Game of Thrones [thronies rejoice! XD]

Knight of Cydonia

I COULD BE BANNED!
I liked the episode but they continue to show too much off the slow/uninteresting storylines. They have multiple plots that should be progressing at different rates, but in the tv show they feel the need to cover the majority of the characters every episode even if they haven't got much for them to do. This leads to a lot of scenes feeling like they are stalling while they wait for other longer plotlines to catch up. Ayra's stuff apart from last episode has been the same as every previous episode from what I remember. Now it seems 6 episodes in that the other plots have reached the "same" point in time so her story is allowed to progress to leaving the stick girl and surly man.

Also where the fuck is my man Bronn?
 
1. What a great episode! Beautifully shot, setting up bastardbowl nicely, and ho shit the Hound is back! Before credits!

2. There's a load of theories that that wasn't Arya but I'm not buying it - we see in Season 6 Trailer 2 that the final shot is of a bloodied hand scraping a wall of a dark alleyway, and the clothes that that character is wearing matches the clothes that Arya is wearing in the ep8 promo. My guess is that she's improvising and using her wounds to lead a trail for the Waif into that dark alleyway, and using her blind training, can cut her down that way. I reckon she was caught off guard by the Waif this episode because she was overly confident/too cocky about her negotiating tactics with the sailor beforehand? Then again, we do see a shot of Arya parkouring it up in the Ep 8 promo seemingly unscathed, so hmm.

3. Riverrun looks great, so does Bear Island. Lyanna's portrayal is proving divisive in my family - my bro thought she was cringeworthy, I thought she was great.

4. What with Littlefinger's involvement (Sansa was obv sending her letter this episode to him), Rickon's capture and the scarcity of recruitments thus far, I don't think Bastardbowl will go as swimmingly as everyone's expecting. Ramsay will prob die, sure, but at what cost? I can just picture him dragging Rickon onto the battlefield, and forcing Jon to make a sacrifice. I can also kinda see Tormund n Ghost dying, and heck, even Sansa - I really don't think she's an endgame character. Sansa has very little plot armour, an underlying sense of becoming overconfident, and her death will be a tragic one and leave the North in turmoil (which is necessary imo as the Whitewalkers need to reach Kings Landing at some point), as there won't be a Stark in Winterfell (assuming that Rickon also bites it, and that Jon's still considered a bastard)

5. Expecting Olenna to die before she can get out of Kings Landing - her insulting Cersei was the final nail in the coffin. Honestly I expect a lot of bloodshed in Kings Landing before the season is over - including deaths of Tommen, Olenna, Lancel, Cersei, that 'shame' Nun (her death foreshadowed by Olenna saying she could do with a bashing - aka Mountain) and heck maybe Pycelle and Qyburn at the hands of Varys' 'birds'.

6. It concerns me how Dany's gonna react to Tyrion negotiating with the slave traders in a more forgiving way than what she's used to. There's prob gonna be conflict there before the season's up.


Overall, my 3rd fave episode this season, behind Ep2 and Ep4 (Roose Bolton poisoned by the enemies, and Dany slaying the Dothraki leaders respectively).
 

Codraroll

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Seems like the Waif is a good contestant for the worst stabber of the season. I mean, let's have a look at the knife stabbings so far...

Sand Snakes vs. Areo Hotah: A teenage/twenties girl pricking a huge, muscular, trained soldier in the shoulder blade. Dead before he hits the floor.
Ellaria Sand vs. Doran Martell: A middle-aged woman stabbing a wheelchair-bound, old man in the chest. Dead within a minute.
Ramsay Bolton vs. Roose Bolton: A man in his twenties stabbing a man in his late fifties in the chest (or was it back?). Dead before he hits the floor.
Ramsay Bolton vs. Osha: Same man in his twenties, stabbing a woman in her thirties in the throat. Dead within seconds.
The Waif vs. Arya. A ruthless, well-trained assassin in her thirties (in the books, at least), stabbing a twelve-year-old girl repeatedly in the stomach. Girl survives, goes for a swim, makes it to dry land and is up and walking minutes later.

Doesn't look like a particularly clever kill. Arguably, she wanted to prolong Arya's suffering and draw out her death, but she still botched up the job pretty badly (and Faceless Men shouldn't even have any emotions regarding their targets). I think we're looking at a failure at Faceless Academy here.
 
one thing that i take from this season so far is that, when you don't have sand snake shenanigans, you got yourself an, at least, decent episode.
I am really excited for next week, especially for Arya.

sidenote: We need more Hot Pie in the show js.
 

