Summary: Arya confronts Sansa about the letter she wrote to Robb. Sansa goes to Littlefinger for advice. Sansa sends Brienne away. Beyond The Wall, the fellowship of the throne are attacked by wights. Thoros is wounded and eventually dies but they capture a wight. The army of the dead chases them and surrounds them on an island. However, Gendry runs back to Eastwatch and sends a raven to Dany. The wights attack the group on the island but Dany arrives with her dragons to save them. The Night King kills Viserion in the ensuing chaos. Everyone leaves but Jon is left behind. Benjen saves him but dies in the process.
The Good: The production in this episode was great. Everything looked really good throughout the episode. As a big "Lord of the Rings" fan, I did like the idea of making a "Game of Thrones" fellowship and I thought the character interactions in the first half of the episode were pretty good. Tormund and The Hound were consistently entertaining in their roles and their conversations with each other were good. I especially liked Tormund talking about Brienne to The Hound. Jon and Jorah had a pretty good scene as well and I'm pleased that they touched on Longclaw in their conversation. I liked Tyrion's worries about succession regarding Dany. With her unable to reproduce, it makes perfect sense for Tyrion to put some thought into Dany's future and things that he may need to take care of. Having the Night King kill a dragon was smart. Now Dany doesn't seem quite as invincible and the White Walkers are even scarier than before. The addition of an undead Viserion is bound to lead to some exciting moments down the road. The Bad: Unfortunately, this was easily the worst episode that "Game of Thrones" has ever done. There was an unbelievable amount of plot holes, clichés and gaps in logic which just added up more and more as the episode went on. While I liked the idea of the fellowship, the idea of it is in total contrast with everything I loved about "Game of Thrones". The very existence of a group of heroes going on a quest is not in the spirit of the show and shows that the writers and showrunners and losing sight of what this show is all about. The polar bear fight was very poor. First of all, the whole battle was practically pointless as it accomplished nothing and existed solely because the showrunners wanted a zombie polar bear (they actually said this on camera). Furthermore, the logic surrounding the battle was baffling. First things first, who were those redshirts that were killed? Were they people who joined up with the fellowship? I swear we have never seen them in any other scene. Or were they just random people who happened to be around? It's so forced and makes little sense. Furthermore, why did nobody do anything while Thoros was fighting the polar bear. The Hound was petrified, but what about everyone else? Were they too busy sipping on tea as they waited? Lastly, the polar bear wight was killed by a stab to the head. A polar bear WIGHT was killed by a stab to the head. If the dagger was dragonglass, then fair enough. But how would anyone be aware that dragonglass kills wights along with the White Walkers? They haven't done it ever before, so surely they should at least react to the bear getting killed by the dragonglass. Furthermore, Tormund attacked with his axe and it did nothing. Why would he refuse to bring a dragonglass weapon when it's the only weapon that would work? Same goes for Gendry's hammer. This takes me to Thoros' death. Talk about a meaningless death. Deaths in this series have all existed for a purpose, but this one felt more like a "someone needs to die on this mission and we pick him" kind of death. I expect things like this from "The Walking Dead" not "Game of Thrones". The next action scene was the scout party battle, and it was still terrible. First of all, the actual idea of a scout party is beyond stupid. What the hell are they scouting? There are pretty much zero people beyond The Wall currently, and the only reason Jon's crew were there was because they are idiots going on an idiotic mission. So why would the White Walkers need a scouting group. I'm fin with Jon killing the White Walker, but I'm not fine with every wight dying except one. How convenient!! How implausible is it that every wight doesn't die and that just one survives for them to take? It's downright unbelievable. Then we get into the group running when the army of the dead comes after them. My first question is, what the hell was their plan of getting away going into this? Did they not plan any of this out? Did they seriously just charge an army of thousands of wights with no plan to escape? What a terrible plan. Logically, they should have had a method to get a wight and get out of there immediately. Yet they don't do this. They just waste time until the cold comes and then they run. But they don't even try to run back to where they came. They send Gendry to Eastwatch and everyone else just goes somewhere else for some reason and they get trapped on a frozen lake like incapable idiots. Why didn't they all run with Gendry and only send him ahead when it was clear that all of them were dead? Also, I think Dany would figure out they died when no word comes back from them, so Gendry running back should hardly be a concern for them. But nope, Gendry