Game of Thrones: Season 8, The Final Season (spoilers)

I agree with TUS' list. Too close, too dark and too fast with cuts.

I will add:

Lot of fun but most of the EP I was screaming "why?!"

Bran spent the night flying with the ravens. k?

Sword fire was cool but apparently only served for a narrative point of reference to show how quick they go out.

Take your time, red witch. We got all night.

Fire breathing dragons breathing fire is a myth, lol. Or they ran out of fuel.

I thought they bit its head off!

Land. In the field of the dead. Don't look around. Just wait.

More people should have died. They kinda deserved it, IMO.

OH. John is STILL a know-nothing lucky fool.

5 minutes was SO GREAT! But having a hard time not thinking about the rest.

Do you watch previews for the next episode, TUS? Pretty sure there was a shot that included Ghost in the preview. And it looks like both dragons made it, too.

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I did keep wondering why MOST of their plan wasn't to have the dragons just roil fire over the white walkers and leave almost everyone safe in Winterfell. Honestly... after seeing the dragon do this with the Lannister army a while ago, HOW did they NOT just do that THIS time?

That plot point really irked me. Beyond that, there were quite a few great moments (even though they're dark). BTW, the show folks say the series is dark on purpose. They try VERY VERY hard to use as much natural lighting as possible and to NOT do anything that will give the viewer a sense of "Oh, look, they LIT this scene!"

So, so many scenes (especially night scenes like these) end up almost TOO dark for many people. Frankly, I was grateful for some of the gore being covered up tonight!

Personally, I shut off all previews and skip "previously on..." clips. Just in case!

My only gripe was that The Night King should have done away with several characters not just Theon. Jamie would have been a good death for the Night King and perhaps one of the Dragons.

Too dark an episode. Maybe with so much money invested they should have got hold of a better cinematographer. Imagine Deakins shooting this episode. It would have been magic.

I understand the dragons not taking out the dead as much as they should have. They were blinded by the ice clouds and were more invested in killing the Night King and his dragon. I know this is a hard thing to accept, but I will give them a pass.

Yes, there were fewer deaths and not that glorious ends, but Lady Mormont's death, though disheartening, was brilliant.

The end made the whole thing worthwhile. What an end. No one deserved it more than Arya. Man I love that bit so much. I reckon the green eyes is Cersie.

Oops, I thought the dagger fell into Brans hand and HE not Arya killed the NK. Doh

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They did a good job showing that the Dragons can't just insta kill everything when they're blind in the ice storm, and damn who thought the dead were gonna swarm like that? Was exactly like waves rolling over an army.

The Dothraki were little more than cannon fodder, was dramatic when Mel lit their blades and they charged but was such a waste from a strategic point of view.

On rewatch I'm a little more forgiving of the plot armour, for us the final part of the battle when everyone was in mortal danger seemed to take 40 minutes which would be totally unrealistic, but really your witnessing lots of simultaneous events that last about 10 mins.

Even with brightness turned up on TV it was hard to follow lots of the action, some tech wizard will sort an easier to follow version for YouTube I'm sure.

You Tube comment, "GOT Skyrim, when you beat the main boss before the sidequest boss". It feels a bit like that, like the main event is over. Not saying the finale won't be great but it's like Sauron going down at the end of the Two Towers.

Eh, I think it's acceptable since he's pretty flat as far as villains go - a slightly-more-sapient-than-usual zombie is hardly the most compelling Big Bad you could centre an entire finale around, so it makes more sense to end with confrontations between the humans.

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Still sad to see my man Jorah go....

As for the Dragon strategy. I think Danny was afraid of another ice blade taking out a dragon, then they'd be down two. On top of that, they couldn't see because of the ice storm and I think the ice storm actually was putting out the dragon's breath.

Night King came prepared.


They also didn't show a preview for me after it aired.

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Suspect's Reviews

You are right but I thought they might go a bit deeper about his past/motivations etc, but nope turns out he was quite a straight forward big baddie.

I'm not saying either that the finale won't be great, it's just that a lot of people expected this to be the main threat.

We can only wait and see the big picture in the end.

3 eps in and we get the white walker attack, never expected him to be at the end.

Oof. That was...not a good episode.

There are some cool moments, to be sure. But most of my admiration is of the meta "I can't believe this is a TV show and not a movie" variety, which isn't as important as admiring it because it was technically brilliant or narratively coherent. I'll briefly make my case (spoilers, naturally):

1) Too dark. Had no idea what was going on most of the time.

