https://ew.com/tv/2018/11/01/game-of-thrones-final-season-ew-cover-story/

The end of Game of Thrones: An exclusive report on the epic final season
James Hibberd
November 01, 2018 at 12:00 PM EDT

OCTOBER 2017: THE TABLE READ

When Kit Harington entered the conference room, he had no idea what to expect.

The final season’s scripts had been emailed just a couple of days earlier, sending the Game of Thrones cast into a reading frenzy. Like millions of fans around the world, the actors had been waiting nearly a decade to learn their characters’ fates. The entire six-episode season arrived at once, protected by layers of password security.

Sophie Turner flew through her copies in record time, quickly messaging the producers her reaction. “It was completely overwhelming,” says the actress, who plays Sansa Stark. “Afterwards I felt numb, and I had to take a walk for hours.” Others, like Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), first had to hurry home to get some privacy. “I turned to my best mate and was like, ‘Oh my God! I gotta go! I gotta go!’” she recalls. “And I completely flipped out.” She then settled in for a reading session with a cup of tea. “Genuinely the effect it had on me was profound,” Clarke adds. “That sounds insanely pretentious, but I’m an actor, so I’m allowed one pretentious adjective per season.” Peter Dinklage, meanwhile, broke his years-long habit of checking immediately to see if Tyrion Lannister survives. “This was the first time ever that I didn’t skip to the end,” he says.

Even showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were uncharacteristically anxious, wondering how the actors would react to the climactic twists. “We knew exactly when our script coordinator sent them out, we knew what minute they sent them, and then you’re just waiting for the emails,” Benioff said.

The cast then journeyed to Belfast to gather in a production office for the formal read-through. By then, everybody knew the tale that was about to unfold, with two notable exceptions: Davos Seaworth actor Liam Cunningham (“The f—ing scripts wouldn’t open, the double extra security!” he grouses) and Harington, who outright refused to read anything in advance.

“I walked in saying, ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,’” Harington says. “What’s the point of reading it to myself in my own head when I can listen to people do it and find out with my friends?” So, yes: Jon Snow, quite literally, knew nothing.

Benioff and Weiss opened the proceedings by asking the cast to refrain from doing anything during filming or afterward that might reveal even the tiniest spoiler (“Don’t even take a photo of your boots on the ground of the set,” one actor recalls being told). And then, seated around a long table scattered with a few prop skulls, the cast read aloud the final season of Game of Thrones.

At one point, Harington wept.

Later, he cried a second time.

SEPTEMBER 2012: IT’S IMPOSSIBLE

After the table read, the Game of Thrones cast spent 10 months filming just six episodes of television. But the season actually took far longer to pull off. GoT’s final chapters have been in the works for years. To better understand what’s ahead, let’s first go back to EW’s season 3 set visit and this never-before-revealed conversation with Benioff and Weiss…

The production camper was like many others on the set — barren, cramped, cold, utilitarian, with dirt on the floors from muddy boots tramping in and out all day. The showrunners sat on the same side of a tiny dinette booth while the wind coming off the Northern Ireland bay howled outside. They were already thinking about their final season, and it worried them.

During its second season, the fantasy drama averaged 10.3 million viewers across all platforms. That was enough to ensure they were eventually going to finish the series, yet that inevitability was also the problem. Because when they first pitched Thrones to HBO, they hadn’t exactly been honest. And now they were working every day toward a finale that was impossible to make.

“The lie we told is the show is contained and it’s about the characters,” Benioff said, which was at best half true. The epic fantasy was very much about its ensemble cast, but it’s also the least “contained” series ever made. “The worlds get so big, the battles get so massive.”

Author George R.R. Martin, whose series of novels forms the basis for Thrones, had revealed to the duo the broad strokes of how his Song of Ice and Fire saga secretly ends, including a description of an epic final battle that’s been teased from the show’s very first scene. But this climactic confrontation was miles out of reach for a series that cost about $5 million per episode. “We have a very generous budget from HBO, but we know what’s coming down the line and, ultimately, it’s not generous enough,” Benioff said.

So the producers had an idea: The final season could be six hours long and released as three movies in theaters — just like Martin’s best-known influence, The Lord of the Rings. It’s not that the duo wanted to make movies per se, but it seemed like the only way to get the time and money needed to pull off their finale. “It’s what we’re working towards in a perfect world,” Weiss said. “We end up with an epic fantasy story but with the level of familiarity and investment in the characters that are normally impossible in a two-hour movie.”

The flaw in this plan was that HBO is about serving its subscribers, not taking gambles at the box office. Behind the scenes, the network brass gently shot down the movie idea. But executives assured Benioff and Weiss that they would eventually have everything they needed to make a final season that was “a summer tentpole-size spectacle.”

Years later, the producers would strike a deal with the network to spend two years on a shortened season 8 that would cost more than $15 million an episode. You could say HBO made good on that promise from 2012, and the showrunners will happily give the network full credit. “They put their money where their mouths are — literally stuffed their mouth full of million-dollar bills, which don’t exist anymore,” Weiss quips.

But it’s probably more accurate to say that since season 3, Benioff and Weiss willed their ambitious final season into reality the hard way: by growing Game of Thrones into the biggest show in the world, a hugely profitable pop culture and merchandising sensation with more than 30 million viewers an episode and a record number of Emmys. Only with that kind of leverage do your towering ambitions begin to look like reasonable requests.

In fact, the GoT team was so successful that the biggest sticking point in the agreement was persuading HBO to halt the series. “We want to stop where we — the people working on it, and the people watching it — both wish it went a little bit longer,” Benioff says. “There’s the old adage of ‘Always leave them wanting more,’ but also things start to fall apart when you stop wanting to be there. You don’t want to f— it up.”

That concern — a constant desire to conclude the show on the strongest possible note — is something we heard over and over from the cast and crew when we visited the GoT set for the last time.

MARCH 2018: THE FINAL SEASON

Arriving at the studio gate, I’m halted by a guard and asked to scan my badge, a security upgrade from past years. Then I’m asked for my phone, and the guard covers its cameras with stickers — that’s new too. Along with an HBO escort, I walk inside an enormous hangar that’s so large it’s where the RMS Titanic was painted.

What’s being filmed here is episode 6, the series finale. Like Harington going into the table read, I don’t know anything about the final season’s storyline. I look around at a meticulously constructed set that I’ve never seen on the show before. Several actors are performing, and I’m stunned: There are characters in the finale that I did not expect. I gradually begin to piece together what has happened in Westeros over the previous five episodes and try not to look like I’m freaking out.

There is absolutely nothing more that can be said about that scene at this time.

