OFFICIAL Game of Holmes Season 8 Thread - A Dream of Flat Tops 4/14/19

[Foxmulder]

Nah, I can't agree with this. Weiss and Benioff ran this shyt into the ground....would be kinda fukked up to hold that against any future show runner of the spin offs, though.

Fred.

The issue after seeing the night king go out like a bytch why should we be excited to see his origins. I think that’s the first prequel they are doing.

 

[TheAlbionist]

The Jon and Jaime dualities.

Both desperate to be men of honour.

Both gave up their lands and titles to serve the realm/the king.

Both killed Monarchs they had sworn oaths to.

Both fell in love with close relatives and had to choose.

Jaime gave in to the incest and died with it when he could've stayed in the North and lived happily ever after.

Jon knifed his moment of temptation Master Aemon warned had him about.. and returns to his original plan an honourable man who shall take no lands nor titles... for the Watch.

 

[Cuban Pete]

Apparently the writers were telling the cast to think of Dany burning Kingslanding as an analogue to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.



Would have been more effective if she burned the red keep after the surrender and as a result unintentionally let off wild fire that blew up parts of the city.

By that logic then Dany isnt really a Mad Queen. She made a decision to bypass the human shields and decisively strike the city to the point they had to surrender. US did it in Japan and they still do it in Syria even with all the smart missiles the govt has. What point where they tryna make? That war is bad? Thats not the point they made. Dany literally saved humanity but she burned a city to the ground. America kind of did the same thing and while yes the American government is horrible and very guilty of some extremely heinous shyt, we couldve been stuck with Nazis/White Walkers. Yo they keep pissing me off the more they try to explain this fukkery lol

 

[Foxmulder]

By that logic then Dany isnt really a Mad Queen. She made a decision to bypass the human shields and decisively strike the city to the point they had to surrender. US did it in Japan and they still do it in Syria even with all the smart missiles the govt has. What point where they tryna make? That war is bad? Thats not the point they made. Dany literally saved humanity but she burned a city to the ground. America kind of did the same thing and while yes the American government is horrible and very guilty of some extremely heinous shyt, we couldve been stuck with Nazis/White Walkers. Yo they keep pissing me off the more they try to explain this fukkery lol

The more they talk the more you realize they’re fukking stupid.

 

[Brian O'Conner]

I got a general idea of that but walk me through it

Ill try to post something in the next few days not in the right state of mind now... Ive been through all the stages of grief, denial, anger, despair.. just want to try and forget it all happened

 

[hex]

The issue after seeing the night king go out like a bytch why should we be excited to see his origins. I think that’s the first prequel they are doing.

The Star Wars prequels basically ruined Vader....but fans were still amped when he briefly appeared in "Rogue One".

I think as long as the shows are good people aren't gonna care about the context beyond that.

Fred.

 

[Scuti]

i just read through the 40+ pages from last night's airing and goddamn i couldnt agree more with most posts in here
i was defending the past 5 episodes in hopes that there would be some reveal that tied everything together and tied the loose ends but there was just...nothing

 

[Soundbwoy]

That was TWD bad, I don't care about Arya murking TNK. If they didn't want to continue they should handed the series to some bum on AWOIAF they would've done it justice, can't even fall back on the books because of lazy ass GRR Martin

 

[Daniel.]

Sansa betrayed Jon which helped drive Dany to become unhinged and spiral to darkness, Bran knew what would happen and said nothing the whole time and they got rewarded with being crowned King and Queen while Dany dies and Jon is exiled. Straight bullshyt.

After reading the response from Kit Harrington about the fan response to the finale, there's a part of me that hopes that was very much intended by the writers as commentary on how history remembers its heroes, on the back of the honest, the loyal and the well intended.

Irrespective of execution, the show maintained the shades of grey in all of its characters - with the exception of probably Davos, no one walked away clean from all of this and those that live on without any semblance of power (Arya, Jon) live on in relative anonymity. A sell sword, a coward, smuggler and a murderer whoremonger are the ones leading the way to a better future. Not the ideal picture of people to lead.

I struggle to believe that wasn't intentional and that they actually saw these wins by these characters we loved and supported as heroic victories. Bran and Sansa are fukking a$$holes in retrospect, while Jon and Arya are nameless and free. It's an interesting thought whether they meant it or not.

 

[duck]

The new prince of dorne. Who the fukknis this guy.

 

[Roid Jones]

I tried rationalizing this shyt but

Jon Snow went from b*stard to the beloved king of the north, dude was a badass and had the north rocking and ready to ride for him

Then the last season dude suddenly can’t make any choices for himself and he’s lost all conviction

Dude was a shell of himself this whole season

fukk this show

Every episode Jon is like 'I don't want it '

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

i really feel bad that i finally convinced my brother to watch (before this season started), i want to tell him to stop at season 6...and give him select episodes of season 7, and select scenes of season 8

 

[Tasha And]

Article hits the fukking nail on the head for this rushed, underdeveloped, dumb shyt. The bold especially.