2) Too many quick edits. Those are very effective for establishing a mood or starting things off, but after that they don't serve a lot of purpose. Especially combined with #1.

3) Where did Arya come from, at the end? It's cool she got to do what she did, but she's just sort of there, and unnoticed by all the wights? And what did she jump off of? Seems so needless. They could've have had creeping her way towards it, maybe she knows a path they don't (because she's got the home field advantage, which seems "right" and fair, narratively). We know she's creeping up on him, so when she makes her move and he catches her, we gasp (and it's a double-reversal when she stabs him anyway). Instead she just comes out of nowhere, and none of the giant army around the Night King do anything about it, and it's literally the one thing that saves them after total defeat.

4) Bran's doing...what, exactly? I guess we might find out, so I'll put a pin in this complaint. But it's gotta be good, and there's gotta be a good reason we don't find out now.

5) Theon dies for that? I mean, sure, he gets to be brave in his final moments, but not in a way that matters. I guess you could say the people who defended Bran had to hold the wights off for awhile. But it kinda seems like the wights were just going to clear a path for the Night King, anyway. So it's not really clear if Theon did anything useful at all, since it still ends with Bran surrounded and everybody saved by the Deus Ex Arya.

Things That Were Good:

1) The Dothraki wipeout. I realized a second or two in what was going to happen and it was great.

2) A lot of the supporting characters going out doing what they were meant to do, even if Jorah and Beric were both pretty predictable.

3) Arya in her Raptors-in-the-kitchen scene. I don't know if it makes sense that any place in the castle would be that quiet or closed off at that point, but it was really well done, at least.

4) The dead rising near the end. Great example of how hopeless the fight is. Though you'd think, knowing that, maybe the Night King would flank himself with minions a little better.

Jamie will have to decide who is he loyal too. Killing him now would have been a waste.

I'm glad the Night King was killed soon. We have now 3 eps for the main event (Lannisters vs Starks/Targaeryan). It would always come to this!

@Yoda

The feel like telegraphing the Arya thing would have ruined it for me. It's set-up not only in this episode but in a prior one with her stealth. In the library, her moving around goes unnoticed by the wights, but drops of her blood hitting the floor is heard.

In the episode prior she sneaks up on Jon Snow in that very same location, he even says this out loud.

So for me at least, the surprise attack worked.


Although, we are in total agreement with the lack of clarity in the fight and whatever the hell Bran was doing (which might seem pointless now that the Night King is dead).

I'm glad Theon got his redemption, he knew his time was up. Him putting up any kind of fight against the Night King would be ridiculous to me.

One of the best episodes ep3 I’ve seen - rivals two towers with that kind of eerie dread and violence. It was worth the two year wait and I’ll forgive season 6 and 7 now. I was really impressed and enjoyed the previous episode immense anticipation.

Someone made a brightened trailer for ep 3, wonder if they will do the full battle.

People keep complaining how Jon did nothing in the episode. He faught the Knight King Dragon to Dragon and Had To deal with Hoards of New Wights when Night King Was Running from him by putting Wights and a Undead Dragon in front of him. Dany was the impatient one while jon was calmer and least he learned from Battle Of The Bastards. Dany saved Jon but he tried to tell her not to land her dragon and get out of there.

Having established her stealth keeps it from being utterly stupid, for sure, but to my mind it just sort of makes the whole thing vaguely plausible, provided they make some additional effort to explain how it could've happened. I mean, this is a wide open area, and it's basically surrounded by wights. I can't even really imagine, on my own, how that was meant to work. And as I alluded to, it's sooooo easy to come up with narratively coherent and honest ways to explain it (she knows a back way into the wood because she grew up here).

Yeah, if that ends up being his arc: to become bait, that's pretty bad.

Yeah he couldn't have won. Though I'm okay with Boromir Deaths, where someone with something to prove hangs on longer than you'd have thought possible but still goes down. That's kind of what I figured was going to happen with Beric (and of course it did), and possibly Theon, too. He got to be brave, I'm just not sure it served a purpose. Which I'm also sort of okay with, provided the show is sort of leaning into that and maybe setting it up somehow, too.

I guess my common complaint to all these character moments is that they spent so much time on the battle (which wasn't even really comprehensible at times) that even clocking in at 90 minutes they still had to hurry through people's big moments.

I 100% agree that it made sense to end the series after this fight, though the idea of leaving the Night King alive so you can have it both ways still seems like the better option. Ah well.