A word about spoilers: The cast is used to keeping story secrets, yet they’ve never sounded so anxious about it. “There are moments where you don’t trust yourself to have this in your brain,” says Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry. “You’re in possession of something millions of people want to know. It’s such a bizarre feeling. And between now and when it comes out, I’m gonna be drunk at some point.”

So far, at least, the team has done a far better job than in previous years at keeping the story under wraps, even while drunk. Theories abound online, but they are guesses. A purported script leaked to Reddit, but here’s a way to spot a fake — real Game of Thrones scripts don’t say “Game of Thrones” on them. “Drone killer” guns were used to guard against any peeping robots attempting to fly over the set. Production documents stating which actors were required to be where and when used code names (Clarke, for example, was “Eldiss”). “It gets highly confusing when you need to remember who is who,” Turner says.

Benioff and Weiss’ next gig is writing a new Star Wars film, and they received some final-season secrecy tips from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and producer Kathleen Kennedy. “They’ve given us a lot of hints about how to lock things down, things we never would have thought of or didn’t know were possible,” Weiss says.

At some point HBO will release a proper final-season trailer revealing more. Until then, here’s some basic setup we can tell you: Season 8 opens at Winterfell with an episode that contains plenty of callbacks to the show’s pilot. Instead of King Robert’s procession arriving, it’s Daenerys and her army. What follows is a thrilling and tense intermingling of characters — some of whom have never previously met, many who have messy histories — as they all prepare to face the inevitable invasion of the Army of the Dead.

“It’s about all of these disparate characters coming together to face a common enemy, dealing with their own past, and defining the person they want to be in the face of certain death,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman says. “It’s an incredibly emotional, haunting, bittersweet final season, and I think it honors very much what George set out to do — which is flipping this kind of story on its head.”

How these fan favorites get along drives much of the drama this season (okay, here’s one specific tease from the premiere — Sansa isn’t thrilled that Jon bent the knee to his fancy new Targaryen girlfriend, at least not at first).

The drama builds to a confrontation with the Army of the Dead that’s expected to be the most sustained action sequence ever made for television or film. One episode — the same that Benioff and Weiss were concerned about pulling off so many years ago — is wall-to-wall action, courtesy of “Battle of the Bastards” director Miguel Sapochnik.

Last April a crew member revealed that Game of Thrones had wrapped 55 night shoots while filming a battle. Media outlets around the world ran stories saying the final season’s battle took twice as long as the 25-day shoot for season 6’s climactic Battle of the Bastards. This wildly understated what really happened. The 55 nights were only for the battle’s outdoor scenes at the Winterfell set. Filming then moved into the studio, where Sapochnik continued shooting the same battle for weeks after that.

“It’s brutal,” Dinklage says. “It makes the Battle of the Bastards look like a theme park.”

The battle doesn’t have just one focus, either, but rather intercuts between multiple characters involved in their own survival storylines that each feels like its own genre. “Having the largest battle doesn’t sound very exciting — it actually sounds pretty boring,” Benioff says. “Part of our challenge, and really, Miguel’s challenge, is how to keep that compelling… we’ve been building toward this since the very beginning, it’s the living against the dead, and you can’t do that in a 12-minute sequence.”

To help pull it off, the production hugely expanded its set for the Stark ancestral home of Winterfell, adding a towering castle exterior, a larger courtyard, and more interconnected rooms and ramparts. Strolling around the new Winterfell is like wandering a sprawling, immersive medieval resort compared with its previous Days Inn-like scale. The ground is covered with snow and blood. The air is thick with smoke from the fire pits. You can turn any direction and only see more Winterfell. It’s easy to feel like you’ve somehow wandered into Westeros.

The Winterfell expansion is just a small example of how every element of the production was heightened this year in an effort to “not f— it up.” Scenes that normally might take a day to film now took several. “ checks take longer, costumes are a bit better, hair and makeup a bit sharper — every choice, every conversation, every attitude has this air of ‘This is it,’” Clarke says. “Everything feels more intense. I had a scene with someone and I turned to him and said, ‘Oh my God, I’m not going to do this ever again,’ and that brings tears to my eyes.”

Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lannister, agrees: “There was a great sense of grief. It’s a huge sense of loss, like we’ll never have anything like this again.”

More tears, like during the table read.

You know, Harington will actually reveal why he cried that second time.

“The second time was the very end,” Harington says. He’s referring to when the cast reached the last page of episode 6, and what the showrunners wrote there at the bottom.

“Every season, you read at the end of the last script ‘End of Season 1,’ or ‘End of Season 2,’” Harington says. “This read ‘End of Game of Thrones.’”

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"You can't beat white people. You can only knock them out."

...he finishes. Not another book in the anthology series or episodes of the GoT prequels or his other sci-fi series. He's at least saying he's committed to finishing the next book.

After that, who the fuck knows? Sounds like he's sticking with the plan to make Dreams of Spring the last book, but more of the Targeryen anthologies might come out beforehand.

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If so is there a specific order to them or are they all individual stories. Sorry I'm being lazy and don't feel like googling.

One is the history/encyclopdia of the World. It basically talks about the each of the seven kingdoms in Westeros, then the stuff across the sea where Dany grew up, and some sketchy details about the lands further to the east and south of that. There's also basic history about lots of the events. It's basically all supplemental.

Haven't read the History of the Targaryens book that came out last year, but from my understand its also supplemental material that can be read at any time. From what I understand, it tooks about characters who have been mentioned and a few who may figure in later, but no "order" is required.

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I know I know this is rumored but where there's smoke there is usually fire.

No way HBO lets the last tow books come out before the show ended. Show only people would read the last book and ratings would tank.

Book readers are going to read the books no matter what.

That said. John lives. Danerys dies. The dragons are all dead. Greyworm, Jorah, Brienne, The Hound, Beric,Tormund, Dolorus Ed,Euron, Theon, Cersai, all die.


Winterfell is destroyed. KL is destroyed. Yara is quenn of the iron islands. Messandei takes a ship and goes home to the summer isles.

How I'd like it to end:

The white walkers are defeated, with heavy losses. Probably Bronn does that wog shit and either mind controls the white walker dragon or mind controls the other two dragons to fuck up the walker dragon. Even though Brienne fucked up The Hound they have to team up to fight the walkers. Maybe Sansa gets killed but who cares. Theon has his moment of redemption and then his punk ass dies. Despite the incest they marry and try to form a new kingdom or whatever. Tormund ends up being the new leader of the Wildlings and they all peace out back the north. Meanwhile Cersei is like fuck all y'all I'm Queen Bitch, and everyone is forced to make a truce with her, knowing that too much of their army died to the walkers for them to stand a chance against the Lannisters. Jaime dies in battle so Cersei's last bit of humanity dies too and she goes full ruthless. Maybe in the aftermath the Hound and The zombie mountain have a showdown and The Hound comes up short. But then oh hell yeah Arya creeps up out of nowhere doing that Scooby Doo shit and finally kills Cersei. Or maybe she shows up with the Sand Snakes and is like you're the last one on my list but I'ma let these hoes get you. Then Daenerys and Snow are the King and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and they let the Dinkles run King's Landing on his own THE END.

but some theories I have are that Tyrion will betray Danny for his sister.

