The finale leaked. First 15 mins was something else.

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I really didn't need another horrible graphic birthing scene gone wrong, Jesus Christ.

And then Daemon choking out the only person he actually cares about? Where the fuck did that come from?

 

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I haven't watched the full episode yet cause I want to watch it in 4k (cinematography is picking up a hell of lot of slack from the writers side) but yeah, the clips I saw are quite strange. I really, really don't understand how they could look at one of the most interesting and fan favorite characters of the Dance, read GRRM's quote about Daemon being "the wonder and terror of his age", and then decide to depict him as a repeat offender of violence against his wives and cut out most scenes filmed that show him in a sympathetic light (there are leaks and images from cut scenes where he comforted his daughters after their mothers passing, or where he seemed to collapse on the beach out of grief after Visenya's stillbirth).

Like sure, Daemon is a real piece of shit sometimes in Fire and Blood - but that's not what makes him an interesting character. It's the fact that he can still be good towards those he cares about and do great things that make the audience root for him and elevates him above being another Ramsey or Joffrey.

It's just particularly strange because they seem to be trying to show a bunch of other characters like Aemon, Allicent and Rhaenyra in a more nuanced light, whilst giving Daemon the opposite treatment. I think this has also been a problem in terms of what agency it removes from characters like Allicent and Aemon. I suppose they want to keep these characters more sympathetic so audiences can root for them, but is the story really bettered by the fact that this huge civil war, the beginning of the end for House Targaryen, was sparked less by an ambitious family trying to play the game, and more by Allicent misunderstanding some ramblings and Aemon not being able to control his dragon? Does this make them more interesting characters, that some of their defining actions weren't really of their own volition? I suppose the answer is up to individual taste, but in my opinion it does not.

 

Honestly I don't understand how anyone can watch this show considering the author pretty much abandoned the book series but keeps making false promises to fans that he is supposedly close to finishing it. The guy is just milking his fans and no way will I watch or read anything associated with with this author.

 

Cool Cool. Thank you for sharing.

Just watched the finale, and I have to say I liked it.

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The choking out scene I didn’t care for, but otherwise I thought it was pretty solid. I think Aemond was clearly trying to fuck up Lucerys. Like the kill might’ve been accidental- but im sure Vhagar was picking up a murderous vibe from Aemond. The look I saw at the end was less “oh fuck I killed my Nephew” and more “oh fuck this will look bad”, imo

 

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It looked to me very much like both of them lost control of their dragons completely. Araxes took a flame swipe at Vhagar, and Vhagar straight up wasn't going to take it.

The look of "oh fuck" on Aemond's face seemed genuine.

 

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I don't get the way the handled Lucerys's death. They obviously want to set up Aemond as this badass sicko who's a match to Daemon but yet all he wants to do is taunt Luce and regrets killing him? Now I'm sure that this is going to be a massive driving force for Rhaenrya going forward, and will probably lead to some interesting book spoilers. But like why not give Aemond the agency to make the decision to kill his cousin instead of 'oops dragons can't be controlled'. It's so in line with the character.

It's the same thing with Alicent. Instead of the whole 'spoken to the wrong person' bs why not just say that she wants the best for her children and she's unequivocally usurping Rhaenyra? I think it would have been so much more badass if Viserys straight up told her to kneel to Rhaenyra on his deathbed, and she walks to the council table and says 'yeah i dont give a f'.

As other users have pointed out, they're trying way too hard to make some characters redeemable, which is an impossible feat if you've read what happens next in the book.

I also feel like outside Rhaenyra and Alicent (and maybe Daemon if the writer of that episode feels like it), all the other characters are super basic. Otto wants power. Larys (who I enjoyed up until ep 9) is horny. The Sea Snake wants a legacy. Cole is butthurt from getting dumped. A lot of the secondary characters (namely the children) have pretty much 0 character too, despite them being in the background (ahem Baela and Rhaena ahem) all the time. GoT handled the whole generational differences/conflicts stuff so much better in S1.

Overall, I feel like this season was meh. They played it incredibly safe and spent way too long setting shit up. There wasn't a single episode like the more iconic GoT episodes that thoroughly impressed me. Hopefully they take more risks and introduce more agency and depth in the second season.

