Good to know, but then that raises the question of where he was for the entire battle. He ran off to face the dead in an open field, somehow survived, and then vanished for the rest of the battle.

I mean, I'm happy he's alive, but that was still a terrible use of him.

 

Nah, even as a standalone movie, it was mediocre at best. Too many dumb decisions from the moment the episode started. For example, these people had fire-breathing dragons but instead of using them they sent horses against an undead horde that is very weak against fear.

Game of thrones was at its best when it was using Martin's material.

The show runners and writers have proved that they are actually particularly inept at writing Political intrigue.

In fact, I think this was there only chance of actually producing something decent because they could rely on magic and mysticism as a crutch.

 

This honestly makes me nervous for their star wars project...

 

There were dumb decisions, but not putting the dragons in the field from the start was not one of them. They already know the NK can 1HKO them with his spears, and now he has his own dragon. Original plan was to hold their dragons in reserve until he came out so they could 2v1 him, and that wasn't a bad plan.

 

What depresses me is that in like, less than 20 posts less than 24 hours after the episode aired, I've seen some really great ideas, very simple, very logical, for how certain things could have been different. And this is a huge show with tons of money and creative people. And it's not like it all paid off in the end so you can see why they had to contort themselves around characters making bad decisions to get to this one place that's going to pay off. So I'm just left going... why?

It feels like - and I can certainly identify with this as a fanfiction writer - that they got these little snippits of ideas for scenes, like the swords igniting, then the swords going out, or Arya dropping the dagger then catching it - and just threw the baby out with the bathwater trying to get there.

If nothing else, it's a pretty great abject lesson on why one shouldn't do that as an author. It really does leave your audience feeling quite hollow.

Like eating a bag of Cheetos - they each might be individually very tasty, but you're gonna feel mixed at best when you're done with the bag.

 

To be fair to the showrunners, they did have the problem of needing to resolve two "big bads" in one season: the Night King and Cersei. And to make matters worse, they are geographically distant from each other. If the Night King battle had been too epic and felt too much like the climax, then Cersei would have felt like an afterthought.

However, even there I think there are some obvious routes they could have taken to a more fulfilling climax rather than dispatching the Night King in such a routine manner. Because of Cersei's history, there are ways to get rid of her in a satisfying manner without a big battle. Game of Thrones has always been about how actions have repercussions. Cersei seized the throne despite having zero claim to it, and she did so by publicly murdering her rivals and desecrating the religion of her people.

In Game of Thrones seasons 1-4, that would not have been the type of thing a character could do without consequences. I think it would be a satisfying ending for Cersei's arc for her to finally be screwed over by her own short-sighted actions. The people rise up against her, and the Lords of the realm refuse to come to the aid of an open usurper. In the end, Cersei is not defeated by Danaerys or Jon or Sansa or Arya or Jaime. She is defeated by herself.

This would have also had a nice irony to it. Remember at the beginning of the series, when Illyrio fed Viserys lies about about the people were secretly sewing Targaryen banners, waiting to rise up for their king? Well, it would have been a nice parallel if Cersei had made that lie become true: the people hate her so much that they rise up in Danaerys' name.

Having this kind of political demise for Cersei would have permitted the battle vs the Night King to be the military/action climax of the series, lasting more than one episode.

 

Alternatively, this episode could have been written as a form of Hardhome, with people like Theon, perhaps Bran and Sansa, dying, with Jon, Arya, and other surviving forces to retreat from Winterfell as the undead army truly invades South, and that'll create complications between whether or not Cersei's people are willing to die at the point of swords of ice and become wights over crossing her given the stakes. That would allow the Cersei plot to likely resolve, while allowing for the culmination of the final battle and to resolve the other dangling threads (that were introduced in the show just as well) regarding the Long Night, Jon Snow, and so forth.

 

It appears that I'm easily pleased because I liked this episode for what it was. Sure, it was rather dark in few scenes, but Melisandre became MVP of the episode by giving us some really needed light. The tactic were bad, but I didn't expect anything better after the BotB. Some characters only survived because apparently this is RPG and their higher level allowed them to fight countless enemies ten times as long as the rest.

Yet, overall, they managed to give us an epic battle like nothing before on the TV.

I was one of these saying it's not possible that they will win this in one episode. The AotD needed to prove themselves before being defeated and Cersei wasn't going to be the final villain. Well, as far as this fight, I would say the Night King didn't disappoint after seven seasons of build up. In my opinion, this was the finale of the series. The next three episodes are going to be an extended epilogue similar to Hobbits dealing with Saruman at the Shire.

And by now I'm pretty sure that the only thing that the books and the show will have the same about the ending is who is going to survive and who is going to sit on the Iron Throne. Almost everything else will be totally different though this battle of Winterfell will probably happen with a different army of the living involved.

I was sure that Lyanna will survive and one from Brienne, Jaime and Pad group will not.