Codraroll

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My first impression after watching this episode is... well, slight disappointment. "I choose violence" didn't exactly have the pay-off we expected. Sucks to be that one Sparrow, but overall it was slightly underwhelming.

My biggest gripe, however, was Arya. Last week's episode was a really good set-up for her. It showed Arya spending money openly, waiting in the open for the Waif to strike, and escaping her attack. It looked like she was setting up a trap. What happens? Turns out her wounds are largely ignored, Arya had no plan, and managed to get herself badly hurt again while escaping from a Terminator-esque Waif - but again, the wounds turned out completely unimportant in the end. I must admit, I liked the trick with the candle, but overall her arc set up way more than it delivered on.

Also, Beric is still alive here. Does that mean Lady Stoneheart still isn't resurrected? Edmure mentions to have been trapped for years after the Red Wedding. In the books, they resurrect Catelyn only a few days after she was thrown in the river. Here, if they decided to do the same, they'd barely have a corpse to resurrect. Dead bodies do not age well in rivers.

Lastly... or should it be first? The opening credits showcase both Winterfell and the Wall. Neither location featured in the episode.
 

Inflikted

Orco2
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I would have loved to see some more butchering. I hate how Tyrion has become basically a joke character. And speaking of jokes, that scene was fucking cringe
 

Knight of Cydonia

I COULD BE BANNED!
They nailed the hounds scenes and I especially like the small things they do. The first part where he comes into focus in the background, axe in hand, was a great horror film type moment. More scenes like these can carry any episode for me.

Arya seems to have traded common sense for the ability to fight in the dark, she was sort of better at killing before joining the assassins.
 
I would have loved to see some more butchering. I hate how Tyrion has become basically a joke character. And speaking of jokes, that scene was fucking cringe
I quite enjoyed the joke scene.

Arya's arc was predictable but Jaqen's subtle smile when she said her name was cool. Off-screen deaths are not.
 
My first impression after watching this episode is... well, slight disappointment. "I choose violence" didn't exactly have the pay-off we expected. Sucks to be that one Sparrow, but overall it was slightly underwhelming.

My biggest gripe, however, was Arya. Last week's episode was a really good set-up for her. It showed Arya spending money openly, waiting in the open for the Waif to strike, and escaping her attack. It looked like she was setting up a trap. What happens? Turns out her wounds are largely ignored, Arya had no plan, and managed to get herself badly hurt again while escaping from a Terminator-esque Waif - but again, the wounds turned out completely unimportant in the end. I must admit, I liked the trick with the candle, but overall her arc set up way more than it delivered on.

Also, Beric is still alive here. Does that mean Lady Stoneheart still isn't resurrected? Edmure mentions to have been trapped for years after the Red Wedding. In the books, they resurrect Catelyn only a few days after she was thrown in the river. Here, if they decided to do the same, they'd barely have a corpse to resurrect. Dead bodies do not age well in rivers.

Lastly... or should it be first? The opening credits showcase both Winterfell and the Wall. Neither location featured in the episode.
I hope they ressurect Blackfish instead, considering he just died and he's awesome.


Also, #HYPE for the big battle next episode!
 

WaterBomb

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Gregor: Clearly you don't need THIS anymore *removes head*

In all seriousness, I'm slowing growing more disappointed with the show because it's becoming far less surprising. In earlier seasons we were shown repeatedly that nobody is safe no matter how much we love that character or how important he appears to be to the storyline. Additionally, you never knew what was going to happen next. The shock and surprise value was, to me, one of the main factors that made the show so appealing. Now, we've seen a few characters emerge that are obviously unkillable, and where a plot is going is visible from miles away.

-The second we saw that The Hound was still alive everyone instantly knew he'd eventually kill The Mountain. It hasn't even happened yet but it's so obvious it's not even funny
-Jon Snow they actually did kill, but then brought him back to life as if it was a response to the public outcry over his death
-Now that I think about it, the entire bit with the Hound and the community felt contrived and forced. It seemed like the most cliche way of forcing The Hound back into the story so he could kill The Mountain, and they manufactured an entire side story just for it
-Arya is also quite clearly unkillable at this point, as Waif had her dead to rights and let her survive. She didn't even wait around long enough for a normal person to properly drown before walking away. I suppose you could blame hubris a bit, but I doubt it given her extensive training and skill shown thus far. Feels again like the writers are just too scared to kill Arya.

