Game of Thrones Season 7 Eps 6 & 7
Aug. 29th, 2017 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightGame of Thrones season 7 has come and gone so quickly it feels like blink and you'll miss it. It's been a little uneven at times, but I did feel the last two episodes were pretty good (in most ways - see caveats behind cut, along with lots of spoilers).
Okay, episode 6 was beyond daft - mainly because Tyrion's plan was daft in the first place, depending as it did on Cersei actually caring about anything other than keeping her nihilistic grip on power (and the finale showed us how well that went). However, I suppose you can forgive Tyrion still wanting to believe his sister isn't completely a monster, if only because she's his sister.
Can you?
But episode 6 was also daft because of the way all the travelling/communication that in previous seasons would have taken ages was so ridiculously fast, ie:
Jon and co set off from the Wall. We don't know how far they walked but it looked like a reasonable distance, yet it seemed to take Gendry all of five minutes to run all the way back (and how did they even know he was the quickest runner when no one had ever seen him run?)
The raven summoning Dany to Jon's aid seems to arrive instantaneously.
Dany then turns up to the rescue the next morning.
You have to admit it was all a bit (a lot!) ridiculous. Not to mention, why on earth didn't the Night King aim his spear at the dragon Dany and co were sitting on rather than one of the ones flying about, thus killing twodragons birds with one stone? Does he have some agenda - ie. he wants a proper war - or is he just rather stupid?
But anyway, ridiculous or not (and I haven't even mentioned all the ridiculous stuff), I forgive it all for the sheer spectacle. Plus, no one I cared about died. Except poor Viserion. I'm actually quite upset about him. :(
Nobody except a few red shirts (and a dragon) dying is not terribly GoT of old, I agree, but I'm fine with it, just as I'm fine with the lack of nudity this season apart from a couple of rather vanilla sex scenes (the first of which at least gave Missandei something to do), and the lack of visceral violence. That was pretty much confined to the scene in the finale where Theon beat up the bloke who didn't want to go and rescue Yara. In fact, this is the first season of GoT ever where I've only once had to hide my eyes and not watch till it was all over. I don't really count the enormous numbers of people set on fire by dragons, 'cos, though I'm sure there was actual fire and actual stunt men getting set on fire, it's...just not real.
Back to episode 6, and another thing I didn't like in it was the Sansa/Arya quarrel (if that's the right word), but that, too, I can forgive because the finale turned it on its head and revealed it to be the sisters' plot to finally get rid of Littlefinger.
Loved that court room scene, didn't feel sorry for Littlefinger at all (hateful, hateful man), and Aiden Gillen will probably be back as Littlefinger-as-played-by-Arya in season 8 anyway.
The final Sansa/Arya scene in the finale was one of my favourite scenes in the entire season. I hated that their reunion seemed to have been soured and didn't at all mind having been fooled as to what was actually going on.
That said, I don't really understand the scene between them in private in episode 6 (the one where Sansa discovers Arya's faces). You could argue that their previous unpleasant scenes were played in the knowledge that Littlefinger could well be watching, but not that one.
Oh well, now I know what I know, I'll just have to re-watch the scene again, I suppose, and see if there are clues as to what is really happening hidden in the dialogue that I didn't notice the first time.
As for the finale, though there were again things happening rather too fortuitously at times (in particular, Sam barging in on Bran, who then decides to confide in him for some reason as to Jon's true parentage, and it then turns out that, despite how it seemed at the time, Sam was in fact listening when Gilly read him the extract from the Grandmaester's private journal in which he mentions Prince Rhaegar and Lyanna marrying) I thought it was pretty well done.
The outcome of the daft quest beyond the Wall played out so spectacularly in the dragonpit scenes that I could forgive the initial daftness (except for Tyrion and Jaime actually believing in Cersei's change of heart) and the final scenes of the Night King and poor, dead Viserion bringing down the Wall and the zombie army (you know, the one that's been marching on the Wall since season 2?) breaking through into Westeros proper sent chills down my spine. Really well done.
Other stuff I liked:
That Theon will (hopefully) redeem himself once and for all by rescuing Yara.
That Jaime finally turned on Cersei and left her truly alone. Couldn't happen to a nicer person.
It's going to be really hard waiting a year (or possibly longer?) to find out what happens next, but here're a couple of possibilities.
Dany saying she couldn't have any more children and Jon saying why would she trust the person who told her that seems anvil-y for her actually getting pregnant. If that happens, I'd expect to see her sidelined in the fighting from now on and for Jon to go head to head with the Night King on either Drogon or the third dragon, Rhaegon - the one named after his father. Whether he'll survive the encounter I don't know, but if either Jon or Dany has to die I'd far rather it was Jon. He's just so damn mopey. He even looked mopey when he was having sex with Dany. Also, I really don't want Dany to have to step aside because Mr Mopey has more right to the iron throne than she does.
