Game of Thrones final season [spoilers]

[Homeless Nutter]

Well, have we considered the possibility, that Jon and Daenerys... are simply idiots? And so are the majority of other main characters. That would explain a lot. They have no idea what they are doing, but they're charismatic, attractive, and able to bend people to their will, so few question their ill judgement, especially when it comes to military strategy and politics. They're dumb and/or crazy, but just luck out all the time.

The whole plan for the battle was questionable, to say the least. Even if we go along with the hare-brained idea, of using Bran as bait for the Nightking - did he have to sit outside, in the cold, guarded by only a few men? The Nightking - who allegedly always knows where Bran is, because of the mark on his arm - could have swooped down on him and lit him up with blue dragon-flame, before anyone could do anything. If Bran was indoors, he'd be easier to guard, because the undead would be funneled through doors and such, there would be more opportunities for traps and hidden assassins, and at least the Nightking would have to get off his dragon. And why were they so sure, that the Nightking would come for Bran himself, anyway? Seems like a few ice zombies, or another White Walker could have done the job just as well.

Another "odd" decision was placing the trebuchets in front of the infantry, instead of at the back - perhaps behind the walls. That meant, that as soon as the enemy reached the defense lines, all the heavy ranged weapons were gone. Consequently, they were only used for a moment.

And why would you send thousands (tens of thousands?) of Dothraki to their deaths, but leave the walls unmanned until the enemy is at the gates?

Lighting the trench seemed unnecessarily fiddly as well - why not use a flaming arrow, a long fuse, or dragon-fire? And while the enemy was stopped/slowed down by the fire, it might have been nice to still have those trebuchets, or at least archers on the walls, ready to fire into the mass of zombies...

Yes, I'm pretty sure my "lucky morons" theory checks out.

[Amarok]

I think the problem with this 3rd episode is that it's difficult to suspend disbelief to the point of such a waste of armies. So many people planning for it, and then it's all to waste.
Anyone who plays chess knows that it's important to preserve your troops and to always trade yours for at least an equivalent adversary.

Riding into the dark and unknown was stupid and something no one would do, especially against a magical foe. It's unbelievable that that would be the plan.

1. Real war is nothing like chess . Especially if you playing against someone who doesn't play the rules .

2. As I said it was the only role they could fill

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Well, have we considered the possibility, that Jon and Daenerys... are simply idiots? And so are the majority of other main characters. That would explain a lot. They have no idea what they are doing, but they're charismatic, attractive, and able to bend people to their will, so few question their ill judgement, especially when it comes to military strategy and politics. They're dumb and/or crazy, but just luck out all the time.

The whole plan for the battle was questionable, to say the least. Even if we go along with the hare-brained idea, of using Bran as bait for the Nightking - did he have to sit outside, in the cold, guarded by only a few men? The Nightking - who allegedly always knows where Bran is, because of the mark on his arm - could have swooped down on him and lit him up with blue dragon-flame, before anyone could do anything. If Bran was indoors, he'd be easier to guard, because the undead would be funneled through doors and such, there would be more opportunities for traps and hidden assassins, and at least the Nightking would have to get off his dragon. And why were they so sure, that the Nightking would come for Bran himself, anyway? Seems like a few ice zombies, or another White Walker could have done the job just as well.

Another "odd" decision was placing the trebuchets in front of the infantry, instead of at the back - perhaps behind the walls. That meant, that as soon as the enemy reached the defense lines, all the heavy ranged weapons were gone. Consequently, they were only used for a moment.

And why would you send thousands (tens of thousands?) of Dothraki to their deaths, but leave the walls unmanned until the enemy is at the gates?

Lighting the trench seemed unnecessarily fiddly as well - why not use a flaming arrow, a long fuse, or dragon-fire? And while the enemy was stopped/slowed down by the fire, it might have been nice to still have those trebuchets, or at least archers on the walls, ready to fire into the mass of zombies...

Yes, I'm pretty sure my "lucky morons" theory checks out.

Again it would matter how they fought it was always going to be dumb luck and you dragon fire arrow idea is silly as no arrow would be able to handle it . As for archers they are close to useless against wights . So none of these tactics really matter .