I mean maybe it's not all that bad but the predictability of some of this is starting to irk me.
 

Tokyo Tom

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An interesting theory for why the Waif was unable to kill Arya is that the Waif is actually Arya. She represents the part of Arya that truly wants to become no one and a faceless man, which is why Arya eventually killing the Waif and re-declaring her identity as "Arya Stark of Winterfell" to Jaqen symbolizes her giving up on the Many-Faced God and finding her true self once again. Notice how the Waif is only ever acknowledged by Arya and Jaqen (iirc), and no one seems to react to the Waif when she is chasing Arya through the streets. I thought they should have explored this a bit more, but perhaps they wanted to keep it as a subtle thing, assuming that I'm not reading too much into it in the first place.

Regarding Qyburn's rumour, it seems like the mad queen theory is becoming more and more plausible. Trial by combat is off the table for Cersei so the Mountain can't bail her out (like, he definitely could, but the rules! D:), so things are looking bleak. With few allies left in King's Landing and plenty of enemies, it does not seem far-fetched for her to want to burn the city down with Aerys's vast caches of wildfire buried underneath the city. This leads to my next point, and I forgot to take into account Maggy the Frog's prophecy in my last post about Cersei being death-immune:

"And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you."

However, this line was excluded from the flashback in the show. I did a quick search of "valonqar" in the thread, and I believe Layell was the only one that caught this (good catch by the way, I had to watch the scene again to remember o_o):
Cersei's flashback was done well, except for the valonqar part of the prophecy which was COMPLETELY missed. Does anyone who only watched the show even get why she is remembering this prophecy? Why does it matter now? Joffrey was already dead and another younger more beautiful queen has already been well on the way to taking over. They have toned down Cersei's crazy for real, I bet we won't even get the scene where she gets fired up.
Why this prophecy matters:
Valonqar means "little brother" in High Valyrian, which Cersei interprets as Tyrion, but ideally the twist would be that the valonqar is Jamie (Jamie is the younger of the twins). The prophecy also states that Cersei outlives all her children, meaning that Tommen is gonna catch these hands soon, which probably drives Cersei closer to the edge in terms of burning the city (if she doesn't kill Tommen herself w/ wildfire or whatnot, which is a theory I've read somewhere). Jamie has two episodes to return to King's Landing from Riverrun (and with the Tully situation resolved, that's what he's gonna do), so we can watch him see Cersei about to "burn them all" and kill her like he did with the Mad King youknowwhatimsaying!? It'll all come full circle.

Questions raised: why did they omit this seemingly crucial part of the prophecy from the show? Will it turn up at some point? Does the lack of the prophecy discredit the theory? Luckily this is Game of Thrones and not Lost, so we should have the answers in two weeks :)

My contribution: What the EFF happened to Gendry? Although I suppose with Arya returning to Westeros what better time for him to reappear...
 

Layell

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Questions raised: why did they omit this seemingly crucial part of the prophecy from the show? Will it turn up at some point? Does the lack of the prophecy discredit the theory? Luckily this is Game of Thrones and not Lost, so we should have the answers in two weeks :)
Yeah, I know exactly about the theory, and to be honest, that is why I'm peeved about the valonqar missing still. In any case, I believe it's because D&D are somehow stuck on this idea that they need the main female characters to be perfect ladies. It's the same thing they did with Shae, which I still consider a terrible, terrible decision.
 

Bull Of Heaven

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Arya is also quite clearly unkillable at this point, as Waif had her dead to rights and let her survive. She didn't even wait around long enough for a normal person to properly drown before walking away. I suppose you could blame hubris a bit, but I doubt it given her extensive training and skill shown thus far.
I've seen comments like this in a few places since that episode. Was I the only one who interpreted what happened as Arya swimming away and the Waif not knowing where she'd gone? I didn't think that I was supposed to think that the Waif thought Arya was dead.
 
I heard the argument of no one noticing the Waif prior to this past weeks episode, so I payed close attention. The Waif definitely was causing just as much havoc on the streets to people as Arya was.
 

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