I’m not going to insult anyone that compares this show to latter seasons of TWD bc clearly we’re not watching the same show.
Sat in a dark room and rewatched the show on hbo go on a 4K tv. It was fine. Some blacks weren’t awesome, but I could see what happened easily.
i wish more characters had died bc it does break believability. But it would have diminished the sacrifice for the ones that did. Familiar theme this weekend. Same with not wearing helmets...you need to see the actors face, so they don’t wear helmets or they take it off every 5 min.
Cant expose the dragons and need the Unsullied for defense. No one had issues with the Dothraki leading the charge during Loot Train.
Jon waded through a sea of slow-moving wights. They sprinted at everyone else. I don’t have any issues believing a faceless man could sneak by the White Walkers quickly. But the problem with her coming from the secret passage is that she’d have had to go through the crypts.
I enjoyed watching Jon just roll past Sam and other friends who needed help. He’s learned some since losing Dickon. I meant Rickon, but I love that name.
After seeing the behind the scenes, I think part of the reason might be the wire work as well. It's easy to have wire work look unnatural, and it adds to it looking a bit off in this scene.
I don't know if her tumbling over the top of wights on the stairwell also used some trick, but that looked much better.
Maybe in the books and show the Azor Ahai prophecy is just some BEWWWL SHIT?
If so, I dont know why they made it a point to make the "born under a bleeding star" part of the prophecy come true by showing Ser Arthur Daynes sword (made from a falling star) sat down on the edge of Lyannas birthing bed with an image of a sun/star on the pommel and covered in Daynes blood, who is from STARFALL.
Or maybe Jon is azor ahai and he fulfilled his destiny of defeating the long night by assembling everyone at winterfell to stand against AotD.
Maybe in the books and show the Azor Ahai prophecy is just some BEWWWL SHIT?
If so, I dont know why they made it a point to make the "born under a bleeding star" part of the prophecy come true by showing Ser Arthur Daynes sword (made from a falling star) sat down on the edge of Lyannas birthing bed with an image of a sun/star on the pommel and covered in Daynes blood, who is from STARFALL.
Arya is the “prince” who was promised?
Also, does Arya owe a debt to the many faced god for taking the life of the NK?
I’m not going to insult anyone that compares this show to latter seasons of TWD bc clearly we’re not watching the same show.
Let's ignore the TWD part and just say and and every movie that establishes a space, has a character suddenly appear, and when you ask where the character came from the answer really is just "off screen" as the answer then they're using a bad technique. (And there are plenty of shows and movies that use this technique.) And this time Game of Thrones decided to use that bad technique. If they had shown her come down from the tree, shown her full on ninja running over the wights, tossing a wight mask of one of the newly deceased, established a place to squeeze through, anything but fly at a weird parabolic angle with no where to have launched from because it was from a wirework platform instead, any of those options would have been better.
Also, does Arya owe a debt to the many faced god for taking the life of the NK?
You could have had one dragon ravage the army of the dead while one hung back waiting for the White Walkers, NK and Ice Dragon to show themselves if the losses become unsustainable for the deadites. You draw them out, and hopefully make them rush and do something stupid like attack Bran before the resistance has been completely broken....
And the loot train attack didn't involve one of the designing generals perseverating about how many bodies the Lannister were going to be able to throw at the Dothraki.......
I am assuming Arya came from some type of low wall or a branch of the Weirwood, right? It sure looked like she was coming in a downward trajectory, as she comes in to the view when the Night King is grabbing his sword. It doesn’t look right to say she just ran by 6 white walkers, Theon’s dying body and then leaped at him like MJ in a dunking contest!
I rewatched the episode last night on a different TV and my initial reaction has not changed. It was made too dark in post-production. That aside I have issues with the episode.
I think, as ARon has mentioned in the past, The Double Ds were hired to adapt GoT not write it. It is hard to blame them for this because they didn't ask for it but I think this episode was poorly written and was really saved because it's directed by Miguel Sapochnik.
