I don't know the first thing about film-making but wouldn't they be able to quite cheaply shoot a bunch of scenes where the characters just talk to each other? Utilizing sets they've already built, just shove two actors in there and make them have a conversation?
This would go a long way to making the characters relationships actually feel meaningful, for example they could have grounded Daenarys and Jons relationship with the audience in a much more believable way and actually made us sad if they have to split up this season.

I'm so pissed about the lack of actual emotion being displayed at the big changes in the world. The fans have anticipated the Targaryen!Jon reveal for two seasons now, and how do our characters react to it?
1. Sam tells Jon. Jon denies it for a few seconds but as soon as he starts believing it they cut away.
2. Jon tells Daenarys. They talk about it for a few seconds and then the horn calls them to battle.
3. Jon/Bran tells Sansa and Arya. They cut away right as they're about to be told
4. Sansa tells Tyrion. They cut away right as Tyrion's about to be told.
5. Tyrion tells Varys. They start the scene just as Varys has assimilated the information.

I can understand why they wouldn't want to do all these scenes, it would get repetitive. But why not flesh one of them out? Have the characters actually arguing with each other, instead of us being left guessing how Arya felt about the whole thing?

 

The two actors talking thing isn't a question of money, it's time. We're in the end game now, and time spent having these characters we all know and like interact with each other is time not spent showing huge incoherent battles or shocking reveals.

 

Well yeah, but they could have just stretched the episodes and had an 8 episode season instead. This would surely be good for HBO as well, make people drawn in for longer?

 

Relevant

 

There are many potential spoilers out there, some more possible, some less and many contradicting each other. I'm going to ignore them and list my predictions before the series ends.

Sansa Stark, Bran Stark, Samwell Tarly, Gilly, Brienne of Tarth, Yohn Royce - all safe at Winterfell. Done with their arcs and waiting for the epilogue written by Sam played by GRRM.
Gendry - not sure if he's at Winterfell, but he's not going to be killed after getting promoted. Maybe if he actually wanted it from the beginning, but right now it's not a reward for him and he didn't get Arya.
Tormund Giantsbane, Ghost - safe at the North.
Arya Stark - probably safe, even if she's involved in the last battle. Afterwards going to simply travel around the world.
Davos Seaworth - probably safe. No point in killing him when there are many other characters that needs to have time for their endings.
Varys - not going to survive as Mel said. At the moment everything suggests that Dany will be the one to kill him for a treason.
Sandor "The Hound" Clegane - unexpectedly survives and isn't sure what he should do about that.
Bronn - survives and gets the castle.
Grey Worm - survives because he doesn't want to.
Podrick Payne - as long as he stays away from Tyrion, he survives. Otherwise he may be killed for an additional drama.
Euron Greyjoy - killed by Jon or by Dany with her dragon. Both need something big to do in the battle and neither is going to get Cersei.
Qyburn - I would say killed by Varys, but he may not have a chance. Maybe somehow survives and continues his work in other place because otherwise we get an ending where all villains are defeated.
Gregor Clegane - killed by Sandor and Arya.
Yara Greyjoy, Robin Arryn, Edmure Tully - waiting for the scene with someone sitting on the Iron Throne.
Tyrion Lannister & Jaime Lannister - one is going to survive, one is not. Tyrion has a better chance at the moment to live than Jaime.
Cersei Lannister - I get that the prophecy of getting killed by younger brother isn't in the show, but after all that it's should be Jaime that kills her.
Jon Snow - survives and gets the Iron Throne because he insists he doesn't want it. While it's expected of the main hero, the twist is that he's going to be a very bad king, finishing GoT as it started with Robert on the throne.
Daenerys Targaryen - many predict that she's going to be the Mad Queen and be killed for it, especially after the last episode, but I say she survives, but doesn't get the throne. Because of her actions in the next episode, she won't have a necessary support with people and lords or dragons and a big army to force it. Maybe marries Jon, but resents him for being just his Queen. She becomes a Cersei to his Robert and since they can't have children, the Game of Thrones continues.

 

r/freefolk has been a riot these last two days

 

This one seems to fit here:

 

Heck, I will go further. Its Ginny using her Bat-Hoggey Hex™ and seventh year would be all about Umbridge who turned out to be a genius after all the dumb shit she did.

 

Harry kind of forgot about the Horcruxes.

 

I kind of hoped he'd become somewhat of a Queensguard for Sansa.

 

You guys wanna know who is the most despicable and monstrous character in the show?

Not Cersei Lannister.

Not Tywin Lannister.

Not "The Mountain".

Not even Euron Greyjoy, OR EVEN THE NIGHT KING.

IT WAS JON SNOW ALL ALONG!!!

WHY DIDN'T YOU PET UR DOG JON? HOW COULD YOU?

This show is like some 12 year olds girl fanfiction. All it misses is some gay sex scenes and mpreg.

