Anon crushed the alternative ending absolutely 1000x better than the actual show runners for free.
I love this, and it made me absolutely angry again for this two fucks that gave us the most disappointing conclusion to a story that I loved deeply. it could have been so much more. nicolaj was awesome
As much as everyone (including me) shits on AI, it brings me great peace that within my lifetime basement fanfic hobbiests will be able to generate this scene/episode with HBO quality, indistinguishable as a fake. I will actually get to see this.
That and my wish to see an Episode of star trek TNG where data gets sent to 1992 and has to save the community center by teaching Biggie and 2Pac the true meaning of Christmas
If an AI like that ever exists the first thing I’m asking for is a second season of Firefly
Jaime killing the Night King should have been the only right answer. It makes the whole trip beyond the wall to get evidence worth it instead of being for nothing, and it completes the greatest redemption arc in television history.
God DAMN that gave me chills. Mourning again for what could have been.
I always disliked how Arya’s story at the temple of black and white went…
A girl speaks the truth!
Arya Stark facing Jaqen H’ghar once again, her sightless eyes searching the blackness, “who are you?” he asks. “I am no body” she replies; “a girl lies!” says Jaqen. “WHO are you?”; Arya angry now, stares blankly at him, “I am Arya of the house Stark! I am The Cat of the Canals! I am the boy Arry; I am the Blind Gir!; I am anybody!”. “Yessss” replies Jaqen “a girl speaks the truth”.
The realisation dawns; the Waif who tormented Arya for the longest time never realised this was the test; her vision clears. Jaqen H’ghar smiles down at Arya, you are anybody, you are everybody!
The Waif, realising that Arya has passed her tries to kill Arya. The Waif is not much of a challenge and Arya kills her in self defence. Jaqen is not pleased, Arya was not sanctioned to kill The Waif. She is forced to leave the temple…she returns to Westeros and the story continues from there.
As someone who never watched GoT, I have no idea what all this is about and considering how much the last two seasons get memed, I don’t think I ever will.
Putting Marvel style quips into this completely kills it lol. “They say the best swords have names, gang? Any wacky ideas??” “Oh yikes! Not right now!” “Let’s name it Mountain Dew Baja Blast sponsored by Morgan and Morgan!”
The whole season turned into half arsed fan fiction.
I wouldn’t even call it fan fiction as the writers were seemingly not even fans of the show. It was like a fan hired someone who had never seen the show and hated everything about it to write it.
I call that the Netflix live-action anime treatment.
Oh they hired 343i to write it? That actually makes sense.
Nah, they did kill a bunch of people. Remember the useless Dothraki cavalry charge? Straight up substracted the Dothraki army from the political equation, and removing several thematics from the narrative in the same blow. What would’ve become of the Dothraki after the war, had they survived? Would Kingslanding have kept a military continent of Dothraki, the way the Byzantines incorporated Huns in their army? Would they have had a political role in this new order? Would they have faced racism? Or would they have returned to the Steppe, and if so, would they have ruled it as an independent land or remained clients of Daenerys? And how would they have reacted to her death? So many questions that needn’t be addressed thanks to the white walkers.
Davos: “There is land in the reach, go start your own house”
Unsullied: “You… you do realize what we are, right?”
Adopt some orphans, there’s sure to be a bunch of those running around by now.
Remember the useless Dothraki cavalry charge?
I remember a very dark screen and a bunch of yelling and then nothing. I assume that’s what you’re talking about.
I remember when the Dothraki magically respawned for the Bells/final episode. Hooray, even though they got literally swarmed, somehow, Grey Worm survived
Next episode: Hordes of Dothraki
I’m so glad I never watched the last season. “Oh, but what about…” Don’t care. I’ll read the book eventually. When they ran out of material from the books it became cartoonish.
I’ll read the book eventually.
Get a load of Mr Optimism over here!
Somebody will write it.
That somebody will be Brandon Sanderson. The story will be good and impactful, but will suddenly lack any kind of romance or nudity.
Sanderson has said numerous times that he would not want to finish ASOIAF
I kinda wonder if the reaction to the ending killed his motivation to finish it. Id buy that explanation.