A few of the things that bugged me were:
The cavalry charge was so dumb and only there to have the cool shot of the fires going out. How about reserving them in the rear until the moat was lit and have them come along it sweeping a large portion of the wights but getting overrun anyway? That way it makes sense and they still all die also breaking the spirits of the people on the wall watching it. I'll stop the fan fiction here.
Several times there was major characters being overwhelmed and then a few minutes later there they are OK and getting overwhelmed again. The plot armor was very thick this episode.
Dany Jonning Jon by taking off with Drogon was funny but the old saying "No plan survives contact with the enemy" should be changed for GoT to "No plan survives dumbass impulses from people who should know better."
Ghost
Ghost
Ghost
Was Azor Ahai prediction just a giant red herring all along?
Why did The Lord of light raise Jon? What was his purpose? Just to get people there so Arya could do her thing?
The way The Double D's made it sound in the mini doc was they chose Arya to kill the Night King. That wasn't one of the bullet points GRRM gave them!?!?!? What exactly did he give them? Show Ghost for 5 seconds a few times?
I’m not going to insult anyone that compares this show to latter seasons of TWD bc clearly we’re not watching the same show.
Let's ignore the TWD part and just say and and every movie that establishes a space, has a character suddenly appear, and when you ask where the character came from the answer really is just "off screen" as the answer then they're using a bad technique. (And there are plenty of shows and movies that use this technique.) And this time Game of Thrones decided to use that bad technique. If they had shown her come down from the tree, shown her full on ninja running over the wights, tossing a wight mask of one of the newly deceased, established a place to squeeze through, anything but fly at a weird parabolic angle with no where to have launched from because it was from a wirework platform instead, any of those options would have been better.
They conveyed that she rushed passed the other WW. She could have launched off of a pile of bodies that they had shown strewn through out the woods. Doesn’t seem like the most unbelievable part of the episode
re: jon/dany tension ... seems like the best compromise between dany’s ambition & jon’s lack thereof is for dany to allow northern independence. a key element of her demonstrating her suitability for the iron throne would be if her ambition were checked, and i think this would accomplish that.
the fact that the long night extinguishes flame independently (e.g.W inability to ignite the moat without ‘red magic’) was the most chilling part of this episode.
They clearly show Arya blowing past the other White Walkers. These guys took ten years to make it to the Wall when Gendry did it in like a day. Speed is not a strong suit and the Night King still managed to 180 choke her. I guess you can quibble with Arya's ups? Idk. I think she's got ups.
I am assuming Arya came from some type of low wall or a branch of the Weirwood, right? It sure looked like she was coming in a downward trajectory, as she comes in to the view when the Night King is grabbing his sword. It doesn’t look right to say she just ran by 6 white walkers, Theon’s dying body and then leaped at him like MJ in a dunking contest!
That's the crux of my issue with it. Considering the direction their hair blows and way the lieutenant white walker turns his head to watch her pass by him, they're signaling that's exactly what happened. If she jumped down from the weirwood tree, that would have used the established environment in a way that I'd be totally down with. But with the shots they showed she definitely ran by them and leaped. And the way the lieutenant just turns to the side makes it look like she's already passing by him at his eye level all the more making it weird.
Side Note: It would have been nice if Theon had died facing the other way and lived long enough to witness his death. Hopefully he was alive long enough to see the circle of wights crumble away.
Well, to be fair, they all just watched Theon run at the NK with a spear. They seemed to just assume Theon was toast. maybe they thought the same of Arya.
Given the polar bear and horses, it does seem like a missed opportunity to not have a brigade of undead fauna. Then again, there are probably a lot of wolves north of the wall. Very expensive.
I’m not going to insult anyone that compares this show to latter seasons of TWD bc clearly we’re not watching the same show.
Let's ignore the TWD part and just say and and every movie that establishes a space, has a character suddenly appear, and when you ask where the character came from the answer really is just "off screen" as the answer then they're using a bad technique. (And there are plenty of shows and movies that use this technique.) And this time Game of Thrones decided to use that bad technique. If they had shown her come down from the tree, shown her full on ninja running over the wights, tossing a wight mask of one of the newly deceased, established a place to squeeze through, anything but fly at a weird parabolic angle with no where to have launched from because it was from a wirework platform instead, any of those options would have been better.
