GOT

[11thEagleFan]

You can attempt to justify every one of her terrible acts, sure. Real life despots do it all the time. The point remains, the signs were there. I just think the showrunners get too much blame. People should be blaming George R. R. Martin’s lazy *** for not writing a book for 8 years. Seriously, he can’t write a follow-up to A Dance with Dragons in an 8 year (and counting) timespan?

 

[engie]

The Mad King himself never "burned them all". Don't believe he even decided that was a good idea until it was obvious he had been duped into opening the gates and Tywin was coming for him and sacking the city. He pulled some cruel, stupid stuff. But he never burned a million people for kicks except when it was time for him to die.

I know people do not stop to attempt to play out motivations in their heads much overall, but the plot has just gone full retard. "Hey, she's got dragons. Let's huddle up right beside the castle she came here to burn". "Yep, it's definitely the safest place." I know the smallfolk aren't educated in the story persay, but they must have a lot of street sense in order to survive in Flea Bottom. Street sense says GTFOOD. Hell the forgotten Dornish had shown how to resist the dragons for hundreds of years. You don't be there when they arrive. Bronn is the only one they've allowed to retain good walking around sense on the whole show.

Congruent with Dany's character would have been to torch the gates to KL and the gates to the Red Keep for her army to enter at whatever cost that came along with that. And light up Cersei. And if you've got to take down the city, then have the wildfire she doesn't know about take out the city and feel tremendous guilt about that. In fact, thinking about it now, the wildfire should have been the actual plot reason not to light the joint up with her Drogon precision guided missile.

Or better yet, how about this: You setup the hunger siege exactly as discussed in Winterfell. You tell all the smallfolk to get out of the city and give them a timeframe to do so while promising to provide them with food and shelter. This will tell Cersei when the attack is coming, but it's not like she didn't know it was coming when it actually arrived anyway. Cersei will bar the city shut trying to retain her civilian safety net. You torch the walls. And you give a fair period of time for evacuation. You give the innocents a chance to escape your utter decimation before you burn it all down.

I get it -- she lost her ****. Good guy gone bad. And there's no "good" way for a "good guy" to commit terrible atrocities.

 

[engie]

You can attempt to justify every one of her terrible acts, sure. Real life despots do it all the time. The point remains, the signs were there. I just think the showrunners get too much blame. People should be blaming George R. R. Martin’s lazy *** for not writing a book for 8 years. Seriously, he can’t write a follow-up to A Dance with Dragons in an 8 year (and counting) timespan?

Having power on that level = doing things that someone somewhere views as "terrible". It's true for every single character in the story. But I wouldn't have found it normal for Arya to poison the blackwater and murder everyone in KL just because she murdered all of the guilty Freys willing to drink a toast to the Red Wedding. And I wouldn't find it normal for Jon to march to House Thorne and put them all to the sword because of what happened at the Wall. Dany didn't murder the slaves of Meereen because of what the Masters had done.

She had definitely been building up to "destroying cities" with a dragon. But she hadn't been building up to purposefully blasting every innocent person she could find to blast.

 

[WutheringDawg]

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here but the reason that Aerys didn’t use wildfire to destroy King’s Landing is only because Jaime assassinated him. The king didn’t have a change of heart in the 11th hour. He was just stopped short of his final solution.

About the citizens of KL entering the gates of the red keep - Cersei said it herself, it has never fallen. Also, it’s pretty obvious that no one though Daenerys would go scorched earth. Cersei though that chess move would mitigate the dragon to some extent. I’m not sure about the population of the city but it felt like the number in the streets was not everyone. So there are certainly those who were more successful in avoiding the destruction. But that still feels like a byproduct of the perplexing timing of season 8. It takes a few shots of people going through cavern tunnels or hiding in a wine cellar to illustrate that. To the bigger point though, I don’t think not showing this takes away from the moment.

Your third point is certainly a viable potentially more effective plot structure, but I think there’s plenty of criticism that would exist regardless of how we got to the end of this episode. That’s just going to happen when a show of this magnitude is watched under the social microscope that GoT has been. It’s certainly not the same show we all started with but it hasn’t been for a while. I think the fatal flaw of the episode was removing Daenerys as a character. We only get a two seconds of her as a character prior to the final massacre. that removes something essential from the mix.

Im just screaming this into the void now, but I really wish we could have gotten another season.

 

[11thEagleFan]

All fair points. As I watched Dany massacre thousands of innocents, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have been different if she hadn’t watched her best friend Missandei (and last real surviving confidant) be executed. Then I thought about Ian McShane’s quote from a season or two earlier, when the Hound is asking him to take pre-emptive action against the outlaws that threatened the village. “Violence is a disease. You don’t cure a disease by spreading it to other people.” Dany finally reached her breaking point. She had lost too much. In the span of 2 episodes, she lost her most loyal soldier, her best friend, and her would-be lover rejected her. Ouch.

