At first I thought Arya may have been waiting for the Night King at the Godswood. On my rewatch yesterday I think I found a clear hint that Arya did in fact sneak past the White Walkers. As the Night King is reaching for his sword it shows a close up of a White Walker and you can see something slightly blow his hair by. I think Arya just legit runs through them as they're all facing Bran.

bobinator said:

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I mean, maybe, but that's not really the argument here. My point is that it's very clearly stated in the show, by an extremely trustworthy source, that the dead can't go past the wall as long as the wall stands.

That's a core reason why I thought their plan to retrieve one in season 7 shouldn't have been possible. Now, they don't know that of course, but it still shouldn't have been possible by the rules laid out in the show.

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Maybe they're like vampires. They can't come in unless invited. Or burn down the walls with an entranced zombie dragon. lol

So many new replies.

OldShadeOfBlue said:

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At first I thought Arya may have been waiting for the Night King at the Godswood. On my rewatch yesterday I think I found a clear hint that Arya did in fact sneak past the White Walkers. As the Night King is reaching for his sword it shows a close up of a White Walker and you can see something slightly blow his hair by. I think Arya just legit runs through them as they're all facing Bran.

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

Where are all of the little Craster WW's?

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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In all my time on the Entertainment Board, I don't think I've ever seen a thread grow so fast for such an extended period of time. We must be adding 10+ pages daily.

I've been trying to catch up all week and have failed.

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That's a sign of a good show, to me.

aTmAg said:

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OldShadeOfBlue said:

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At first I thought Arya may have been waiting for the Night King at the Godswood. On my rewatch yesterday I think I found a clear hint that Arya did in fact sneak past the White Walkers. As the Night King is reaching for his sword it shows a close up of a White Walker and you can see something slightly blow his hair by. I think Arya just legit runs through them as they're all facing Bran.

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

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Except in the very first scene of the entire show they are seen running quickly through the woods and moving very fast

Charlie Conway said:

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aTmAg said:

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OldShadeOfBlue said:

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At first I thought Arya may have been waiting for the Night King at the Godswood. On my rewatch yesterday I think I found a clear hint that Arya did in fact sneak past the White Walkers. As the Night King is reaching for his sword it shows a close up of a White Walker and you can see something slightly blow his hair by. I think Arya just legit runs through them as they're all facing Bran.

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

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Except in the very first scene of the entire show they are seen running quickly through the woods and moving very fast

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Arya on her way to kill the Night King

aTmAg said:

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

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Do you watch this show?

At Hardhome they were running all over the place and there was basically a tidal wave of them that hit the unsullied last episode. They're pretty quick.

Now, SPECULATION ALERT, I do think there is a kind of 'stagger around' mode if they don't actively see/hear/sense anything that they're going after. Like the ones where Arya was in the last episode. But several times we've seen them running. It also has to do with what kind of shape the body is in, some of them limp pretty bad.

But we've seen them running, jumping, etc several times.

Charlie Conway said:

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aTmAg said:

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OldShadeOfBlue said:

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At first I thought Arya may have been waiting for the Night King at the Godswood. On my rewatch yesterday I think I found a clear hint that Arya did in fact sneak past the White Walkers. As the Night King is reaching for his sword it shows a close up of a White Walker and you can see something slightly blow his hair by. I think Arya just legit runs through them as they're all facing Bran.

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

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Except in the very first scene of the entire show they are seen running quickly through the woods and moving very fast

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They don't show the white walkers until much later in the show.

Well yeah, that's the big difference in playing by your rules and not. We know that the dragons have extremely strong magical properties, so the idea of a dragon being able to take down the wall is perfectly plausible, and once the wall is down, all bets are off. That part is fine.

Like I said, I'm willing to accept pretty insane rules of worldbuilding, that's the best part of really good fantasy and sci-fi, you just have to play by them once you've established them.

Charlie Conway said:

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aTmAg said:

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OldShadeOfBlue said:

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At first I thought Arya may have been waiting for the Night King at the Godswood. On my rewatch yesterday I think I found a clear hint that Arya did in fact sneak past the White Walkers. As the Night King is reaching for his sword it shows a close up of a White Walker and you can see something slightly blow his hair by. I think Arya just legit runs through them as they're all facing Bran.

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

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Except in the very first scene of the entire show they are seen running quickly through the woods and moving very fast

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You talking about this:



I don't think those are WW, I think they are just wights. Those are damn fast (faster than living people it seems).

bobinator said:

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aTmAg said:

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In Hardhome, the WW don't seem particularly fast (running wise). I can't think of a time that I have ever seen a WW (including the NK) run. So it may not be ridiculous that Arya can run through them from behind before they can react.

