...so do not read it if you haven't seen Game of Thrones season 8 yet and don't want to see any spoilers. I just watched the season over the past couple of days and was ...underwhelmed. I had seen so many spoilers going in, but that wasn't it. It just felt anti-climactic and boring at times. The show, which was all about the characters and intrigue and so on, reduced to Action Splodey Fight Scenes That Last All Episode, and I found myself wanting to fast forward. There were fight scenes before, but the point generally wasn't the fight scenes; it wasn't like a Transformers movie where the point is visual action. Though that kinda happened too with The Battle of the Bastards, it wasn't nearly as bad. The Battle of Winterfell, which should have been the culmination of so much buildup over the course of the series was just ...Helm's Deep. It played not like the final battle, but just a big battle with the ultimate conclusion yet to come. Instead, Cersei was given the place as the final boss, when the whole point of Jon's unifying everyone was that who sits on the throne doesn't matter if the world is Zombieland. Instead it was, there, we killed the zombies, now on to the real monster. What?
I had seen that the internet wasn't happy with season 8, but I wanted to give it a chance. Tbh, I wasn't sure if the internet was just having a freak out because a girl had gotten the big kill, as sometimes fandoms do, so I shrugged at criticism until I could see it for myself (not that I was watching/reading criticism on purpose because I wasn't trying to spoil it, but unless I was going to stay off Twitter for six weeks, I was going to see some discussion of it).
So today it's my turn to bitch about What The Fuck Happened To Game Of Thrones.
One more thing: I've never read any of the books, so this is not me bitching about "waah, books to TV." Even the TV-standalone fans are kinda wondering WTF happened.
1. What the fuck kind of battle strategy was that?
You have all these smart people who are good at strategy, and they all agree that it's a fine idea to send a bunch of Dothraki charging at the ginormous zombie army in the dark? What? Why didn't you just have the two dragons start mowing them down with fire - you know, like Dany did to King's Landing - until the Night King showed up? Even if the storm showed up so Dany (and Jon) couldn't see to do that anymore, it wasn't that way when the Dothraki started. They could have killed a ton of icicle zombies and given the warriors less to deal with.
Jon knows that the Night King can raise the recently dead - he saw it north of the wall. So he knows that burning the dead is necessary unless you want them to keep respawning at you. Why wouldn't they have used the dragons first?? It's not like the dragons are a surprise secret weapon - the Night King has one of the three! He knows they're there!
2. Why all this build up about the Night King just to have him offed like the one ring had been tossed into Mount Doom in the span of one episode?
I gotta say, I watched several fan theory videos on YouTube before this season ever started, and they should have handed the writing reins over to those people instead of the people who wrote the show. There was one theory that green (instead of black) dragonglass would heal the Night King back into a human, which would have been a very cool ending. And speaking of dragon glass - they made all those weapons with it and ...didn't fight the Whitewalkers, only the zombies? More build up like this is going to be important but it leads to nothing, like a frayed thread.
Arya WAS the wrong person to kill the Night King. Arya didn't have any particular connection to him that made it meaningful, it was just Arya being a badass. If Jon had done it after all he's been through, that would have made sense. If Dany had done it after he zombified one of her dragon children, that would have made sense. If Bran had done it with some three eyed raven power, that would have made sense. Hell, if they wanted to have a rando do it, having Theon do it while defending Bran would have made sense - they had Theon move after he had been stabbed, and you expected him to get up and get a stab in from behind or something. But no, just another feint. The writers think they're M. Night Shamalayan or some shit, but this isn't The Sixth Sense, and nobody said, "oh, what a good twist." They all said, " ...what?" It was flat and anti-climactic for Arya to come rushing in at the end.
3. Arya's skills weren't used
So Arya is basically a super ninja at this point, and instead of using THAT skill, to say, KILL CERSEI, they used her as brute force to kill the Night King, and then deny her Cersei because suddenly revenge isn't her path?
WHAT?
