Besides the first two short useless episodes that should have been combined into just one episode, there were a lot of things wrong with season 8 and the ending of Game of Thrones.
And I’m not just talking about alternative endings or being unhappy with how it was written. I’m talking about blatant and obvious story gaps that made absolutely no sense — further demonstrating the producers inability to write and produce a series after the books have ended.
This does not mean that the producers aren’t talented or their work wasn’t hard, but when you’re trying to film and write scenes that don’t exist, it becomes a completely different ball game. And with most shows, not knowing whether or not the show has a chance of becoming a success or whether or not they’ll make it passed a few seasons, doesn’t draw immediate big names to the production team.
This tends to give no-name producers and writers a chance to really shine and as the show became more popular and it was obvious the last book was not going to be finished before the show, this probably had the producers in a panic.
If Martin were to keep the general ending the same, which many of us hope it won’t be, he’ll at least be given the chance to fill in the scenes and missing plot holes that made Season 8 seem incomprehensible and rushed.
So here are a list of my biggest grievances with Episode 3, the first real episode in Season 8 that had potential not to waste our time.
The Night King
The very opening scene of the entire series starts off beyond the wall and introduces us to the White Walkers. Throughout the entire storyline, it’s been nothing but “winter is coming” and with it the undead.
The ENTIRE big picture of the series, the main plot, is about the army of the undead, and all of the other plots are side plots do this build up from Daenerys, to Cersei, and all the things that happen at Kings Landing — is really nothing more than getting to the main story line of the White Walkers and getting us familiar with the motives and traits of all of the various characters.
So what do we get?
After the Night King took down a dragon by tossing a spear hundreds of yards into the air and raising it from the dead to finally blast through the massive icewall that prevented the undead army from going south. And battle after battle where the Night Kings generals are apparently Jedi master combatants who are even a match for the most skilled of heroes we have. And after watching the undead army just obliterate everyone and everything on it’s way south.
We are somehow left with that entire conclusion all happening in one episode and not even being the final episode, which does not make any sense at all as the Night King and White Walkers have always been the core plot of this entire series, at least according to the TV Show.
Besides the poor lighting in this episode and technical failures. Besides the Dothraki for some reason charging out into total darkness alone when they could have just stayed and defended Winterfell. Besides just about everyone else dying except a handful of heroes who are standing on piles of corpses and never seem to get over run. It’s just failure after failure of things that really don’t make any sense, I mean, the producers even failed with the Night King raising the dead.
Before I get to the end, imagine that the Dothraki do not charge out and that the undead attack Winterfell and it’s a long hard battle outside where they are forced to retreat and light the trenches as they do in the episode. Let’s say that we are at a stand still as we were until the Night King ordered his minions to fall onto the trench to make a path across. Let’s just get rid of this obvious dumbness altogether.
If the Night King is able to raise the dead from the crypts, think of how much opportunity was missed by the producers to use that to infiltrate Winterfell from inside. Imagine that after defending Winterfell, it looks like we have an advantage, we fall back and light the trenches, but then suddenly the Night King raises the newly dead and we start to look as if we no longer have an advantage, but instead of them crossing the trench like they did, imagine if they attacked from inside the crypts and this attack led to the White Walkers opening the gates and letting the army through the front door.
What if Jon Snow had to fight Ned Stark or something cool of that nature, I mean why even bother to show the crypts being raised from the dead just to slaughter people hiding in the crypts, this made no sense at all, just another thing that had no real purpose and was wasted.
What if everyone that was part of the Night Kings army, instead of just being destroyed when the Night King fell, instead returned to life, and then joined Winterfell when they marched south to fight Cersei. Imagine Cersei seeing Ned Stark alive. There were so many better “unexpected” things that could have happened instead of the show “unexpectedly” starting to suck.
This would have made a lot more sense, additionally, about half the heroes that lived should have for sure died fighting in the castle, the picture after picture of only the heroes alive standing on piles of corpses fighting had to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.
Then let us get to the ending where Arya Stark jumps out of the air and kills the Night King. Now I don’t have any problems with Arya killing the Night King, however, there were a dozen generals standing there and they were surrounded by part of the undead army.
In no way shape or form does Arya make it to the Night King undisguised, and why would you not use this as an opportunity for her master of disguises to come into play here. What if Bran had died and she was acting as Bran this whole time. There was literally no significance in his role as the Three Eyed Raven, he never took over a dragon or used this ability in any way useful in Season 8 at all.
Either way, there was no realistic way this happens, the strength of the Night King actually catching her in the air should have crushed the life out of her, it amazes me how he gently catches her and holds her there for no reason whatsoever so she can kill him. It was just another poorly designed scene, a very poor job of writing, and very offensive way to remove how powerful the Night King had always been, and an insult to how useless Arya’s training with the Faceless Men were.
If she was disguised as Bran it would have made more plot sense for the Night King to take his time killing Bran as that seemed to be his goal all along, and that’s when Arya disguised as Bran, kills the Night King with the Dagger that was used to try to assassinate Bran.
Now that would have been an epic ending, even though the Night King should have been the final battle for the whole series, the writers/producers really missed their chance to shine in this episode, and it only gets worse form here.
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