When Game of Thrones premiered, all the way back in 2011, I was a graduate student studying international relations. Part of what captivated me about the show (and the books it was based on) was its political realism: The nuanced motivations of the Seven Kingdoms’ leading players, the mundane workings of the Small Council, and the long history of Westerosi conflict and how it shaped the protagonists’ worldviews. After I graduated and became a journalist covering global affairs, I started writing about the show professionally — publishing piece after piece after piece on how it related to and illuminated the real-world workings of global politics.

Maybe that’s why Game of Thrones’ final episode, “The Iron Throne,” felt like such a personal slap in the face.

The resolution to the defining conflict of the series — the battle for the Iron Throne and the future of the Westerosi monarchy — is essentially determined by Tyrion Lannister making an impassioned speech. Sansa Stark wins independence for the North without so much as an argument from any of other assembled lords. Jon Snow returns to the Night’s Watch, which no longer has any reason to exist, and then maybe-possibly defects to the wildlings? And Arya Stark, for no real reason, decides to become Christopher Columbus.


In its final season, Game of Thrones dispensed almost entirely with trying to make sense of its characters’ internal motivations — let alone the complex political reality that its psychological realism initially helped create.


People did things because the plot required them to, not because their actions were consistent with their past behavior. Battles were decided purely by narrative convenience. In one episode, Euron pretty easily killed one of Dany’s dragon with a well-aimed ballista, but in the next episode, no one could seem to hit the sole dragon that remained. And the politics of the show, a key part of what made it feel so different and fresh way back in 2011, completely fell apart — to the point where it was impossible to treat the series as having anything like verisimilitude.

Unlike some viewers, I don’t object to some of Game of Thrones’ big concluding plot points per se. Daenerys going mad could have made sense, as could Bran becoming the king. The problem was the execution: The show so prioritized shock value over cogent character development and attention to political detail that the complex reality of Westeros — the element of the series that had previously engaged so many viewers so deeply — crumbled like a King’s Landing tower blasted by dragonfire.

It’s a deeply frustrating end to what was, at its best, one of the deepest and most exciting shows on television.

Related

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Let’s zoom in on the resolution of the Iron Throne plot, the show’s core concern over eight seasons.

So Tyrion is in jail, apparently for several weeks. He is brought before an assembly of the Seven Kingdoms’ most powerful lords and ladies — from protagonists like Sansa and Arya to side characters like Yara Greyjoy and whoever the new Prince of Dorne is. Everyone has apparently decided to meet to negotiate Tyrion and Jon’s fate with Grey Worm and the Unsullied, a discussion that could potentially end in yet another brutal battle if they can’t work out a compromise. The fate of the country hangs in the balance.

In the past, a meeting of this importance could have taken up an entire episode of Game of Thrones. The show would have paid close attention to each of its main characters’ objectives and approaches to the discussion, with the side characters’ interests and motivations somewhat outlined as well.


It’s not just the North that wants independence, for example: Both the Iron Islands and Dorne are historically separate from the rest of Westeros and might well be looking to secure their own freedom from the Iron Throne. Gendry, the new lord of the Stormlands, might be looking to shore up his shaky claim on his title (as a b*stard elevated by the now-dead Daenerys). These conflicting interests could have theoretically led to a tense and difficult negotiation, one that lasted several days in show time and produced a surprising outcome.

What happens instead? They decide to elect a king out of the blue, seemingly just because Tyrion suggests it. He suggests that Bran Stark, an unknown to most of Westeros’ nobility, should be king. He makes a speech about Bran’s magical powers, which no one really understands, and suggests that Bran’s command of narrative means that he should be entrusted with near-absolute power. In the show’s universe, the speech should have been greeted with as much laughter as Sam’s attempt to invent democracy.

Him?
HBO
But that’s not what happens. All of the assembled nobles seem to be moved by the power of Tyrion’s words, and everyone except Sansa (who declares that Winterfell will opt out and remain independent) votes to make Bran king — as well as to revolutionize the nature of the Westerosi monarchy by making it elected rather than determined by birth in perpetuity. There is no meaningful debate or discussion whatsoever. How does this affect Dorne, the Iron Isles, the Reach, the Vale, the Westlands? Who cares! Tyrion is good at speechifying.


The whole scene felt as though it had been transplanted from a different show — The West Wing, in particular.

The West Wing is defined by its optimistic account of democracy. At its core, Aaron Sorkin’s White House drama believed that people are rational and open to persuasion, and that the American political system centers on people having good-faith conversations about their beliefs and frequently changing their minds as a result. Speeches persuade; the marketplace of ideas works.

This is not how American politics — or politics anywhere, really — actually works. It’s a naive vision that Game of Thrones has spent years deconstructing, pointing out all of the ways in which self-interest and ideology not only make it difficult for people to compromise, but sometimes lead to war. And yet, the end of this long struggle for supremacy ends in the most saccharine way possible: all the lords agreeing to a new king, without any debate, because Tyrion offered up some pretty words about stories.