Arya's luck will run out and turning on the Many-Faced God will be her undoing. That's if this is even Arya?!

Daenerys will flip in a bad way when she learns she ISN'T next in line for the Throne and Jon is. Either that or Jon will find out but just not tell her about it.

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Every battle.
Every betrayal.
Every risk.
Every fight.
Every sacrifice.
Every death.
All #ForTheThrone.

https://twitter.com/GameOfThrones/status/1062359268203077633

I thought I'd outlast it as a bookreader but my passion for the series has waned. Holding onto hope though that GRRM's outline was robust enough to keep everyone guessing till the end.

I can only take so much storybook "dogs eating Ramsay huzzah" moments from a series so adept at turning tropes on their head.

While the show probably deviated quite a bit from where George R.R. Martin would/will take it, I think it's still putting a spin on those old tropes.

Ramsey getting eaten by his dogs? Yeah everyone might have been cheering at it, but I thought it showed that Sansa had evolved into someone who could have someone killed off just as brutally and sadistically as Ramsey.

Same with Little Finger. Sansa sits on with almost satisfaction as her once innocent l'il sister slits dude's throat. Even fine ass Danaerys is straight burning folks alive with them dragons and watching it all without flinching. If that's not enough, the show started with Ned Stark chopping ol' boys head off, then he dies the same way, then a few seasons later Jon Snow has to prove his worth as a leader by doing the same thing and chopping off dude's head.

Nobody comes out clean on that show.

I know we live in a time where our movies and TV shows don't shy away from featuring good guys that are okay murdering the bad guys, but even so, I think GoT is pretty successful in showing characters get got in the worse way by merciless villains for the first five or so seasons, then wrapping it up with the characters will love being just as merciless, but somehow we cheer. And there's even characters like Cersei that are right in the middle. She does awful shit and you hate her, but after she goes through hell herself, you almost root for her when she takes her sweet revenge. Or at least you don't know who to root for as almost everyone did someone else dirty.

stopped watching after S2 and sort of checked in here and there. but Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons were both all over the place as novels, which made for really boring television every time I tried checking back in.

I'm cherrypicking episodes from S6 and S7 now, and there are some impressive moments. but agreed -- a lot of the momentum is gone for me. I wonder if Martin is test ballooning some of the ideas he had for each character, and will tweak them for the books.

not that I'm waiting for those, either.

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Game of Thrones | Season 8 | Official Tease: Dragonstone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NspqGM0DbbQ

https://twitter.com/GameOfThrones/status/1084631184804433921

Thats a legit fear of mine, not even playing.

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"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." - James Baldwin

Game of Thrones | Season 8 | Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR4PJn8b8I

https://ew.com/tv/2019/03/04/game-of-thrones-season-8-battle/

Game of Thrones first look: Inside the brutal battle to make season 8

'You are broken as a human and want to cry': An exclusive spoiler-free journey behind the scenes of the final season

James Hibberd
March 04, 2019 at 08:13 AM EST



The great battle is over.

The snowy ground is streaked with blood.

Beloved heroes lay dead outside the castle gates.

Winterfell is quiet.

And then…

A sudden roar from above. A gust of wind. A blur of low-flying movement.

A dragon?

No.

An ice dragon?

Worse.

“F—king spoiler helicopter just flew right over the set!” says an alarmed crew member.

This could be a disaster. It’s April 2018 on the set of the final season of Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland. The helicopter seemingly came out of nowhere and flew directly over a ridiculously sensitive scene from the show’s final season. The production is supposed to have government-protected airspace — no planes, no drones, and sure as the seven hells no mystery choppers buzzing Winterfell. If paparazzi armed with cameras were on board, their photos would cause an explosion in the entertainment universe. Did anybody get its tail number?

The production calls the Civil Aviation Authority to track down the pilot’s identity while showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss are informed of the potential breach. As usual, they are calm. You cannot command a set as sprawling and intense as Game of Thrones and lose your cool every time there might be a catastrophe or you’d never stop hyperventilating.

“There’s always a crisis, there’s always an imminent disaster,” Benioff says. “You never quite know where it’s coming from but, over time, you get a sense of where the real catastrophes are and which ones are probably going to be okay.”

After a tense hour, the news comes down: It was a police helicopter. So GoT’s secrets remain safe for now. All the while, the production never stopped moving. The show must go on, after all, and the HBO drama’s final season is the biggest show on the planet, spending 10 months filming just six episodes for its climactic season 8. Expectations are incredibly high.

“The fans will not be let down,” says director David Nutter. “There are a lot of firsts in these episodes. There’s the funniest sequence I’ve ever shot on this show, the most emotional and compelling scene I’ve ever shot, and there’s one scene where there’s so many together it feels like you’re watching a superhero movie.”

Nutter tackled three episodes in the final season, including a calm-before-the-storm entry that might surprise viewers with its play-like intimacy. The showrunners also directed one episode: the mysterious series finale. (More on that in a bit.)

But it’s the season’s most ambitious entry — arguably the most difficult-to-produce episode in television history — that’s expected to be particularly staggering.

The episode chronicles the great battle of Winterfell, pitting an uneasy collection of allies against the Night King and his army; a face-off teased from the series’ very first scene. It’s one of two in the final season directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who previously tackled “Hardhome” and the Emmy-winning “Battle of the Bastards.” Here fan favorites like Jon Snow (Kit Harington), Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), and Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) are fighting for their lives, impossibly outnumbered against a supernatural enemy.

The episode is expected to be the longest consecutive battle sequence ever committed to film, and brings the largest number of GoT major characters together since the show’s debut episode in 2011 (“You can’t have this many actors on set, there are too many egos!” jokes Harington).

“What we have asked the production team and crew to do this year truly has never been done in television or in a movie,” says co-executive producer Bryan Cogman. “This final face-off between the Army of the Dead and the army of the living is completely unprecedented and relentless and a mixture of genres even within the battle. There are sequences built within sequences built within sequences. David and Dan an amazing puzzle and Miguel came in and took it apart and put it together again. It’s been exhausting but I think it will blow everybody away.”

“Exhausting” is quite the understatement. The episode required 11 weeks of grueling night shoots. Imagine up to 750 people working all night long for nearly three months in the middle of open rural countryside: The temperatures are freezing in the low 30s; they’re laboring in icy rain and piercing wind, thick, ankle-deep mud; reeking horse manure and choking smoke. The stars of Game of Thrones require some coaxing to get candid about their experience because nobody wants to sound like they’re whinging (as The Hound would say). But if you spend even a brief time on set you realize staging the battle was unprecedentedly brutal.

