The Battle of Winterfell was a gore fest, someone on the production staff must really like that stuff.
I didn't think they were going to have the Knights of the Vale ride in at the last second, al la Stannis in the Battle of Castle Black, but they did :P
At least Ramsay Got his, Little Prick.
A little off topic, but the Lannisters have completely screwed themselves, totally, and next episode I think we will see that bare fruit.
Everyone will stop pretending and call-out Tommen for what he is, a Bastard, born of Incest like is Brother before him, and Chaos will reign.
Just as Dany comes from the East and The White Walkers from the North....
I guess Ramsay should have fed his dogs earlier...
“A little off topic, but the Lannisters have completely screwed themselves, totally, and next episode I think we will see that bare fruit.”
What we might see in the next episode is Cersei setting off tons of wildfire bombs underneath the Sept of Baelor! They keep telegraphing that idea. They did it again tonight.
His mother could call him out to punish him for essentially sending her to the show trial to die or get stripped of everything.
“the Lannisters have completely screwed themselves, totally, and next episode I think we will see that bare fruit.”
The North is no longer under Lannister control, the Vale seems to have flipped, the Dornish want to go to war with the Lannisters (and Varys is on the way to recruit them), and Danyrs now has enough ships and Dothraki to sail for Westeros. So things may have never looked worse for the Lannisters. Even Arya is coming for them now.
All they need is a civil war inside the capital with the faith militant to make things worse.
Maybe Loris will die, or maybe the High Sparrow - but somebody will have to die.
The season finale should kill off another character or two, and the preview showed some scenes back at Kings Landing.
Maybe Tommen will die, making Cersei will go all Mad Queen, and Wildfire Nuke the place, right before the screen goes black.
Or maybe she inadvertently kills Tommen, not knowing that he is inside the Sept, when she burns it.
But count on it - bodies will hit the floor.
Blackwater was like that as well. All 3 battles were lost and then the calvary rides in. Kinda cliched. But still, awesome battle. Poor Wun Wun, I guess he was the last giant anyway. Poor Rickon, not special enough for the Lord of Light to bring back? I don't think he had a single line this year and I can't remember if he ever said anything back when he was little. He shouldn't have run in a straight line like that, turn, duck, roll, something.
Speaking of Stannis, I forgot to mention last week was really hoping to see the Braavos play version of him before they wrapped that up. I wonder how they would have characterized him and how much flatulence would be involved.
Seems like they have a lot to fit into the season finale, even for an extra long episode.
Recalling an earlier conversation, I have some difficulty seeing how the show will string out the story for two more seasons unless there is at least one more major plot reversal. Last night's episode was an all-points "turning of the tide." At the beginning of the hour, the good guys faced disaster both in the North and in Meereen. At the end of the hour, they were victorious on both fronts, with an Ironborn alliance thrown in as a bonus. The show logic is driving to an endgame sooner rather than later.
In principle, Euron and his fleet are no more than kindling for the dragons. The trick will be finishing Euron while saving the ships for Dany and Yara, but that's a minor piece of scriptwriting. The story can be further padded out with endless clash of armies subplots. That would be a mistake. The White Walkers have been unveiled, and they are moving in the north against Jon and the emergent northern alliance, and anyone who rallies to him in the next couple of episodes. The three D's are moving in the east (Dany/Dothraki/dragons). Anything in between is fluff. The fluff may insist on dying pointlessly, or it may join the emerging alliance in time, but that choice is incidental to the finale.
I am afraid those responsible for the show have caught Peter Jackson disease and have fallen in love with extended battle scenes. Last night's was tedious. The only important thing was the timely arrival of the Knights of the Vale, and that should have been better plotted instead of being left as a hackneyed cavalry-over-the-hill, perils of Pauline rescue.
Looking ahead, it is really pointless to stage endless sideshows involving Lannister, Martel, Tyrell and Dornish armies at this point.
The internal politics of Kings Landing and the remaining great houses should be resolved swiftly, but the writers may have become too self-indulgent to care.
The Jon Snow/Targaryan reveal is almost anticlimatic at this point. Bran, Jon, and Dany have emerged as the triumvirate against the White Walkers. Arya, Sansa, Yara, Brienne and Meera are all sympathetic and popular secondary characters who need to sorted out, dead or alive. We will see if GRRM and/or the screenwriters are misogynist enough to kill a couple of them off. I'd like to see Tyrion ride a dragon, but it's not terribly important one way or the other; Tryion is now a servant of Dany. Varys needs resolution as well, but that too is a minor detail, as are the Clegane brothers. (Go Hound!) Of the secondary characters left standing, probably the biggest question is Jamie; will he finally break with Cersei and find redemption, or will he end badly? Kevan Lannister is also an attractive character, but he has already overstayed his role and is probably about to be Varysed.
That leaves Littlefinger as the last major schemer still to be unmasked and settled. That doesn't take two seasons. Killing Dany would scramble everyone's calculations, but that would be premature before the penultimate episode, if at all. As a matter of dramatic pacing, the next two seasons are shaping up as anticlimactic.