#he's coming back fucked up and with a war against ice zombies on the horizon he has bigger fish to fry

[fromtheseventhhell]

Jon literally grew up idolizing the Targaryens. He liked to pretend to be Aemon the Dragonknight when he played games with Robb. One of his heroes is Daeron the Young Dragon. And of course Maester Aemon was one of his mentors and one of the people Jon admires the most.

Jon's character literally doesn't matter to them when they come up with these "theories". They're just projecting their personal feelings onto Jon so "Targs evil + Jon good = Jon hate Targ". They also try and bring up Brandon and Rickard as though Jon has ever spared them a passing thought. If he cared so much and was soooo anti-targ he wouldn't have had such a good relationship with Maestar Aemon, like you said. They just want the books to follow their personal feelings and they're gonna be pissed when that's not the case.

[sassycabs]

Game Of Thrones S8, E3

There will not be a show with the same gravitas, impact, and scale as Game of Thrones for a very long time. This show has changed the way battles are shot and directed, the way dialogue can have layers and layers of subtext (although this is mostly thanks to GRRM’s writing), and the way different actors’ chemistry are showed on screen as their characters. That being said, fuck this episode.

Here I outline all the arguments I keep having with myself, after reading reviews and Reddit threads, and watching numerous 30-minute analysis videos. And no, I still don’t know exactly how I feel. Betrayed, yes. Dissatisfied, yes. But is this the end for me? No, I want to know if my dissatisfaction is only a hurdle I need to cross to end up with a great sense of relief and pleasure for what’s about to come in the last three episodes.

Of course, all information and assumptions are based on the TV series since I’ve never read the books, and whatever information I’ve gathered about/pertaining to the books, I researched only online. I’m a med student, okay, as much as I want to, I have no time, energy, or patience to read books anymore.

Visuals and Direction

Miguel Sapochnik and Fabian Wagner don’t dissapoint. As the director and cinematographer for both Hardhome and Battle Of The Bastards, we knew to have high expectations and they were met -- sure. Yes, the entire episode was dark and dimly lit, but it is called “The Long Night.” It may be annoying but it’s seriously one of the lesser sins of this episode.

The direction is also obviously inspired by other apocalyptic/zombie films, TV shows, and maybe even games. Of course people will never forget to compare it to Helm’s Deep, which is way, way above this episode’s league; this episode is not even in the top three battles in the entire series. But you can also see some instances of World War Z, The Walking Dead, hell, even The Last Of Us. Arya’s scene in the library? The Last Of Us underground train station vibes.

Overall, the visuals were great--not the greatest, and not even as great as some people say it is, but still, I doubt any other pair of people could achieve what was done.

Addressing and Justifying Everything That Happened

We have to start with the big picture: why and how is the Night King already dead? Yes, he’s and his army of the dead have been hyped up, foreshadowed, and talked about by every single character in the series and we’ve established that they are the biggest threat to humanity itself. But, just as everyone else who isn’t from or hasn’t gone to the North is asking, what’s his deal anyway? Well, most people, myself included have forgotten that one scene from Season 6 when Bran finds out that the Night King was made by the Children to defend themselves from Men. Obviously, as we know now, that didn’t really work out as they planned. The Children and the First Men ended up joining together to keep the Night King away into the North of the Wall/“Lands Of Always Winter”. So after all the hype and the theories, the bad guy really is just some bad guy: something made to defend but ended up becoming an evil that wants to take over the world (Ultron, is that you?). So where does that leave us? Apparently, back to giving a shit about who sits on the Iron Throne.

It isn’t a secret that GRRM is deeply inspired by LOTR, and after reading more about it, you’ll find out that his favorite part of the story is the Scouring of the Shire: 

I love the way he ended ’Lord of the Rings.’ It ends with victory, but it’s a bittersweet victory. Frodo is never whole again, and he goes away to the Undying Lands, and the other people live their lives. And the scouring of the Shire —brilliant piece of work, which I didn’t understand when I was 13 years old: ’Why is this here? The story’s over?’ But every time I read it I understand the brilliance of that segment more and more.

So GRRM’s leaning towards this type of ending: bittersweet. The heroes win, we literally defeat death and save humanity, but people still end up squabbling over stupid things like... who gets to be the big boy/girl sitting on the Iron Throne. Really, it could be great and I have little doubt that this is the outline GRRM gave to D&D on how to end the series.

Lastly for this portion, of course Arya kills the Night King. In Deep Geek explains all the reasons why better than I ever will. But since I started lurking in Reddit threads, she’s always been my best bet to kill the Night King and I’m glad she did. Having Dany or Jon do it does not do anything for their character, not even for any prophecy. Dany and Jon’s story arcs have been moving towards gaining responsibility, power, and respect of people--in two contrasting ways (that will warrant its own rant on itself) and killing the Night King doesn’t add any value to their character’s progression. Dany is on a quest for the Iron Throne and as we now know, this is just a side quest for her. Jon has also been on the path to the same power and importance, all unknown to him, but he earned it just as much as Dany, and I would go as far to say that he’s earned a lot more Throne Points™ than she has. But what does killing NK do anything for their ascent to power? How does it play against what has happened and what they’ve learned so far in the story? Dany and Jon have been focusing on doing what they think is best for the living; what they haven’t learned about is fighting, killing, or death. I think Battle of the Bastards and The Long Night battle tactics are enough of an argument for us to know that’s true; so thank you Stark Sisters for saving their asses on both occasions. As Ideas of Ice and Fire puts it, Arya’s journey has always been about death and defeating it. If I go on any more about Arya, I’d just be retelling what IOIAF already said, so just watch the damn video.