For Williams, the episode marked Arya’s first Game of Thrones battle, an irony that isn’t lost on her. “I skip the battle every year, which is bizarre since Arya’s the one who’s been training the most,” she says. “This is my first taste of it. And I’ve been thrown in at the deep end.”

A full year before filming began, Sapochnik phoned Williams to warn her. “Start training now,” he said, “because this is going to be really hard.”

“And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’” Williams recalls between takes, looking ultra-grimy with dirt and mock blood on her face (as do all the actors). “But nothing can prepare you for how physically draining it is. It’s night after night, and again and again, and it just doesn’t stop. You can’t get sick, and you have to look out for yourself because there’s so much to do that nobody else can do… there are moments you’re just broken as a human and just want to cry.”

Williams’ feelings are backed up by seasoned action veterans on the show, such as Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont. “It was the most unpleasant experience I’ve had on Thrones,” Glen says. “A real test, really miserable. You get to sleep at seven in the morning and when you wake in the midday you’re still so spent you can’t really do anything, and then you’re back. You have no life outside it. You have an absolute f—ked bunch of actors. But without getting too method about it, on screen it bleeds through to the reality of the Thrones world.”

Concurs The Hound actor Rory McCann: “Everybody prays they never have to do this again.”

To get periodic warmth, actors occasionally huddle around a space heater in a tent or duck inside the production’s cramped, bare-bones trailers. But for the show’s crew there is no relief. “I heard the crew was getting 40,000 steps a day on their pedometers,” Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth) says. “They’re the f—king heroes.” Sporadically, one of the crew members would get switched to the day shift where a different episode was being shot and you could instantly spot the gaunt, gray-faced battle episode workers. “It’s like seeing Nosferatu coming in,” Benioff says.

When preparing for the shoot, Sapochnik tried to find a longer battle sequence in cinema history and couldn’t. The closest was the nearly 40-minute Helm’s Deep siege in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which he studied to determine when the audience would get “battle fatigue” from too much hacking and slashing. “It feels like the only way to really approach it properly is take every sequence and ask yourself: ‘Why would I care to keep watching?’” says the British director between takes. “One thing I found is the less action — the less fighting — you can have in a sequence, the better.”

Another directorial challenge was figuring out which character to focus on in each scene when so many heroes are involved. “The I’ve done previously were generally from Jon’s perspective,” Sapochnik says. “Here I’ve got 20-some cast members and everyone would like it to be their scene. That’s complicated because I find the best battle sequences are when you have a strong point of view. I keep thinking: ‘Whose story am I telling right now?’”

Part of Sapochnik’s strategy is asking the actors to fill in the blanks of their storyline of what happens whenever the camera cuts to somebody else. As John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) explains: “We may not have seen Sam for 10 minutes but something has happened to Sam in those 10 minutes — you’ve been fighting, or you’ve been running, or you’ve been hiding. How has your story developed? You have to hold in your mind what’s happened since we saw you last.”

To keep actors focused during the long, cold hours, Sapochnik surprises them with questions. “You’re in the middle of a battle and Miguel comes up and goes, ‘Why are you here?’” McCann says. “Why am I here? It gets you thinking. Then he’ll go to another actor and go, ‘What are you fighting for?’” (One actor snarks back, “My close-up!”). As Glen notes: “Everybody is fighting for a personal reason and Miguel tries to imbue every moment in that.”

During one scene that requires a lot of standing still (not during the fighting) one of the show’s series regular actresses abruptly collapses. “Medic on set!” a crew member yells. The showrunners are out of their tent in a flash and run to her. For a few still moments, it feels like the whole cast and crew are holding their collective breath. Then the news circulates that she’s okay, “just fainted.” The actress goes home early and is back the next day.

Filming wasn’t always going be this tough. The original schedule made the battle easier by breaking up filming into very short, specific shots that would, on an average night, require a smaller cast and crew. That’s the standard Hollywood approach to assembling an action sequence.

“We built this massive new part of Winterfell and originally thought, ‘We’ll film this part here and this part there,’ and basically broke it down into so many pieces it would be shot like a Marvel movie, with never any flow or improvisation,” Sapochnik says. “Even on Star Wars, they build certain parts of the set and then add huge elements of green screen. And that makes sense. There’s an efficiency to that. But I turned to the producers and said, ‘I don’t want to do 11 weeks of night shoots and no one else does. But if we don’t we’re going to lose what makes Game of Thrones cool and that is that it feels real.’”

The producers agreed. “When you have rapid cutting you can tell it was all assembled in post-production,” Benioff says. “That’s not the show’s style and it’s not Miguel’s style.” So they approved a schedule that became infamously known among the team as “The Long Night.”

Being surrounded by the expanded Winterfell sets, shooting such long takes with so many actors working amid such rough conditions, reality began to blur at times. “The Winterfell set is unlike anything I’ve seen in my life,” says Grey Worm actor Jacob Anderson. “It’s not like most sets you walk through a door and you see and equipment. You can walk into rooms and cross into tunnels and find yourself in another part of the castle. It’s really immersive. Especially when there is haze and snow and people running around, you can get genuinely lost. There were a few moments where I forgot it wasn’t real, which is bizarre.”

Amid the exhaustion, every detail still counts. During one scene, Bradley wields a sword at undead wight attackers played by stuntmen (the script playfully says of the wights: “They’re zombies but not zombies, we have our own thing.”)

“Sam looks like a badass,” I say admiringly to Cogman.

The producer turns to others: “You hear what he just said? That’s the problem. Sam isn’t supposed to look like a badass.”

I suddenly wish I hadn’t said anything. But Bradley quickly adjusts his performance. The next take he looks more confused, awkward and startled by each new attack. It clicks. Suddenly you’re not seeing badass Bradley, but Samwell Tarly.

“When doing these huge fight sequences, you get carried away sometimes,” Bradley says. “You want to make yourself look as good as possible. Miguel said to me, ‘I know that you want to show you’re quite good at this. But remember your character. Sam’s not that good at this. You have to play him because that’s what’s going to be truthful. So stop being so good!’”

The battle scenes shot inside the studio during the day are tough as well. The production’s cavernous Paint Hall hangar is kept full of smoke created by a machine that heats up paraffin and fish oil. Soon the cast and crew find themselves coughing up fishy candle wax. Protective paper masks multiply in popularity and one crew member has an asthma attack and is taken to the hospital.

Amid some rare downtime in the dim, smoky hangar, two seated figures enjoyed a moment of respite with some tea.

