oh and there's something weird going on with the whole faceless men storyline, but i don't really know what

like was Arya "no one" at any point? don't really think so
did anyone involved ever think that she was? no
yet that poison water stuff didn't kill her
there's a black/white duality implied with the whole thing, so Arya is just some white hat assassin (also had a white horse while Hound had a black one, was kinda rejected by black Jaqen, etc)
they seemed fine just training her up to kill the ppl on her list
Jaqen is probably Syrio or some ****, but head asplode if he's also Rheagar


but again, maybe they'll just skip all of this in the show due to a lack of time/effort, and we don't even see Jaqen in s8

Hot take predictions: we never see or hear from Jaqen Syrio Daario Edmure Sam's dad again. 50 50 on nymeria.

lol, forgot about Edmure

ya could have easily thrown in a short scene of Arya freeing him & lecturing him about FAMILY after merking House Frey if he mattered for anything

still could see him making the end of series montage as lord of riverrun tho

sources confirn

but i would also obv & enthusiastically take a nod to Holy Grail with him still in the Frey dungeon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9wdYy3tCm4 (0:50)

Plz no casting spoilers

I think arya will just wander the world. Even if Bran lives, he won't have a happy ending... hes a tree.

Sam's dad was frazzled by a dragon, he dead

Yeah both are possibilities and both lame.

They just put an axe through that storyline so they could get Arya moving back to a place where she can do fan-servicey things like kill Freys, chat to Ed Sheeran and own an expert at swordfighting despite being largely untrained. That incomprehensible bit where Jaqen goes "now a girl is truly noone" (????) was literally just "OK THIS SUBPLOT IS FINISHED NOW, HOPE YOU ENJOYED!".

Just to elaborate on this, Tyrion should not want to help Cersei, it's out of character for him, and Cersei should not believe that he wants to help her, and even if she did, Tyrion shouldn't believe that she believes him.

Like in the books, Cersei believes that Tyrion is prophesied to kill her, and in both show and books Tyrion says to her "A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid". The idea that they would be co-conspirators is absurd, they are lifelong enemies.

It'll probably happen, though. One of the noticeable changes moving past the end of the books was that well-drawn characters suddenly collapsed into generic archetypes. Tyrion probably had the sharpest decline of any character - the other contender would be Varys. The show departs from the book story at the point where Tyrion is at Illyrio's house drinking heavily - Tyrion then goes on more adventures rather than meeting Dany, but will meet her in the next book. Anyway, he's been written very blandly for those few seasons, I hope they don't butcher his character entirely, but they probably will.

LF was a complete let down after the show passed the books imo.

very possible

but it was so weird/bad from the start that i'm hoping they baked a halfway satisfying twist in there somewhere

i assume there'll be a lot of that

i mean it'd be cool and make total sense if they were just trying to play each other (and Jamie), but like you say, it should be very difficult to play each other due to the complete & total absence of trust


in b4:
"hurrrrr u have new baby? ok i trust u now. dragon mad queen bad, lion mad queen good durrrrr"


yeah they sorta ran out of things to do with all 3, Tyrion was used to prop up Cersei in s7, and LF was used to prop up Sansa

Varys hasn't really had a point in the series since ... he helped to free Tyrion? and that was mostly just to get him out of town
they basically never tried to come up with a Plan B for him after they punted the Young Griff storyline in s1/2

I scrolled down and glanced the word spoiler so I didn't stop to read. Less than 24 hours, I'm so hard right now!

Probably not a coincidence Tyrion/Varys/LF had the sharpest decline, as they're shrewd, plotting sort of characters and the show can't write that stuff, it just lurches from setpiece to setpiece.

heyyo gearin up for the last season and lookin for a place to hang out o/

i feel the need to vent somewhere as i finish rewatching 7th season and nothin will make me change my mind: the worst from it (+ temporary inconsistencies) is the fight between sansa and arya,,, makes no sense (?) arya criticizes sansa but she seems to have forgotten when she was tywins cupbearer and did not kill him or kill herself..... one of the worst written plots ´-´

rewatched S7 , forgot how mehhhhhh it really was
Whole beyond the wall plot with Dragon rescue mission and Snow just deciding "meh don't wanna just fly out here that would be boring ill just wander off and fight some more walkers instead!"
"As Ill prefer to get randomly rescued by benjen at the last second instead"
was mindblowing stupid

Arya/Sansa plot awful as well

Definitely want to set your expectations as low as possible for S8. I know I am and I'm still in danger of being disappointed.

Yep seems like the entire world is hyped but then again most of them didn't think the last few seasons were meh. Don't see how it gets better.

I am not optimistic but maybe GRRM gave the showrunners a clear outline how the story is supposed to end. If they don't have to write original material as they had to in the past 2 seasons they have less chances to mess it up.

That assumes even he knows how this is all supposed to end at this point and whether he even cares anymore. I wouldn't bet on either.

I rewatched this weekend too and I too hated how the stuff with Benjen was handled, but I can sort of defend the way Snow hung around, he was fighting off walkers while they loaded up the dragons and he knew once NK grabbed another javelin it was curtains for the other dragons. Drogon was a sitting duck and would have been easily merked, hell NK almost hit him anyway as they were flying away.

On this point I feel like the plot itself wasn't awful as much as it was handled awfully by the writers. If you're gonna amp up the drama do it with good writing, don't just lazily Shyamalan everyone. (I mean hell, they have their crippled brother who is essentially a living hacked Alexa who knows and sees all*, he could have settled that business in 5 minutes flat with one conversation why even put us through it at all?)


(*except, apparently, about Rhaegar marrying Lyanna for which he inexplicably required an assist from Sam)

Yeah and you can tell even they know it. That convo between him and Dany at Dragonstone where she recounts all the ways he previously plotted against her and questions his loyalty felt like it was jackhammered into the script, especially given the timing which was well after she's already trusted him with some pretty important **** and opened herself up to being totally ****ed by him.

staying optimistic that some of the flaws of s7 were caused by the need to get everything in position for s8, and that this ... at least won't be the worst season

fingers crossed

like you said, they just needed something to happen in WF, so that's the best they came up with i guess, and yeah it sucked and made almost no sense

also funny how for the like the first time in the series it required intentionally omitting information from the audience, and it still sucked and made almost no sense

so bad

i think we're meant to understand via his pov trips the way he sees things like all at once / in fragments, so it's hard to focus / he has to specifically look for some things
(think he mentioned in s7 about needing to improve his ability to see things)

and then obv he didn't know that marriage even happened, so kinda easy to miss

lol, dragon administration not doing a very good job vetting cabinet members

On a scale of 1-10, my excitement level is at about a 4 right now. I have pretty low expectations going into this season, so who knows, maybe I'll actually enjoy it.

When's it out in the US? I think it's in 10 mins time here, which is 10:30am ACST. Won't be watching it until tonight though.

It's about to start (in 2 minutes).