 

Also I have no idea what

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the first 20 minutes hoped to achieve. I think it wanted to set up a sad tone for the episode, but Viserys just died, shouldn't that be enough for everyone? I get the whole the birthing bed is a woman's war field stuff, but doing it this often just takes away from the effect, and something like that doesn't merit 15 minutes in a season finale when it's been done much better in mid season episodes.

 

Alicent is not really power hungry, she just thinks her son is prophesized to be king because Targ dreams. Aemond didn't mean to kill his nephew, it was just dragons being dragons. It also plays nicely with Viserys' line earlier in the season about Targ control of dragons being an illusion.

HOWEVER.

Both of these writing choices take agency away from the characters. Alicent isn't ambitious, she's obeying some prophecy. Aemond isn't a bloodthirsty motherfucker, Vhagar disobeyed him. I can live with the show's interpretation of Aemond, but the first is unforgivably dumb and I don't like it.

Overall, I think S1 is a solid season of tv that entertained me. It had some great scenes, but nothing that truly wowed me. @Ackner says there wasn't an iconic episode like some of GOT's episodes, but then I ask you to point out which GOT S1 episode stands out as one of the iconic ones. The early seasons of GOT have the advantage of nostalgia and rose tinted glasses, as well as the viewers remembering the iconic, great scenes while disregarding the meh content. Does anyone really think Littlefinger delivering exposition on himself while his whores do practice fucking on the sofa was gripping stuff? Did all the walk-and-talk scenes in GOT have you on the edge of your seat? Yeah, no.

HOTD Season 1 is good stuff, overall. I look forward to more.

 

I mean, I don't think any HOTD episode was up there with 'Baelor' or 'Fire and Blood'.

But the highs were pretty close. And altogether, I think it's a pretty nifty set of 8+/10 television and I'm hype as fuck for watching the actual Dance unfold

 

I definitely don't think Alicent thinks she's obeying a prophecy or some Targ dreams or the like, she literally is just so Cersei-level in love with her children and obsessed with Rhaenyra's impropriety that she heard the dying, hallucinogenic ramblings of her husband and filtered them into 'He said Aegon should be king'. Viserys' words are clearly nonsense to anyone who doesn't have the context for them, she's just generously filling in the blanks.

That whole scene was absolute bullshit though, another shitty unfortunate miscommunication trope, the crutch of all writers who can't make genuine dramatic conflict.

I actually kinda dislike how much charity the show is giving to her with her wanting to show mercy on Rhaenyra and such. I think its realistic the way they write her as a conflicted and hypocritical character but it's just not as entertaining like how stone-cold the Lannisters were in the original series. They can be made likeable in their own way despite being absolute bastards, see Daemon, Tywin, etc.


Overall, series is pretty good but it gets bogged down into fairly mind numbing soap opera level family drama in the middle that lowers my opinions of most characters and makes me a lot less invested (the whole Rhaenyra sex scandal). It dips back into the big fantasy politics at the end which I enjoyed with the stolen coronation and the 'duel' over Storm's Eye, and the family drama stuff is a lot better (the confrontation at Driftmark, the last supper, etc). They also make some really bad writing decisions for very shallow, corner-cutting reasons (Viserys 'prophecy' to Alicent, the Meleys erupting from the Dragonpit).

I get that it's supposed to be a bit more ambiguous than the original Game of Thrones due to this just being a big Targ civil war, but the show's biggest problem is that I genuinely don't like many of the characters any more. I started out liking plenty of them, but most of them got worse and very few got better. Rhaenyrs doesn't always feel super strongly defined as a character, I really liked her at first but she feels like she mellows out a lot after the time skip and the stupid sex scandal and the way the bastards are handled just feels awkward. Alicent starts off as sympathetic, then takes a big swing towards being a sanctimonious rat but they make her boo hoo about it enough that she's not a good heel either. Cristan starts out likeable, gets sexually assaulted, and then becomes the least likeable cunt in the show and gets away with literal murder in the Red Keep in front of tons of witnesses twice.

Daemon is fairly good throughout being an absolute bastard but the best kind, though with a lot of high and low points. Viserys really finishes the season strong, Paddy Constantine doing tremendous work. Aemond picks up and becomes pretty decent at the end following in Daemon's shoes.

I know its a big meme from some people to say 'Oh the White Walkers deserve to win after all this shit' but I do genuinely just want this entire family to get axed at a lot of points in the show.