“We’re no longer the little kids of Game of Thrones,” Turner reflects.

“Thank God,” Williams replies.

“You know the Titanic was built here,” Turner says. “All that child labor went into it and the child labor continues here today.”

“Except they had it worse, they weren’t brought tea,” Williams says.

Sapochnik suddenly appears and halts their banter: “Do you know what you’re doing next?”

“We think so,” Williams says.

“Have you seen your scene?” he asks, referring to a “pre-viz” animation he mocked up of the battle episode.

“Yes,” Turner replies. “Can we see the whole episode?”

“No.”

“Rumor has it it’s 90 minutes long,” she helpfully prods.

Sapochnik just smiles and darts to his next task. He’s directing three different units shooting three different scenes all at the same time, which is, frankly, bonkers. “If Miguel lives through this it will be the hardest thing he’s ever done,” executive producer Bernadette Caulfield says, “the hardest thing all of us have ever done.”

Spoiler: The cast and crew lived. And all our favorite characters? Well, their fates remain to be seen. Crew members don triumphant “We Survived The Long Night” jackets and the actors can now tell their war stories. “The hard work pays off on this show,” Williams says. “After one of those really tough days, you know it’s going to be part of something so iconic and it will look amazing.”

Yet there’s another episode in the final season where fan expectations are running even higher: The show’s extremely top-secret final episode, directed by Benioff and Weiss.

For the finale, secrecy was ratcheted up to another level. Only crew members wearing a special Episode 6 badge were allowed on set during filming and some scenes were shot on a closed set. I joke to the showrunners that I wouldn’t be surprised if they directed the finale themselves just so they wouldn’t have to reveal their ending to one additional person.

“When something has been sitting with you for so long, you have such a specific sense of the way each moment should play and feel,” Weiss explains. “Not just in terms of ‘this shot or that shot,’ though sometimes it’s that as well. So it’s not really fair to ask somebody else to get that right. We’d be lurking over their shoulder every take driving them crazy making it hard for them to do their job. If we’re going to drive anybody crazy it might as well be ourselves.”

And what will the Game of Thrones ending feel like? The show’s cast have teased a wide and conflicting spectrum of reactions in media interviews. You know this is a story that subverts conventional fantasy storytelling. And you might also know Benioff and Weiss have long said they ignore what fans say they think they want in their story.

Still, make no mistake…

“We want people to love it,” Weiss says. “It matters a lot to us. “We’ve spent 11 years doing this. We also know no matter what we do, even if it’s the optimal version, that a certain number of people will hate the best of all possible versions. There is no version where everybody says, ‘I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this’ — that’s an impossible reality that doesn’t exist. I’m hoping for the Breaking Bad argument where it’s like, ‘Is that an A or an A+?’”

Adds Benioff: “From the beginning we’ve talked about how the show would end. A good story isn’t a good story if you have a bad ending. Of course we worry.”

The finale will air May 19. Tens of millions of fans around the world will tune in to see which characters perish, which survive (if any) and who sits on the Iron Throne (if anyone). And then we’ll enter a post-Game of Thrones world, with all our watches having ended.

Benioff is pretty blunt about his finale viewing plans. “I plan to be very drunk,” he says, “and very far from the internet.”

after the sparring scene from last season I wanna see the two of them just mow down a battlefield full of whites.

Season 8, Episode 1
Debut date: Sunday, April 14 at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)
Estimated running time: 0:54

Season 8, Episode 2
Debut date: Sunday, April 21 at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)
Estimated running time: 0:58

Season 8, Episode 3
Debut date: Sunday, April 28 at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)
Estimated running time: 1:22

Season 8, Episode 4
Debut date: Sunday, May 5 at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)
Estimated running time: 1:18

Season 8, Episode 5
Debut date: Sunday, May 12 at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)
Estimated running time: 1:20

Season 8, Episode 6
Debut date: Sunday, May 19 at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT)
Estimated running time: 1:20

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-thrones-final-season-episode-running-times-revealed-1194967

if the trend from previous seasons continues. I can't imagine a full episode of all battle. it's gonna be fucking epic.

Was confirmed a while ago. Longest episode as well. Directed by the same guy that did Hardhome and Battle Of The Bastards


"the Night King actor Vladimir Furdik has already revealed that a battle that’s “the biggest in television history” is arriving in episode 3 of Game of Thrones season 8."

https://www.gamesradar.com/game-of-thrones-season-8-will-feature-a-battle-that-lasts-a-whole-episode-and-heres-when-we-might-see-it/

---------------------------------------

"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." - James Baldwin

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN AND THE FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON (obviously).












continuing the tradition of rather chill season openers, this episode was all about throwing back to ep1 of season 1 & mirroring the situation from years earlier to where it is now: a kingly procession strolling into Winterfell, a curious child climbing up above to view the spectacle, distrust of non-Northeners etc.
awesome to see so many characters come together for the first time ever, and others seeing each other for the first time since season 1. so many confrontations have to be quickly played out and then put aside so all can fight the army of the dead.
HBO already posted a couple of breakdowns here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha8Qsx6_OBw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkdbetJTZGA.

and the preview for ep02 where Jaime gets to answer to Daeny for killing his father, and (one assumes, based on the final shot of ep01) to Bran for crippling him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6YCfVe4eR0.

Sam's reunion with Jon was great, him finding about his ancestry wasn't overly-dramatic or over-done, i think they handled it just right. after Sam learns of his father and brother's demise, obviously he's got more motivation to urge him to take the lead and be the king of "the 7 bloody kingdoms". i feel like both Daeny and Jon have shown compassion AND no mercy during their time as leaders, but one of em commands 2 dragons and the other does not.
although considering the dragons recognise Jon as Targaryan anyways, he really could usurp the would-be queen and take his rightful place.

ultimately i think Sam's *best* point was that Jon was humble enough to set aside his crown for the good of his, and all, people. it seems unlikely Daeny would do the same.

some clear setup for some obvious conflict, but i hope they pay it off in the unexpected and twisty ways that we've come to expect from this show.

V.

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For some of these events to take place that i wish i didnt feel rushed and overwhelmed like one big giant HS reunion. The Arya/Jon meet up didn't have anywhere near the emotion it deserved but that's just what this show is now so I guess you just have to accept it. The early seasons ain't coming back.

I loved the opening scene/procession. Honestly whenever they film one of the armies moving in unison like that is pretty hype.

At least someone (Sansa) is finally calling out Cersei on her fake ass pledge go come help. It makes sense that she of all people would recognize it. But certainly a few other people should see it too (Tyrion).

