House of the Dragon (Game of Thrones) Thread

[Adam]

Does anyone know if/when the "Last Watch" documentary will air in the UK? I know it's slated for next Sunday on HBO and wondered if it was going to be on Sky Atlantic.

[Nerf]

3 hours ago, Chris2K said:

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I don't mean to be "that guy" but to everyone who dislikes it so much, what would you have done differently?

Baring in mind your limitations are that you have sixty minutes of airtime to work with, the balance of keeping people happy between the fans who started with the books and the fans who only watched the show, and the creator of the whole premise giving you a smattering of details to work with, including the ending which you have to stick to, and nothing more.

As a given, taking the stupid self-referential book out of the equation will be top of most lists I'm sure.

 

 

Spoiler

 

I mean, not alienating the one man that knew how the pieces of the puzzle would fit together is a good start. As is not imposing a half season on yourselves when your network has granted you as many episodes as you need to tie the story up conclusively (including additional seasons!) just because you want to start playing Star Wars ASAP instead.

Other than that, I dunno, maybe more than five seconds of thought into literally any aspect of the story's conclusion? Maybe when you ask yourself how Jon Snow could possibly have survived the Unsullied and Dothraki undoubtedly baying for the blood of the man who murdered their Queen, your answer shouldn't be "just fade to black and fast forward a few weeks." Maybe ask yourself why Dorne and the Ironborn are not only totally cool with the North gaining independence ahead of them despite seeking it longer than them, but also being totally okay with a rigged election made up almost entirely of Starks and Stark loyalists.

Besides all that, it's not my job to write a better story than they did. It's their job to give their project the attention that it deserved, because they're capable writers. And that's the sad thing - I do believe they're capable writers that ultimately just lost interest in the show and wanted to move on as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

 

 

Edited May 20, 2019 by Nerf

[FLiam]

One of the main issues I had is that I had lost all emotional investment in the characters and it was because of bad writing and characters behaving completely different to as they had done previously.

Tyrion was one of the wisest, most scheming characters of the entire series and suddenly he doesn’t have a clue. There was a line in which he said “I was a wise man once”, and I finished the line to my wife saying “until we ran out of the source material”. 

I can’t quite put my finger on it completely either, but since last season the dialogue has been, off. It hasn’t felt the same as the previous seasons, not as poetic in some way. It feels more run-of-the-mill TV show whereas before it was distinctly unique. 

One of the main things I’d have done differently is not limit the time for the final season in terms of episodes and I certainly would have had the Nights King play a more important role than cannon fodder at the end.

[Josh]

I didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it. It evoked no strong feelings. It was an episode of television that sure was there. Which isn’t great for a series finale.

[Meacon Keaton]

I went into it assuming there’d be no actual finality to it. It wasn’t going to be Breaking Bad where we all knew pretty much from the start what the main character’s fate would be. But the world Martin has created is going to live on, so I assumed we’d never get a concrete “The end”. I’ve had more time to think of it and I still think I like it. I may go back in a week or two and change my mind on a rewatch but for now, I’m alright. I’m also like 25% glad it’s just done, too, though. 

[Arjen Robben]

Spoiler

 

 

[TMM]

I appear to be in the minority here but I loved it. 

[Your Mom]

Sorry if this has already been said but I saw this  on twitter

 

Spoiler

I read someone's theory on twitter which I would post but I can't find it now. She said that they accidentally fucked themselves by electing Bran King. Because their new system is a king just rules for their lifetime and then they select a new one but whatever person the Raven thing rides in can live for thousands of years so they without knowing it elected an immortal king who is being controlled by the Raven. Like in an earlier season they asked Bran something and he said "I am not Bran" which meant he has no control anymore.

I don't know if that checks out because I don't really follow the lore or whatever but I thought it was neat. Otherwise they elected the literal most boring character king  

 

[TCO]

That was fucking laughably dreadful. That wasn't Game of Thrones, that was a thrown together, poorly written rush job where the characters just didn't behave like they should. They lost their way soon as the books ended but it's almost like a completely different show now.

[FLiam]

Not sure what the spoiler rules are so I’ll spoiler just incase.

Spoiler

The more I think about the Jon killing Dany then being kept prisoner the more it makes no sense whatsoever.

I’ve been told by people “Well we have to assume he told Greyworm and the Unsullied”.

I have several issues with that. Firstly, we are the audience, you’re supposed to tell us the story. Secondly, they would have straight up murdered Jon for killing Dany. The gap in time is baffling and screams of “we really didn’t know how to get from a to b so we just skipped some time”. It’s such a big plot hole that I can’t look past.

 

[Meacon Keaton]

What exactly would you have wanted them to show during that time lapse though? Them rotting in their cells? The other Houses traveling to King’s Landing? I’m just unclear on what you wanted them to do there.

[Arjen Robben]

Spoiler

Probably at least some aftermath, preferably the immediate aftermath to one of the shows lead, and the seasons key characters death.

 

[FLiam]

3 minutes ago, Meacon said:

What exactly would you have wanted them to show during that time lapse though? Them rotting in their cells? The other Houses traveling to King’s Landing? I’m just unclear on what you wanted them to do there.

I wanted to see what happened. 

Spoiler

Why and how was Jon taken prisoner? Did someone see the dragon flying away with her body? Did Jon simply tell everyone he just killed her? Did he tell everyone the dragon did? Did he try to escape and was caught somehow? Why didn’t the Unsullied kill him as soon as they found out? 

 

[Ruki]

This is cool.

[Your Mom]

I do have trouble with

 

Spoiler

Why didn't they kill Jon? Why are they suddenly interested in the judicial process?  

 

[Schlitzbrille]

4 minutes ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

I do have trouble with

 

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Why didn't they kill Jon? Why are they suddenly interested in the judicial process?  