[pocaracas]

I think the problem with this 3rd episode is that it's difficult to suspend disbelief to the point of such a waste of armies. So many people planning for it, and then it's all to waste.
Anyone who plays chess knows that it's important to preserve your troops and to always trade yours for at least an equivalent adversary.

Riding into the dark and unknown was stupid and something no one would do, especially against a magical foe. It's unbelievable that that would be the plan.

1. Real war is nothing like chess . Especially if you playing against someone who doesn't play the rules .

No shit?!! But keeping your troops alive is equally, if not more important.

2. As I said it was the only role they could fill

Charging into the darkness?? no.

[Shell B]

As people who are not military strategists, we can suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy a show.

[Clueless Morgan]

1. Why ? Why should this battle have dragged on rather then do it in one shot ? Why should it have gone further ?

I'm saying that for the scale and scope of the threat, for the entire battle to be over in a matter of hours was... unexpected.  Basically, the first major battle that the NK fights south of the wall and he's dead.  Seemed too easy for such an existential threat.

2. Hardhome wasn't an open plain the kind of terrain the Dothraki are built to fight on 

I'm not saying that the Dothraki would have been effective at Hardhome, I'm saying that Jon saw the kind of relentless onslaught of attack the army of the dead have and he still thought sending the Dothraki across a field in the dark without dragonglass weapons - because 100% they were not expecting Melisandre to show up and light their blades on fire - was monumentally bad planning.  The way it would have gone down without even the hope of Melisandre's fire blades would have been Jon doing exactly the stupid thing he was warning against: sending an ill-equipped army into battle against an enemy that would immediately kill that army and suck its victims into its own regiments was stupid.

3 . The darkness is symbolic 

You can still have symbolic darkness and an episode where you can see what's happening.

4. And that's bad because .......

Predictability in story-telling is usually bad.

1. Really their plan wasn't perfect but it wasn't completely dumb

Yeah, huge parts of that battle were completely dumb.  Some parts weren't, most of it was.

Why should the NK [/color]be hard to kill nobody else in this show is .

Because he's 8-fucking-thousand years old and magic.

What a crappy episode!

How the heck do you plan for a horseback army to attack an unseen foe at night?!?!
Oh, surprise!! they get slaughtered by ghosts and the little flaming swords go out in less than 5 minutes! Damn, worse than a crappy battle in World of tanks.
How were those dothraki expecting to defeat the dead?? no valyrian steel, no dragonglass... wut?!! wasn't that the whole point of Jon going to Dragonstone? get dragonglass. Most idiotic waste of a whole army.

Also, that's not how you do battle at night. Blind!? Idiots.
Either light up the field properly or stay behind the walls and wait for the day... at least dawn. Wasn't that the plan at Helm's Deep? Weren't they saying that this was going to be more spectacular than Helm's Deep? More stupid, if anything...

Yup yup yup.

It was really stupid not to arm the Dothraki with dragonglass weapons.  It was really stupid of the living to start the battle before dawn.  It was really stupid for the fire trench not to be lit the whole goddamned time.

Then again, it was also really stupid of the NK to not just bring the storm straight in to Winterfell and he and his dragon with it under cover of said storm and just start blowing blue fire all over the castle to kill the living and, maybe, get Bran while he's at it.

Stupidity all around.

Dragons should have been on top of the castle towers spitting fire at the attacking horde and obliterating them all until only the night king and the other white walkers were around.

That's sort of what they were doing, at least IMO.  Part of the plan, I thought, was to keep the dragons away from the castle so they aren't just sitting targets for Ice Dragon.  Once the battle started Dany went off script (She and Jon were supposed to wait for the NK to show himself and then they would target him alone) and dragged Jon down to the battle where they were melting zombies, and then for a while it looked like Jon and Dragon were sitting on the ramparts protecting Bran and waiting for the NK to show up.

Theon... close quarters battle with bow and arrow, very clever.

he should have known to stand his ground and let the attacking force come.

This single sentence is the fundamental flaw of the entire battle.

With the white walkers gone and the wildlings mostly on the south side of the wall, I'd say that the wall will not get rebuilt and the far north might become an 8th kingdom of Westeros.... or part of the North, vassals to the Starks.

No way will the wildlings become vassals of the Starks.  My bet would be that whole bunches go back north of the (now ruined) wall because that's their home.

Can I say it again?... what a crappy episode!!

I definitely have a higher opinion of the ep than you do but I totally get your disappointment.

