at that point. And so his decision of great wisdom is to head north of the wall, where it is cold as fuck... instead of settling in Winterfell where the people would take care of the Unsullied?!

For a show that tries to wrap up every loose end, they seemed to manage to wrap them almost all up very poorly.
 
Arya's ending was good, when the Hound convinced her to go and choose life instead of death and just abandon her kill list when she was on the verge of scratching off the last name - it was a nice wrap up to her arc. But then, her way of choosing life was to go and be a sailor because she'd had a one line conversation about something like that a few seasons beforehand ... that was just weird.

I kind of liked Jaime's ending in that he decided to choose love over everything else, regardless of how stupid it was. It was a dumb decision which ended badly, of course, but it fit with his character, the same way that Ned's decision to choose honour over everything else and try to allow Cersei to try and save her children was a dumb decision which ended badly, but it was one that fit with his character. My only real issue was his going on about how he's actually an asshole who didn't care about the common people. That was totally false and his caring about the common people is why he betrayed his oaths and killed Aerys, why he betrayed Cersei and rode North to fight the zombies, etc. He always put on the mask of an asshole who didn't care about the common people, but that was never more than a mask and then they decided right at the end that it was an actual character trait of his.

Varys and Dany's could have been good if they'd spent a few more episodes developing the plot lines as opposed to just jumping to the end of them and deciding that foreshadowing is a good replacement for character development. As it was, they were trash.

Drogon's was the best, though, because he finally got his revenge on that stupid chair which had been sending out all those mean tweets about him behind his back ... I assume. Clearly, that chair had done something to piss him off and the got its comeuppance.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Arya's ending was good, when the Hound convinced her to go and choose life instead of death and just abandon her kill list when she was on the verge of scratching off the last name - it was a nice wrap up to her arc. But then, her way of choosing life was to go and be a sailor because she'd had a one line conversation about something like that a few seasons beforehand ... that was just weird.

I kind of liked Jaime's ending in that he decided to choose love over everything else, regardless of how stupid it was. It was a dumb decision which ended badly, of course, but it fit with his character, the same way that Ned's decision to choose honour over everything else and try to allow Cersei to try and save her children was a dumb decision which ended badly, but it was one that fit with his character. My only real issue was his going on about how he's actually an asshole who didn't care about the common people. That was totally false and his caring about the common people is why he betrayed his oaths and killed Aerys, why he betrayed Cersei and rode North to fight the zombies, etc. He always put on the mask of an asshole who didn't care about the common people, but that was never more than a mask and then they decided right at the end that it was an actual character trait of his.

Varys and Dany's could have been good if they'd spent a few more episodes developing the plot lines as opposed to just jumping to the end of them and deciding that foreshadowing is a good replacement for character development. As it was, they were trash.

Drogon's was the best, though, because he finally got his revenge on that stupid chair which had been sending out all those mean tweets about him behind his back ... I assume. Clearly, that chair had done something to piss him off and the got its comeuppance.
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Re: Jaime. He knew Cersei had to die. HAD to die. It was sad (because of Brienne) that he chose to die with her but not out of character.

Arya heading off into parts unknown seems fine. I was glad she abandoned her kill list and embraced life on her terms.

Jon being sent off to the north? That was dumb. But given that the Targareans had a 50/50 chance of becoming mad, murderous bastards, I can see why they said he couldn't have children. But seriously: he's got to have kids. And there's no need for a north wall anymore.

Sansa needs some love and affection and I hope she gets it.

I also hope Tyrion does as well. I understand his affection and love for Jaime but he knew his sister was mad and evil and while a sibling might regret that, and mourn the death of an evil, mad relative, I think that Tyrion would have offed her himself if he had to.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Arya's ending was good, when the Hound convinced her to go and choose life instead of death and just abandon her kill list when she was on the verge of scratching off the last name - it was a nice wrap up to her arc.
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Could he have told her that before they left Winterfell?!
But then, her way of choosing life was to go and be a sailor because she'd had a one line conversation about something like that a few seasons beforehand ... that was just weird.
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Not a sailor, but an explorer. She was going to prove that the... wherever the heck they are... isn't flat.

I kind of liked Jaime's ending in that he decided to choose love over everything else, regardless of how stupid it was.[ It was a dumb decision which ended badly, of course, but it fit with his character, the same way that Ned's decision to choose honour over everything else and try to allow Cersei to try and save her children was a dumb decision which ended badly, but it was one that fit with his character. My only real issue was his going on about how he's actually an asshole who didn't care about the common people. That was totally false and his caring about the common people is why he betrayed his oaths and killed Aerys, why he betrayed Cersei and rode North to fight the zombies, etc. He always put on the mask of an asshole who didn't care about the common people, but that was never more than a mask and then they decided right at the end that it was an actual character trait of his.
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Jaime's end does help keep him from getting much honor in the end, but it seems quite bizarre that he'd epiphany up, and then un-epiphany. And then smooshed by a few bricks.