Jaime will turn up at Winterfell and either accidentally or on purpose tell Sam that Dany had his father and his poor idiot brother burned to death. Bran will tell everyone it was Jaime that pushed him off the tower.
Jaime will die, not sure how but hopefully heroically.
Jorah will die, likewise.
Cersei will either A) die still thinking everyone except her is to blame for everything or B) team up with the Night King to be in charge of the Entire World.
Erm...actually, I'm not very good at speculating so I'll stop. What do you think will happen?
Trivial stuff:
What on earth sort of fire was that Viserion was breathing (and don't you have to be alive to breathe in the first place?). It'd have to be hot, wouldn't it, or it wouldn't melt the Wall? So it's not like he's an ice dragon now.
Poor Viserion. Really sad about what happened to him. First, he gets named after the world's most useless older brother, then he gets chained up in a basement in Mereen, then he gets killed while being a good, helpful dragon son, then he gets zombified. Meh!
Not nearly enough Lyanna Mormont in this season.
ETA: Stuff I forgot to mention:
It's hard to see how Beric and Tormund would survive the destruction of East Watch but I'm sure they have somehow. After all, someone has to turn up at Winterfell in season 8 to tell everyone the Night King is on his way and that he now (thanks to Dany) has a weapon of mass destruction.
Also, since I wrote this post, I've read this article on Vox about each character's strategy in season 7 ranked by political science and it's hard to disagree with the assessment. Cersei wins big time at the game of thrones and Dany performed the absolute worst, in particular by letting the aforementioned WMD fall into the hands of the Night King.
You could argue, I suppose, that when Dany flew off to rescue Jon she still didn't really believe his stories about the White Walkers. Also that no one had the least idea that the White Walkers had a weapon powerful enough to kill a dragon - particularly since Qyburn's giant arrow seemed to do little more to Drogon than make him really, really cross. But still.
I also skim-read an article that I won't link to by some guy who describes himself as a 'happily married serial monogamist', in which he has a good moan about how there are only beta males in Game of Thrones and the female characters are depicted as being the strongest, and how it's not fair and why can't things be like they were in the real Middle Ages when (white, straight) men ruled and women knew their place or some such nonsense.
:Eyeroll:
Okay, episode 6 was beyond daft - mainly because Tyrion's plan was daft in the first place, depending as it did on Cersei actually caring about anything other than keeping her nihilistic grip on power (and the finale showed us how well that went). However, I suppose you can forgive Tyrion still wanting to believe his sister isn't completely a monster, if only because she's his sister.
Can you?
But episode 6 was also daft because of the way all the travelling/communication that in previous seasons would have taken ages was so ridiculously fast, ie:
Jon and co set off from the Wall. We don't know how far they walked but it looked like a reasonable distance, yet it seemed to take Gendry all of five minutes to run all the way back (and how did they even know he was the quickest runner when no one had ever seen him run?)
The raven summoning Dany to Jon's aid seems to arrive instantaneously.
Dany then turns up to the rescue the next morning.
You have to admit it was all a bit (a lot!) ridiculous. Not to mention, why on earth didn't the Night King aim his spear at the dragon Dany and co were sitting on rather than one of the ones flying about, thus killing two
But anyway, ridiculous or not (and I haven't even mentioned all the ridiculous stuff), I forgive it all for the sheer spectacle. Plus, no one I cared about died. Except poor Viserion. I'm actually quite upset about him. :(
Nobody except a few red shirts (and a dragon) dying is not terribly GoT of old, I agree, but I'm fine with it, just as I'm fine with the lack of nudity this season apart from a couple of rather vanilla sex scenes (the first of which at least gave Missandei something to do), and the lack of visceral violence. That was pretty much confined to the scene in the finale where Theon beat up the bloke who didn't want to go and rescue Yara. In fact, this is the first season of GoT ever where I've only once had to hide my eyes and not watch till it was all over. I don't really count the enormous numbers of people set on fire by dragons, 'cos, though I'm sure there was actual fire and actual stunt men getting set on fire, it's...just not real.
Back to episode 6, and another thing I didn't like in it was the Sansa/Arya quarrel (if that's the right word), but that, too, I can forgive because the finale turned it on its head and revealed it to be the sisters' plot to finally get rid of Littlefinger.
Loved that court room scene, didn't feel sorry for Littlefinger at all (hateful, hateful man), and Aiden Gillen will probably be back as Littlefinger-as-played-by-Arya in season 8 anyway.
The final Sansa/Arya scene in the finale was one of my favourite scenes in the entire season. I hated that their reunion seemed to have been soured and didn't at all mind having been fooled as to what was actually going on.
That said, I don't really understand the scene between them in private in episode 6 (the one where Sansa discovers Arya's faces). You could argue that their previous unpleasant scenes were played in the knowledge that Littlefinger could well be watching, but not that one.
