I think the events mostly unfolded the same way with some minor characters switched around. I guess the biggest change was the compression of time (which I thought worked brilliantly for tv) and Jon deciding to go out in his own instead of being forced (again, I believe that from his show character)

Really I'm just ecstatic they created an awesome battle like that for a tv show. Ended way way too quickly

i don't remember either....but the whole thing was epic.

LOVE how they finally got Jon stepping into true leadership role...really obvious who the men trust, they nailed that.

don't recall janos hiding in the book either...

they kinda maybe made it easier for Jon to assume command and be voted LC.

I appreciated the ambiguous way Ygritte died in the books. And poor Pyp.

I wasn't too impressed honestly. I thought the black water was much better. I think the next battle at the wall will be better though.

Blackwater's stakes were a little bigger because we had faces on both sides: Stannis/Davos and Tyrion/Cersei/Joffrey/Hound. There was no way the Wildlings were gonna conquer the Wall when we hadn't even seen Mance since like S3E3.

But still... some quality stuff. Didn't expect to lose Grenn AND Pip. That was tough.

my issue with blackwater was that i never felt it was that big. this episode we got a ton of great wide angles that helped you feel the sheer size of what was going on

also GIANTS MAMMOTHS WALL-SCYTHE

I will give you Grenn and Pyp and the giant wall scythe. Those were pretty damn good. There were also a couple of good speeches to get you pumped even from ******* Ser Alliser.

Ygritte's death was handled extremely well, too.

Oh yeah forgot about Thorne. He was awesome tonight.

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Expected to see a lot more complaining about the changes from the book.

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It's expected at this point.

They're building Jon back up after neutering him in S2. What with the two straight episodes of "herp derp this wildling girl is gonna get away! Oh no I got caught!"

He's back to "my boy" status

Wow, I was blown away by that episode. I wasn't expecting a lot since it was all at The Wall, but I might have enjoyed it more than any other episode this season.

Highlights (some already said by others)
Aliser Thorne, great way to make him human with his convo with Jon, his great speech at the foot of CB and his great fighting.

Thorne vs. Tormmund - great contrast of styles between a knight and a wilding

Jon vs. Magnar of Thenn - I know Jon is only like 5'5", but jeez that guy TOWERED over him. Great fight that too.

Great long shots of Castle Black. What a huge set.

Said this the first time I saw the giants in Season 3 - the giants are so cool and well designed. They say nothing and you feel like they're real characters. Love the one going nuts when the other one gets shot.

The stand vs. the giant at the inner gate. PHENOMENAL. Maybe my favorite moment of the season.


On the previews - probably not the first person to postulate this theory, but it looks like the Hound is going to stand up against a whole bunch of people out hunting him/Arya.

I think they purposely had him mock Syrio Forel only to come around and pull a Syrio - telling Arya to run for it while he fights impossible odds to buy her time.

It seems clear there is cavalry in the next episode.

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don't recall janos hiding in the book either...

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He and Thorne weren't even at Castle Black for the attack from the south. They were at Eastwatch and showed up with Stannis. I wonder now, b/c of his hiding, if Slynt will be replaced by Thorne as Jon's main competition for Lord Commander.

Thought the episode was pretty good, although I also appreciated the ambiguous nature of Ygritte's death in the book more. Hate to lose Grenn and Pyp, but for a TV show they aren't that necessary. That wall scythe was freaking awesome.

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The stand vs. the giant at the inner gate. PHENOMENAL. Maybe my favorite moment of the season.

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got chills while they chanted the oath. really ****ing sad grenn died, he's one of my favorite periphery characters

I can see why they killed both pyp and grenn, even if I don't particularly like it. When he becomes LC in the book he forces himself away from his old friends to make the tough choices that only a LC could make. This way it's easier for him to assume the role since all he has left is Sam

"We should have stayed in the cave..."

wow tonight was incredible

I think my favorite part of the episode was Ser Alliser's conversation with Jon Snow atop the wall. The writers managed to make him seem human, not a 100% total *******, extremely dedicated to and driven by his oath as a nightswatchman instead of his petty feud with Jon, and they still managed to keep him a crusty old ****.

Great episode but it was absolutely not necessary to kill both Grenn and Pip...

Think about it, once Sam leaves there will be no developed characters(from the NW) for Jon to interact with unless they really ramp up the role of of the "tamed" wildlings...

Also I hope they keep the Stannis entrance the same as the book, the Red Woman lighting the warg's eagle on fire was awesome, displayed her trump of power over the wargs'

[This message has been edited by hunter2012 (edited 6/8/2014 11:56p).]

I think redbaron nailed the reasoning.

I'm still disappointed in the light use of the Dire Wolves. It's what really ties everyone back to the Stark family. Even in this one, they show ghost killing one wilding. They should have showed him going from one to the next in at least one sequence to show how devestating the dire wolf is in battle.

It was the biggest miss in the Rob Stark story as well. In all his battles, the wolf was unstoppable. It made you think there was no way this guy, with this army, and this wolf could ever lose. Made the red wedding even more shocking.

And why isn't Arya having wolf dreams? More wolves please!

I really wanted someone to ask at some point during the fighting, 'Where's Maester Aemon?!' And cut to....




