TheAlterBridgeNation.com

They should end the show with GRRM playing the part of old man Sam finishing his lifelong documentation entitled A Song of Ice and Fire. The irony would be so sweet.

zazthespaz wrote:Never mind. No idea what that’s acronym means. I’m out.

Out? Is this why you fled to Alaska? I assumed it was just my presence in your state. It's getting hard to keep track.

One month closer to 2019...

Winter...is here.

7 hours and 40 minutes to go...

#TeamNightKing but also #TeamJaimeLannister I'd be fine with either of those two making it out alive.

ITS ALMOST HERE!

That stare at the end.

Jon Snow knows something now.

Next weekend is gonna be wild...

Loved this episode so much. The big battles, the dragons, the special effects and the big twists are great, but the characters are what makes this show so great.

Yeah, it was pretty cool being captivated by an episode where pretty much nothing happened.

#Arya'sBoob

It was one of my favorite episodes in quite some time. The scene between Jaime and Brienne was stellar. There were a lot of great little moments that just add to the weight and emotion of what’s about to happen.

The Battle of Winterfell...what an episode.

HOLY SHIT

This episode seems somewhat polarizing in terms of its reception

I have so many mixed feelings about this episode. I loved the first half but didn't enjoy the second half so much.

When the battle started I found it utterly terrifying to watch. I was watching it full of suspense. When the Dothraki's swords were lit up I felt quite optimistic, but then once the entire Dothraki army got destroyed almost immediately I thought 'how is anyone going to survive this?'. It was that tension that kept me absolutely gripped to the episode. When everyone had to retreat into Winterfell, the tactic of setting fire to the barrier failed and the Unsullied pretty much sacrificed themselves, I thought 'how are the people we are rooting for going to win?'. This continued once the wights started climbing up the wall and I genuinely thought all my favourite characters were going to die.

But then the tension went away, there were a number of instances where our favourite characters looked like they were definitely going to die, but didn't die, to the point where it is implausible that they survived, and this is what killed the tension for me.

I've always hated Arya's character, her character arc and her actress's acting ability (I don't intend to go into the reasons why here), but I actually enjoyed some of her scenes this episode to my surprise. She was fighting back, but not doing so well. She was getting quite injured, which is different from the 'I'm a super ninja assassin' thing that we've had for a couple of seasons. But then the ending happened...

It was once the Night King rose the dead that all tension disappeared. Jon was literally surrounded by the dead, but survived? Everyone inside Winterfell seemed like they definitely stood no chance, characters like Jaime, Brienne and Podrick were simply pinned against a wall. Yet everyone survived? How? Samwell survived simply by lying down.

I thought for a moment that Dany was going to die, and I was interested to see where the plot would go if she did die, but Jorah just came out from nowhere. Where did he come from? How did he survive charging with the Dothraki (and on that note - why was Ghost even there)? Although I did like his death scene.

I thought they gave Theon a good send off though, although I do wonder why they decided to guard Bran with just a few people with bows, especially given how quickly the Dothraki got destroyed.

My main gripe is the ending. Suddenly the White Walkers appear. What they did do all episode? I remember being terrified by one of them whilst watching Hardhome, so I thought it would have been cool to see someone like Brienne against one of them. Suddenly it's Bran and the Night King and I'm starting to think 'what would happen if the Night King actually won?'. Game of Thrones used to be all about unexpected twists and turns, and I was starting to think the Night King would win. We know so little about the Night King that I thought the prospect of him winning and staying around for a bit longer would be really interesting. But no. Arya comes in from seemingly nowhere to simply stab the Night King. How did Arya get passed all the dead? How did Arya get past the White Walkers? Why did Jon have so much difficulty getting to Bran, but Arya didn't? It just seemed so utterly implausible that I've now lost a lot of the respect I had for the show.

Whilst I can't stand Arya's character, it's not so much the fact that it was her, it was more the execution, I think I would have hated it equally if Jon did the same.

On the subject of Jon, what did he actually do? Part of me is relieved that he wasn't the superhero saviour, but they gave that to Arya instead. It also seemed implausible how close to dragon fire he could be, but still live (I've mentioned how he was entirely surrounded by the dead on his own). The dragon fire was seen to smash through parts of Winterfell, but he was able to just run it off? Throughout the series there has been a lot of suspense regarding the tension between him personally and the Night King, so it's disappointing that he did extremely little.

There's been eight seasons of hype for the White Walkers, and it's done (I wish I knew how to do that South Park 'and it's gone' meme). All finished by Arya implausibly running through an entire army of the dead and simply stabbing the Night King.

I don't know how I can remain excited for the rest of the series now. All our main characters have just survived the biggest and most terrifying battle they'll ever face, if they can survive that, surely they can survive anything? If they are ever in danger, one of their mates will just rescue them, when you think it's all going horribly wrong, Arya will just jump from nowhere. How does the show remain exciting to watch after that?

It kind of makes me think of season 8 of The Walking Dead. They just went through this massive All Out War saga which was supposed to have loads of tension, although it didn't, because you knew every time that Rick or Daryl were on screen, that they would simply survive, they would find a way out of it.

I loved the last episode and after watching it, I felt like I had said goodbye to a lot of the characters and was ready to see them go, but it is so deflating that pretty much all of them survived in entirely implausible circumstances. It's hard to think that this is the same show that gave us the Red Wedding.

Furthermore, it's just disappointing that the White Walkers are just gone. There's some much mystery about them and so many unanswered questions that I hope we haven't seen the last of them (or at least the books will fill in the blanks).


Apologies, I didn't intend for this to be a massive long post, but once I started rambling I struggled to stop.

Edit - the other thing I've just thought of is what did Bran actually do when he warged into the ravens? When the Night King was approaching Bran I felt like that was actually going to lead to something, but it didn't?

I agree that the pacing feels all kinds of weird now that the big, end of days enemy has come and gone in the space of one (astonishingly tense) episode, and we've still three left to watch against Cersei. While she's brilliantly vicious and spiteful to watch, it can only feel slightly anticlimactic compared to this, right?

I had the complete opposite reaction to you with Arya, the whole time he was walking towards Bran I was like "Arya, clock's ticking!" because she was always gonna be the one. She knows death better than anybody else. Swell of the music at that point was great as well.

The reaction I've read that I agree with the most that it was utterly spectacular and as tense TV as you'll watch, but the story has gone a little haywire. I hope the next few weeks don't feel like filler and can really give the series the ending it deserves.

I agree with a handful of those points, especially about how certain characters like Sam, Brienne, and Jaime seemed to magically survive. But I love Arya’s storyline. Her character has been progressing towards a huge assassination moment for quite some time. I think the issues were with some of the execution more so than the idea of Arya killing the Night King.

The dagger Arya uses is the Valyrian steel dagger used in the assassination attempt against Bran in S1. Valyrian steel doesn’t shatter against the White Walkers like normal steel. Some people think Bran was warging into the past throughout the episode to move the dagger throughout history into his possession just so Arya would have it for that moment. We just don’t have any confirmation on that.

The episode itself was fantastic, but it's hard to believe this is the conclusion. A non-united Westeros vs. a threat as big as this, and they deal with it in one night. Cersei did the right thing staying south, I guess.