Game of Thrones: The Final Season

[malcolm1980]

Discuss it all here. It premieres on Sunday. I, for one, can't wait.

For refreshers, here are my Top 10 favorite episodes of all time:

01. "Hardhome" (S05E08)
02. "Battle of the Bastards" (S06E09)
03. "The Winds of Winter" (S06E10)
04. "The Rains of Castamere" (S03E09)
05. "Baelor" (S01E09)
06. "The Door" (S06E05)
07. "Winter Is Coming/Pilot" (S01E01)
08. "Mother's Mercy" (S05E10)
09. "The Dragon and The Wolf" (S07E07)
10. "The Children" (S04E10)

[emmygrammyoscartony]

Top 10 of all time (in alphabetical order)...

Baelor
Beyond the Wall
Blackwater (will take a lot in these next six episodes to top this as my fave)
The Dance of Dragons
The Door
Hardhome
The Lion and the Rose
Mother's Mercy
The Rains of Castamere
The Winds of Winter

I still think "Battle of the Bastards" is the most overrated GoT episode to date.

[misplaced validity]

I’m on a re-watch before I get to the last season. I’m in season 2 right now, which starts fairly slow.

[malcolm1980]

24 hours before the premiere! My rankings of the seasons of the show:

01. Season 6
02. Season 3
03. Season 1
04. Season 2
05. Season 4
06. Season 5
07. Season 7

[teppo2]

3-5 are pretty much perfect. 2 and 6 are consistently very good, 1 is good but suffers a bit from needing to establish so much, and 7 is too much action, too little character interaction. I expect 8 to me similar to 7 but I’m sure it will be spectacular to watch.

[Culturegeek]

3, 6
5
2
4
1
7, though I still haven't seen the season finale.

ETA: Just did. Wouldn't change the rankings, though.

[emmygrammyoscartony]

I kind of hated it.

This show is nothing like it was 1-6 with its brilliance. The writing is such a mess. I found the dragon sequence beyond cheesy, and also very "WTF?" was the moment that Jon was kissing Dany and Drogon was staring at him. One of the things I love about GoT so much is that it is a fantasy show that throws so many surprises and wrenches in the plot in such clever and innovative ways. I feel like they are DESPERATE for writing and plot points and the result is cringe-inducing and humorous-but-should-not-be-humorous moments that are far too prevalent.

Also, I do not get this love of Jon Snow and never have. I really like Harington, BUT he (and the writers) have failed to show Jon's vulnerability in complex ways like they have with others. Case in point is Dany. I absolutely love how we have seen her grow and get to this point. After seven seasons of rooting for her to get to that throne, it is frustrating to me that we are supposed to now all of the sudden turn on her. The scene with Sam really pissed me off. And the mixture of that with her finding out about Jon driving her made like her father being a real possibility REALLY pisses me off. I would rather them kill Dany off at this point than anything else happening. They are going to ruin this character. Also, I want Cersei on the throne before Jon at this point because one of the things I have loved about this show is how it has empowered so many female characters in a deeply misogynistic setting and world. OF COURSE a man is going to be the one to take the throne.

I cannot wait for George R.R. Martin to write the final books so it can rectify this shit.

Also...

5
2
6
3
1
4
7

[Culturegeek]

I liked it well enough. The show does its iconography well - the climax with the Umber boy was staggeringly well done. And I find fascinating things in the editing rhythms, to be honest.

I want Arya Stark to kill Jamie Lannister then to kill Cersei as Jamie Lannister.

I'm gonna argue that Benioff/Weiss erred when deciding to end the show now, though, because it really does feel super plot oriented, but on steroids.

I liked the Gendry-Arya scenes (loved the call back)

[malcolm1980]

I, too, liked it quite a bit. I noticed that it's practically a remake of the pilot and even has callbacks to a lot of season one moments.

If they followed the books more closely, there's actually enough published material for ten 10-episode seasons before they tap the well dry: The Dorne storyline is far more complex and a lot better than what they came up with in the show. The Kingsmoot storyline involving the Greyjoys is also far more elaborate (there are actually THREE brothers, the show condensed it to just one, Euron). The Stannis-Melisandre-Davos storyline is also longer and more complex. The entire "fake" Aegon Targaryen/Young Griff storyline was dropped all together as well as Lady Stoneheart (although there are elements of both of those story lines in the show).

But I understand why they had to do it: If they did it more faithfully, all the Stark story lines will be cast to the sidelines for a few seasons. The Sansa, Arya and Bran story lines will have to be benched for a couple of seasons (and the kids will look too old). There will be so many new characters to follow, TV viewers may start getting frustrated and forget stuff.

Although the Dorne storyline could've been better and I wished they found a way to incorporate Lady Stoneheart, I'm okay with the way the show-runners did things. The books are the books. The TV show is the TV show.

[misplaced validity]

In a way I wish they had dropped some of the Starks for a bit; we saw far too much of Arya training and Bran doing...not much.

I understand condensing something like Dorne, but ultimately it wasn't handled well (though the payoffs were still good TV).