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Do you watch this show?

At Hardhome they were running all over the place and there was basically a tidal wave of them that hit the unsullied last episode. They're pretty quick.

Now, SPECULATION ALERT, I do think there is a kind of 'stagger around' mode if they don't actively see/hear/sense anything that they're going after. Like the ones where Arya was in the last episode. But several times we've seen them running. It also has to do with what kind of shape the body is in, some of them limp pretty bad.

But we've seen them running, jumping, etc several times.

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So maybe I have the wrong terminology. I'm not talking about the zombies (that I thought were called "wights"), I'm talking about the tall white long haired dudes that usually sit on horses (plus the NK). I thought they were the WWs. I don't remember seeing those guys run fast.

OldShadeOfBlue said:

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You're clearly thinking of wights, not White Walkers. The White Walkers do not run or they'd probably be called White Runners lol

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Yeah, my bad, got crossed up there. They're also White Riders, as we've seen them on horseback several times, haha.

The Arya stuff doesn't bother me at all. We know she has at least some magic with some of her skills, she's incredibly fast, AND all of the attention is on the Night King. If I were in a big circle and my all powerful leader was about to strike down our mortal enemy, I probably wouldn't notice someone running by me in time to react.

If Craster was able to keep the WWs and the NK away by leaving the baby sacrifices could others have done the same? If they had put babies outside of the Last Hearth would the NK have taken the babies and left the others alone? I never quite understood the baby sacrifices thing.

bobinator said:

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I don't think it's an inconsistency, at least not until later on when they're able to fly one over the wall.

I think this is the Night King testing the defenses. He knows they can't cross the wall, but he's seeing if he can reanimate a body on the other side of the wall (and maybe kill a bunch of the Night's Watch in the process).

I don't think it's a big jump to think that he had a WW relatively close by to raise them at night in the castle once they were through the wall.

So I think all of that was actually a decently well thought out plan.

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My opinion is that the magic built into the wall prevents the White Walkers from crossing the wall, but not the wights. Presumably, wights could have climbed it and attack the north during previous winters, explaining why the wall was 700 feet high and the Night's Watch was created. That means the wight that they brought through the wall in season 1 was just "napping" (there's a precedence that the wights can go quiet for extended periods of time) and the wight they flew over the wall was fine too. Also, this would be consistent with Benjen because there was no effort to turn him into a wight, they tried to turn him into a White Walker, thus, preventing him from going over/through the wall. Clearly once the foundation of the wall was destroyed, so was the spell.

I know that would be contradictory to the CotF's magic in the 3ER cave, but there's no reason why the CotF couldn't have a different kind of spell than the spell that was built into the foundation of the wall (presumably by Bran the Builder who isn't a CotF).

We can all agree that Cold Hands and Benjen were combined into the same character for simplicity/casting purposes by HBO

bonfarr said:

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If Craster was able to keep the WWs and the NK away by leaving the baby sacrifices could others have done the same? If they had put babies outside of the Last Hearth would the NK have taken the babies and left the others alone? I never quite understood the baby sacrifices thing.

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So my thoughts are that WW's are converted from living dudes (unlike wights which are raised from the dead). Since the average joe doesn't want to be a WW, they will run away and not let them selves be "WWized". So the babies (or slow ass people in general) are really the only ones that can be made into WWs. And that Craster was giving up his sons because he was a jackass traitor who was willing to screw over mankind as long as he was able to live in that crappy house banging his daughters. That dude deserved to die (probably should have been more painful).

Only issue there is like I said they clearly aren't 'napping,' we can see their eyes in that video I posted a few pages back.

And you could be right, we just don't have any evidence of that in the show. The only thing we do have is what Benjen said, and he directly says 'the dead cannot cross' not just that certain dead things cannot cross.

bobinator said:

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I think the idea here is that the Night King needs more White Walkers to help raise his army, so in exchange for the live babies he wasn't harming Craster. But how exactly they established that relationship would be interesting, haha.

Night King: *stands there menacingly*
Craster: "Well... I'm dead..."
Night King: *still standing there*
Craster: "I'm uh... not dead... want a snack?"
Night King: *still standing there*
Craster: "What about some ale?"
(twenty minutes later)
Craster: "What about a LIVE BABY?"
Night King: *nods*

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Insert this:

Craster: "What about a LIVE GIRL BABY?"
Night King: *still standing there*
Craster: "What about a LIVE BOY BABY?"
Night King: *nods*

bobinator said:

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I think the idea here is that the Night King needs more White Walkers to help raise his army, so in exchange for the live babies he wasn't harming Craster. But how exactly they established that relationship would be interesting, haha.