Agree to disagree. It's your opinion that it was a bad technique, but IMO it felt believable that Arya could pull off the kill because of her training and they chose to hide the kill until the last second to build up suspense. On the other hand I think it would have been a little stupid to show Arya take a wight's face off in order to get close to the NK. You don't have to show every little detail for a scene to be effective. At that moment we were experiencing the scene from the Night King's perspective. So I would say it was a smart choice to edit the scene that way so we were just as surprised as the NK.
The more reactions I read, the more it's clear that some people just want to be upset at stuff. I really don't know why some folks just feel like if their pet theory doesn't pan out then the episode was a failure.
The Night's King motivations were established seasons ago (the children literally created him to wipe out mankind), and clarified just one episode ago. It's clear Arya's role has been set up since episode 5 or 6 of season 1.
I don't know why people are still getting frothy at the mouth over the lack of Ghost. It's not just the budget to render him, it's to make the motions et al of a wolf that large believable; especially when interacting with human-sized shapes.
Plus, it's been abundantly clear that the show was never going to introduce the depth of connection between the Starks and their direwolves like the book did. Essentially, the direwolves were nothing but a problem for the show.
Finally, the issue with "not enough characters dying". This can only possibly become an issue after the episode ends. There's no way you can tell me you weren't deeply concerned about the characters the first time watching it.
For me, the episode continued to have a problem that other battle sequences in GoT continue to have (Blackwater and Loot Train being notable exceptions): the flow of the battle seemed kind of stop-start. At some point, it seemed like Jon and Dany took a 15-minute smoke break or something. The Night King just randomly chilling on the dragon was...weird. What exactly was Sam doing and how did he make it out alive?
Ultimately, this was a fantastic episode. The problems came nowhere close to the spectacle that was presented. I continue to excuse the showrunners and writers for any story issues, because paraphrasing Aron, they signed up to adapt, not to create original content.
And that's something we all need to consider actually. Maybe GRRM has really written himself into a very tight corner and there is literally no way for him to tie the story up neatly without even more books. Perhaps D & D have the right idea by just getting right to the point.
I have no military experience, nor do I even watch military movies, or read about it or anything, so correct me if this is wrong. But one thing I thought the episode was going for was keeping the point of view centered at Winterfell and how it would feel if you are there waiting for the enemy to show up at your gates, and then the aftermath when the enemy does show up. Other than Jon and Dany's pov on top of wherever they were with the dragons, the action took place all around the castle without moving far from its walls. It made sense to me when the battle lines were drawn and the Dothraki took off with their flaming swords and came back hastily retreating and we didn't get to see what happened because that's the point of view of most of the characters at that point.
As for the characters, I liked that Sam was super scared and semi-useless. He isn't trained in battle but he seems to think he can contribute. I liked that Arya was really frightened but strong and useful and handy with her weapons during the battle scenes as that reflects her training. It made a lot of sense to me that the Hound became triggered because that has happened before and it's part of his character that he's afraid of fire. And of course all the heroes behaved as we expected them to behave.
I thought it was fantastic when Arya flew out of the fog and attacked the NK because it was kind of the ultimate moment for her character- she is one of the characters who has changed the most, learned the most and grown the most, and we were waiting for Jon to show up so we weren't thinking about Arya, nor was anyone when they made the battle plans. (Maybe thought her face was too young, hehe winky wink). Nor was even Arya (??) before that moment with Melisandre and she kind of came full circle and realized the higher purpose in this battle of all this training (killing the NK vs just killing a number of wights or whatever).
Agree to disagree. It's your opinion that it was a bad technique, but IMO it felt believable that Arya could pull off the kill because of her training and they chose to hide the kill until the last second to build up suspense. On the other hand I think it would have been a little stupid to show Arya take a wight's face off in order to get close to the NK. You don't have to show every little detail for a scene to be effective. At that moment we were experiencing the scene from the Night King's perspective. So I would say it was a smart choice to edit the scene that way so we were just as surprised as the NK.