Was Cersei really in a position where she needed to let Euron fuck? Any how did wack ass Theon manage to infiltrate that entire fleet and rescue Yara? And Winterfell is gonna be happy to get Theon back to fight on their side? lol

>For some of these events to take place that i wish i didnt
>feel rushed and overwhelmed like one big giant HS reunion. The
>Arya/Jon meet up didn't have anywhere near the emotion it
>deserved but that's just what this show is now so I guess you
>just have to accept it. The early seasons ain't coming back.
>
Really I didn't mind this. In a lot of fantasy series the big reunions are underwhelming, because the characters are a little more battle worn, a little harder, a little more older and jaded. Sometimes it's just a hug, and they move on to the war ahead. The innocence they had when they last saw one another is GONE.

>At least someone (Sansa) is finally calling out Cersei on her
>fake ass pledge go come help. It makes sense that she of all
>people would recognize it. But certainly a few other people
>should see it too (Tyrion).

Yeah Sansa's development is great. Really I think she should end up on the throne.

>Was Cersei really in a position where she needed to let Euron
>fuck? Any how did wack ass Theon manage to infiltrate that
>entire fleet and rescue Yara? And Winterfell is gonna be happy
>to get Theon back to fight on their side? lol

I agree about everything with Theon. With Cersei I think she let Euron hit it because he had mountain sized balls and all she has now is zombie Mountain. She probably wanted to fuck more than he did lol.

>>For some of these events to take place that i wish i didnt
>>feel rushed and overwhelmed like one big giant HS reunion.
>The
>>Arya/Jon meet up didn't have anywhere near the emotion it
>>deserved but that's just what this show is now so I guess
>you
>>just have to accept it. The early seasons ain't coming back.
>>
>Really I didn't mind this. In a lot of fantasy series the big
>reunions are underwhelming, because the characters are a
>little more battle worn, a little harder, a little more older
>and jaded. Sometimes it's just a hug, and they move on to the
>war ahead. The innocence they had when they last saw one
>another is GONE.

I feel you on this but I think another part of the problem is that the scene got lost in the jumble of a lot of other reunions, reveals, info-dumps. There was just A LOT of payoffs happening in this episode one right after another.

Would it be more legitimate (publicly) to have another kid by her brother or at least someone else (who claims to be a King)?


It's Cerci though so this ain't gonna work out too well.

_______________________
We rationalize dumb shit

>Would it be more legitimate (publicly) to have another kid by
>her brother or at least someone else (who claims to be a
>King)?
>

So if she didnt let him fuck after all he has done he could easily take the Iron Fleet and dip.

---------------------------------------

"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." - James Baldwin

Is Dany and she's starting to look awfully petty and childish. Her days concerning herself over slavery and high morality seem to be a thing of the past.

Other than it being a ridiculous and wasteful plot point...how did Dany suffer from trusting Cersei? I'm guessing it's because she could've just killed her and taken over the throne right then and there?

Based on Jamie's conversation with Bran...it's looking like he has 0% chance of making it out of this battle alive.

I forget...does the army of the living know that one of the dragons is now fighting for the night king? That issue aside, why even engage in hand to hand in combat if you can just flyover with the dragons and burn em all?

Tormund had some funny moments but they prob need to take it down a notch or two before he becomes a caricature.

>
>I forget...does the army of the living know that one of the
>dragons is now fighting for the night king? That issue aside,
>why even engage in hand to hand in combat if you can just
>flyover with the dragons and burn em all?
>
>Tormund had some funny moments but they prob need to take it
>down a notch or two before he becomes a caricature.

Agreed.

---------------------------------------------------------

>Other than it being a ridiculous and wasteful plot point...how
>did Dany suffer from trusting Cersei? I'm guessing it's
>because she could've just killed her and taken over the throne
>right then and there?

She suffered because of Tyrion's whole stupid plan to get a wight to convince Cersei cost her a dragon.

If Tyrion was smart he would've advised for her to march them all to King's Landing, meet the dead there, and settle it/call Cersei's bluff

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>If Tyrion was smart he would've advised for her to march them
>all to King's Landing, meet the dead there, and settle it/call
>Cersei's bluff

Or instead of fleeing with the Wight she could have stayed and just burnt the whole dead army and Night King right then and there. She still had 2 dragons after all.

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which is why I said 'that ridiculous plot line'

but dany's emphasis seemed to be on Cersei's lie and made no mention of the events preceding the king's landing meet up.

maybe it's just implied but it wouldve been easy to say 'yo u cost us a dragon u dumb mfer!'

>She suffered because of Tyrion's whole stupid plan to get a
>wight to convince Cersei cost her a dragon.

After Dany had just finished burning up most of her infantry.....and she lost a dragon.

---------------------------------------

"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." - James Baldwin

BTW Cersei, Sansa and Dany all CLEARLY are concerned about the Throne. Almost all equally looking at the war against the dead that is in front of them but at the same time wondering what to do if they they eventually survive that war.

Not sure how Dany is being petty or childish when her whole story arc has been about fighting for her family name and being the first female in her fam to rule the 7 kingdoms. It's what we liked about her. With all she's been through I don't see how we can look at her being petty or childish for all that she has accomplished could be taken away not just from the war, Cersei, and now Jon being the rightful heir to what she's been working towards. That is not petty. Maybe unfocused when she has to get past the dead first but it's a legitimate reason of concern.



----------

IG @h_n_z

>BTW Cersei, Sansa and Dany all CLEARLY are concerned about
>the Throne. Almost all equally looking at the war against the
>dead that is in front of them but at the same time wondering
>what to do if they they eventually survive that war.
>
>Not sure how Dany is being petty or childish when her whole
>story arc has been about fighting for her family name and
>being the first female in her fam to rule the 7 kingdoms.
>It's what we liked about her. With all she's been through I
>don't see how we can look at her being petty or childish for
>all that she has accomplished could be taken away not just
>from the war, Cersei, and now Jon being the rightful heir to
>what she's been working towards. That is not petty. Maybe
>unfocused when she has to get past the dead first but it's a
>legitimate reason of concern.


^^^^alladis

I still think Sansa will become the new Cersei. I do think Sansa survives some how, i'm just not sure she rules the 7 kingdoms. I think her blind spot for whats best for the 7 kingdoms/her and whats best for her family are still blurry to her. Much like Cersei shes more tired of being told what to do and being passed around that she wont bend the knee and ultimately wants to rule. SHe uses the excuse of doing whats best for her family but I think thats only part of it. Arya is buying into it because she's motivated by what was done to her family and she wants revenge. I hope she see's the light but that last line in the scene of her and Jon's reunion tells me she won't.