 

And not give him a chance to redeem himself by Ghost getting all the pats for being such a good boye ?

[Lint]

It happened again

Spoiler

 

Water bottles this time 

 

 

[gunnar hendershow]

It had closure, which was nice. Some problems, but most of it is definitely chalked up to them rushing everything.

I get a lot of the logistics of rushing it. Sophie Turner, Emilia Clarke, and some others aren't going to be willing to do this forever. The writers certainly didn't want to be doing this anymore. I think they genuinely thought when the show became a hit based on the outlines they had gotten from GRRM they could finish it pretty quickly. Hence why they started cutting out extra storylines early. All of those are things you do when you adapt something, nothing I really hold against them.

The whole "It feels like a totally different show" holds some water. But this is GRRM's ending. Book 1, chapter 1. It's Bran. George always planned on something big for Bran, some cosmic significance to the whole story. It's potentially a big reason he has such writer's block, because he's got such a huge collection of characters and stories in this world and he's trying to move all those pieces around while the main threads--Bran, Dany, and Jon--wait for the eventual climax. Benioff & Weiss, kind of foolishly but also due to the limitations of TV, just lopped off so much of the story outside of those core pieces.

The idea that in ASOIAF/GOT the deaths don't serve as plot devices isn't really true. In hindsight nearly every death has occurred at the right time. It's served to move another major step in the plot forward. The books will get to the same convergence as the show did, but it'll do it most likely a lot more smoothly because he has more freedom to tell as many stories as he needs in his books. TV is a very challenging medium to end well. The larger the world and the characters the harder you get to actually have closer. We're fine with movies, when a character is on screen for 15 minutes, not knowing what happens to them. But when we see a character on TV for 6, 7, or 8 years we expect a level of finality that is extremely hard to obtain. Breaking Bad is an example of a show that closed out great because it didn't give itself a large stable of characters it had to work with. Game of Thrones never had this ability. Too much was always going to converge at the end, but the least they could have done was give themselves more episodes to tell the same story. Instead they rushed it, and it really shows in how rapidly the dialogue moves things along that you simply didn't see in earlier seasons. That's why it felt like a totally different show. We were supposed to hear one sentence and have it move the story, in book terms, 20 pages ahead.

Also there are dozens of ways I can think of off the top of my head that they could have explained how Jon was still alive after killing Dany. It's not a plot hole as much as much as it's just an example of them trusting their audience to some of the work for them.

[GhostMachine]

I thought it was a decent ending, but had a few flaws:

First of all, Jon's fate. Why is there really even a need for a Night's Watch anymore? True, there are some threats still down below the Wall (or what's left of it), but those threats aren't nearly as bad as the White Walkers, and the Wildlings are now allies, not enemies. Plus, why the need for the no wife and kids vow to still be in place? On top of that, why do it to prevent a war with the Unsullied? The Unsullied are more or less assholes for doing whatever Dany wanted, including cold blooded murderer. Hopefully, as someone already brought up, those disease-carrying butterflies are still in Naath and wipe the Unsullied out, or at least whittle them down to a negligable force. Then they can say fuck them and brinh Jon back....if he wants to come back.

Plus, its not really a punishment. Jon seemed at home there before, and is friends with the Wildlings. 

The Unsullied taking Jon prisoner for killing Dany didn't make sense. Considering the nasty things they did in the past, they should have outright killed him. And refusing to hand over Jon would have been good enough reason to declare war. Greyworm essentially forcing them to pick a new king was stupid. 

I get Tyrion's punishment of being Bran's hand, because Tyrion is smarter and wiser than he gives himself credit for. He might think bad of himself for siding with Dany,  but actions he took before even meeting her, as well as actions after, saved a lot of lives. If not for his lack of self-confidence, he'd probably make a great king.

What I did like:

Smiled big and actually clapped when Jon killed Dany.

Brienne finishing Jamie's entry in the book, and seeing that history treats him kinder than it should. Jamie did regret that he didn't have a lot of deeds recorded, other than killing the king. But lets not forget that if he hadn't been treated badly for kiling the king and had properly been credited with saving the entire kingdom, he might not have become such a foul wretch. 

The dragon melting the throne and them deciding that future kings will be chosen rather than it being an inheritance. They won't really need a throne until Bran's successor is chosen, and the Iron Throne could been considered cursed. Good riddance.

The make-up of the Small Council. Though it would be interesting to see who fills the open positions.

Arya going off on her own to become an explorer.

And if Peter Dinklage doesn't win an award or at least receive a nomination for this season, someone called the Bullshit Police asap. Best actor on the show, and he really killed it the last few episodes.

 

[DMN in the House]

3 hours ago, The Chiksrara Special said:

Sorry if this has already been said but I saw this  on twitter

 

  Hide contents

I read someone's theory on twitter which I would post but I can't find it now. She said that they accidentally fucked themselves by electing Bran King. Because their new system is a king just rules for their lifetime and then they select a new one but whatever person the Raven thing rides in can live for thousands of years so they without knowing it elected an immortal king who is being controlled by the Raven. Like in an earlier season they asked Bran something and he said "I am not Bran" which meant he has no control anymore.

I don't know if that checks out because I don't really follow the lore or whatever but I thought it was neat. Otherwise they elected the literal most boring character king  

 

In terms of the book lore, Bloodraven kept his personality, at least before he got put in the tree.

This episode was trash. The entire council scene was bad fan service with no explanation. BOTH council scenes, in fact. Sansa just declared the North free, Drogon burns the Iron Throne, it's like they just jammed tinfoil theories from YouTube together.

I'm not even mad at where things end, but the gaps, leaps, and jumps they take to get there are larger than Neil Armstrong's.