My conspiracy theory is the show ended more or less how George R. R. Martin has been planning it, but because it was received so poorly he had to scrap it all and start the last two books over
Honestly, the plot points themselves were fine it’s the execution that made it terrible. The pacing was off, character interactions and motivations made no sense, yes. But the broad-brush strokes of the plot could have been done well.
from what I gathered from interviews etc, the ending itself (e.g. where each character went or did) is basically set by george. Just the way show got there was written by the show writers
So yes, the ending is by George, the execution by the show runners
It killed my motivation to read anything further about that world.
I’ll read the book eventually.
Oh you sweet summer child
Two books left, so far. Previous was released over a decade ago. I think a next book is possible, but two?
I bought the last one on release date, and I have no clue where each character is right now. I’m not reading the books again, and I don’t think a summary will make me care again.
Yeah I’ve given up any interest. If another book comes out, there’s absolutely no reason for me to read it. Like you said, the last book is over 10 years old. So you’d have to re-read the entire series to catch up. Then you’d read the new book, only to be confronted with the same problem for the final book. I ain’t doing this whole thing again in another decade!
At this point, he’d have to release both books at once for me to have any interest in reading them again. And we all know that ain’t happening.
Yeah those books are never coming out. The absolute best time for them to come out was when the show was still in its prime. But universally people hated how the show ended, it’s dropped out of pop culture completely, season 8 has become a verb much like jumping the shark, and given how long between the books interest says waned. There are other books, there are other authors, and there’s just generally other things to do.
Yeah I saw how bad the penultimate season was and could tell I’d regret it. So I just came up with my own headcanon for how things end and don’t worry about it.
There is no “what about”. You’re good.
They tried so hard to subvert expectations that they fucking obliterated everyone’s character arcs.
Gotta admit, I expected the show to end up making sense. Subverted!
A lot of people shit on the final season, and rightly so. The ending didn’t fit the entire narrative of Ice and Fire, Arya’s training was basically useless, Daenerys’s ending didn’t make sense
I’m yet to hear of how anyone would rewrite the final season to be good, or where the plot points are all resolved. You would need to change a LOT, particularly how you conclude with the final battle AFTER Kings Landing is taken/won. There’s a few novel ideas there:
- Bran warging into a dragon
- The Night King ignoring the North and going to war with Kings Landing
- Arya using her skills at some point to attack/kill Cersei
- Jamie’s redemption, and possible pairing with Brienne, to leave Cersei alone and unhinged. Perhaps even Jamie killing Cersei?
- The Night King being such a credible threat that he actually takes over Westeros and the final battle being waged in Essos, or with the full “world” involved
- Jon ascending to the throne, as prophesied - but leaving the throne and escaping north
- Westeros just generally being destroyed and no one winning. " The dragons siding with Jon, leading to Daenerys’s madness
- Bran slowly turning into the new Night King
So many avenues, but I’m yet to read a coherent plan.
My main gripe with is with the final episode, the final ,“bran should be king” happy ending. Like come on. It’s so counter to the rest of the show. They just rushed the cleanup so badly.
My headcanon is Bran warged into the writers and made them do that
D&D certainly displayed the same level of intelligence as Hodor in writing the last 2 seasons.
“bran should be king”
Didn’t you hear, who had a better story? Who? Totally king material.
Even worse (IMHO) was Martin rushing out book 5 in an unfinished state in order to take advantage of the TV show’s popularity.
I think the big thing is the Night King should have stayed in the Far North, and there should have been a counteroffensive to push into his territory and kill him there as the battle keeps raging in the south. A full on war, with the White Walkers being a seemingly impossible enemy to overcome, with the only glimmer of hope being the army in the north slowly approaching the Night King’s stronghold to cut off the threat at its source.
A bit like Frodo et al.
I’m partially with you on this. Comparing the mess of a state that the books’ storylines are in, I think the TV show actually did a good job of cutting out some of the complications, from fake Aegon to Lady Stoneheart to the defeat of Stannis to all the storylines that were pruned in the Sept explosion, and finally moving things towards a conclusion.
If it is the case that Bran wins the throne in the end, fine, I guess that’s the finish that’s been prescribed.