There's a couple of things I do like. It's great to have GOT back on the screen in some form, costuming is great. The dragons are excellent, Caraxes especially feels disconcerting to watch in a great way, duel over Storm's Eye was fun. I like that there's a contrast between GOT where all the high houses are super relevant and jostling for power from the very start, versus here where the Targs don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves and their kin so very few other families are in focus for now.

Perhaps it'll fix itself now that they have less timeskips to get through and more time to devote to characterization but it definitely lacks that oomph factor GOT had, even though its good. There's some excellent characters and material in the Dance that I look forward to seeing.

 

I wish we got some more of the Strong Boys. Lucerys' death shoulda hit me way harder than it did, even if it was brutal as hell.

I wonder if they keep tying the story to Viserys when he says, "controlling dragons is an illusion."

They might be setting that up with how effective Daemon is with Caraxes at the end?

 

I haven't watched the show but Fire and Blood ending had the same mad queen ending. I'm curious to see how the audience will receive it after GOT's mad queen ending failed spectacularly.

 

I felt that this one was carried off much more tastefully, and with much more setup. The Targaryens and Velaryons are death-locked in internecine conflicts the entire season, with the central figures of the queens on each side (and Rhaenys to the side to a certain degree) struggling for restraint, and within the two last episodes they both receive the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back and makes reconciliation impossible, Alicent's coronating Aegon pushing the domino and Lucerys' death making stopping the war now inevitable.

In contrast, Daenarys was more or less an oblivious, conquering juggernaut who learned her lessons about rule under her megalomaniac brother and her warlord husband, which were reinforced by ruling a city of slaves. Nuance was learned extremely slowly and only barely tolerated, and given enough provocation, she finally snapped - though this was shown, obviously, extremely ham-handedly in comparison to HotD.

I like the ending overall for how well its been framed, but I'm a little annoyed with how hard the narrative is pushing the 'oh gosh it was all an accident' thing. Would have much preferred that Aemond carry out his role as Daemon's sort of younger mirror - mostly sociopathic, utterly egocentric - rather than they reinforce the already largely reinforced 'no one controls dragons' theme. I understand Lucerys' dragon freaking the fuck out given how big his opponent was, but it would have been a much stronger scene IMO if Aemond countered by deliberately murdering him in cold blood.

 

Cheers by the way did the dwarf fool Mushroom make it to the show? He is hilarious.

 

He's only in the background, but he's there!

 

Despite starting this thread, I've only gotten around to watching HotD recently, and I'm only on episode 8. I love it so far. It's a fantastic adaptation that really elevates its source material. It's really well written and we'll acted. Personally I think (hope) that it fits more with ASOIAF canon than GOT canon, otherwise the whole Prince that was Promised prophecy is superfluous, but either way I'm glad that they're giving us more context for it.

So far, Aemond in both of his iterations is my favourite character. He knows what he wants, and he takes it, and damn the consequences. Also, the best argument for why Aegon shouldn't be king is Aegon.

 

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how do we think that the show handles Rhaenyra's death? Is Sunfyre gonna eat her straight up, or will the show have it burn her then eat her?

i'm still butt-bothered we haven't seen Sunfyre yet. I sure hope that the crippling of it and Aegon II above Rook's Rest isn't the dragon's debut.

I hope that Sunfyre is legitimately beautiful and breathtaking.

 

Dragons don't eat raw meat.

 

That was a very good season premiere.

It was slow but I think everything had its place and I really appreciated the focus on a larger ensemble instead of the usual Alicent-Rhaenyra stuff. Also scenes like the stuff at the end, where it tracks someone who isn't a part of the main cast and you can subtly see what they think about all this. I thought Aegon's actor did a particularly good job. I also really appreciate the way the two sides are presented - its clear that everyone in this show has their own motives and goals, and everyone wants to do thing a certain way. Showing those cracks was nice.

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For anyone who's very familiar with the book, did they do the rats thing early? Its been quite a while since I've read it and I admittedly didn't read it in too much detail, but from what I remember that murder happens later in the war no? Maybe they moved it up for obvious reasons.

Also the scene where Haelena walks into Alicent having sex was absolutely hilarious.

Very excited for this season.

 

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Blood and Cheese was very early on in the book too. It goes Luke dies > Aegon throws a huge feast for Aemond killing Luke > Daemon sends Blood and Cheese in retaliation.