I thought it was a fantastic episode. Allister Thorne's speech and presence was great, Gilly was annoying as usual but Sam made up for it, the special effects and giants were awesome, and Jon had a pretty sweet fatality kill on the Magnar of Thenn. I thought the scope of the battle was done a bit better than Blackwater and edges that episode out only slightly for me, even with Tyrion's better rallying speech. It felt like there were thousands of wildlings coming and death was slowly circling in for everyone like an Alamo/Thermopalae situation. Obviously the budget has increased a lot since season 2 and they saved a lot of money up for this episode to make it look so stellar.

That tracking shot of all the major character's fighting positions when Jon first got back down the wall to Castle Black was superb, and I thought the ice anchor, giant arrows, and Grenn's stand at the inner gate were all major highlights.

Ygritte and the Thenn's death were both done pretty well in my opinion. Glad they didn't kill off Tormund, but was suprised they killed both Grenn and Pyp. I guess they are introducing a lot of new actors next season in Dorne and possibly Iron Islands so they have to trim the casting fat, with a lot more still to come. With Stannis, Melisandre, Mance, and Tormund, Janos (temporarily ha), and Allister still in the picture, Jon will have plenty of ppl to interact with next season. Pyp and Grenn got good send offs. And now their watch has ended...

Next week's episode is going to be wild. I'm looking forward to it.

Just read the non-spoilers thread and everyone is saying how this was a good but not great episode. I thought it was absolutely phenomenal. The action was just plain awesome, much better than the Blackwater, and the episode contained a lot of emotionally powerful moments. I thought Ygritte's death was one of the saddest moments of the entire series. I was also happy to see Sam get some action and drop an f bomb. Looking forward to the finale. The only disappointment was that there was no new Silicon Valley episode to watch after it.

Something I just realized, Jon went toe to toe with the Magnar better than he did that homo at Craster's.

Also, I'm kind of surprised how many of those on the non spoiler thread have little interest in the night's watch plot.

In the Blackwater episode, I could hardly tell what the f was going on. They did not do a great job showing the landscape/geography of that battle for KL. Plus, all of the close-ups they showed of Stannis made me think he was fighting for some lone tower out in the middle of nowhere instead of at the gates to KL.

This episode was so far above the Blackwater, and it wasn't even close. They did a great job with all the camera work, and in particular, with showing exactly where all of the mini-skirmishes were taking place in the context of the overall battle. My only gripe is that it felt like there were only a couple thousand wildlings in the forest beyond the wall. Would have been cool to have a quick CGI shot showing the masses moving through the forest towards the wall.

I feel like they arent playing up his skill with teh sword enough.

I didn't like that Jon didn't really get to command. But then again they basically ignored the wall and focused on castle black. It's hard to say he led the defense when all he did was kill 3 dozen climbers and waste a ton of arrows.

I guess janos will threaten sam about his cowardice during the vote.

Yes yes yes. This was probably the greatest episode of Thrones to date, and nothing really shocking happened in it, other than maybe Ygritte's death, but of course we all knew that was coming. I guess the non-readers are only looking for the "holy **** didn't see that coming moments" at this point, otherwise how could you even possibly call this episode anything other than great?

Giants and finally mammoths!!

Poor Pyp and Grenn. Like you guys said, the oath at the gate was chilling. When the episode cut to the next day I was all "show us what happened to Grenn!!!"

At least they left us Dolorous Ed.

Dat long tracking shot!

Ghost!

Really amazing stuff.

[This message has been edited by R0GUE (edited 6/9/2014 1:17a).]

I feel like most non-readers aren't as interested in The Wall as they are in the Tyrion stuff because the Wall has been such a slow build. Maybe it just had the poor luck of coming a week after The Duel.

This whole season has shown us just enough of Jon and Ygritte that we don't forget about them, but with all the "Mance is coming" threats, it could have been another season before anything happened. It just felt that... forgotten.

Glad that finally, after nearly 4 years of hype, The Wall gets some spotlight. And we're not done yet! Stannis's arrival should be sweet.

http://m.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-game-of-thrones-the-watchers-on-the-wall-have-fun-storming-the-castle

I think this sums up what I was trying to say well, for a non-reader perspective.

Sweet episode - just an arc that has suffered a bit from the split-book 2 seasons. (Like Stannis. They should all be a bit more interesting after next week!)

yeah the non-readers surprise me a bit too - i guess they just don't get the importance of holding the wall and the battle in the north.

maybe the arrival of stannis will help next week.

i think the books did a much better job of selling that as the real threat while all the other drama was going on...because if the wall fell nothing else south of there mattered...

The wall just isn't interesting as far as the show goes...and there is no chance for boobs, so why would they care?

The comments on that HitFix review (which I read every week) are about split 50/50 with the technically great but boring vs. amazing and important crowd of non-readers. It's good to see that some of them get it.

So non-book readers are essentially people from the seven kingdoms (the wall is for criminals and trash) and readers are nights watchmen (the wall is still really important you guys!)

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The wall just isn't interesting as far as the show goes...and there is no chance for boobs, so why would they care?

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It's weird to me that so many people get pissed at "bad guys" triumphing everywhere (red wedding, Oberyn, Blackwater) and then don't seem to care about the wall which is nothing but likeable good guys

Not to mention that we just got one of the coolest battles in tv history