**tl;dr warning**
To keep the convo going (and because I'm bored), here's a complete compilation of suggested improvements/musings/criticisms.
What I wished they had changed:
1) Just simple better battle tactics. Not a huge deal at the end of the day but there was just a LOT of dumb decisions which many have gone over. It's not like we needed some incredibly complex battle tactics, just some common sense. There were multiple experienced field strategists and combat veterans there: Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Grey Worm, Jorah, Davos, Jaime, Beric, Sandor, Royce, Theon, Tormund, Edd, and presumably a bunch of Northern lords and Dothraki captains. I'm all for suspense, but it's lazy writing to artificially create it by having the good guys make arbitrarily dumb decisions, when they should very clearly know better. (Like, don't put trebuchets in FRONT of your castle walls and trench. Simple stuff like that)
2) At least some reaction from Dany seeing wight Viserion. As she loves to remind everyone, her dragons ARE HER CHILDREN. You'd think it'd be pretty impactful to see your child turned into a zombie that's trying to annihilate people you love.
3) Some reaction from Sansa from seeing Stark ancestors rise from the dead.
4) Jon and some other heroes with valyrian swords battle desperately with White Walkers/the Night King
5) Wight fights that are personal (Ie - wight Edd vs Jon/Sam, wight Hodor vs Jon/Arya, wight Jorah vs Dany, etc.)
6) More deaths - Why is Missandei AND Greyworm still alive? The crypts were obviously a disastrous oversight so imagine the impact it would have to see Greyworm fight to near death and escape victorious only to rush back to the crypts to find that Missandei dead...that he failed to protect her. (Something like this could have been done with Gilly/Sam or Tyrion/Jamie and it would have been pretty heart wrenching.)
7) If you're absolutely DETERMINED to have Arya kill the NK, at least do it better;
8) Lynna doesn't get her hero moment. That was an embarrassment, and complete betrayal of what ASOIAF stands for. I don't care she's a fan and writer's favorite, the battlefield isn't place for a 12 year old and this is EXACTLY the type of dumb decision GRRM would punish for shock value. Give the kill to literally anyone else, i don't care.
9) Bran does something. Literally anything. (could do a 2 for 1 and have him warg Ghost. Easy win/win)
10) Has anyone realized that the Hound and Sansa STILL haven't had a reunion? Yea, that hasn't happened. And I'll do you one better...Jon and Jamie have yet to speak to each other (other than Jon saying "we'll need every man we can get" at his trial). This show is suffering MASSIVELY from this shortened time frame HBO has decided to impose on itself.
Some off-shoot rebuttals/musings:
To keep the convo going (and because I'm bored), here's a complete compilation of suggested improvements/musings/criticisms.
What I wished they had changed:
1) Just simple better battle tactics. Not a huge deal at the end of the day but there was just a LOT of dumb decisions which many have gone over. It's not like we needed some incredibly complex battle tactics, just some common sense. There were multiple experienced field strategists and combat veterans there: Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Grey Worm, Jorah, Davos, Jaime, Beric, Sandor, Royce, Theon, Tormund, Edd, and presumably a bunch of Northern lords and Dothraki captains. I'm all for suspense, but it's lazy writing to artificially create it by having the good guys make arbitrarily dumb decisions, when they should very clearly know better. (Like, don't put trebuchets in FRONT of your castle walls and trench. Simple stuff like that)
2) At least some reaction from Dany seeing wight Viserion. As she loves to remind everyone, her dragons ARE HER CHILDREN. You'd think it'd be pretty impactful to see your child turned into a zombie that's trying to annihilate people you love.
3) Some reaction from Sansa from seeing Stark ancestors rise from the dead.
4) Jon and some other heroes with valyrian swords battle desperately with White Walkers/the Night King
5) Wight fights that are personal (Ie - wight Edd vs Jon/Sam, wight Hodor vs Jon/Arya, wight Jorah vs Dany, etc.)
6) More deaths - Why is Missandei AND Greyworm still alive? The crypts were obviously a disastrous oversight so imagine the impact it would have to see Greyworm fight to near death and escape victorious only to rush back to the crypts to find that Missandei dead...that he failed to protect her. (Something like this could have been done with Gilly/Sam or Tyrion/Jamie and it would have been pretty heart wrenching.)
7) If you're absolutely DETERMINED to have Arya kill the NK, at least do it better;
- Jon fights the white walker generals (instead of Viserion who is off somewhere fighting Dany/Drogon/Rhaegal) with Jamie and Jorah at his side.The night king strides on towards the garden as we finally get to see heroes armed with Valerian steel vs the white walkers. Jorah is killed, Jamie and Jon are on the ropes but slowly fighting there way to the Godswood.