"I'm her family too"
"....Don't forget that"




----------

IG @h_n_z

>I still think Sansa will become the new Cersei. I do think
>Sansa survives some how, i'm just not sure she rules the 7
>kingdoms. I think her blind spot for whats best for the 7
>kingdoms/her and whats best for her family are still blurry to
>her. Much like Cersei shes more tired of being told what to do
>and being passed around that she wont bend the knee and
>ultimately wants to rule. SHe uses the excuse of doing whats
>best for her family but I think thats only part of it.


thats a hell of an arc too

Sansa just asked if the North would still be free, being that they took back their home land. She doesnt seem to give a shit about whats happening down South. She basically lived as Ramsey's slave and vows to not let the North ever be ruled over again. Completely different. Those two are literally the only two still playing the old game, when it doesnt exist anymore.

---------------------------------------

"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." - James Baldwin

I've always got the sense that she was done listening to people. Look how she's been since coming back home. She argued with Jon because she thought she always knew better. She knew what was right to do. Not telling her hand and using Little Finger the way she did was a move she wasn't wiling to tell was VERY Cersei type move. Do i think she has shown she wants the throne? No not bluntly. But we've seen signs of it from day one. The way she idolized the Lannisters and wanting to be a future queen was def telling. She wanted that so bad to the point she basically betrayed her family in a way and looked down on them.


----------

IG @h_n_z

and no longer wants to deal with tyrants

kings landing was a house of horrors for her...I don't see any part of her that wants to go back, even if she was going back to rule.

I cheered out loud when Arya took out the Night King. I was so loud that I was immediately worried that I woke up my kids upstairs.

That was my shit.

So was ol' girl making that last stand to kill the giant.

This battle was HUGE. I heard that it was bigger than the Battle of Helms Deep but I couldn't believe it. IT WAS.

My only minor complaint was that a lot of it was so dark that sometimes I couldn't tell what was going on. Besides Theon I didn't really know who lived and who the White Walkers killed. That could just be my TV though.

Actually I have two minor complaints. I have no idea whatsoever as to why Bran Stark is so important. Why did he wog with those ravens? I was just sure that his powers were going to play some role in the battle but NOPE.

Spoilers on GOT 'and' avengers ENDGAME......




anybody think this is kinda the same plot point as another epic sized piece of entertainment happening this same weekend?

while watching last nights GOT battle episode I kept on thinking, "heh, go figure, so this is 'essentially' kinda the same thing that happened in EndGame. Bran/DocStrange two dudes who were able to 'see all' for the most part were able to see in advance the 'only' scenario where the humans can win....so they do a combination of 'orchestration' and 'letting some stuff happen' (which is also orchestration in a way), to make sure this 'one scenario' plays out, knowing that it involves a several folk dying along the way (even though we got wayyyy fewer deaths last night than I expected. I think they're coming though....when the REAL battle gets rolling..).

anyways, thats what I was feeling as I watched it.

I wasn't a huge fan of last nights ep though. Started with promise (liked the slow tension at the beginning, like the flaming dathraki weapons timing out in the distance, that was nice), and ended with a really exciting and satisfying Arya moment.... but in between, mostly too murky and hard to see, some rather goofy plot holes in the battle strategy, some folks still alive who no way should be given their situations in this battle....etc etc.

Arya's fight scenes throughout the Ep were the highlight by a mile for me. It was the only clear, well-choreographed fight and it tied true to her character/arch.

one more beef/question....

GHOST????

IF he died, part of me is glad that it was OFF screen (dog lover here, so seeing him on the front line had me maaaaadWORRIED at the beginning....not sure how I would have reacted actually SEEing him get taken down. Would prob have a broken flat screen today .

like I said...IF he died. they didn't actually SHOW him go down. and I didn't see him in the background when old mr Freeze rose his dead posse up....so maybe he's still out there somewhere...

SPOILERS





It was never in her story arc for this to happen. Just seems like they are pandering or trying to be too smart. All these seasons of building up Jon to face off with the Night's King and you drag that build up by having Jon pinned down. Then having a fight with the Nights King last 2 seconds. Cmon. I get the show wasnt about that fight of humans vs the dead and more so about the throne but very anti-climatic. But more annoyed that it was random.

I now believe my theory of Sansa/Arya and what looks to be Tyrion will go up against Cersei vs Dany/Jon. I really do think Sansa will become the new Cersei.


----------

IG @h_n_z

is in next week's episode preview

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

*Effasig*

>is in next week's episode preview>

whew! thanks


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RIP David Williams:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Williams_(guitarist)

loved the music and the whole vibe.

I enjoyed the darkness element...for the most part. Most of the battle scenes have been hard to discern anyway so I guess I'm just used to that at this point. And in this one we're dealing with a bunch of ravenous zombies which makes things even harder to slow down. I suppose at times it didnt need to be THAT dark but whatever I'm not too bent outta shape over it. I think the one thing I had a really hard time figuring out were the in-air dragon fighting scenes...it was really hard to recognize the good dragons from the undead dragon.

Loved Mellisandra coming back and weaving in some of the themes from the early seasons.

I enjoyed the hell outta the episode but I think it outright failed in effectively explaining what the Night King and his army actually wanted and their motivation for terror (unless it was just terror for the sake of terror). In an earlier episode this season they made a reference to the Night King wanting to kill Bran to erase the memory of the world? Or something like that? I need a little more than that to know what we're fighting for here.

The episode (or maybe the series in general) also failed to to explain Bran's role in that battle and in the fight against army of the undead. Bran channeled back into the ravens but I have no idea what he accomplished with that. I'm sure I could google it but I shouldn't need to do research after watching a 90 min show.

>loved the music and the whole vibe.
>
>I enjoyed the darkness element...for the most part. Most of
>the battle scenes have been hard to discern anyway so I guess
>I'm just used to that at this point. And in this one we're
>dealing with a bunch of ravenous zombies which makes things
>even harder to slow down. I suppose at times it didnt need to
>be THAT dark but whatever I'm not too bent outta shape over
>it. I think the one thing I had a really hard time figuring
>out were the in-air dragon fighting scenes...it was really
>hard to recognize the good dragons from the undead dragon.
>
>Loved Mellisandra coming back and weaving in some of the
>themes from the early seasons.

same here. they do a pretty excellent job of turning hated characters into beloved and opposite also. honestly one of my favorite parts of the episode is when she told Clegane that Berric "served his purpose"... and initially all that told us was... for... Arya? but pretty damn awesome how ALL OF THAT came together (you'll shut a thousand eyes). there were some really cool throwbacks this episode.

>I enjoyed the hell outta the episode but I think it outright
>failed in effectively explaining what the Night King and his
>army actually wanted and their motivation for terror (unless
>it was just terror for the sake of terror). In an earlier
>episode this season they made a reference to the Night King
>wanting to kill Bran to erase the memory of the world? Or
>something like that? I need a little more than that to know
>what we're fighting for here.

its pretty awful how bad they have really conveyed the Night King. what was it, season 2, that it showed the Children of the Forest creating him? and then we went YEARS without anything shedding light on that. and basically, NK wants to kill the Raven so that the history of man will be forgotten. makes sense to me, but I agree they did a poor job of explaining him in a historical context.

