Poll: Winter Is Coming - HBO's A Game of Thrones [READ WARNING]

[CaptainRAVE]

Well that went well. Cersei doesn’t really have any opposition now.

I’m breathless after that episode. Loved it. Wow.

Where do they go now? NK dead. 3 long episodes.

 

[Minusorange]

What would you have written?

Not have the Dothraki charge head on into an army they couldn't see, cavalry are used for flanking not head on
Have Mellisandre bless ALL the weapons with fire, not just the Dothraki
Not have Mellisandre ruin the ending half way through and have Arya vanish for half an hour (the writers say it makes you forget but I was waiting for her to show up and kill the NK the moment she mentioned closing blue eyes)
Not have the Unsullied waste their lives defending outside the walls when they could have manned the walls to prevent the dead breaching them
Make use of the fact that Winterfell was built by the same dude who built the wall and at least have "some" kind of magic protection against the dead to make it look like they have hope and then have the Night King overcome it like he did with the wall
Not have Theon YOLO into the Night King when Bran says thanks
Have the Night King actually fight along with the Whitewalkers and not have him casually stroll over to Bran and take his sweet ass time killing him
Have Bran do something other than worg into some ravens that literally served no purpose
Ditch the plot armour and kill more characters, not just those whose story arcs were obviously finished (Sam for instance surrounded by the dead, using them as a couch, somehow survives despite being a worse fighter than little Lyanna)
There was a door protecting the crypt, yet for some reason the dead cannot break it ? But they can smash through the doors elsewhere in the castle like they're paper, not to mention the ones that do come alive in the crypt can somehow scratch their way through solid stone ??

The battle was epic, but the story itself was probably one of the worst written GOT episodes ever

 

[Efour]

Some really terrible editing just made it really nonsense.
So much to just say wtf to.
Such horrible pacing and, I just don't know if I cba to moan, just smile and watch the last episodes.
It's really suffered this season, it's a superhero movie.

 

[Washout]

That was the biggest steaming pile of BS I've ever seen.

One undead giant O_o - you see several giants get blasted by the dragons
No Ice spiders o_O - there have never been ice spiders in the show
What the NK touches he turns, grabs Arya, nowt. O_o - We've seen his turn babies into WW, nothing else?
His generals and army all stand around whilst she passed them, jumps 9ft in the air and attacks him..............right........ O_o - They don't see her coming thanks to her training?
Why was the NK attacking? Why the rush for the undead? Surround the castle and wait........forever? o_O (might spoil the action show-ness but come on they have waited 1000 years, what's 6 months outside a castle! - Why, not like they care about casualties. Dragon couldn't stop him, as far as he cared nothing could.
NK could have been raising the dead all over the shop too, he only did his party trick once o_O - Again, at what point did he need to do it?

You can have grievances with how things panned out or choices but when most of your complaints can actually be explained fairly easily calling something, "the biggest steaming pile of BS I've ever seen" seems a bit hyperbolic...

Have a Snickers too.

 

[cm1179]

i'm going to watch it again shortly but the more i think about it, compared to other epic fights, it has not quite met expectation and (not for the first time) this series isn't making as high a grade as the others

felt very 'walking dead' at times when got has always been 2 leagues above. some of the dragon flights again a tad cheese and jon snow's accent? bloody hell

the crypt scene was a bit of a mess as was when the dead just fell and piled up in the fortress. also, the knight king could've used the army to end snow and didn't

but then the ending with the gorgeous melisandre the haunting scene of the dothraki being wiped out, the trauma of battle felt by greyworm and the hound and some of the cinematography still keeps this show at number 1

 

[SpeedFreak]

Terrible, dreadful bitrate on Sky - We were watching it in a darkened room and the artifacting was disgraceful.

Great episode though, loved it.

Thought it was just me. Shocking picture quality!

 

[SexyGreyFox]

It comes to something when you have to close the curtains in your house during daylight to try and make sense of what's on the TV.
What a pile of poo that episode was, straight out of the Walking Dead and nobody significant dead.

 

[Stumble Bum]

Not have the Dothraki charge head on into an army they couldn't see, cavalry are used for flanking not head on
Have Mellisandre bless ALL the weapons with fire, not just the Dothraki
Not have Mellisandre ruin the ending half way through and have Arya vanish for half an hour (the writers say it makes you forget but I was waiting for her to show up and kill the NK the moment she mentioned closing blue eyes)
Not have the Unsullied waste their lives defending outside the walls when they could have manned the walls to prevent the dead breaching them
Make use of the fact that Winterfell was built by the same dude who built the wall and at least have "some" kind of magic protection against the dead to make it look like they have hope and then have the Night King overcome it like he did with the wall
Not have Theon YOLO into the Night King when Bran says thanks
Have the Night King actually fight along with the Whitewalkers and not have him casually stroll over to Bran and take his sweet ass time killing him
Have Bran do something other than worg into some ravens that literally served no purpose
Ditch the plot armour and kill more characters, not just those whose story arcs were obviously finished (Sam for instance surrounded by the dead, using them as a couch, somehow survives despite being a worse fighter than little Lyanna)
There was a door protecting the crypt, yet for some reason the dead cannot break it ? But they can smash through the doors elsewhere in the castle like they're paper, not to mention the ones that do come alive in the crypt can somehow scratch their way through solid stone ??