- Keep the Bran NK staredown but instead of the calm circle of wights we have in this scene, there are still iron born and theon fighting, but they are losing badly. We seen Theon getting overun by wights while NK slowlys and smugly aproaches Bran, the sounds of the battle become distant, we have the "we're losing montage" we got in the series..Theon manages to get free from the wights. Theon rushes to stand guard over Bran and the NK goes to Bran. Theon desperately fights NK knowing he has zero chance. NK cuts off Theon's arm or inflicts some major wounds, but Theon knows he has faced worse from Ramsey. Mutilated, he keeps fighting beyond the limits of what most men could bear. NK has enough and kills Theon finally. Theon's last vision is of Bran, who tells him "you're a good man" and Theon smiles with the image of home and family before passing. Then you can have Arya do what she does and at least it enters the realm of possibility for her to get close with all the chaos going around.
- Jon arrives just in time to see Theon sacrifice himself for Arya/humanity, but doesn't get involved in the fight because Arya ends it first.
- It's the same basic story, the same ending, and pretty much the exact same scenes apart from Jon making it to the Godswood, Theon tangibly doing something and doing it in the eyes of Jon (the man he wants to impress most), and we get to see SOME white walker action.
8) Lynna doesn't get her hero moment. That was an embarrassment, and complete betrayal of what ASOIAF stands for. I don't care she's a fan and writer's favorite, the battlefield isn't place for a 12 year old and this is EXACTLY the type of dumb decision GRRM would punish for shock value. Give the kill to literally anyone else, i don't care.
9) Bran does something. Literally anything. (could do a 2 for 1 and have him warg Ghost. Easy win/win)
10) Has anyone realized that the Hound and Sansa STILL haven't had a reunion? Yea, that hasn't happened. And I'll do you one better...Jon and Jamie have yet to speak to each other (other than Jon saying "we'll need every man we can get" at his trial). This show is suffering MASSIVELY from this shortened time frame HBO has decided to impose on itself.
Some off-shoot rebuttals/musings:
- To people applauding the 'foreshadowing' of Arya's heroic moment:
- They keep bringing up the "blue eyes, green eyes" thing as foreshadowing that Arya kills the Night King. HOWEVER, this happened in Season 3 in 2013. And D&D said they knew Arya was going to kill the NK only 3 years ago. This is an obvious retcon of the line that was supposed to foreshadow her journey as a Faceless Assassin. It was also altered from it's original delivery - highlighted by the fact that 'blue eyes' was said before 'green eyes'. The order was 'brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes', no emphasis is placed on blue eyes. D&D took an completely unrelated quote and forced it into a scenario just to SUBVERT my expectations. It'd be like if Sansa killed Cersei and delivered the line "when you play the game of thrones, you either win or die." DUM DUM DUMMMMMM.
- "It gives Arya's training a purpose to have an end goal." - Wouldn't a more fitting end goal for her training be to kill Cersei? She's been on her list since S2. She specifically trained to become an assassin to kill people on her list. Her entire arc was about killing people on her list. That's why she abandoned the House of Black and White because she saw MERYN F'n TRANT in Braavos and disobeyed her training to become "No One". She couldn't let go of her lust for revenge. Now I'm supposed to believe all of that was so she could kill the Night King? I guess there's a chance she can still kill Cersei, but then Arya gets the kill on the two major villains of the series ON TOP of avenging the Red Wedding with Walder Frey. This is already ridiculous. The more I read about and discuss this episode as it relates to Arya's big moment, the worse it gets.
- And I swear to the gods, old and new, if anyone says the words "subvert expectations" I will ninja assassinate you swifter than this Deus Ex Machina.
- I honestly don't see what the point in Cersei is now. If Arya can ninja shank an 8,000 year old ice demon, someone who can control hundreds of thousands of dead people and a dead dragon, and the greatest threat the world has ever known, then why tf is Cersei even considered a threat? Why should I care at all about Cersei? I mean granted I haven't cared about her since the show decided to not have her face any political consequences for blowing up the sept - arguably the most despicable act in KL history - but I really don't give a **** about her now. Or why should i care about her and her stupid throne when we just had humanity saved this episode? Oh no, she might rule for a few decades, imagine the horror...compared to the extinction of human life. She doesn't even have an heir (or maybe she does, who knows with this show).