>The episode (or maybe the series in general) also failed to to
>explain Bran's role in that battle and in the fight against
>army of the undead. Bran channeled back into the ravens but I
>have no idea what he accomplished with that. I'm sure I could
>google it but I shouldn't need to do research after watching a
>90 min show.

i am basically a die hard Brann fan and have been since day 1. and its hard to defend him here. I personally think after watching that episode twice is that he warged into the crows to keep "eyes on" the NK until he reached the Godswood. Brann knew what was gonna happen this whole time I think... Giving Arya the dagger was either a MASSIVE COINCIDENCE or he simply knew how this would all play out. if the Red Woman knew, im sure Brann could. just played the Slow Game and getting almost everyone killed.

Jon Snow and Danny were basically superfluous thru that battle. what the HELL happened to Jons dragon? We saw Dannys bounce with all the zombies on him but Jons basically crash landed and we never saw him again.

enjoyed the episode a lot. like you, a lot of the combat is really hard to follow. I think they cheat a lot of it, but should be expected for the cost of everything. i thought it was DUMB AS HELL to rush them w the Dothraki. brave but dumb.

Gray Worm with the mach3 spear spinning with 4000 dead bodies near him was legit.

-----------------------------------------

>
>same here. they do a pretty excellent job of turning hated
>characters into beloved and opposite also.

paging Jamie Lannister



>
>its pretty awful how bad they have really conveyed the Night
>King. what was it, season 2, that it showed the Children of
>the Forest creating him?

I really need to go back and watch this. I've only watched this show one time through.


>i am basically a die hard Brann fan and have been since day 1.
>and its hard to defend him here. I personally think after
>watching that episode twice is that he warged into the crows
>to keep "eyes on" the NK until he reached the Godswood. Brann
>knew what was gonna happen this whole time I think.

If he knew what was gonna happen then he wouldn't have needed eyes on the NK.



>Jon Snow and Danny were basically superfluous thru that
>battle. what the HELL happened to Jons dragon? We saw Dannys
>bounce with all the zombies on him but Jons basically crash
>landed and we never saw him again.

Seemed like the Dany/Jon/dragons were putting in work by burning off a lot of the wights.

The other dragon stuff was very unclear. One of the dragons (Jon's dragon) returned to Dany at the end to console her as she wept over Sir Jorah. And I thought Dany's dragon died?


>enjoyed the episode a lot. like you, a lot of the combat is
>really hard to follow. I think they cheat a lot of it, but
>should be expected for the cost of everything. i thought it
>was DUMB AS HELL to rush them w the Dothraki. brave but dumb.

Much of the battle strategy didn't make sense. The only real effective strategy was burning the wights with the dragons. But relying on that only wouldn't have made for very interesting TV.

The battle against the undead is over in one episode, one night in the GoT universe? WTF!??! They really learned to save on the effects budget by keeping shit in the dark.

And we never really get to the motivation of the Night King.

Naw, I ain't happy.

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Scratch the budget comment.

GamerTag and PSN: PokeEmAll

“An endless night,” Bran explains to his comrades in Winterfell. “He wants to erase this world and I am its memory.”

We also know there's a good chance he's pretty pissed at the world because of how he was created. I'd have been more mad if there'd been a scene of the Night King explaining himself when we've got more or less everything we need to understand.

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>“An endless night,” Bran explains to his comrades in
>Winterfell. “He wants to erase this world and I am its
>memory.”

Wouldn't killing everyone be effectively the same as erasing its memory?

And why does he want to erase the world?

>We also know there's a good chance he's pretty pissed at the
>world because of how he was created.

I need to go back and watch this. Maybe the answers are there. It's been a number of years since I've seen it.

>“An endless night,” Bran explains to his comrades in
>Winterfell. “He wants to erase this world and I am its
>memory.”
>
>We also know there's a good chance he's pretty pissed at the
>world because of how he was created. I'd have been more mad if
>there'd been a scene of the Night King explaining himself when
>we've got more or less everything we need to understand.

Yeah I remember that but I guess I just didn't like that reason, haha.

Still doesn't make me any less pissed that the NK prepared for how ever many hundreds of years or whatever and the battle ended in 60 minutes.

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is that everything he's ever done, reflects way more going on that "I want to kill everyone"

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

dollar dollar bill, y'all

when Tyrion took that big sigh, I was still pretty much all in, even with the dragons meandering about being useless and so many characters cheating death seconds after being depicted in a scene being overwhelmed. The music was swelling, the tables had been set, I was all in...

Nah. Don't give me the cheap "didn't see that coming!" ending. I'm not even gonna rant about it. This episode had a great first thirty minutes and made me seriously consider not watching the last three episodes for the last hour (I will, 'cause why not).

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
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like at least 9 zombines came into the birds-eye view of Danny&Jorah and then cut to another impossible-to-win combat scene. they defintely cheated a ton of scenes and tried to have this insane build up with these cutscenes across characters. that birds eye one was total bullshit. Arya got overwhlemed 3x and we never even saw how she got out of it.

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the rest of the damn show is the jon/dany/cersei show?

you kidding me right now?

no more NK?
no more army of the dead?
no more crazy magic shit?


CMON MAN

Well, any other ending beyond the Night King simply winning and killing them all. That'd be the other option.

But they spent full seasons building up Arya, showing her training in great detail, making her the deadliest assassin in the Seven Kingdoms. The Red Witch teased it seasons ago, the dagger's relevance has been known, it was in Arya's hands. It's been built to for years now.

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Nothing is worse than teleporting a character behind a scene just in time to do a thing.

I said it in GD, but just give us a quick set up of a figure moving through the God's Wood after Jon is cut off by Viserys, reveal it's Arya, reveal she's behind the Night King, then give us all the same shots that made the show if you want.

An exciting surprise is way more fun to watch than a dull, blunt surprise.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

And while Arya was said to have been training to be a great assassin, the show did a piss poor job with depicting that journey. HBO botched the Braavos phase badly

But I could totally accept and ride with her killing the NK if it was like after a long ass period of time with Westeros having been through the ringer and whatnot...and if Jon Snow hadn't been rendered utterly distracted and useless once this big war against the ominous threat from beyond the wall that his entire adult life had been about preparing for finally arrived.

Personally, I more wanted to see Arya be the one to murk the hound and cersei...having her kill NK kinda would make it lame for her to take them out too now, but i don't need the show to do what i imagine. Just need it to pay off its own story in a way that does justice to the buildup.