Now that we know what we’re talking about, let’s now argue why it’s all wrong.

Me Complaining For 7 Paragraphs Straight

For years now, we’ve been building up the story that the White Walkers and the Night King are the biggest threat to Westeros’ humanity and I’m not gonna lie, along with the rest of the fan base, I’m really disappointed. After learning about the Scouring of the Shire, yes, I feel the bittersweet-ness of it now and I hate it. I guess I’m still the 13-year-old GRRM asking, “Is this really it?” I said this is probably the outline GRRM gave to D&D, and I’m open to accepting it only I’m not convinced this is exactly how he meant to play it out. All GRRM gave was an outline; as someone who has been trying to figure out how to end the books, he probably doesn’t have it all figured out himself, how could we expect the showrunners to know? And that’s the problem.

Despite GRRM being inspired by Tolkien’s work, are we really expecting an exact copy paste of the formula? This, I doubt. And I’m gonna say it now: yes, I agree that the writing of Game of Thrones has suffered tremendously since they ran out of book to copy-paste dialogue and pacing from. Just watching Robert and Ned’s conversation on The Kingsroad from Season 1 will show you how incredibly different and layered even simple dialogue is and how it still pays off even now. The problem is that GRRM’s writing had set down rules and pacing that the fans of the show have grown to love, and delivering a payoff to 6 Seasons (yes, six!) of build-up with just 6 expensive episodes does not give the story and even the characters any justice. So yes, this may really be the checkmate ending to A Song Of Ice And Fire, but no, this is probably not exactly how the pieces will move in the books.

I’m still dumbfounded by the fact that the evil was defeated so easily, by some sneak attack, and we’re left to Scour Westeros, with dragonfire instead of ice. We already know the people are afraid of the dragons; but they will never know about the reality that the dead literally rose with the arm raise of an ice man, that they can dampen dragonfire suddenly like they’re wet pieces of cloths, and that they can take seven seasons to get to The Wall but only three episodes to get from The Wall to Winterfell. All this will just be another Northern folktale to the hard-headed Southeners. To have this “great evil” be defeated so easily and have what is now majority of the humans in Westeros think so little of our “heroes” because this threat never even met the horizon for them feels like it missed the purpose of being the evil that it is. The people in the North have been warning the world about this threat, and it came--for them, but it didn’t come to those who it would have mattered.

We could say that Cersei was the greater evil after all, but now that the evil has been defeated, what does she have against two dragons, invincible characters, and her own brother/lover? She has nothing left but sell swords and a pirate. The story could have moved forward the way GRRM had outlined it, but there are too many cracks popping up in a story that started out air-tight and it’s impossible to just turn a blind eye just because you loved the beginning. There’s a reason why GRRM is taking so long to write: he’s been building a world that has rules, with characters whose actions have consequences.

As a show that was released in the same speck of time as Endgame, I can’t help but feel like GoT is out of touch with the standards fans have with the stories showrunners and filmmakers get to tell. We can argue that, yes, Thanos is not the most complex villain out there, but his brand of villain has deviated from the cookie-cutter villains previous films have been feeding to us. Watching GoT after watching a year’s worth of great TV shows and films with the most exceptional writing and direction that has ever been shown in history (i.e. The Good Place, Into The Spiderverse, Eighth Grade), it feels like this show has just turned into pulp and fan-service. 

I’ve always been a firm believer in asking more from these big companies that are the moving blocks for the type of entertainment that is readily available to us. We as fans deserve better than feeling good that our favorite character didn’t die, or even worse, having the ease to recline on our chairs and know they won’t. Most of the best stories don’t end up making us feel relieved, they make us question characters’ motives and actions; they induce our critical thinking skills. We deserve to come out of a theater or to put down our laptop and have some sense of introspection, even just for five minutes. The development of the first four seasons made us feel this way: for Jaime, Olenna, Sansa, Tyrion, Jon, and many others. Now the story just feels as if it’s just moving towards the plot goal rather than individual characters’ actions driving the collective story forward.

It could take me all day to rant about Dany and Jon’s battle tactics, despite having some of the best military minds in their group of heroes, or how the plot armor is so thick right now Rhaegal and Drogon are still lost in it, or even just the physiology of Wights (how did they go from walking like glaciers to Usain Bolt after season 7?). But all of these complaints are already everywhere online, you just have to find the Reddit threads for them. I’m hoping the next episodes will surprise us, maybe half of the heroes die by Cersei and Euron’s hands after all. And oh dear god, bittersweet or not, I hope the quote still stands: 'If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.'