Slurmee wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 01:48
Really don't understand how basically all the main cast fighters lived how nobody important died in the crypts very unrealistic with how easily the army was tearing through the no named characters.
I have a hard time stomaching complaints about "all the main characters lived!" because Jorah and Theon are huge deep-theme season 1 characters with full plot arcs and important impacts on other main characters, and Lyanna is a relatively new character but a fan favourite. Whether a person particularly cares about Jorah or Theon is subjective—for some, they were the only reason to watch the show. It's a big blow. And no one can argue they weren't important characters.
The threat of the army of the dead was amply demonstrated by eradicating all the freefolk, all the northern houses that weren't at Winterfell, all the Dothraki, and almost all the Unsullied. The people in the crypts were contending against maybe 4 fully desiccated skeletons without weapons, not an army.
Slurmee wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 01:48
I really think they've rushed the ended and I think we should have gotten to see the night King take winterfell and have them flee before they kill him.
That would have padded the season without really adding anything new. Instead of one big set piece battle, they get to have two. Hardhome already established the "crushed forces running from the Night King" plot beat. And Winterfell established the "North has nothing left" plot beat. I struggle to understand what new central narrative purpose another retreat from the Night King would serve, and beyond that, padding it out just for the sake of more action kind of flies in the face of some of the other complaints people have about the show (that it cashes in story for action and glitz). Some fans seem to want to have their cake and eat it too with a lot of their complaints in this season/episode.
Slurmee wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 01:48
I think had they not over hyped how they were all going to die then survive due to plot armor I would have liked it a lot more.
Characters die when it's expedient for the plot, and they live when it's expedient for the plot, same as in the early seasons. Just killing a bunch of important characters because the night King is supposed to be scary would be bad writing. Most of the characters you listed who "should have died" underneath my tweet—killing characters off for visceral effect before their story arc comes full circle is bad planning, pandering. If the show has to religiously follow a pattern of offing key characters to keep people interested, that's the flip-upside-down-side of the narrative gain they made from killing Ned: predictable, toothless. The purpose of the last episode's brooding about how we're all going to die wasn't to bluntly foreshadow that they were all going to die.
Slurmee wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 01:48
The episode was still decent just didn't live up to my expectation and didn't have any decent twist.
I like that people somehow think Ned's and Robb's plot-necessary deaths were these great, subversive surprises, and lament that the show doesn't do that anymore. Meanwhile, the NK's plot-necessary death was a great, subversive surprise.
Slurmee wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 01:48
All Dany and Jon may as well have not been there they were useless.
That was the point. That was part of the twist. This show is not about the heroes doing heroic things. The fabled King in the North and Dragon Queen are just people, with power, who are exercising that power in whatever way they can, and sometimes it doesn't avail them.
That said, they both had interesting plot beats, which is what makes a character useful in a given episode. A good story is strung together by characters moving forward along a plot arc, whether they stab any bad mans or not.
Slurmee wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 01:48
Nonetheless excited to see how they clean up the cersei stuff.
Agreed. This is what the show is supposed to be about. And it's still up for debate whether the Cersei stuff will be "cleaned up". Cersei isn't a bogeyman zombie from the shadows. She's another main character exercising political power. Cersei, Jon, and Dany are all in the mix in the endgame and we don't know how it will play out. That's why the NK's fate and when it happened are classic, good, successfully-executed early-season-style plot elements. Keeping him in the game any longer would have devolved this show into stock fairytale fantasy, which is not what it's supposed to be.
The Shoemaker wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 02:15
I don't really like the implication that Cersei was right in disregarding the white Walker threat over her own political/personal status... but I mean she's going to die this season regardless.
I think it's fucking fantastic that she was right. Cersei ignoring the greater threat to defend her own power and then actually gaining from it is the
exact kind of twist-of-the-dagger plot moment as Ned doing the right thing and being punished for it. Cersei in S7-8 so far has been the purest culmination of G.R.R. Martin's aesthetic since the early seasons of the show.
The Shoemaker wrote: ↑30 Apr 2019 02:15
Maybe they'll have some interesting things to tackle, like what Jon's purpose is now that the walkers are done for. I'm not terribly interested though, everything they've set up through season 7 to now is just unnecessary, forced drama to pad out the series.
Everything they've set up through season 7 to now is the main thrust of the entire 8 seasons. The WWs/NK were the padding, and they had to shed them to get back to the real story: the exertion of political power on and by Cersei, Jon, and Dany and how it affects them in different ways.
You make a great point about Jon's purpose now that the WWs are gone. He's been using the threat posed by the WWs to hide from any questions of his life's purpose and goals, and on top of that, he's just heard some interesting news about himself that he hasn't been able to process yet. How does that internal conflict resolve itself now that he doesn't have a bogeyman to bury it in?
Anyway, all that said, I'm not saying this was the greatest episode of TV ever filmed. But it was a good episode, great action setpiece, with nice cinematography and pacing, and interesting plot and character development.
It's also OK not to have liked the episode! Jesus Christ. It's just that I've found the complaints I've seen so far about the show losing its way or about the episode in particular to be massively unconvincing and unsupported at best.