Oh well, now I know what I know, I'll just have to re-watch the scene again, I suppose, and see if there are clues as to what is really happening hidden in the dialogue that I didn't notice the first time.
As for the finale, though there were again things happening rather too fortuitously at times (in particular, Sam barging in on Bran, who then decides to confide in him for some reason as to Jon's true parentage, and it then turns out that, despite how it seemed at the time, Sam was in fact listening when Gilly read him the extract from the Grandmaester's private journal in which he mentions Prince Rhaegar and Lyanna marrying) I thought it was pretty well done.
The outcome of the daft quest beyond the Wall played out so spectacularly in the dragonpit scenes that I could forgive the initial daftness (except for Tyrion and Jaime actually believing in Cersei's change of heart) and the final scenes of the Night King and poor, dead Viserion bringing down the Wall and the zombie army (you know, the one that's been marching on the Wall since season 2?) breaking through into Westeros proper sent chills down my spine. Really well done.
Other stuff I liked:
That Theon will (hopefully) redeem himself once and for all by rescuing Yara.
That Jaime finally turned on Cersei and left her truly alone. Couldn't happen to a nicer person.
It's going to be really hard waiting a year (or possibly longer?) to find out what happens next, but here're a couple of possibilities.
Dany saying she couldn't have any more children and Jon saying why would she trust the person who told her that seems anvil-y for her actually getting pregnant. If that happens, I'd expect to see her sidelined in the fighting from now on and for Jon to go head to head with the Night King on either Drogon or the third dragon, Rhaegon - the one named after his father. Whether he'll survive the encounter I don't know, but if either Jon or Dany has to die I'd far rather it was Jon. He's just so damn mopey. He even looked mopey when he was having sex with Dany. Also, I really don't want Dany to have to step aside because Mr Mopey has more right to the iron throne than she does.
Jaime will turn up at Winterfell and either accidentally or on purpose tell Sam that Dany had his father and his poor idiot brother burned to death. Bran will tell everyone it was Jaime that pushed him off the tower.
Jaime will die, not sure how but hopefully heroically.
Jorah will die, likewise.
Cersei will either A) die still thinking everyone except her is to blame for everything or B) team up with the Night King to be in charge of the Entire World.
Erm...actually, I'm not very good at speculating so I'll stop. What do you think will happen?
Trivial stuff:
What on earth sort of fire was that Viserion was breathing (and don't you have to be alive to breathe in the first place?). It'd have to be hot, wouldn't it, or it wouldn't melt the Wall? So it's not like he's an ice dragon now.
Poor Viserion. Really sad about what happened to him. First, he gets named after the world's most useless older brother, then he gets chained up in a basement in Mereen, then he gets killed while being a good, helpful dragon son, then he gets zombified. Meh!
Not nearly enough Lyanna Mormont in this season.
ETA: Stuff I forgot to mention:
It's hard to see how Beric and Tormund would survive the destruction of East Watch but I'm sure they have somehow. After all, someone has to turn up at Winterfell in season 8 to tell everyone the Night King is on his way and that he now (thanks to Dany) has a weapon of mass destruction.
Also, since I wrote this post, I've read this article on Vox about each character's strategy in season 7 ranked by political science and it's hard to disagree with the assessment. Cersei wins big time at the game of thrones and Dany performed the absolute worst, in particular by letting the aforementioned WMD fall into the hands of the Night King.
You could argue, I suppose, that when Dany flew off to rescue Jon she still didn't really believe his stories about the White Walkers. Also that no one had the least idea that the White Walkers had a weapon powerful enough to kill a dragon - particularly since Qyburn's giant arrow seemed to do little more to Drogon than make him really, really cross. But still.
I also skim-read an article that I won't link to by some guy who describes himself as a 'happily married serial monogamist', in which he has a good moan about how there are only beta males in Game of Thrones and the female characters are depicted as being the strongest, and how it's not fair and why can't things be like they were in the real Middle Ages when (white, straight) men ruled and women knew their place or some such nonsense.
:Eyeroll:
no subject
Date: 2017-08-29 08:22 pm (UTC)I have a hard time thinking she will. B&W have spent a lot of time this season pointing out (not always very subtly or convincingly) that Dany isn't an all-loving Disney princess; she may be a good person at heart, but she has a lot of pride and is in over her head politics-wise. I wouldn't be surprised if they're going to have her take it less than graciously when she's informed that everything she's fought and killed and sacrificed for was a misunderstanding.
Jaime will turn up at Winterfell and either accidentally or on purpose tell Sam that Dany had his father and his poor idiot brother burned to death.
Oh, I hadn't considered that. There's not going to be a huge amount of room for political maneuvering in the last half-season, but assuming there's already a wedge between Jon and Dany...