Varys and Dany's could have been good if they'd spent a few more episodes developing the plot lines as opposed to just jumping to the end of them and deciding that foreshadowing is a good replacement for character development. As it was, they were trash.
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Yup.

Drogon's was the best, though, because he finally got his revenge on that stupid chair which had been sending out all those mean tweets about him behind his back ... I assume. Clearly, that chair had done something to piss him off and the got its comeuppance.
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Yeah... he seemed to have the intelligence to know the chair was Danys' ending... but not smart enough to connect the dots regarding the one dead person and the live person right next to her.

I will say this, I totally did not see the whole Bran and Mjölnir angle.
 
I had hoped the 8th season would redeem the shows multi-season downward spiral by having the Army of the Dead besieging Winterfell, and Cersei and the semi-dead Mountain having to deal with the Night King.
well, there would have been other good ways to wrap up the series, but Season 8 was clunky and wildly uneven (see my previous posts)--though maybe not as bad as Season 7.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Not a sailor, but an explorer. She was going to prove that the... wherever the heck they are... isn't flat.
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But, honestly, that's like you going off exploring to prove that the world isn't flat. If you were unsure, then before you started you could turn to the person sitting next to you and ask. She can similarly turn to the person sitting next to her and ask the same question since the person sitting next to her is in touch with all the living creatures on the planet and can just tell her the answer. It's not really an exploration if the only reason that you need to explore is because you made a conscious choice to be willfully ignorant about what you'll find.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Not a sailor, but an explorer. She was going to prove that the... wherever the heck they are... isn't flat.
Click to expand...

But, honestly, that's like you going off exploring to prove that the world isn't flat. If you were unsure, then before you started you could turn to the person sitting next to you and ask. She can similarly turn to the person sitting next to her and ask the same question since the person sitting next to her is in touch with all the living creatures on the planet and can just tell her the answer. It's not really an exploration if the only reason that you need to explore is because you made a conscious choice to be willfully ignorant about what you'll find.
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Whaaaaaaaaatttttt?
 
Toni said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Not a sailor, but an explorer. She was going to prove that the... wherever the heck they are... isn't flat.
Click to expand...

But, honestly, that's like you going off exploring to prove that the world isn't flat. If you were unsure, then before you started you could turn to the person sitting next to you and ask. She can similarly turn to the person sitting next to her and ask the same question since the person sitting next to her is in touch with all the living creatures on the planet and can just tell her the answer. It's not really an exploration if the only reason that you need to explore is because you made a conscious choice to be willfully ignorant about what you'll find.
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Whaaaaaaaaatttttt?
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She forgot to ask the omniscient guy sitting next to her what she’d find.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Toni said:
Whaaaaaaaaatttttt?
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She forgot to ask the omniscient guy sitting next to her what she’d find.
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Except Bran isn't actually omniscient. He has Greensight, and he can warg, but that does not mean he has knowledge of everything. Greensight provides the ability to perceive past, present, and future events through dreams, and warging allows one to enter the mind of animals, and perceive events through them. Both abilities apparently descend from the First Men, who were the original human inhabitants of Westeros. Perceiving events through dreams, as Greensight allows, seems to be rather unreliable. How would one know what is an actual dream, and what is coming from Greensight? Presumably, as one became more experienced with it, they would be able to tell more reliably, but Bran has not had Greensight for long. Then there is the issue that Bran would have to have had the right Greensight dream vision to gain the required knowledge. If those dreams happen purely by chance, he might never gain a specific piece of knowledge from Greensight, he certainly would not live long enough to perceive every event in the past, present and future, so there must be some limitation. I have my own personal interpretation of Greensight, that since it descends from the First Men, then the event in question must have also been witnessed by one of the First Men, or their descendants. I am not sure how this interpretation bears out from the books, as I have not read them, but I don't think anything in the series contradicts it. Since the first men are native to Westeros, given my personal interpretation, if they or none of their descendants ever travelled west from Westeros, there would be no knowledge of what lies in that direction.

