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There is a theory that the original message of Stark words, along with "The North remembers" and "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell" have been lost. According to it, Winter is the Night King and company; and when the Long Night ended all those millennia ago, it was at Winterfell. Related to it is the theory that the crypts at Winterfell were designed so that the dead would always be there to protect the people (the Starks), and that when Winter came, they would rise in defense of Winterfell. But they would only do so if the castle's true ruling family was there. This was what the North was actually supposed to remember, and why there must always be a Stark at Winterfell.
There's more evidence of this in the books -- the climate of the crypts, Bran seeing something leave the castle when he and Rickon leave, the weather turning nasty once there are no longer any Starks at Winterfell. They don't really touch on this in the show.
Walder Frey, Littlefinger, and the Waif all had green eyes.
Yes. And foreshadowing is not the same as character development, but the writers seem to have the idea that it is. Dany is shown as totally sane up until this episode. A bit ruthless at times, but a sane ruler who is always TRYING to do the right thing and be a good leader.
IF they had shown Dany being told she would be betrayed three times and subsequently worrying about it.
IF she had not locked up Viserion and Rhaegal after Drogon burned the little girl.
IF Jorah had been shown cautioning her at Astapor or Vaes Dothrak instead of just showing those scenes as total victories for her.
IF she had continued to execute the masters in Mereen instead of trying to work with them.
IF she had burned all her captives after the Loot Train Battle instead of just the Tarlys.
If even just one or two of those things had happened, this past episode would have worked a whole lot better.
I wish they had included the scene in the House of the Undying where she's told of the treasons she'd know. They could have so easily followed up with that later on, with her talking to some of her advisers or friends about it. There could have been a scene with her and Missandei or Tyrion or Barriston where she expresses her fears of being betrayed. She could have mentioned it to Jorah during his trial. Or maybe to Daario when she leaves him: and her fear that he might one day betray her could have been viewed as just as legit of a reason to leave him in Mereen, as well as speak to a possible growing paranoia within her.
You nailed it on the head. I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with her going full Mad Queen. But the show has spent seven and a half seasons building her up as someone determined to be a good and just leader. "I'm not my father," she tells Ser Barristan. And his response is, "No, Your Grace. Thank the gods." To flip it all in the space of one episode fails the character.
A lot of people say that this was all foreshadowed, and maybe they're more perceptive than I. But a lot of what people point to as foreshadowing, we can point to other characters doing similar things or worse:
-- Stannis, Cersei, and Theon all burn people alive -- innocent people, most of whom they knew, deliberately, and on multiple occasions.
-- Tywin sacks Kings Landing and orders the deaths of innocent children. He later turns around and watches, with clinical detachment, the death of his grandson and orders his son executed for it.
-- Jon runs one of his superiors through, then defends himself later as saying "he made me do it."
-- Bran repeatedly forces himself onto a mentally challenged innocent.
-- Meera encourages Bran, then deliberately abandons said mentally challenged innocent to be torn apart by zombies.
-- Ygritte and Tormund sack villages, then stand by and watch while their companions eat the people they killed.
-- Ellaria Sand and Olenna Tyrell both poison children. Olenna even watches as he dies.
Are all of them mad too? You could make a case for some of them, but ALL of them?
Yes. Many of the signs WERE present (see Season 2 when she threatens to burn Qarth to the ground), but it seems like the show has had too much to wrap up and not enough time to do it. I have absolutely no problem with her going Mad Queen, but the way it's been handled has been poor. Maybe if they had done all 10 episodes in Seasons 7-8, it would have been better -- they could have included a little more of her descent. Instead, we get seven seasons of "I'm not my father. I want to be a good person. I want to know how to rule justly" and in one episode, "I'm going to burn you all."
BUT, I'd also like to point out that a lot of what she does that many of the characters fault her for, and we the audience point to her eventually going mad -- burning people alive, not grieving for her brother, sacking cities -- have been done by other characters too. Stannis has his brother-in-law and his daughter burned alive. Tywin watches his grandson die with an almost clinical detachment. Both men sack Kings Landing. Were they mad too?
the Night King should have had a crazy mano-o-mano fight with Jon beforehand.