Not nearly enough Lyanna Mormont in this season.
They could have an entire episode of her just glaring and it still wouldn't be enough.
After all, someone has to turn up at Winterfell in season 8 to tell everyone the Night King is on his way and that he now (thanks to Dany) has a weapon of mass destruction.
Or they find out when Viserion swoops down and burns the place to the ground 5 minutes after the end of this episode. See, this is why the super speed of episode 6 sucked. For the rest of the series, they're going to have to come up with some explanation for why the Night King doesn't just show up with a dragon in every single scene. Granted, he wants dead unburned bodies, but he should be able to end any siege situation in 30 seconds.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-29 08:52 pm (UTC)My theory/idea I had the other day was that Cersei will survive all the fighting but like her mother before her, will die in childbirth, leaving her baby to be raised by Tyrion.
Because, like you said, Jamie is doomed, he just can't atone for all the things he has done. I kinda feel like Cersei will end up killing him in the end...
Those are just the main thoughts in my head. Also, if Dany does get pregnant it will take her a little bit of time to find out so perhaps it won't effect the battles to come? Because, while I agree a pregnant woman probably wouldn't want to fight, I really don't want the whole "oh no she's pregnant now and must hide away" thing because she's been a warrior this whole time and I want her to fight side by side with her people.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 07:32 am (UTC)I agree, based not only on this season but on previous seasons in which she's behaved less than mercifully at times, but she seems to have fallen in love with Jon, so who knows?
It'd be ironic, I think, if GoT, which in previous seasons has been accused of misogyny and furthering rape culture etc, but which has come through that and now gets lauded in some quarters as quite a feminist show (enough so to annoy some fanboys a great deal) then reverts to the 'traditional' model by having Dany cede the throne gracefully to Jon because he has a better claim. We'll see - though not for 18 months, it looks like.
They could have an entire episode of her just glaring and it still wouldn't be enough.
I agree. I'd also quite like to see her meet up with Jorah, who I guess is her uncle, or second cousin, or something.
See, this is why the super speed of episode 6 sucked. For the rest of the series, they're going to have to come up with some explanation for why the Night King doesn't just show up with a dragon in every single scene. Granted, he wants dead unburned bodies, but he should be able to end any siege situation in 30 seconds.
My daughter thinks he has to have some agenda beyond kill!smash!destroy! to explain why he's being so leisurely about the whole thing, but to me it just looks like he's keeping pace (for no obvious reason) with the zombie army. I suppose he had to before. Now he doesn't. Maybe his tactics will change?
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 07:39 am (UTC)This wouldn't matter so much if things hadn't moved at such a glacial pace in previous seasons. It's just so noticeable. ;(
I don't know if Cersei will die in the way you suggest. She may, of course. I don't discount her being the sole survivor, though. Who knows? I think it's likely Jaime will kill her and himself at the same time. Maybe jump off a tower> That would bring things full circle with what happened in episode 1 of season 1 with Bran.
because she's been a warrior this whole time and I want her to fight side by side with her people.
I feel the same way, though I do think her tactics have been very poor this season and am not sure if that's a comment on her as a character or just because the needs of the plot demanded that she be. Either way, someone should make her some armour -preferably without silly metal boobs.
I meant to say, I saw your post about wanting to do a re-watch of the entire show and wondering how much time you have. Well, it looks like the final season may not air till 2019 so if you only watch one episode a week you'd still finish in plenty of time. ;(
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 11:29 am (UTC)Ironic, but far from unlikely I'm afraid. I hope not. Honestly I'm struggling to come up with an ending where either Jon or Dany becomes The Good Monarch that won't be disappointing. You can't break the wheel if you're riding it.
I'd also quite like to see her meet up with Jorah, who I guess is her uncle, or second cousin, or something.
Oh yes. And possibly the only chance we have of getting confirmation of one of my favourite fanons, that Jeor Mormont knew who Jon Snow is and kept it secret. (Not that it matters much at this point.)
And yeah, the Night King's long-term strategy is puzzling, but now that he can do anything they're really going to have to work harder with him. I'm wondering if they're going to start the season with a big defensive win for Team Warmblooded to justify the Night King being a bit careful.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-30 02:14 pm (UTC)I don't think it's unlikely either. And if Benioff and Weiss are quizzed about it afterwards they'll probably say that was just what things are like in that kind of society (as if it were a real society and not one that GRRM invented). But we'll see. I also have trouble seeing either of them becoming good king/queen Jon I/Danaerys I or whatever.
I'm wondering if they're going to start the season with a big defensive win for Team Warmblooded to justify the Night King being a bit careful.
Well, they'll have to win at least a battle at some point or there'll be no tension in the story at all.
I have thought of something I'd have liked explained better before he died after the briefest return ever, and that was why the White Walkers chose Uncle Benjen to become one of them. What are their criteria?