has to run back so that Dany can come back and save the day, so he just has to go regardless of how it makes no sense. The actual retreat to the lake was really poor. First of all, the idea that the ice would break in a perfect circle around the island is dumb and extremely convenient for everyone to survive. Next, is the idea that the wights would surround the group. We haven't seen any intelligence from these things before, and they have only ever charged their enemy with intent to kill. Yet for some reason, these guys now have the wits to surround them on the lake before attacking them? That's inconsistent. Worse yet, are their random showings of intelligence later. They are too stupid to dodge a rock that The Hound throws, yet they are smart enough to notice that the way is clear for them to attack? What the hell. Also, why didn't all of the wights attack after that? Just one went out after seeing the frozen ice. Were the others just daydreaming? The writers weren't even trying to be consistent with wight intelligence. The actual battle on the island was terrible, even worse than the polar bear fight. It was awfully nice of the wights to go like 5 at a time to the island while all of the others waited around. Whatever happened to the terrifyingly quick and vicious wights that were at Hardhome? Those wights would have crushed these guys in like 2 minutes. But we can't have that happen, so all of the wights are suddenly less threatening because the plot says so. Maybe you can make a case and say that the wights were smart enough to realize that the ice would break again if they charge, but that once more highlights the inconsistent intelligence flaw. The tease of Tormund's death was poor because the moment he went down, he should have died. But the wights have become incapable now and they don't kill him so he can be saved. I guess the wights just got tired from walking all the way to The Wall. The biggest issue with this battle was that it had zero tension. We were obviously killing time for Dany to come in for the save so that's what I was waiting for the entire time. Dany's attack did nothing for me and also managed to piss me off by being totally ridiculous. First of all, I don't have any emotional reaction to seeing dragons burn stuff so it has already lost my interest. The showrunners apparently think that we enjoy this show because dragons not because of all the other stuff that we actually watched the show for in the first four seasons when dragons weren't doing much. So I was pretty bored by the whole dragon attack scene, but then the boredom eventually turned to anger due to how dumb everything got. The Night King killing a dragon was cool, but why did he attack Viserion? Drogon was literally totally still on the ground but the Night King instead attacks the difficult target for some reason. Why would he not go for Drogon? Killing Drogon will also prevent any of the others from leaving which would cause all of them to die. Plus then the Night King gets a bigger dragon. It's a win-win for him to target Drogon. Also, if he is accurate enough to hit Viserion from that distance while he moves, that makes it even more ridiculous that he would miss Drogon when Drogon flew away. Also, if the Night King has such accuracy with these spears, why didn't he just rain them down on Jon's group on the island while they slept? They wouldn't be able to do anything about it and the Night King would save himself some trouble. Suddenly, the Night King has gone from terrifying villain to another idiot of a villain who is only terrifying and smart when the plot demands it. Also, I was displeased that the dragons never even attempted to attack the White Walkers with their fire. Shouldn't Dany really go after the main threat instead of the random army? Furthermore, it would be way more satisfying if the Night King killed Viserion while Viserion was trying to attack him. The end of the battle was one of the worst conclusions I have ever seen. So Jon decides to fight the wights because... I have no idea. What was he trying to accomplish? What could he have done? Nothing! So just get on the dragon Jon, you idiot. I was downright angered by this decision because of how stupid, needless and out-of-character it was. Jon is supposed to be a heroic and selfless person not a suicidal fool. The save from deus ex Benjen was ridiculous too. Nice of Benjen to get under two minutes of screentime for him to provide the convenient save and die. That's just bad writing. Furthermore, that makes two deus ex machinas in one episode of this show. Let's not forget that this show was all about avoiding popular fantasy clichés in the first four seasons. To put so many cliches in this one episode is a literal spit in the face of George RR Martin as the poor man has to now watch his masterful works get slandered in the hands of incapable showrunners who have no clue how to provide a satisfying conclusion to this epic franchise. And of course, I can't forget to mention the ridiculous time jumps that happened in this episode. Just how long were these guys on the damn island? Gendry pulled an olympic marathon by running to Eastwatch, recovered, sent a raven to Dany all the way on Dragonstone which is extremely far away, Dany read it, contemplated what to do, decided to help, flew