YES. THIS. And not just because it would have been awesome to see. The Others do things the Old Way -- one on one in single combat. This is pointed out right in the very first episode when the Nights Watch get caught by the White Walkers. Waymar (I think it's Waymar) is SURROUNDED by Walkers (you can see at least 4 or 5 of them), but only ever faces off with one of them. In the book, it's more obvious -- Waymar actually gets a couple of parries in before he's defeated. So for the Night King NOT to do anything mano-a-mano, either with Jon or anyone else, kinda fails the narrative a little.
Also -- a big one on one fight would be a validation of the actor's abilities. If they were just going to have the Night King simply walk around staidly without saying anything, they could have had anyone play the guy. But instead, they got a majorly awesome kick ass stunt dude and had him....throw a stick at an x on a green screen? It seems like a huge underappreciation of Vladimir Furdik's abilities.
Stannis had people burned alive. Several people. And unlike Dany, he knew most of them. Most of the people Dany burned were either collateral damage (citizens of King's Landing) or faceless members of an army (the Lannister Army and Golden Company).
The people Dany deliberately burned alive?
The creepy master in Astapor (who was skivvy and perverted, and don't tell me you didn't cheer when Drogon fried him)
The Tarly's (she had given them a choice to bend the knee or die)
Varys (she had warned him what would happen if he ever betrayed her)
eta:
Mirri Maz Dur (indirectly responsible for the deaths of Drogo and Rhaego)
Pyat Pree (who had kidnapped Dany and trapped her in a room WITH her dragons)
NONE of them compare to the burning alive of YOUR OWN DAUGHTER.
Fire has never acted normally in this show. In Season 1, a normal coal and wood fire is able to melt gold in seconds. Later, when Dany builds Drogo's funeral pyre, she uses what looks like half a mile of wood and brush, and the fire goes through it all in mere seconds, when it normally should take at least a couple of minutes. In Season 7, the weird human flesh spiral used on poor Ned Umber is also ignited in seconds, when it should have taken longer than Drogo's pyre.
But when Melisandre burns Selyse's brother -- and later, Shireen -- the fire takes a couple of minutes to go through the pyres, as it normally does in the real world. And we haven't been told anything to make us believe that Melisandre's torch wasn't made from anything different than Dany's, Beric's, or Drogo's.
So given all those inconsistencies, I'm just going with this one. There are other issues I have with the plot -- like how did Arya manage to survive when LITERALLY everyone around her dies -- but this one I'm just going to roll with this one.
It's unclear whether or not the letter he burned was the same letter he's shown writing earlier, or if it's a different letter with basically the same contents. You'll notice, in the very beginning, that he's already written several other letters, but we only see him burning one.
It's not like it really matters for WHOM the letter was intended. The point was to show that he had lost faith in Dany and wanted the rest of Westeros to know the truth about Jon.
Perhaps the point of Bronn in this season is to emphasize the effect all the political instability is having on the people. As Jorah said way back in season 1, the common people pray for rain and for a summer that never ends. They don't really care which king or queen sits on the iron throne. Bronn is sick and tired of all the political backstabbing shenanigans, and he is sick and tired of being sick and tired. In that way, he is representative of the people of Westeros. He doesn't care who sits on the throne. He just wants what's best for him.
Maybe. The zombies don't care about attacking a place where there's no people, and there was no one in WinterTown when they arrived. Everyone was inside the castle.
Yeah, it seemed a little incongruous to me that only half the army was destroyed. It seemed like there were many many more, given the few Dothraki we actually see returning with Jorah, and the number of Unsullied who were still on the wrong side of the trench when Grey Worm closes it. And this time the Wildlings aren't going to be involved. Tormund is going back north, and as much as they love Jon, I doubt very many of them care who rules in Kings Landing.
BUT, I'm also wondering if, as Jon and company head south, they're going to pick up allies. They have to pass the Twins and go through the Riverlands, and Sansa or Jamie may have been working an angle there. Plus, Jon may totally stink at strategic planning, but he's very very good at getting people to play well with others.