 

Clearly you haven't been paying attention because there were plenty of gay scenes in the early seasons. As for Mpreg no ones that twisted.

 

So many good memes, hard to pick just one

SuBvErT eXpEcTatiOnS



Leoburn da Quinci



What happened after they cut to black



Dragon CGI really was monstrously expensive

 

I'm quite amused by an amount of potential and contradicting spoilers that are appearing on the Internet at the moment from the sources that have at least some credibility from earlier informations they provided. In my opinion D&D didn't just film few fake scenes. They're actually behind some of this misinformation. Making sure nobody spoils the ending was always going to be almost impossible, but hiding which one is the right one while spoiling lesser things is much easier.

And for these who doubt they would actually bother with it, if I'm not mistaken, there was at least one instance where they wrote a fake screenplay for an actor where he's killed just to prank him. They're not only capable of doing it, but probably have fun while posting some of these things on the Internet.

 

The sad thing is, having read the leaks/spoilers - those from the most verified sources that were correct about everything in ep 4 - i'm not surprised at all. As for whether people should read them, it depends how you react to everything in the last couple of seasons when they reveal their utterly revolting writing. If you get enjoyment in the moment at the surprise reveal of the big pile of shit, then don't read them. If you're like me and you just get pissed off, then it's better to read them in advance so your BP doesn't get too high while watching. Now I can sit back and just laugh at the trainwreck as it happens.

 

Overall I found the episode to be about average, which says a lot about the turn GoT has taken. There were some cool moments, some wtf moments, but nothing that was intense enough to keep me immersed for too long. In general it's never a good sign if my thoughts are wandering away from the original subject while viewing.

 

I've been thinking about it, and another way to articulate why this season is so frustrating is this:

The show's started to place very uneven narrative consequences on its characters (because the consequences are now being determined by what the plot demands).

GoT's always done a thing well:

Character A makes a decision that makes sense to their character but is flawed in some way -> negative consequence -> character evolves (or dies).

Jamie sticks his neck out for Brienne, loses a hand.

Tyrion tries to do good as the Hand in King's Landing -> does good, but gets on Jeoffery's bad side and almost killed

Daenerys takes over Mereen to try to make it a non-slaving city -> doesn't have a great grasp on ruling, makes mistakes, counter-revolutionaries pop up like weeds.

So here we are in Season 8, with Daenerys and Cersei propped up as competing queens, with the whole narrative weight of the show bent to this (rip Night King), and... let's see.

Daenerys: Kills a couple Tarlys (one of whom is a story-endorsed dick) -> Sam tells Jon about his parents, leading to everyone knowing (and caring) that Jon has a claim to the throne. Listens to her advisers -> loses a huge chunk of her army and allies. After she's lost a shitload of people saving Jon's homeland, begs Jon not to tell anyone about his parents, correctly predicting what will happen -> Jon tells people anyway, her allies start to plot against her. She loses one of her two remaining dragons and the two people in the world she's closest to in the span of a couple days.

Cersei: Blows up the Sept of Balor to solve a problem she created by giving them power in the first place -> Becomes Queen, no one seems to really take issue with her literally destroying a hugely important, historically powerful pillar of the realm -> her son dies. She's a little broken up about it, but she comes down on the side of "well he betrayed me so whatever" -> immediately gets pregnant. Has finally secured her rule, but a massive foreign army shows up with dragons -> Euron shows up with his teleporting fleet, heat-seeking, armor-piercing scorpions. Night King shows up and kills half of Dany's army. Golden Company shows up.

The thing the show did right was constantly shuffing the deck of who you were rooting for, and breaking down the Good Guy Starks vs. Bad Guy Lannisters that the first half of season 1 head faked towards, twisting that standard trope into something a bit more like The Wire - following both "sides" and realizing that 99% of the people on both of them are trapped in a shitty system, from which they can sometimes, if they're very lucky, grasp moments of self-determination from, but almost always at a cost.

And yet here we are at the very end, only to give us White Queen Daenerys vs. Black Queen Cersei, complete with all the standard fantasy tropes where Daenerys is held to absurd expectations and even grey choices like killing Sam's dad and brother come back to tragically, dramatically, slowly fuck over everything she's worked for, and Cersei stops being a true PoV character and starts being the Bad Guy we cut to occasionally to cackle with a minion and ruminate on how fucked the heroes are.

Cersei blowing up the sept and this leading to cementing her power rather than making it more complicated was the death knell of this show being an interesting, non-hacky fantasy story. As soon as you start treating her as a non PoV character, as soon as you bring everyone else we care about together and uniting them under Jon/Dany, you railroad yourself into standard Disney villain tropes, and the only way to make that kind of story "feel" like a serious show is to hand people Idiot Balls and make Dramatically Bad things happen at "surprising" times.

Which, like we've emphatically seen this season, just ends up feeling hollow and unsatisfying all around.