 

[Uncle Ruckus]

I think that is 100% what d&d are getting at, however, they did a terrible job at telling that story. The entire series has been a slow, in-depth build up of events to tell a major plot. Rob went to war for two seasons, betrayed a family and died because of it. That story took two seasons. They build up Thorne and people in the NW hating Jon for 5 seasons, finally killing him. Those are two of the bigger WOW moments in the show and it took a long time to build up to those moments. Plus, it was done with GRRMs writing. These guys have just done a **** job at story-telling on their own.

 

[engie]

I don’t think I misrepresented the mad king’s Intent. He decided to torch the place after it was clear that he was defeated. Not after it was clear that he was victorious.

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

I watched a guy on youtube talk about the same things.

Spoiler

Of course it could happen for all of those reasons and those you have put under spoiler, but it would be really, really anticlimatic and still feel more like a copout than a good ending. There has been zero foreshadowing or hints in a show that lives on those things. It would be harder and more believable to put any of the other possibles on the thrones and have that bittersweet ending. IF the spoilers are true it would just leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

It might have worked if they spent 2 or 3 seasons laying all of this season out but the show runners were too happy to hurry up and run to Disney to do the new Star Wars trilogy. IF they do the same job with that they will be beaten in the public square.

 

[MSUDC11]

I’ll be honest, the outrage over this season has already gotten old, and I say that as someone who still thinks this has been far from their best season.

The pacing has been frustrating and the last two seasons have both been several episodes too short, but it’s still compelling, entertaining TV. It’s not as good as earlier seasons but some are acting like it’s the worst thing ever put on television and that’s just not true. It’s good content with a few flaws this season, but still good content.

 

[HotMop]

I think Tyrion gets brought up for execution, then does what Tyrion does. Trial by combat....Bronn fights for him again out of self-preservation for his claim to Highgarden. Dany of course names Greyworm. Be interesting to see how it plays out from there. But that brings Bronn back in a sensible way at least, and perhaps gives a fitting end to his arc either way.

I think that with a twist, Arya circles back and kills Greyworm, goes into the battle as Greyworm then turns around and offs Dany. The rest has been so obvious it might as well be this.

 

[WutheringDawg]

If season 8 has been one thing it has been direct. I don’t think there’s room in the final episode for this to happen. I think that the Walder Frey death was they truest direct payoff of Arya’s faceless man training was the assassination of Walder Frey. That was a well earned shocking payoff. I think to repeat that maneuver would lessen the potency of the original without necessarily serving this week’s plot. I think it would be more meaningful for her to fall at Jon’s hand as he has been the realm’s biggest champion. It would be fitting for him to be the savior of that we all thought him to be, but just vs. a different threat.

 

[Go Budaw]

I’ll be honest, the outrage over this season has already gotten old, and I say that as someone who still thinks this has been far from their best season.

The pacing has been frustrating and the last two seasons have both been several episodes too short, but it’s still compelling, entertaining TV. It’s not as good as earlier seasons but some are acting like it’s the worst thing ever put on television and that’s just not true. It’s good content with a few flaws this season, but still good content.

Agreed. I actually thought it was extremely well done and well paced through the end of episode 3. Episodes 4 & 5 have just warp speeded the plot so much that everything seems forced. They could have told the same story (with the same content even) much better by stretching it out and making 4-5 into about 4 standard length episodes. Then stretch out the finale into 2 full length episodes. That would have made it a full season.

People would have appreciated the Arya / Hound farewell a lot more if they spent more time focusing on their dialogue on the Kings Road, for example. People would have also believed the Dany transition a lot more if it happened more gradually. I mean Varys went from serving Dany faithfully with no questions asked to wanting to kill her like 20 minutes after he found out Jon’s true parentage. Then Tyrion snitched him out in like 2 seconds and he was dead right after. That type of pacing with no tension build up in between key story twists is just completely atypical for this show.

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

The people are speaking and they ain't happy.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/16/entertainment/game-thrones-petition/index.html

As of Thursday morning a Change.org petition titled "Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers." had more than 350,000 signatures.
"[Showrunners] David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on," the petition reads. "This series deserves a final season that makes sense. Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!"
The goal is to gather 500,000 signatures of people dissatisfied with how the eighth and final season of the show is playing out.

 

[sandwolf.sixpack]

As of Thursday morning a Change.org petition titled "Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers." had more than 350,000 signatures.

Damn, now it has over 493,000 signatures. That is pretty impressive.

 

[Uncle Ruckus]

wow.

 

[HotMop]

514,000 now...dang.

 

[WutheringDawg]

I wonder how many of these people realize that a reshot version of season eight would more likely than not comprise of a completely new cast.

 

[Chesusdog]

According to the books it only happened once in the known history of Westeros, and even then it only succeeded because the shot hit the dragon in the eye.