 

I'd agree... if he had managed to kill a single tier 1 character.

For a moment there I actually thought they were going to kill off half the cast in the first minute of the battle.

 

Seems like the show just doesn't really really want to use the direwolves.

For a few seconds I was convinced Bran would discover that the Night King was heading to Kings Landing.

It would have been a smart and strategic move on the King's Part. It would have forced Cersei into the fight. It would have tied into the vision flying over a destroyed King's Landing. And it could have ended with the North and South becoming overwhelmed and falling back to the iron islands.

While there, the show could have resolved its political intrigue . And what better place than the Iron Islands(they were the first kingdom we know of that had democracy) to try out some form of Democracy.

The newly formed Kingdom could then take on the Night King and maybe they could plan out an assassination mission with Arya getting the kill.

Oh well it is what it is. Right now the only consolation is that there is no way Martin can't top this.

 

The next thing you know GRRM dies of a heart attack. D&D would be the only closure anybody will ever get.

 

Gotta admit, it's adorable people still think Martin is ever gonna finish the series.

 

I personally feel that while TWOW may eventually come out, ADOS will not, at least not by Martin. I could be reading this wrong, but I get the feeling he's not really feeling it regarding this series anymore, particularly given the reception and the way the TV series has gone. Even if the ultimate direction were intended to be very different, it's a challenging thing for a writer to find motivation to continue writing when the idea is no longer fresh on the page and has, in some form or another, already been done. There's a post along those same lines in the following link that I think concisely gets to the heart as to why I don't think we'll see ADOS; the motivation and drive to complete the series is no longer burning bright. https://circleofcinema.com/2017/06/16/the-tragedy-of-george-r-r-martin-and-his-future-books/

 

The show should’ve gotten one more season or the Cersei arc should’ve been resolved last season. This entire season could’ve been focused entirely on fighting the white walkers. At least that way they would’ve have been portrayed as a legit threat. Over 6 episodes we see many main characters die heroically. The living get their asses handed to them, retreat all the way down to King’s Landing, make the last stand, and have Jon or Dany or Arya or whoever kill the Night King there. Having it all resolved in one episode reminds me of that phrase it didn’t go out with a bang, but a whimper.

 

My reaction to the episode's narrative is pretty much 'meh.' It felt like every single character died 5 times each, and yet all the major characters are still alive somehow. There's hundreds of things wrong with this episode, all of them have been covered by others already so I won't go in detail. That scene last episode at the fireplace of dread and anxiety is laughably pointless in retrospective since everyone in that room survived the battle. This was the best place to end the arcs of many characters.

The battle strategy in this episode was hilariously bad. I feel bad for all those people who drew up elaborate thousand-word analyses of battle tactics and troop positions. The only thing I don't have a problem with is the Dothraki's braindead charge. They've always been light cavalry morons that had deluded grandeurs of being fantasy Mongols.

A great deal of complaints about this episode would vanish if they reveal the NK's death was a fake-out or if he wasn't quite so dead, but I've learnt since S6E7 to take things on the show at face-value, so that means the NK really is gone for good.

From a cinematography standpoint, if you shut off your brain at the battle tactics and turn your brightness up to 150%, this episode was stunning. It's just a shame all that quality budget is wasted on an incoherent story.

 

One of the biggest letdowns for me was that there were not one white walker getting killed in the battle proper. Given that Winterfell now has pretty much the largest collection of Valyrian Steel since the fall of Valyria and huge amounts of dragonglasss AND all the best fighters wielding it, I'd have wanted to see at least one scene where, say, Jaime manages to shank a walker with his sword, causing the nearby wights to fall dead. That could have also been used to explain how people getting completely swamped managed to survive to the end.

 

The one thing missing from the episode - Jon versus the Night King sword duel. While cliche, after Hardhome I was sure they would have one. While I liked that the Night King decided that killing Jon personally isn't important, I would have it after he tried and it was taking too long. Jon doesn't need to be the one to kill the NK, but it would give more closure than just running after him.

 

Someone linked me an amusing gif from r/freefolk, this seems like the best place to share:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/bipsnh/after_reading_last_nights_postepisode_discussion

 

So I could be wrong, but wasn't the central premise of the series always that the giant dick-measuring contest that underlies all the internecine conflict is extremely self-destructive and pointless? That there's always a bigger fish and the reckless, boundless pursuit of ever greater power does nothing but destroy what would otherwise protect you (and everyone else) from the inevitable external threats?

I haven't watched the show, my knowledge of it coming through general cultural osmosis and hanging out in threads like this, and I stopped reading halfway through the third book, when it became obvious Martin couldn't tell a story without trying to tell every story simultaneously, but everything I know about the series is that that's one of the central thematic pillars of the whole series. It ran through everything I read, as far as I can remember, and it's pretty consistent with what I know of the show as well.

And in that case, breezing through the Walkers to focus back on the internecine conflict just kinda... shits all over it.