I looked in on the freefolk subreddit, and its blowing up with people complaining about "Discount Jack Sparrow" perfecting a dragon. Rhaegar is just shrieking his wahmen-respect in all directions like he always does.

 

Rheagar does point out some dumb things characters have made. I would just say that characters making mistakes is--when done well--good for a story. As regards Euron targeting the wrong dragon, you could just as easily say he couldn't see which was which that high up, against the sun, and maybe he just shot at them a bunch hoping to hit something, or he targeted the one with a fucked up wing.

Dany running away seems perfectly fine under the circumstances, she just saw Rheagal die and was probably scared for Drogon, although that dive right at the Iron Fleet was damn stupid.

As for the character of Euron, I'm not mad at him myself because he's just not that interesting imo. He's not onscreen enough to get some proper development and I'm not drawn in by his whisper shtick.

 

This episode kinda underlines how much of a joke Episode 3 was. There was more serious character death in a filler episode than there was in the climactic battle against the apocalyptic evil. In one episode, a teleporting Gary Stu with invisible ships that apparently can't be seen from an aerial position did as much damage to Danaerys as the Night King did in his entire arc. And he did it with siege weapons of magical range and accuracy.

Incidentally, it's the second time the show has pulled this exact surprise!Euron card. The moment they had the dragons approaching Dragonstone with the soaring, dramatic music I called that something bad was going to happen. The showrunners are actually quite predictable once you understand they value surprise over everything else, even if it doesn't make sense.

Aegon conquered the entire Seven Kingdoms with three dragons and a small army. We are given to understand in the show that Drogon is now fully grown and as big as he's going to get, so in the TV universe, Balerion would not have been much bigger than Drogon is now. If dragons were that easy to kill with regular weapons, Aegon's conquest would never have happened.

Unfortunately the show writers lack the imagination and/or writing skill to get themselves out of the hole they wrote themselves into without nerfing dragons massively. The natural way to eliminate the advantage of dragons was the Night King, whose mythology and powers enable watchers to buy into the idea that he can realistically kill dragons. But when the show made Cersei the final boss rather than the Night King, and when they got rid of the Night King without him taking out any more dragons, the show abandoned the natural and logical dragon-killer and had to resort to silliness to even the odds.

Character-wise, the episode fared a bit better than it did on plot, but the first half was much better than the second half in this regard.

On the "good" side was the Sansa and Danaerys dynamic, as well as Tyrion's conversations with Sansa and Varys. Those scenes did a lot of work that was overdue in terms of having the characters openly confront certain tensions which in previous episodes had been consistently avoided by interrupting conversations the moment they reached the moment where characters would have to actually confront their conflict.

The Gendry stuff was good too, both in terms of being legitimised and with Arya. Though I felt like the legitimisation of Gendry could have been done with a bit more gravitas and grandeur.

On the bad side, you had everything to do with Jaime. I feel like a romance with Brienne cheapens their relationship which has been based on growing respect. It reeks of fanfiction style "everyone has to pair up" writing, lacking the maturity of a writer who can have a man and a woman respect each other, work closely with each other and develop a strong bond without it becoming a romance. And then the episode doubled down on ruining Jaime by having him basically discard his entire character arc to date.

The writers are clearly ignoring their established characterisation in the name of getting Jaime into the right place and the right time for a Dramatic Moment, because the show is now about little else than manoeuvring people into situations that will get a big reaction. Probably they are going to manoeuvre him all the way down to King's Landing so they have have a dramatic "who will be the one to kill Cersei?" sequence where Arya, Jaime and various others are all racing to be the one to get to Cersei first. And then Cersei will trip and fall down some stairs, breaking her neck. Surprise!!!

When Jaime was first shown leaving in the night, my initial thought was that the show was going to have him leave in an ambiguous way. Watchers would be led to believe he was heading to King's Landing and Cersei, but in fact he would be going to Casterly Rock to claim his birthright and raise an army. He heard that Cersei had seriously damaged Danaerys' army and knew that he needed to do something to tip the balance against Cersei.

This would have been rewarding in several ways. Firstly, it cements Jaime's primary character arc of getting over Cersei. Secondly, in claiming Casterly Rock he would be inadvertently fulfilling Tywin's desires for his eldest son, but in a way that completely goes against Tywin's "family first" philosophy by claiming his birthright for the purpose of removing a Lannister from power. Thirdly, by bringing the Lannister army to the aid of the Targaryens when he could have sat the fight out, he demonstrates a contrast from the way his father handled Robert's Rebellion and redeems the Lannister family. Fourthly, it would have allowed for a climatic moment of salvation where Jaime arrives with an army at his back to save the day.

But unfortunately I'm pretty sure Jaime is just going to race to King's Landing on his own for a personal confrontation with Cersei.

Another poor characterisation was Danaerys, albeit it's a characterisation they have been trying to push for a while now - the "Targaryens are a flip of a coin" card. Unfortunately they just haven't put down the proper groundwork for this. Danaerys didn't even show a hint of this character arc until season 6 episode 9 (Battle of Mereen/Battle of the Bastards) where Tyrion had to talk her out of raining fire down on everyone. I feel like the last two seasons are too late to develop a new character arc which fundamentally overturns the nature of a character who had previously been consistently about justice, protecting the innocent, liberating the downtrodden, etc. It feels like an artificial character arc designed to generate some conflict in a plotline which naturally lacks any.

