Battle of the Bastards and The Winds of Winter are two of the finest hours of TV ever produced. There are so many bad takes in this thread. It's just painful to read. Can we go back to 40 pages of Ed Sheeran discussion?

They're really rushing the pace.

I now like Euron: "Did you see your brother? He was like: Oh no! ... What a ****!"

Shame to see Bronn is away with the Lannister army, I was hoping he'd find out about the remaining sand snake.

What scroll did the old Winterfell maester keep that paints Littlefinger in a bad light? He looked concerned at the news there were backups.

Cersei has put good generals in charge of her army, Dany has not. There's no disgrace in being a poor general as Hand, but you have to appoint someone who knows what they're doing. Maybe Jorah can be good here?

Yeh, I find this whole thing stupid. The Royal Navy was about 200 warships at the height of its influence in the mid 19th century. The current US navy has a similar number. Both took 30+ years to build by the most prosperous nations on the planet at the time.

Robb did this against the Lannisters, and it didn't really cost him.

I assume this is why Cersei said 'after the war is won', she has time to engineer his demise if need be.

Battle of the bastards was executed well, but the cliche ending was too strong to overcome that.

Dany was getting plenty of good advice and chose to ignore it, Lady O, Yara, and the Dorne ladies all told her to lay the smack down on King's Landing immediately and just end things once and for all.

"If we do your plan innocent people will die!"
"It's called war"

When you choose to wage a war 'honorably' vs. an opponent willing to do anything and everything to win, you're putting yourself at a gigantic disadvantage.

Lots of people in this thread seem to have missed the entire part of last episode where Jaime tried his hardest to convince Lord Tarly to be his ranking general and said the rest of the lords of The Reach looked to Lord Tarly for advice in this situation.

And then the part in this episode that showed Lord Tarly riding next to Jaime on the way to Highgarden.

if you like logic defying plot of marching a 20k army from from the vale to the north completely unnoticed to save john snow not a moment to soon and not a moment too late then sure its great

Game of Thrones has never shied away from being slightly soap opraish almost to the point of cheesiness sometimes. The show has never been this like ultra serious, deep heady thing. That's not why the show is good or people like it. It fundamentally IS a soap opera, just with much better setting, acting, writing, and production values.

I don't think you can have a seven season show without soap opera elements. I can't think of one at least.

I like this take. Dany has basically no one around her with military experience now except Grey Worm (who is now conveniently trapped at CR thanks to Tyrion's bumbling). Daario is sorely needed here. Even Grey Worm and Daario have no experience with Westerosi combat tactics. She actually needs Jorah now.

Grey Worm also has no true military strategy training. He is good at fighting battles, but never had to be in charge of the strategy. As an unsullied, I'm sure he must have been taking commands from the Masters and then under Dany it seemed like some combination of Baristan/Daario/Jorah was in charge of strategy.

Basically, Tyrion's advice to Dany that you shouldn't make plans based on how you hope things to be is true. Contrast that with Littlefingers advice to always be fighting all wars in your mind. Tyrion picked his strategy, but gave no thought to what would happen if his opponent didn't act as he hoped and expected.

If Grey Worm wasn't educated on military strategy then he would just be in charge of a small squad or just be another foot soldier.



Sending the Unsullied to Casterly Rock made no sense when you think about the time it would take and how vulnerable/weakened you'd be afterwards. Show went full ****** there.

There's battle strategy and then there's war strategy.

I would reckon somehow like Greyworm has good battlefield tactics but isn't really a war planner.

Unsullied are raised to follow orders of the war planners, not be war planners.

I was actually hoping they would be attacking Dragonstone at the end.

Would get things really moving

Actually the Tyrells and the Dornish out of the way is probably good overall

Maybe Tyrion is playing 4d chess?

He wasn't when Dany had to bail him out after he made 'peace' with the masters.

He's clearly an accomplished diplomat now, and probably good at the strategy of running an empire. He's not very good at war though.

Dammit! really choked up that Olenna is gone. She's such a savage, went out like a boss. Really going to miss her . She's easily a top 5 character on GOT.

My top 5 list:

1. Missandei
2. Khaleesi
3. Tywin
4. Tyrion
5. Olenna

Clovis tarding up the thread again as usual.

Season has been great. Euron's finger in the bum line had me howling. Legit rolling on the floor, thought my belly was about to burst. Best scene ever.

The interpreter is your top character? Seems an odd choice.

Seems like about half of the dialogue since last season is the characters rehashing things that happened on the show previously. They just keep telling their life stories to each other in various ways over and over. Very unfortunate writing.

loved the ep, easily best of the season.

Loved how they didn't waste any time and opened with jon and dany.
Loved that ships/people are moving way faster, I hate how traveling takes forever and delays plot.

I don't know why arya isn't in winterfell yet, but she should be anytime with the rate the show is moving.

Looking forward to arya/sansa/bran/jon all in 1 room at 1 time. Doubt it happens tho.

Those complaining now that the speed of transportation is too great need to stop nitting and enjoy the plot developments

yeah, well a lot of these grisly old guys look alike

Does Littlefinger know that Jon is a Targaryen? Tyrion does not. Other than Bran, did that knowledge die with Ned?

Got to assume his top two are just bc they're hot. How anyone can enjoy Daenerys as a character at this point is simply beyond me. Her big "I did this myself" speech last night was a low point in the shows run. Basically her entire character is a lesson as to why the #1 rule in screenwriting- show don't tell- is so important.

Maybe her constant unearned arrogance and hypocrisy will eventually be punished. It sure hasn't happened yet but if that happens I'll eat my words and say I was wrong. But my guess is that she'll face some adversity, OVERCOME THE ODDS, and ultimately sit atop the throne at the end of the show. Her character arc will have been 8 seasons of people around her telling her how great & important she is while she makes bad decisions and rides her dragons to the top.

I just don't get why you'd create this big awesome universe filled with nuance where actions have consequences, if the resolution is gonna be actually you can just click buttons for 8 seasons if you have dragons, hell ya girl power. It completely undermines all of the great stuff that has happened so far. And tbh it's always been lurking- there's always been a sense of "ok Varys & LF working their way to the top is cool, but who cares let's skip to the part where Daenerys takes KL". She's been a huge problem on the show ever since it was clear that she's invincible. Even now, Jaime outmaneuvering Tyrion is less meaningful than it's trying to be because, as his been pointed out on the show, Daenerys can ride her dragons over to KL and take it whenever she wants.

Only Bran knows

Speaking of Jon, I think it would be really cool if the big revelation of him=Targaryen would be if he somehow walked through fire.

Bran recognizes that he must tell Jon; so why doesn't he tell Sansa he needs to get a raven to Dragonstone?