Hawk was right about the NK but that's just a really disappointing and lazy way to go. What the fuck was all this build up of the army of the dead and of the NK if all it takes to end them is a teenage girl flying in from the free throw line to lightly pierce the NK in the gut. That's it? Fuck this shit.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

It was very entertaining.

For those bitching about the battle being dark and confusing, how the hell else were they supposed to to film it? It was a battle at night with the snow/dust kicking up and an estimated 100,000 dead army + the thousands of the “good” guys. What did you expect - lighted closeups?

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Not a mult.

Too dark, hope the final 3 episodes are better than these first three. You'd think with no dragons and no unsullied and no dothraki .. cersai mops the floor with this lot.

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Agreed. If people complain about that episode there is something wrong with them.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

I mean jackref is right in that the whole thing makes no real sense. It was a great moment when Arya killed the Night King, but she was given that moment just to subvert expectations. Plus that's all the show has been for a few seasons. A series of moments. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.

"And the Night King was killed by.....oh I don't know....let's say Moe."

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Just a few questions:

What happened to Ghost?
Are we going to get more about who the Night King was? Why he wanted Bran? Connection to Bran?
WTF was Bran doing after the crows saw what the Night King?
Are 2/3rds of the dragons dead now?
Why was melisandre at Winterfell and why did she die?
Which Starks came out of the crypts?
Did Jon's mother come out of her grave?

Ghost is alive. He's in the preview for next episode. Same with the dragons. Both are still alive.

Probably no more about the Night King.

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No trolling. I had no idea what was going on all episode.

Battle of Blackwater was madness but you still were able to follow along. This episode was giant mess

If we learn nothing more about the Night King, what a waste of a story line.

It was honestly easier to see when I watched it on my phone.

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This episode was completely botched.

Writing failed to illuminate the central mythology of the show. Technical production failed to illuminate the actual battle scenes.

We've all been left in the DARK!

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What did you guys want? Jon Snow to fight him 1 on 1 and kill him? You would be talking about how boring that would be. Maybe Bran stands up in his wheelchair and destroys him with a broken wheel?

The whole point was it was a sneak attack with Bran as bait. When Dany ruined the whole plan when the Dothraki died it had to be something kind of flukey.

It was dark but they were literally fighting something called the Night King.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

i can't really disagree with this criticism. what it reminded me of was the sequence of Snow & Co. grabbing a wight to bring back to king's landing. a lot of various shots of redshirts getting killed, and every main character you know won't die somehow surviving.

this was built up too much, and that's why it was a letdown. i didn't have a problem with how the night king was brought down but they just gave this guy way too much breadth of mystique. i never really cared about his backstory but because they spent so much time on this subplot, they wrote themselves into a corner with handling it. so there really was no better way of doing it, but there was no way of doing it well.

there was a ton of padding the runtime, too. while some of the battle scenes are done well, there were questionable ways the battle panned out. why not begin with the 2 dragons flushing out the first batch of walkers in the first place? instead of sending bloodriders to their deaths.

the visual of the lighted swords dying out was pretty cool, i'll give them that. but this wasn't a really riveting episode as it was promised. with 3 episodes to go, we have the bigger story to get to. this episode really shouldn't go down as one of the better examples of the show. i wouldn't say it was a total waste but it was a letdown for me.

The point is after years of building up the NK as something deeper than a mindless zombie he ended up being killed off like a typical... mindless zombie. No stuff on motivations or a larger plan. This is supposed to be the apex predator and in the larger scheme of things the writers basically made him irrelevant. I don't have a problem with the lack of visual coherence but I do have a problem with the lack of narrative coherence.

Less importantly, he also he went out like a little bitch. Stabbed in the gut one time from someone suspended in mid-air? The fight between snow and the one White Walker last season was much better.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

The Night King was never built up as something deeper. He never said anything and was emotionless throughout the whole series. He happened to have a nearly unstoppable army. Did you want him to start talking? They laid out his motivation in the previous episodes if you really wanted that.

He died as he should. It had to be a fluke. Jon Snow made that clear. The only difference was Arya had to do it because Dany ruined the plan at the start.

The plan was to hold off the armies, bait the NK to Bran, and then hope they get a shot to kill him and all the armies die. I think the episode was improved because Jon Snow wasn't the hero once again.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

i think the bigger picture of his resurrection was giving weight to the backstory of his birth and the importance of his legacy. but it would have been more satisfying for him to kill the night king, especially since he has so much more history than arya did.

i still get flare-ups of feeling like RR really dropped the ball not finishing this story himself because benioff & weiss show their weaknesses as writers an awful lot in these post-ASOIAF storylines.

Jon Snow killing the Night King would have been the biggest "fan service" in the whole show.

GRRM told them that Arya kills the Night King. He is still guiding the story.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Arya getting the killing blow made no sense, and was done because people expected it to be Jon. That's it.

A faceoff between the main living characters and the Night King and his White Walkers could've been interesting and would make more narrative sense.

Their whole plan seemed stupid and doomed to fail. Have the crazy horselords charge into the dark? Have Theon guard Bran with no dragonglass? Have people hide from the dead in a room full of dead people?

Makes no sense. But it doesn't matter. The show is spectacle. And it was great spectacle last night.

Just don't try to make sense of it.

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I don't think so. D&D said they made the call because it would subvert the expectations people had that Jon would be the one to do it.

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fan service is inventing drama for the sake of appeasing an audience. snow and the white walkers had a ton of history. it wouldn't have been fan service for him to kill the night king, it would have been a solid resolution.

but it was so built up, there was no way it would've been satisfying for everyone. it just would've meant more to the story.

Isn't GRRM giving them the major points though?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Where did you read/hear that GRRM told them Arya kills the Night King? Arya is an assassin to kill Lannisters and everyone who wronged her family, not the undead. That is Jon Snow's purpose. Why have a entire series dedicated to the Song of Ice and Fire (Stark and Targaryen) and not have that character be the one to save the world from Winter and the Everlasting Night? It doesn't make sense.

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Midget and Vegan are both correct. I wanted the Night King to be more than just some scary monster that was vanquished by SuperArya. And maybe we'll find out more and he will be. But if that's it with the White Walkers I'm not sure why they were part of the show at all. It wasn't even interesting. I'd rather just have watched a battle between humans.

As far as the technical aspects, it was so dark and there was so much going on you couldn't see what was happening about half the time. Not to mention, that the battle strategy didn't make sense. Why send the Dothraki army to its death when they could have just strafed the wights with a dragon while everyone stayed in the castle or at least on the opposite side of the trench?

I saw a tweet that summed up my feelings perfectly- "That was cool and disappointing at the same time."

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

You aren't looking deep enough. Jon Snow didn't care how it happened. He spent seasons telling everyone this is a nearly unstoppable enemy. His singular focus was stopping them. It wasn't some personal battle for revenge like every other story in this series. It was a pragmatic take that the minor wars of people means nothing with them coming to kill them all. He created an army that succeeded in that goal. That was his victory. A 1 on 1 battle between him and the Night King would have been a letdown.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

So where did Arya, like, come from?

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Jon Snow did save the world from Winter.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Really? I guess I've been watching the wrong show then. I have ZERO percent interest in watching heroes slaughter CGI zombies.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

This is dead wrong. There was practically a whole season devoted to his backstory which also functioned as Bran's self-discovery journey.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Too bad one of us wasn't there. Jon Snow is one of the worst generals in history.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don