north on dragons and found the exact spot where the group was. That must have taken several days of time due to the ridiculous distances that would have to be covered, and this entire time the group was just sitting on the island? That's extremely bad. The ending of the episode with Dany and Jon left me annoyed and disappointed. First of all, I was disappointed in Dany's reactions to the dead army and the death of Viserion. Surely we deserved more of a surprised reaction from Dany when she first saw the army and the Night King. But the biggest offense here is her reaction to losing Viserion. She has commonly referred to the dragons as her children but she doesn't have a motherly reaction to her child's death. Instead she seems more saddened by Jon's apparent death which is just wrong. Furthermore, I was confused by Jon sayign he will bend the knee. Why? What changed from before that forced him to bend the knee now? He has no reason to do this and it's just as stupid as his decision to stay behind to fight. Now on to the end of the episode. The chains came completely out of nowhere. Where did the White Walkers get them? More importantly, how the hell did they get them onto Viserion? Do not tell me the wights did it, because they were unable to go into the water 20 minutes before this scene. The most annoying part is that this seems like such an unnecessary plot hole to include. How hard is it to just make the Night King raise his arms again and have Viserion burst out from under the ice? Hell it would have made for a better reveal anyways, especially since I immediately figured out that Viserion was coming back as a wight after I saw the chains pulling him up. And to think that I have written this many complaints without even getting into the Winterfell story. That one is just as bad as this. The showrunners are blatantly setting up for Arya and Sansa killing Littlefinger but they are doing it in a stupid way. They want us to be surprised so they are making it look like Littlefinger is playing Arya and Sansa against each other so that we can be surprised when they turn on him. It's too predictable and that makes it really tedious to watch. The issue of course comes from the fact that they don't appear to be faking it in their scenes. Why is it necessary for them to fake it anyways? In case Littlefinger has spies? If that's the case, how did they communicate this plan without him knowing anyways? The story is very poorly thought out. It's even worse if it turns out that the two aren't faking it and are genuinely at odds. I didn't wait for them to reunite only for them to start fighting each other. There are so many other conflicts I would rather explore over a Stark family dispute. Furthermore, both characters come off poorly in this conflict. Sansa is foolish for confiding in Littlefinger and sending Brienne away. Arya is totally out of her league and unsympathetic for getting mad at Sansa over something so trivial. Her entire argument makes it seem like she never really grew up past her hate of Sansa at all. So either way this goes, the result is going to be unsatisfying. And it has to be resolved next episode where it will likely be rushed. How did this show come to this? The Unknown: Is Littlefinger being set up or is he actually playing the Starks against each other? What will Cersei's reaction be when she sees the wight? I highly doubt that she actually helps Dany and Jon. Having The Hound use the word "dick" was odd. I don't believe that word has ever been used before so I'm not sure that it exists int his universe. That could be a large inconsistency which perfectly highlights how sloppily the show is being written now. However, I may be wrong so I'm leaving it in The Unknown. Best Moment: Tormund and The Hound talking about Brienne was entertaining. Character of the Episode: Tormund. Conclusion: This was an illogical, stupid and downright insulting episode. The show has fallen off a cliff in the last two episodes and no longer resembles itself. This episode was downright painful and sad to watch because it showed us how far the show has fallen. Score: 36
3 Comments
Joe Y
10/14/2020 10:38:15 am
If you were disappointed, like me, in how 'Game of Thrones' turned into a disastrous mess in its back half, you should check out the sci-fi show 'The Expanse'. Does a lot of the same things that 'Game of Thrones' does....except the authors are finishing the series in a timely fashion and are heavily involved in the show's writing start-to-finish. Definitely worth your time.
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Aaronic
10/17/2020 03:52:24 pm
I've had The Expanse recommended to me by a couple of friends and I'm certainly interested to watch it. It's between this and Mr. Robot for the next big TV show I take on once I finish up Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Lost.
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Joe Y
3/25/2021 09:42:32 am
Whether or not you review them, I would definitely recommend the anime 'Steins;Gate' and 'Legend of the Galactic Heroes' (not sure if you've seen them). As far as sci-fi goes, the former is the best time travel story I have seen, and the latter is the best space opera ever made. Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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