The battle was epic, but the story itself was probably one of the worst written GOT episodes ever

Thank god you don't work in TV then.

 

[StriderX]

Thank god you don't work in TV then.

You mean pandering to social justice? Because when I think of tv and Hollywood now, I don’t think of ‘quality’.

This show at least doesn’t do that to any great extent, but still needed to be less of whatever this episode was, a whole story arc obliterated ‘jus cus’ is disappointing.

One can only hope the remaining episodes have at least some insight beyond a boring continuation of ‘Cersei bad’.

 

[ianh]

From what I could see (which was very little, thanks Sky!) some of the opening scenes were extremely good like the Dothraki charge for example, but once the close fighting started you just couldn't see anything with enough clarity to know what was going on. However I thought the episode was OK but a bit of a let down for NK fans.

Also, and completely unrelated to the show - the GoT writers should NEVER EVER be placed in charge of defending a real castle, what a load of utterly stupid tactics

 

[CaptainRAVE]

So, Cersei now has a bigger army?

 

[awaybreaktoday]

So, Cersei now has a bigger army?

there are still 2 dragons....

 

[ElliorR]

I liked Arya killing the Night King.

What I want to see now is Arya to kill Cersi and then go back in time and kill Joffrey, though I have my doubts that last part will happen.

 

[kindai]

The problem is theyre trying to cram 2 seasons worth of content into half a dozen episodes.

An epic battle like that could easily of been spread across 2 or 3 normal length episodes.

Episode 1+2 - As was done this season

eg: episode 3 - the build up and initial combat, in depth scenes of the dothraki fight (if they still insist on them charging off into the darkness). Some skirmishes with the unsullied legions, have some flyovers where jon and dany see just how much of the army they are up against.

episode 4 - Big melee brawl outside the castle, lots of stuff going on, bits inside the castle, perhaps have the dead in the crypts come to life and have the people in there have their own fight. Can finish that episode off with the lighting of the trench and the retreat and re-fortification.

episode 5 - everything on the other side of the trench being lit. would have been awesome to see the scene with arya in the library instead of her just avoiding them, maybe picking them off one at a time.

episode 6 - the cleanup, counting off losses, farewells to those who died

episode 7 - dany starts her conquest south

episode 8 - probably just some filler here to give time for the weeks it would take to get everything to kings landing

episode 9 - battle lines drawn up ready for the start of the final season.


I just dont understand why the rush to finish everything off in such a small amount of time. To me it just seems the writers are getting bored / lazy with it and want to move onto something new.

 

[TALON1973]

Well I hope the PQ on disc is better than what I just saw. Total mess .And why did it have to turn into World War Z ???

 

[ancientmariner]

I must have watched a different episode to a lot of people here, I thought it was fantastic. Top drawer.

 

[G-MAN2004]

What I find funny is that if the Night King literally didn't do anything at all he would have won the battle. What a truly rubbish ending for a massively hyped up mysterious character.

 

[woppy101]

Well I hope the PQ on disc is better than what I just saw. Total mess .And why did it have to turn into World War Z ???

Didn’t look too bad on my calibrated Sony AF9

 

[monkentage]

The episode peaked at the Dothraki bit. Dark, boring and predictable. Music was good.

The Gamespot review is spot on

Where do I even start? I guess with the fact that it seems like Game of Thrones, the show, has just missed the point of the entire series: that the squabbles between the great houses of Westeros are nothing compared with the unstoppable force of nature slowly bearing down on them from the wintery north. Game of Thrones was never supposed to actually be about the battle for the throne--it's supposed to be about the characters coming together to realize what was really important. The quintessential human fallacy, according to the brain of George R.R. Martin, is believing with absolute certainty that your personal battles are the most important fights that exist. It's a failure of perspective.

Now, with three episodes left, the series' ultimate threat died with a whimper, and its most short-sighted characters turned out to be right, their selfishness justified. As we saw in the preview for next week's episode, the survivors are going right back to their squabbles. They won the great war, but lost the thematic throughline. Why did any of this matter? To give Arya a cool hero moment? So Bran could keep doing absolutely nothing? So Theon could die pointlessly?

I hope this is wrong and the next three episodes contain something interesting.

 

[Minusorange]

some of the opening scenes were extremely good like the Dothraki charge for example

Cinematically it looked amazing, but tactically it was absolutely ******* dumb, also did they only have enough stones for 1 go of the meowitzers and trebuchets ?