It's entirely possible that winter only reached King's Landing for a few weeks. It's also possible it started as ash and was covered by snow.

Does it really matter?

The biggest thing I think will have an effect is the entirely deleted False Aegon plotline.

 

Again, for the third time, we see a fucking snowflake melt on Dany's face when she's dying. It could be both ash and snow, but there is definitely snow falling when Jon is going to meet Dany.



Happens at 8:22

Whatever, this argument is pointless and if that doesn't convince you there's some snow, then there's no point in wasting anymore time. There's no consistency in this episode anyway.

 

@MrBucket I assume you're referring to 8:22. Look at that again. Put it on fullscreen. If your common sense doesn't stop you from thinking it's snow, put on your glasses and actually see the thing. There's no melting. The tiny piece of ash drops on Danny's cheek and stays exactly the same for the hot second or two it's visible.

This is a very weird hill to die on my guy. It's fine to admit you made a mistake.

 

To be honest, it does look like it starts to melt because of the change of colour and when I was first watching the episode, it got me confused if it was suppose to be snow or ash. I agree that thematically it should be ash.

 

...It very clearly melts somewhat.

Just take a fucking look at behind Dany's head in the same shot. That's a fine white powdery substance. Take a look at any shot where we see the substance up close. It resembles snow far more than ash. Compare google images if you must. Anyone who's seen snow and ash can easily tell the difference. The Snow Queen, my ass.

Thematically, yeah, but these writers are the same morons who said themes are for 8th graders.

 

Why the exhaustive debate on such a useless topic?

My two cents: It's likely all ash. If winter had actually come in full force then it would not have disappeared in the space of a few weeks to have the sunny Dragonpit summit.

 

George R.R. Martin Just Set a Very Peculiar Winds of Winter Deadline Threat for Himself.

This is from a guy who was sure he can finish this book within 6 months... three years ago. Yet, it has been a while since he gave himself any deadline, even just joking, which probably means he already has most of it done and is mostly editing. Assuming he doesn't decide to rewrite half it, there is a small chance that the book will be published in 2020. One more year past that and it's going to be a whole decade since the last one.

 

You're talking to people who've spent years dissecting the tiniest details of the Potterverse.

*inhales*

HAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

 

I, err, didn't expect whether it was snow or ash to be the most contentious argument in-thread now that I've seen the episode. Colour me surprised.

At least we'll always have the memes, pretty much sums it up for me. Fucking Bran the Bean.

Explains a lot I suppose about their conception of story-telling, if they believe his is the best story in-universe.

 

Considering they dropped Bran's story for an entire season, I'm not sure even the writers believe that bullshit.

 

I’m just glad that Bran as the evil sorcerer behind the whole season has entered the mainstream with The Ringer half endorsing the theory.

 

Going to be hilarious if D&D will claim in the future it was their intention all along.

Honestly though, with all people complaining about them these days, and for good reasons, in my opinion they deserve to be thanked for their work on the show. Was the ending weak? Yes. But when they did have books to guide them, they delivered an adaptation that become one of the best TV shows in history. There are plenty of examples proving that having a great source material has nothing to do with the quality of its adaptation and D&D should at least get a fair credit for doing an amazing job with that part of the series.

 

@Celestin

I credit D&D with crafting some of the best sccreen stuff ever created for seasons 1-4 and I think that seasons 5 & 6 are still great stuff, though not without great stumbles. But the last two seasons are so poorly written that it does kind of devalue all the work the cast and crew put into them, imo.

 

When you consider weaker parts of 5 and 6 season, it should be obvious that 7 and 8 won't work out. The worst part of both was Dorne that ended with an impossible situation where it was ruled by bastards with no army to back them up. Pretty much sums up how they handled politics later on. And how little they were concerned with the repercussions of Jon's resurrection, other than few comments, should give us a clue that these magical aspects aren't that important for the ending.

By the way, I created a weak explanation for Dorne's situation. While even that should be impossible, Ellaria and the Sand Snakes managed to completely control the palace people and keep Doran's assassination a secret for a while, pretending he's just sick, not very suspicious for him, and giving his commands to them. While they can't keep this act forever, they just need enough time to contact Dany and pledge themselves to her. After that they have her dragons, not that impressive to Dorne, and her army, a lot more dangerous because used to fighting in a desert and pretty much masters of 'hit and run' strategy, to back their rule.

 

They key difference is that D&D do cinematography and television very well, but they (like many people in tv/movie industry) operate with a different mindset than an author.

An author is (should be) concerned about crafting a story. Cause/effect. The details. When you stare at every word and how it fits together, the author is tasked with crafting an intricate weave. When done well, it creates an amazing tapestry.

Directors and tv industry is about creating a product. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about creating a story or crafting an epic, but by its very nature as a money maker, the little details can get lost.

It’s creating art vs creating a product.

D&D will hopefully create a better Star Wars than the new trilogy. If they can do that, I’ll avoid bashing them as bad directors.

 

I don’t remember if Dorne was the only bad part of Season 5 anymore, but it’s probably the stupidest fuckup in the history of the show. Dropping Jeyne and fucking up Littlefinger’s storyline, I can understand. Dropping Aegon and fucking up the whole thing, I can understand. But what on Earth motivated them to drop Arianne?.. Eh, probably wasting the good casting on Ellaria, but it’s not like they didn’t know what was coming.

I do find it worthy of acknowledgement that they actually improved on the books in the first 4 seasons, but it’s not as simple as they can’t plot; their ineptitude started showing before they ran out of books. So, I don’t think it’s just them running out of book material, I think they grew too arrogant before that.

 

Replace Cersei with (F)aegon, and some of the things which occurred in S7 & S8 actually make sense. Why Dany is not taking the Seven Kingdoms with ease (because Aegon has most of the Lords of Westeros on his side, and because she isn't 100% sure he's fake), her 'madness', why she doesn't want Jon Snow's heritage to be revealed (because of the problems she's had with one alleged son of Rhaegar), Varys' motivations etc... Even the whole truce thing might make sense if it's Aegon that Dany and Jon are treating with, and not Cersei.

 

Who would you cast as fAegon?

 

Book Dany is more childish and dreamlike but still has elements of "heroic savior".

Yeah, she has the hints of internal conflict of ruthlessness/dragon vs mercy/motherhood at the last book, but she still feels like a character that would need some really strong motivation to burn King's Landing. Burning the Red Keep with innocents + Cersei inside I could see-- but burning the whole city?



I think the fAegon having basically succeeded, after she has helped Jon save the North/Westeros from the Others, and she basically shows up late to the party, with a supposedly inferior claim, would be a very tragic, but also very beautiful ending. It would nicely contrast with her entire character arc of being destined to be on the throne, of her having worked for it, of wanting to be the savior of the people, of having lost her husband, and supposedly her ability to bear children, of having returned the dragons to Westeros, all her struggles etc.-- and a ready-made 'Targaryen' is already there before her, having suffered nothing along the way.

That would be the only thing I could plausibly see provoking her enough, because he's basically designed to make her redundant.


But the show ending is just...empty of that. None of that truly Shakespearean tragedy and irony that GRRM strives for...

 

That would have been left to Nina Gold, who literally consistently delivered gold into the hands of D&D and all of the directors. Casting directors should really have a category in the Oscars and Golden Globes.