I feel like what you're saying and what I'm saying are two different things. I totally believe she could kill him. I'm totally okay that she was the one that killed him. I'm not okay with the way it was executed. The technique of how they showed it happen. Not the in world story that Arya is capable of doing it.
I just rewatched it. It's a slow motion scene with a very wide ring of wights with nothing to jump off of inside (I guess Theon's body eventually). They part and let NK and crew pass through and close ranks. The lieutenants pause and for several paces the NK crosses clear ground. Then the lieutenants hair blows in the wind as she passes by him, and he turns his head to the side to look at her as if he's looking at something at eye level (And they also showed an over head shot of how close to the sides of the lieutenants that the wights are leaving little space), and the turn isn't looking down at a shorter Arya passing him by. It's eye level. And then she appears mid-air and he catches her by the throat. To connect those dots, she's super-hero jumping at him from a pretty far distance away. That's just out of character of the show. It looks off.
Well, to be fair, they all just watched Theon run at the NK with a spear. They seemed to just assume Theon was toast. maybe they thought the same of Arya.
Jon: "You see, white walkers have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I
am going to sent wave after wave of your own men at them until they reach their
limit and shut down. "
Bran:"Could work. It's never been done before."
Maybe somebody should have told the writers of this show that the Dothraki are actually excellent archers who could you know man the walls and shoot arrows instead of resupplying the enemy upfront.
I really wished they planned on seemingly loosing the battle like Rob in the battle in the whispering wood sacrificing just enough to make it look like a real stand with a coordinated retreat plan out of Winterfell through some underground tunnels. It would have been much more believable when the main characters get swarmed and separated if they retreat into the castle knowing where to go with backup waiting there. They could have even introduced the ambush in the godswood through some secret passage which goes initially wrong because like all the lights go out and than Arya knowing the plan and able to navigate in the dark steps in sacrificing herself.
Another way to get close to the night king could have been to simply wear the face of a wight. I would have bought that, even the small reaction by the one white walker would have made sense in that regard.
It's not so hard to make it awesome and still making some narrative sense.
Finally, the issue with "not enough characters dying". This can only possibly become an issue after the episode ends. There's no way you can tell me you weren't deeply concerned about the characters the first time watching it.
This absolutely *was* an issue for me *during* the episode. The fake-out deaths undercut tension; Dothraki charge evaporates and Jorah with it!? Thrilling and terrifying. I was genuinely awestruck at how dark it was an exit for a major character and realized the showrunners were ready to give us their own, fully original (as in, not pre-ordained by Martin), Red Wedding episode and gut punch up there with Oberyn getting his head smashed in! I was genuinely breathless. And then ..
'Oh, he's back ..'
Greyworm/Brienne/etc get visibly overwhelmed at the front lines? Well, let's just cut away and they're fine. Jon's completely surrounded on all sides by a massive army of wights just raised by the NK? Cut away, he's fine! Jaime/Brienne are literally backs up against the wall with dozens of Wights running at them? Again, just cut away, it's fiiiine. Greyworm's bouncing around all sides of the battlelines even though we explicitly know he was in the front? Don't worry, it's fine.
It sucked all tension out of the episode because I didn't buy any character actually being in peril, and that's despite Edd/Jorah/Theon/Lyanna dying. I could feel the creators tipping the scale way too hard as to what caused or didn't cause a death. Jorah and Dany's circumstance was about a dozen times less dire than Jon's was when he landed in front of the Night King, for example.
Worst of all, I don't really get what the showrunners are saving some of these supporting characters for. Tormund is pretty explicitly tied to the northern storyline. Is he really going to march south and just get offed by some redshirt Lannister? At least dying here would've been appropriate. After Beyond the Wall, I said, 'they must be saving them for S8!', and now I'm twice bitten, once shy. I'm starting to just plain think the show doesn't have the stones for *brutal* and *shocking* deaths. I'm worried everyone will get a neat dramatic Boromir moment, and we won't have anything like a 'Oberyn gets his head caved in unceremoniously', due to their love for the actors. Even Beric has to conveniently roll through the door with The Hound/Arya in order to die in close-up.