The problem isn’t that Bran became king, per se. One could imagine an episode of Game of Thrones in which a deadlocked council, riven by years of division and war, ends up electing a political unknown like Bran as a compromise after a debate that nearly starts another conflict. I could have bought that.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the scene is all about Tyrion — who, as he admitted earlier in the episode, has been spectacularly wrong about everything for seasons now — persuading everyone to do what he says just because he said so. It’s nonsense.

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There were parts of the series finale that I liked, to be sure. Jon killing Daenerys felt right for both characters. Drogon’s attempts to revive his mother were touching, as was Jon’s reunion with Ghost. Everyone laughing at Sam felt right, as did Sansa’s demolition of Edmure Tully when he stood up to make his own appeal for the throne (“Uncle, sit down” will probably become the bane of uncles everywhere).

But the episode’s big beats felt entirely unearned or utterly incoherent.

I like the idea of Sansa winning northern independence, and the shot of her coronation was magnificent. But how come everyone just agreed to that with no objection or discussion? Why didn’t anyone else demand independence or other concessions from the crown in exchange for staying in Seven Kingdoms?

Awesome but politically dubious.
HBO
If that felt emotionally satisfying but somewhat unrealistic, Arya’s turn toward exploring “west of Westeros” was just plain stupid.

I get that she mentioned wanting to explore in a previous season, but why would she abandon her sister and brother after just being reunited with them? Isn’t she a trained assassin with skills that could help Sansa prop up her new queendom? And why is a show that just turned one of its most beloved characters into a cautionary tale about imperialism ending with another one of its beloved characters apparently inventing 15th-century European colonialism?

And it’s on and on and on like that.

Jon goes back to the Night’s Watch, which has no reason to exist now that the wildlings are at peace with the Seven Kingdoms and the White Walkers have been destroyed. Somehow the Wall, a massive quasi-magical ice construction, has been repaired in months. And in the very last sequence, Jon — who is obsessed with duty and honor — seems to quit the Night’s Watch and go wandering with wildlings? Then we see a green shoot from a plant peeking up through the snow, as if what was supposed to be the longest winter in recent history, in a world where winters last years, is already ending? Is it because the White Walkers are dead? Who knows!

Why is Bronn, who has no experience with finance, the Master of Coin? Why is Brienne’s final solo scene devoted to her functionally writing Jaime Lannister’s Wikipedia page, rendering her arc subservient to a man’s? Who thought that having a book titled A Song of Ice and Fire appear onscreen was in any way coherent and a good idea? What was the deal with the Lord of Light, the Faceless Men, the Children of the Forest, and all of the other mythological elements that Game of Thrones had built up over the course of eight years?

These are all questions that it’s hard to think of good answers to. Perhaps if there had been a few more episodes in the final season, some of them could have felt more satisfying or lived-in. Instead, they felt rushed.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Game of Thrones showrunners, decided to cut the episode count in their final two seasons from the standard 10 to seven and six as part of a compromise with HBO (which wanted more episodes). This required them to race from plot development to plot development to get to the end. It seems they decided that building up character motivation and complexity was a luxury, gambling that people would just be happy seeing some kind of neat ending for everyone.


But that felt wrong to me, a betrayal of what made Game of Thrones great in the first place. And if early fan reactions I’ve seen are to be believed, I’m not alone.

Game of Thrones’ finale betrayed the show’s core themes

This season really took a large shyt on all of the things I fell in love with about the series. The political web that entrapped all of the houses in a complex maze of competing interests and the individual characters that tried to find purpose and direction through the chaos. Everything boiled down to being so simple, stupid, and convenient. Previous characterization was either thrown away or turned into a caricature. I like the endings for most of the characters but nothing about how they got there made any sense.

 

[R.E.N. Spells Ren]

because you would have thought number 1 war against the night king they would need every man they could get

danerys finally about to attack westeros word would hve got out
danerys killed and they just stand still and not return?

Return? They were never in Westeros to return to it.

I guess Daario could want to avenge Dany, but I don't know what that entails. Murdering Tyrion? Going north of the Wall to murder Jon? All that would've happened after the events of the finale, so I don't get your confusion.

She didn't bring them from Mereen to fight the Night King cuz they'd be non-factors, there'd be no point. Wouldn't be worth letting slaver's bay slip back into hands of the masters just to have a few more bodies to throw at the army of the dead. Never mind the amount of time it would have taken them to get from Mereen to Winterfell.

 

[Osmosis]

i really feel bad that i finally convinced my brother to watch (before this season started), i want to tell him to stop at season 6...and give him select episodes of season 7, and select scenes of season 8

The show really ended with the season 6 finale but the first four episodes of season 7 weren’t bad despite how rushed everything was. To me the series dipped in quality without any recovery with season 7 episode five.