Again she leaps up from the ground.

It explains nothing, is just a really lazy crutch for people with no real argument.

Of course we are not even talking about how she get to the jump off point after getting her arse kicked by zombies previously.

Or how she is jumping into ground super infested by enemies etc who can hear blood drops hit paving stone.

Its lazy writing and the defence of it is even lazier.

loool

after the 528924668924 other times when someone on this show definitely should have died but then did not (including the 4268907 from this ep alone)? ok sure

Those deaths were also the culmination of an 8 series plot line?

What are you even arguing here?

Yea the show has already sold out so who cares if it sells out one more time?

Obviously several charachters facing off thousands of zombies solo is also AIDS but for me this was the most AIDS moment, because it was super unsatisfying culmination of a plot line that has been brewing for 8 series.

At the end of the day I think Howard Treesong and Chris V pretty much have it nailed from my perspective.

I love the books, I love the characters, and we've had 4 elite seasons and 4 more not elite but on balance still very good teevee since then.

There's a lot to take exception with in the episode and I think the Arya scene is pretty far down the list. E.g.: Jon just deciding to yolo and.....uhh, stand there?...against Viseryion was way dumber; the dead rising in the crypts was entirely wasted; I couldn't see **** a significant portion of the episode(yes I was watching in total darkness) etc. etc.

I want to be mad but I just can't. On the whole the show has delivered massively for me and I look forward to it's conclusion and whoever ghost writes, or whatever it's called, the final book(s).

o fo sho

To be clear as a hollywood style zombie battle this was great and I particularly liked the way the zombies were handled as a kind of human wave that just ran uncaring about death over the defendants, and plenty of other stuff was cool spectacle.

I was till expecting more though as this is GOT not Medieval Walking Dead.

I like burger a lot. No problems with burger.

However if I am expecting steak and get burger I cant help but be disappointed.

Wat?

Are you being serious, if so, wat that is the dumbest shallowest argument you could make.

Nah, these people liked it.

wat?

Fo realz?

P.S. As an European, showing yanklandians in a Bar liking something is never going to work as a proof of that thing being good.

u seem fun


making me feel better about myself anyway, so thanks
seriously

U seem odd.

What a strange place to take this debate.

Sore loser I guess.

I think there's a phenomenon here where people are fixating on the mechanics of the Arya kill because that's the particular way chosen for the NK to die. The kill feels sudden, without depth or resonance, and they're like "it's because I didn't see how Arya sneaked up on him!".

But imo it's not that, it's that the resolution was fundamentally always going to be anticlimactic. When you've got a walking Big Red Button marked "destroy WW threat" the resolution is always going to be "someone pushes it". Like it's always going to be some variation of someone sticks this sci-fi channel reject with the pointy end and boom, seasons-long threat ended. The only way to not have that be anticlimactic is to make that the endgame and then it would still suck balls. An endgame of the Forces of the Chosen One against the Dark Ice Lord would be abysmal. It would be a mockery of everything the series was.

I don't remember if I argued this here pre ep, but the ending to the NK plotline was always going to be either anticlimax or schlocky cliche. Those are the only stories you can do with a one dimensional Dark Lord villain who doesn't talk. I don't think finding out more about the mechanics of how the anticlimax took place is going to make it interesting

He did not have to stay a one dimensional dark lord, that he did was just another massive failing which is leveraged by his teleportation kill. Nothing really interesting happens with the NK, even though there is all this hinted at potential. It just all evaporates like shattering ice.

The alternative, by the way, would be to have left the Walkers to continue to play the role of a force of nature. Don't have the Night King. Have the Walkers, for example, drive the lords and small folk from the northern areas of the North. Jon at Winterfell can't handle the influx of people as winter is setting in, so he must march south in war against the Crown before he's ready. Then he could link up with Dany on the way.

I'm just spitballing but I think that's how you want to handle it. That way there are all sorts of possibilities for how the Walker threat might end. You can do it non-militarily. When you create the Night King and set things up as a conflict with him personally, then you're forced to do a story where he personally is defeated and cast down.

They could not have been more lazy and generic with the NK.

I was really expecting some reveal about his link with Bran and a motivation deeper than some people just want to see the world burn, well not burn that would be problematic for him, see the world freeze.

Anyway my fear now is that writers will feel a burden to not let this finish in a conventional yay good guys win, but they really fumble the implementation and the twist that surely must be coming feels really clumsy and awkward.

Think this is practically a given at this point. That is if I am still not expecting too much and it is just yay good guys win, which is possible.

Rephrasing: the unsolvable problem that creates a deux et machina here is how Arya gets to the night king given the layout of the godswood. It is a deux a machina, just not a giant one.

A much bigger deux et machina is how the wights get a dragon out of the bottom of a lake when none of them can swim.

The thread would be better if we could avoid calling one another names.

That would be a bigger deux et machina.

Based on other show idiocy, I do not think Benioff and Weiss are thinking along these lines.

I still love the show.

yes

i'd argue that discussing these things is a much better use of time & energy than nitting up the manner in which he died, because that doesn't matter for anything afaict


i think they had a plan to do something else with him (probably more similar to whatever will happen in the books), but they ran out of space so just ended it asap

They didn't need to swim, they needed to sink.

the problem wasn't the anticlamatic sudden arya kill, it was that she pulled it off at the exact moment when everybody important was going to die(after unrealisticly fighting off thousands of whites alone).

you just can't portray the army of the dead as powerhouse who slaughters a dothraki hord in seconds but then struggles against a few heroes for the whole episode, that's bullcrap.
no consequence whatsoever

deus ex machina has to be unexpected. everyone who was paying attention expected arya to kill the night king because of the many hints they laid about it happening

it was a lame and unsatisying resolution but not dem

To me this sheds a light on the biggest issue with not only the episode but the WW/NK plot itself; it doesn't really fit in the GoT universe at all. The best & most interesting part of GoT has always been the detailed study of the vast array of characters. Actions had consequences. Decisions mattered. Things that happened didn't play out for seasons down the line.

The WW/NK have always felt immune to this type of storytelling. There's way less subtlety, way less characterization. We've spent 8 seasons preparing for winter but it was probably always going to be a letdown because they didn't really give us a reason to care about them. The lack of development removes tension. Leading up to it there were all of these theories about the WW/NK because GoT fans were hoping that there was actual meaning to them. They wanted them to belong in the universe they took part in. Unfortunately there wasn't any meaning, and I think the truth of the matter is that any resolution to the arc that contained no exposition or swerve, no matter how dramatic or how many lives it cost, was always going to be a disappointment. Because we all kind of realize that we've been waiting 8 years to resolve something that didn't really matter all that much.

And hell, even the writers didn't really respect the WW that much. Sam ****ing Tarly was able to hold off like 100 of them at once. I think they did the best they could given the box they put themselves in. It was an entertaining 82 minutes, and I'm thankful they got this out of the way so they could spend the last 3 episodes resolving what really matters; the characters.

mel: "eyes you will shut forever. brown eyes, green eyes ..... blue eyes."
everyone: "omg arya is totally gonna kill the nk"
(5 minutes later)
*arya kills the nk*
brain geniuses: "benioff & weiss should literally be in prison for felony deus ex machina"

This clown has made the thread unreadable. JFC.