100% agree. I'm being not insulted for bringing up a certain show, but this sloppiness in depicting the level of peril the characters were in is something I expect more on that show, not GoT. The episode becomes "am I supposed to be sad yet? No? I guess I have to wait for confirmed kill before feeling anything." It's like watching a show that has a countdown timer but the timer keeps jumping back and forth to how close it is to zero. Beric had a perfect death moment in the crucified pose in the doorway. They didn't need to have him teleport, suddenly slightly better, and make it inside the room to die there with enough time to spare so they didn't have to try too hard to rush to barricade the door. Leaving Beric outside to die where he was in the hallway would have made the whole thing fit better and give his death more meaning.
All the reasons I liked the show - and didn’t like the show - has been said many times. So just two points:
1. Jon survives because he is either one lucky son-if-a-bitch, or someone rides in to save the day. Would you bend the knee to him to fight Cersei? 2. If poor writing is the problem (and I do think it is) shouldn’t we all be blaming GRRM? He never finished, left storylines dangling, motivations undefined, and resolutions unclear. The series from the books were tight. Post-books? Not so much.
I kinda want Ken Hales directors cut version where we get a 10 minute tracking shot following Arya after Mel low-key reminds her of her destiny to kill the NK.
I mean, we can easily assume that she splits through that established gap between the white Walker ranks, as evidence by one of the White Walkers strands of white hair whisping up as she presumably runs past. And we can assume that because she's the size of a hobbit and incredibly quick, none of the white walkers could possibly move quick enough to stop her before she leaps up and at the NK.
But it would be cool to see from that perspective, I guess, although far less surprising or breath-taking.
Alright calm down. In this very thread, we've seen people speculate that she jumped down from a tree, came up out a secret passage, jumped off a pile of wight bodies, used "assassin magic," and now maybe possibly might could've just run past the stupid assholes. This much speculation, theorizing, etc about what we all watched and can't explain and people still want to argue that it wasn't a poorly-presented scene? Ok.
I'm just about done with this, but I feel like people are still misinterpreting me. "Oh you're surprised the assassin assassinated someone?" NO. "Oh you don't want women to be heroes?" NO. "Oh you just didn't see the 'Arya twist' coming?" NO, and I think it's dumb that people are even calling it a twist. Arya's got the biggest body count of the show aside from Bronn of the Blackwater. A twist would've been Bran standing up and kicking the night king in his icicles.
All I'm saying is: it was a cheap trick of editing techniques, capping off an episode where the director himself has said they wanted to put everyone in the most dire straits possible before having someone come in from literally out of nowhere and save the day. Yes I just made a weird reference to two classic rock bands, and no I don't know why. This episode was an hour and a half of bullshit emotional manipulation and 30 seconds of a "cathartic" moment that was completely unearned. Not unearned by Arya the character, but unearned by the production, with their gimmicky bullshit.
My final word on the subject is: I don't retract my opinion. This episode was shit. But Sunday (fucking yesterday?) is also the day I decided to try and quit smoking, so my irritability may be a bit exacerbated. I'm not wrong Walter, I'm just an asshole.
Alright calm down. In this very thread, we've seen people speculate that she jumped down from a tree, came up out a secret passage, jumped off a pile of wight bodies, used "assassin magic," and now maybe possibly might could've just run past the stupid assholes. This much speculation, theorizing, etc about what we all watched and can't explain and people still want to argue that it wasn't a poorly-presented scene? Ok.
Look at all these possible ways this could have happened. How implausible that it happened.
Alright calm down. In this very thread, we've seen people speculate that she jumped down from a tree, came up out a secret passage, jumped off a pile of wight bodies, used "assassin magic," and now maybe possibly might could've just run past the stupid assholes. This much speculation, theorizing, etc about what we all watched and can't explain and people still want to argue that it wasn't a poorly-presented scene? Ok.
Look at all these possible ways this could have happened. How implausible that it happened.
You are not another person interpreting his words incorrectly. Reading the wrong key words. He said poorly-presented, not implausible. Those mean very different things. It's about how the director wanted to show the audience what happened. And it was presented poorly.