Of course, Bran could warg into an animal, say a fish, and swim west to see what he finds. Presumably the journey would take quite some time, even for a fish, say at least a couple of weeks, and Bran would have to control the fish for the entire time. A time in which his body would be helpless, and prone to starvation. I would think that he might be reluctant to put himself in that position for such an unknown period of time. There might also be other drawbacks to warging for an extended period of time, just as there was a drawback when Bran warged into another human, Hodor, and caused him to be mentally damaged for the rest of his life.

So, all in all, it just takes a bit of thought and imagination to work out how things could have happened the way they did, and maybe it is more fun for some to just poke holes. Certainly, more exposition from GRRM, or the series writers who where going beyond what GRRM had written, could have provided us with answers to all of the questions we have now, but there probably still would have been tons of fans who did not approve of the ending regardless. Also, some times it is better to just leave the answers up to the imagination of the reader/viewer. That worked well for me.
 
Ya, that’s his book ability. There was no mention of any such limitations in the show, so your post is just making up stuff that isn’t part of the plot. So, in that sense, it’s a lot like the entire eighth season.

In the show, he is the memory of humanity. He is not the memory of one small subset of humanity which only lives on one little continent.
 
KeepTalking said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Toni said:
Whaaaaaaaaatttttt?
Click to expand...

She forgot to ask the omniscient guy sitting next to her what she’d find.
Click to expand...

Except Bran isn't actually omniscient. He has Greensight, and he can warg, but that does not mean he has knowledge of everything. Greensight provides the ability to perceive past, present, and future events through dreams, and warging allows one to enter the mind of animals, and perceive events through them. Both abilities apparently descend from the First Men, who were the original human inhabitants of Westeros. Perceiving events through dreams, as Greensight allows, seems to be rather unreliable. How would one know what is an actual dream, and what is coming from Greensight? Presumably, as one became more experienced with it, they would be able to tell more reliably, but Bran has not had Greensight for long. Then there is the issue that Bran would have to have had the right Greensight dream vision to gain the required knowledge. If those dreams happen purely by chance, he might never gain a specific piece of knowledge from Greensight, he certainly would not live long enough to perceive every event in the past, present and future, so there must be some limitation. I have my own personal interpretation of Greensight, that since it descends from the First Men, then the event in question must have also been witnessed by one of the First Men, or their descendants. I am not sure how this interpretation bears out from the books, as I have not read them, but I don't think anything in the series contradicts it. Since the first men are native to Westeros, given my personal interpretation, if they or none of their descendants ever travelled west from Westeros, there would be no knowledge of what lies in that direction.

Of course, Bran could warg into an animal, say a fish, and swim west to see what he finds. Presumably the journey would take quite some time, even for a fish, say at least a couple of weeks, and Bran would have to control the fish for the entire time. A time in which his body would be helpless, and prone to starvation. I would think that he might be reluctant to put himself in that position for such an unknown period of time. There might also be other drawbacks to warging for an extended period of time, just as there was a drawback when Bran warged into another human, Hodor, and caused him to be mentally damaged for the rest of his life.

So, all in all, it just takes a bit of thought and imagination to work out how things could have happened the way they did, and maybe it is more fun for some to just poke holes. Certainly, more exposition from GRRM, or the series writers who where going beyond what GRRM had written, could have provided us with answers to all of the questions we have now, but there probably still would have been tons of fans who did not approve of the ending regardless. Also, some times it is better to just leave the answers up to the imagination of the reader/viewer. That worked well for me.
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tumblr_mx55mk1iSU1rq4kimo1_500.jpg
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Ya, that’s his book ability. There was no mention of any such limitations in the show, so your post is just making up stuff that isn’t part of the plot. So, in that sense, it’s a lot like the entire eighth season.

In the show, he is the memory of humanity. He is not the memory of one small subset of humanity which only lives on one little continent.
Click to expand...

Great, I will mark you down as part of the "more fun to poke holes" crowd.
 
GoT / Metallica mashup
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6UFg6puvfA&feature=youtu.be[/YOUTUBE]
 
KeepTalking said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Ya, that’s his book ability. There was no mention of any such limitations in the show, so your post is just making up stuff that isn’t part of the plot. So, in that sense, it’s a lot like the entire eighth season.

In the show, he is the memory of humanity. He is not the memory of one small subset of humanity which only lives on one little continent.
Click to expand...

Great, I will mark you down as part of the "more fun to poke holes" crowd.
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But it does provide a problem the show doesn’t address. Why didn’t he sneak into the dragons mind and tell it to get an expresso, instead of burning everything.

An interesting way to have addressed it in passing would be to have someone ask him directly and his response as he is being rolled away would have been ‘Then I wouldn’t have become the King.’
 
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