Overall impression of the episode is "some promising elements, but overshadowed by poor writing choices".

My initial impression that Episode 2 was going to be the best episode of the season is I think going to be accurate.

 

A bit of a shame it apparently was such a cloudy day, so that Dany couldn't see the fucking IRON FLEET coming.
From behind the episode: "Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet and Euron's forces, but they didn't forget her."

Perhaps Cersei should've killed Daenerys and her crew (or at the very last Tyrion), when they are served to her on a silver platter. She blew up the Great Sept of Baelor, for god's sake. Honor is not something she cares much for. She could deal a devastating blow by doing a red wedding. But fair enough, some things aren't done. Like killing hostages during negotiations.

I liked the talk between Varys and Tyrion (aside from it not happening in a private room. You're discussing treason..).
Visually, it was a lot more pleasing to ward than episode 3 due to more light. Dark scenes are fine, but they get old after a while.

Point raised on the asoif subreddit: Surely, Gendry is Gendry Waters, not Gendry Rivers?

I'm not really expecting too much of the final episodes, tbh.
D&D are not exactly subtle in working in the "Mad Queen" plotline, so I have a feeling of what to expect.

 

Oh, also, another mild irritation: the way the show constantly presents Jon's claim to the Iron Throne as being better than Danaerys' because he's a man. They did it in episode 2 ("that would make you the last male heir of House Targaryen") and again in this episode ("cocks do matter").

No, his claim is better because he's the direct line. When it comes to inheritance, children take precedence over siblings. I wish the show would have a character actually acknowledge that just once, because it's never been explained and I'm fairly sure the vast majority of casual watchers won't understand it.
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Oh, and another fun thing (because this is the episode which just keeps giving): did they seriously have Sansa state that she's basically glad she got raped because otherwise she'd still be naive. Jesus Christ.

The writers are having the characters do their own textual analysis now. They don't seem to understand the difference between the viewer saying as a matter of causation that Sansa's experiences made her what she is and Sansa herself saying as a matter of her personal perspective that her experiences have had a positive outcome.

They did something similar with Bran and Jaime and just about got away with it because of Bran's weirdness. But having Sansa do it to herself is just terrible writing - literally bludgeoning the viewer over the head by having her explicitly state her own character arc, in case you somehow missed it.

 

Looking forward to the remake in 10 years...

 

Can Brandon Sanderson write two books that quickly? Though it will probably be a few years until Martin officialy gives up or dies.

 

Sanderson has publically stated he wouldn't accept the gig if it was offered, and also Sanderson would be fucking terrible for ASOIAF, if you remotely want to stick to what GRRM has written so far.

 

I was mostly being flippant. But fair enough, I hadn't heard that from Sanderson.

 

I love everything Sanderson, but I agree, he would not be a good fit.

Robin Hobb, Mark Lawrence, Brian Stavely, and Joe Abercrombie could all probably do a much better job of finishing the series in GRRM's style.

 

TBF, Targaryen inheritance puts every male before any female.

Varys and Tyrion's interaction was so contrived. Jon does not want the throne, but there you have Varys talking on and on about how he would be the better king.

Combine that with female Aerys trope and you get poorly described conflict.

Spoiler: Jon, Daenerys

Jon kills Daenerys and goes back to the the Watch. Expectations subverted.

 

Yeah, by all appearances the scorpions in the show aren't precise enough to specifically target one dragon or the other, and going by the bit where we see things from Euron's perespective they were nowhere near close enough for anyone to be able to tell which dragon had the tiny human on it. The impression I got was that they just threw a ton of bolts into the general direction of the dragons and got a few lucky hits on Rhaegal.

In the books, at least. The show hasn't established any of that, at least as far as I recall. Though really, when it comes to medieval succession law male-preference was almost always the general rule anyway.

 

The scorpions are precisely as accurate and powerful as they need to be for the plot.

Dragon half way across the bay? No problem, a single bolt can find its target and hit with enough force to punch right through the armour which was established in a previous episode to be sufficiently tough to prevent full penetration from a much closer range.

Dragon at point blank range? Twenty bolts will all miss.

And yeah, "Jon would be a better king" is a shit character take for Tyrion and Varys. They've both been playing the game for a long time. They know that Jon would be about as good a king as Ned Stark would have been. He'd be eaten alive, completely unable to balance competing factions due to his unbendable nature. Hell, he's already been murdered once due to his inability to handle competing interests of powerful people under his command.

I just don't buy for one second that either of them would ever think Jon would make a better monarch.

 

Euron Greyjoy, the 3 Million Man.

If I were charitable I could say that this one in a million shot was before the Scientific Advancement of the scorpion, but then ASOIAF is a world where people haven't advanced past feudalism for 8000 years.

 

If I remember correctly, you are wrong even in the show only. I think back in season one Renly told Loras that he is the fourth in line of the throne. That would mean Mycella comes after him. Wheter D&D actually remeber any of this is another question.

 

Joffrey Tommen, Stannis, Renly

 

Slight mistake on my side, I mixed up Danys and Jons familytree. But I still think saying because he is male is accurate enough. Because even if the two were flipped, Jon would come first.

 

My point is that if Danaerys were a man, Jon would still have the better claim. But from the way the show has presented it, I doubt many casual viewers realise this.