She makes it all the way to King's Landing with the Hound, and he waits until the last minute to tell her, revenge is bad, don't be like me, which she agrees to in half a minute, and aborts her mission right as she's almost there. Then she goes back into panicked running mode, like she had with the ice zombies.
Arya's whole deal has been learning how to be a super ninja so she could take out her kill list. Sometimes people came off her kill list, and that's fine, but Cersei had not redeemed herself in any way. She fed that other guy his children in a pie FFS, and now she's going to let Cersei go because the Hound says, "don't be like me"??
"What do you wanna talk about while we casually ride to King's Landing?" "Uh, let's just reminisce."
If the Hound was gonna talk her out of going after Cersei (which is stupid, but just for the sake of argument), they should have shown him making his point over the course of the ride, not suddenly at the end.
How cool would it have been if Arya had raided a grave and walked into Cersei's rooms looking like ONE OF HER DEAD CHILDREN or some shit? Or killed her advisor dude and came in looking like him? She did no master of faces ninja shit this whole season. So her whole experience learning to do that was ...to kill Walter Frey? Come on. What if Jamie had died in the Battle of Winterfell and she came in LOOKING LIKE JAMIE?? That would have been cool as fuck.
But no, Cersei has to die under rubble, while crying in Jamie's arms.
4. Speaking of Jamie
Another character arc that was just spat on and thrown away. Jamie went from doing horrible things for love of Cersei (like pushing Bran out a window), to falling for a good woman, Brienne. Only to finally get with her and then ...leave her to go be with Cersei. What??! I'd rather they have killed him in the Battle of Winterfell, and Arya use his face as a mask than this pointless nonsense. They just wanted that scene where Tyrion frees him to repay Jamie freeing Tyrion and so they ruined Jamie's whole story for the sake of one scene.
5. If Dany was going to go Mad Targaryen...
a) it needed more buildup than "her bestie and two dragons are dead," because come on, if she was going to snap and become a genocidal killer from that, she'd have snapped after Drogo died -
and b) it shouldn't have been Jon who killed her. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN GREYWORM.
Jon has known her for like a season and a half. Their romance felt rushed, and was killed off when he discovered she was his aunt anyway. Greyworm was her most loyal warrior - he should have been the one to see she had gone Anakin Skywalker and killed her for the sake of the people. I felt jack shit as Jon did it. I felt bad for Drogon who mourned his mother, but nothing for Jon and Dany as she died. DROGON realized it was power that had done it to her, which is why he melted the iron throne and not Jon - but Greyworm continued to be angry and wanting more blood? What? He was mourning Missandei too, but Greyworm isn't a bloodlusty Mad Targaryen. He's a loyal guy. Come on, now. It would have been much more poignant for him to do The Right Thing which meant killing his queen - LIKE JAMIE HAD KILLED THE MAD KING. That would have meant something.
Also, then Jon could have been king, but instead...
6. King Bran the Broken?
What? Bran did approximately jack shit all season except tell Jon his parentage. Why is he suddenly the king? A wise advisor since he Knows Everything, yes. But the king? That was so out of left field it was ridiculous. It felt right for Sansa to become Queen In The North. It felt random for Bran to be King of the Six Kingdoms.
7. There were supposed to be ten episodes
Apparently, HBO asked for ten episodes this season, and the writers said no.
It shows. It was too rushed. There should have been ten episodes.
8. What was the point about Jon's parentage being a big fat hairy deal for so long
...if it meant nothing except to make Dany paranoid at the end? STOP BUILDING THINGS UP FOR NO GODDAMN REASON.
This means NOTHING!
9. For a season that cared only about visual fight scenes
...why couldn't we see shit during the Battle of Winterfell?
Basically, the good things, imo:
I liked that Gendry was legitimized.
I liked that Brienne was knighted.
I liked Sansa becoming Queen In The North.
I liked Sam becoming the grandmaester.
I liked that Theon totally redeemed himself and saved his sister and died defending Bran.
I liked that Lyanna Mormont got a badass death.
But otherwise? Meh.
So there's my bitch session, lol. What did y'all think about this season? Let me know in the comments! How would you have done things differently?