But more seriously - the show creators needed to dispose of some dead weight, quickly and cheaply.

Did you mean some dead wight?

However, a much smarter option, from the tactical point of view - in my humble opinion - though much more costly to shoot, would have been to keep the Dothraki in the wings, wait for the undead horde to attack first, and then attack their flanks, while the enemy is stopped by burning pits and spikes, all the while pelting them with burning projectiles and dragon fire.

Like a Ramsay Bolton, Battle of the Bastards move.  Only problem is that since they're fighting at night and can see fuck-all they don't know when to attack flanks in order to encircle the dead.

Well, have we considered the possibility, that Jon and Daenerys... are simply idiots?

Definitely possible but IMO less likely.  Jon had made statements like that you can't fight the NK's army in a straight battle and had seen how they fight at Hardhome so he knew a lot more of what to expect than others like Greyworm who would line up the unsullied and fight that straight battle... but ultimately Jon does exactly what he says not to do.  I would have bought a battle that had a clever defense strategy that just falls apart but the way it was portrayed it wasn't even a clever strategy.

Seems like a few ice zombies, or another White Walker could have done the job just as well.

But then we wouldn't have gotten the hugely disappointing stare-fest between Bran and the NK after Theon died in a pointless charge.

Lighting the trench seemed unnecessarily fiddly as well - why not use a flaming arrow, a long fuse, or dragon-fire? And while the enemy was stopped/slowed down by the fire, it might have been nice to still have those trebuchets, or at least archers on the walls, ready to fire into the mass of zombies...

The plan was that Davos would signal Dany and she would swoop in and her dragon would light the trenches but all the storm clouds and smoke blocked her view of the signal.  Davos commented on this in episode.

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As people who are not military strategists, we can suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy a show.

In service of a good story I'm willing to overlook a lot, but putting aside whether this was a historically accurate portrayal of a "realistic" medieval battle against a magical foe, there was a lot in this episode that just didn't work for me and those things had to do with internal consistencies and poor decisions by characters.



That said, I still really enjoyed the episode and would love to talk about the good or successful parts now...

[pocaracas]

Ok, the good parts...
It was too dark for me to realize at the time (and I was a bit distracted with my phone), but I've since seen the 40 minute behind the scenes that they put on youtube and... the crypt and how the dead in the tombs came alive! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA That's hilarious! Put the women and children safely in the crypt against a magical dude who can make every dead person return to life!

Dragon fight!
Jon and Dany definitely could have used some radios and a few flying lessons from How to Train Your Dragon




And they took out the Night King! One huge threat down. After how sloppy it was treated in the show, I'm so pumped to read how it's done in the book.

[Aegon]

As people who are not military strategists, we can suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy a show.

I hold A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones to a high standard, but for the past few years my standard has lowered substantially, which is pretty sad. It's not about suspension of disbelief - that's what allows me to be invested in a story about ice zombies. It's about shit writing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I don't follow the show, but I just read that the last episode is the most tweeted about in the history of television - closing in on eight million tweets.

By comparison, the final episode of M*A*S*H got zero tweets. 

Boru

[Homeless Nutter]

Again it would matter how they fought it was always going to be dumb luck and you dragon fire arrow idea is silly as no arrow would be able to handle it .

Uhm... I don't know what "dragon fire arrow idea" you're talking about. I said no such thing.

The defenders prepared the trench, so they could have set up whatever system for setting it off they wanted. I understand a single arrow fired directly into it wouldn't work, because if it was that easy to light it, it could have happened too early, by accident. But something like a pile of easily flammable material at the far end of the trench, that someone would shoot a flaming arrow, or throw a torch into - that could have worked.

As for archers they are close to useless against wights . [...]

They are? LOL. Well, then someone should have told Theon and the Ironborn guarding Bran, because they were using bows - quite successfully - against wights, until they ran out of arrows...

[Shell B]

As people who are not military strategists, we can suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy a show.

I hold A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones to a high standard, but for the past few years my standard has lowered substantially, which is pretty sad. It's not about suspension of disbelief - that's what allows me to be invested in a story about ice zombies. It's about shit writing.

Oh, I get it if you're not involved enough anymore to suspend disbelief. I just mean if we're talking military strategy alone, it's whatever. There were dragons there.