But I do think the show itself could’ve hit all the same major points in a way that was paced better, with more episodes. More time building up Jon and Daenerys relationship, building up Euron as a major force to be reckoned with, making the final battle against the Night King a bit more evenly matched (maybe using some Children or better tactical use of dragons or even the freaking Dothraki), either building up or never adding the Golden Company, and maybe a bit more political or military skirmish/buildup between Cersei’s and Daenerys’s allies. All the while, really showing that Bran himself has got some cool shit going on and turning him into a more compelling character.
I feel like that could’ve been done without actually revamping the core storyline too much.
Daenerys made perfect sense, people overlooked all the evil shit she did the whole way, because she was “good.” You can argue just sitting there listening to bells during the turn was dumb, but the end result makes sense. For all the terrible shit in the last season, that really wasn’t something.
it made sense. but not in that short amount of time shown. If it was a slow change over a season, it would have been perfect. But as it was it bascially went “oh well, better nuke the city”
pretty much this. she had the targaryn gene and it was always going to be her destiny to succumb to the madness. they did a pretty good job for most of the show showing her explicitly overcoming it but then it was like fuck that get angry and be evil in the space of a few episodes
I never finished the show because of this episode. It was that disappointing I didn’t care how it ended anymore.
I started binging the show from the start when I heard how utterly stupid the last season was just so I could enjoy the memes. Worth it.
I can understand saying it was rushed and poorly done, but the trained assassin, who serves the god of death, absolutely should have been the one to kill the night king. No one has a bigger beef with death than the undead army master.
Jon came back to kill Danny and take the throne and restore what passes for peace.
The Three Eyed Raven took it from Jon.
None of this was especially well laid out or planned or paced correctly, but it’s the most Game of Thrones path they could’ve taken.
I mean, it was Martin’s plan, but the writers took the most stupid and lazy routes to get there.
I honestly think he hasn’t finished the books because he’s got no idea himself how to actually end it. And after the backlash the show got, he’s now pretty sure it shouldn’t end like that…
It’s worse than that: there does not exist a good way to end it. He started too many plot threads and now it’s impossible to end them all in a satisfying way.
His two main assistants also fucked off and then wrote The Expanse series of books. Style is surprisingly similar to GoT, and makes me wonder how much was George and how much was them…
Then The Expanse got made into a show and thems two fucked off for good.
IMO his assistants did a lotmof the heavy lifting, and there was too much left to tie off with GoT so he just gave up.
It’s not about who killed the night king, it’s about when he died. If the opening scene of the show is about the white walkers coming and killing everyone, that should be the final scene of the show. Imagine return of the Jedi beginning with killing off Darth Vader, the main villain that the protagonists have been fighting against the entire time, and then the rest of the movie is Luke trying to defeat Jabba. Or if frodo got the ring to Mt Doom and then they still had to defeat saruman
They should have lost the battle in winterfell, retreated to kings landing, then had a final battle against the night King and cersei all in one major battle. It truly doesn’t matter who kills the night King, just that he is the last antagonist to die since he was the first one to be introduced. It’s about closing plot threads in the order that you open them.
Should I have put the part about being poorly paced, planned, and executed in bigger text or something?
That’s pretty general though. I’m trying to pinpoint the issue as the show not properly nesting plot threads.
Greatest teleport assassination in history
The music accompanying the Night King scene is absolutely top-tier. Shame the storytelling failed to live up to it.
They didn’t do a good job of combining the existential threat of the dead with the political turmoil. It would’ve been better to focus on just one.
I kind of like the idea that the white walkers end up being inconsequential to the story.
I like the King dying to an assassin. He ended up being not too much more than a man in the end.
I’m not sure about his army dying with him though.
On the plus side, Lyanna Mormont was pretty awesome.
Never seen a show kill all interest in itself as GoT did at the end.
Although the quality had already dropped enormously as soon as they ran out of book.
Unpopular opinion, this scene was so fucking awesome.
TBH I was super into it when I watched it the first time, the music and the visuals were all fantastic. I soured on it afterwards, when they were like “oh it turns out half the dothraki are still alive” and basically nobody noteworthy faced any consequences for the battle.
This battle should have killed like 90% of the named cast. Really go out with the ultimate expression of “anybody can die” and sell the shit out of the sacrifices made to stop the Walkers.
Imagine if what drove danaerys mad was losing all of her dragons, her army, and many of her allies in order to save Westeros, and not getting any credit
Bucky did it better in Captain America: The Winter Soldier