Night King: *stands there menacingly*
Craster: "Well... I'm dead..."
Night King: *still standing there*
Craster: "I'm uh... not dead... want a snack?"
Night King: *still standing there*
Craster: "What about some ale?"
(twenty minutes later)
Craster: "What about a LIVE BABY?"
Night King: *nods*

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More likely he just started throwing out the baby boys so he wouldn't be challenged and then one day he noticed they started disappearing and he decided not to ask too many questions.

DannyDuberstein said:

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Where are all of the little Craster WW's?

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icing Tormund's ale down they are

smokeythebear said:

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More likely he just started throwing out the baby boys so he wouldn't be challenged and then one day he noticed they started disappearing and he decided not to ask too many questions.

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Or that, that makes a lot more sense, but my way would be a lot more entertaining.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Quote:

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I started watching this season because my coworkers won't shut up about it and guys, this episode was very bad. I couldn't see a damn thing and even when I could I had no idea what was going on. The redheads are both hot but who is one of them and why did she commit suicide? Why don't the dragons do more cool stuff.

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This must be what it feels like to have bandwagon t-shirt fans.

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Seriously - FFS.

that's worthy of just ending this thread honestly - if I only could.

Why the **** are you (not you, but him) here... if you don't know the difference between Sansa and Melisandre you don't know anything and have no need to comment on anything. This is someone who says they watch just so they can bag on a show - in reality they binged and skim through episodes on their phone while doing something else and see the highlights alone. and meh everything.

Seriously.... GTFO.

bonfarr said:

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If Craster was able to keep the WWs and the NK away by leaving the baby sacrifices could others have done the same? If they had put babies outside of the Last Hearth would the NK have taken the babies and left the others alone? I never quite understood the baby sacrifices thing.

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Lord Mormont knew of the sacrifices and he told Jon that Craster served darker forces or gods than they (nights watch) do.

One could assume that "arrangement" was prior to the WWs marching south. Craster gave his sons to the WWs and they would leave him alone with his daughters. WWs (blue dudes) are more important than wights (undead) to the NK, Craster and his daughters were more important creating WWs than being the mindless undead.

Although the show made it seem like there were only a dozen WWs, craster has probably sent 20-30 boys to the NK. Plus we dont know the strength of the NK after the long night.

It is interesting that the dead was once beaten without "killing the queen bee"

So the WW babies grow up to be adult WWs? I assumed once they turned they would be in a perpetual baby state and was curious s to how they had any value to the NK. What do you feed a WW infant?

bobinator said:

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Well yeah, that's the big difference in playing by your rules and not. We know that the dragons have extremely strong magical properties, so the idea of a dragon being able to take down the wall is perfectly plausible, and once the wall is down, all bets are off. That part is fine.

Like I said, I'm willing to accept pretty insane rules of worldbuilding, that's the best part of really good fantasy and sci-fi, you just have to play by them once you've established them.

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I was just making a joke but to dive into your question, the idea that the dead can't go south of the wall is a common misconception probably taken from the books. The show never actually states the rule that the dead can't go south of the wall and it's never even mentioned that the wall is magic. That is probably a book thing too. The fact that the Night King just burns a portion of the Wall to the ground and a dead body is reanimated at Castle Black (south of the wall) in Season 1 should explain this.

I re-watched the last five minutes 4 or 5 times last night and it seems to me that Arya attacked from above and behind the NK. And Bran, right at the end, seems to be looking above the NK's head. If actually ran by or through the WW there would be no reason for her to leap at him. She had to have been in the tree, or on a rood or ledge.

Maybe she'll actually explain it next episode.

Maybe a new topic, but it'll be better than just arguing the same stuff all day (which I've been a part of so I'm not hating on it... just think maybe it's run its course)

Are there any narrative 'loose ends' from the show that we think are going to actually come into play in these last few episodes? From a "pieces on the board" standpoint as the writers like to say, what all do we still have out there that maybe we aren't thinking about?

I know there's any number of magical devices/people/etc out there in the books that we haven't seen in the show, but from just the show, anything out there that could come off the top rope in the last three episodes?

One thing I keep thinking about is that conversation between Tyrion and Bran the night before the battle that we didn't get to see. I'm thinking that conversation is going to matter at some point, but I don't have a good idea on what could have been said.

he/she is trolling