And Dorne. Don't forget them. They had declared for Dany way back in Season 6, but we never did get to see their army.
A theory: We know that Cersei has had the opportunities to kill both her brothers. On multiple occasions. But it's one thing to order an execution in the abstract, quite another to witness it carried out right in front of you. And whenever they ARE in front of her, she can't quite bring herself to give the order. It's why she hired Bronn ("Go North and kill my brothers, so I won't have to look them in the face and do it myself"). So when Jamie calls both of them hateful, he could be saying that he's hateful because (unlike her) HE will actually see the job done.
It's also a callback to Season 4 when Jamie forces himself on her in the Great Sept after Joffrey's death. "You're a hateful woman. Why did the gods make me love a hateful woman?"
1. He wasn't actually in the castle itself; they were in WinterTown, outside the castle.
2. He probably had been watching the castle. All those dumb scenes with Brienne watching for the candle did have a point after all.
3. He probably didn't, but took a calculated guess. Given the heavy casualties sustained in the battle, he figured not many people would have been out and about.
4. Because Jamie was with Tyrion.
5. The smallfolk wouldn't know who Bronn is. Half the people at Winterfell weren't from the North, so it would have meant nothing to the common people to see a wealthy southerner traipsing around. They would have figured he was part of Dany's retinue and ignored him.
I'm wondering though if maybe Jon will send for him, now that he doesn't have Rhaegal. There were hints that Ghost would play a major role this season, and so far we haven't really seen him do anything. And Ghost was always more a part of Jon than Rhaegal -- who really only existed as a plot device to point out Jon's heritage (but I cried when he was shot down anyway).
And I have often wondered why Ghost has been such a significant player. Jon shows up as a recruit in what is basically military boot camp...and he's allowed to keep his pet? That always seemed odd to me, so I'm hoping that he has a major reason for being in the story, beyond just to point out Jon's warging abilities, which aren't really touched on in the show anyway.
I have read the books and ended up skimming through a lot of the sluggish parts -- like the interminable politicking on Pyke, or the 500 years of contemplating it took for Tyrion not to get to Mereen. Many of the changes the show has made are better than the books (fleshing out of Olenna and Margery, for example) and many of them are worse (Dorne).
But yes, I feel like there needs to be a massive twist coming, because my immediate thought when I saw the Night King shatter was, "That can't be it. That's too tidy." I had been fully expecting the Night King to route the armies of the living and push them back all the way to King's Landing, and only then -- when the Lannisters and the Golden Company are forced to come out to fight them -- would they be finally defeated.
Remember that Bran had a vision of a dragon flying over King's Landing, which hasn't happened yet (It looked like a present day Kings Landing, so it couldn't have been when dragons had been that big in the past). And Dany had one in the House of the Undying of a gutted throne room completely empty and covered in snow. There needs to be some sort of payoff for them.
A lot of success on a battlefield can be attributed to courage and good luck over skill. The French were just as skilled as the English at Agincourt.
Lyanna KNEW that she was the last of her house (in the show anyway. She isn't in the books.) And she KNEW that, given the Army of the Dead's questionable swimming abilities, the people of Bear Island may actually have been relatively safe if they had stayed home (unlike the ones of Deepwood Motte, most likely). But she still brought her people to Winterfell when Sansa called the banners. Because she swore loyalty to House Stark. And she knew that the the survival of the human race was more important than that of her house. Her charging the giant doesn't make her any less badass.
The NY Times has an article that talks about this, and it comes to the same conclusion: that while the NK might have a general idea of where Bran is at all times, he's probably easier to locate when he's plugged in to the Weir-net. It makes sense in a way, since you'll notice he unplugs when the NK and his lieutenants arrive in the godswood.
But the way Bran has been used in this season, and this episode especially, is really what made me think, "Wait. Is that it?" when Arya does the NK in. Because if all Bran's purpose was to lure the NK in to be killed, what's he going to do for the next four hours? He's set up to be this omniscient wizard....and then is hardly used.
(Here's a link to the Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/arts/television/bran-night-king.html)
But not all of them. You'll notice that Lyanna stayed put. There were 8000 years of corpses down there; presumably most of them were dust.