(And definitely there is hard proof that at least the dropping down from the tree isn't possible, unless you accept the way the other white walkers hair blew in the wind was from a random gust of wind, and way he turned his head was to look at something totally unrelated.)
I have no military experience, nor do I even watch military movies, or read about it or anything, so correct me if this is wrong. But one thing I thought the episode was going for was keeping the point of view centered at Winterfell and how it would feel if you are there waiting for the enemy to show up at your gates, and then the aftermath when the enemy does show up. Other than Jon and Dany's pov on top of wherever they were with the dragons, the action took place all around the castle without moving far from its walls. It made sense to me when the battle lines were drawn and the Dothraki took off with their flaming swords and came back hastily retreating and we didn't get to see what happened because that's the point of view of most of the characters at that point.
Comments
Sat in a dark room and rewatched the show on hbo go on a 4K tv. It was fine. Some blacks weren’t awesome, but I could see what happened easily.
i wish more characters had died bc it does break believability. But it would have diminished the sacrifice for the ones that did. Familiar theme this weekend. Same with not wearing helmets...you need to see the actors face, so they don’t wear helmets or they take it off every 5 min.
Cant expose the dragons and need the Unsullied for defense. No one had issues with the Dothraki leading the charge during Loot Train.
Jon waded through a sea of slow-moving wights. They sprinted at everyone else. I don’t have any issues believing a faceless man could sneak by the White Walkers quickly. But the problem with her coming from the secret passage is that she’d have had to go through the crypts.
I enjoyed watching Jon just roll past Sam and other friends who needed help. He’s learned some since losing Dickon. I meant Rickon, but I love that name.
“I’m hurt.” - Ser Jorah Mormont
Also, does Arya owe a debt to the many faced god for taking the life of the NK?
Is that a joke or are you serious and it’s a metaphor in her dream?
(Snow coming to the Iron Throne)
You could have had one dragon ravage the army of the dead while one hung back waiting for the White Walkers, NK and Ice Dragon to show themselves if the losses become unsustainable for the deadites. You draw them out, and hopefully make them rush and do something stupid like attack Bran before the resistance has been completely broken....
And the loot train attack didn't involve one of the designing generals perseverating about how many bodies the Lannister were going to be able to throw at the Dothraki.......
It doesn’t look right to say she just ran by 6 white walkers, Theon’s dying body and then leaped at him like MJ in a dunking contest!
After I wrote this, I saw these! -
https://twitter.com/ringernba/status/1123005291753119744?s=21
https://twitter.com/m_anderson2015/status/1123009566151720962?s=21
https://twitter.com/sethbwolk/status/1123010950821556225?s=21
I think, as ARon has mentioned in the past, The Double Ds were hired to adapt GoT not write it. It is hard to blame them for this because they didn't ask for it but I think this episode was poorly written and was really saved because it's directed by Miguel Sapochnik.
A few of the things that bugged me were:
the fact that the long night extinguishes flame independently (e.g.W inability to ignite the moat without ‘red magic’) was the most chilling part of this episode.
https://twitter.com/BIG_AS_HOUNDS/status/1122703476608372736
Side Note: It would have been nice if Theon had died facing the other way and lived long enough to witness his death. Hopefully he was alive long enough to see the circle of wights crumble away.
The Night's King motivations were established seasons ago (the children literally created him to wipe out mankind), and clarified just one episode ago. It's clear Arya's role has been set up since episode 5 or 6 of season 1.
I don't know why people are still getting frothy at the mouth over the lack of Ghost. It's not just the budget to render him, it's to make the motions et al of a wolf that large believable; especially when interacting with human-sized shapes.
Plus, it's been abundantly clear that the show was never going to introduce the depth of connection between the Starks and their direwolves like the book did. Essentially, the direwolves were nothing but a problem for the show.
Finally, the issue with "not enough characters dying". This can only possibly become an issue after the episode ends. There's no way you can tell me you weren't deeply concerned about the characters the first time watching it.
For me, the episode continued to have a problem that other battle sequences in GoT continue to have (Blackwater and Loot Train being notable exceptions): the flow of the battle seemed kind of stop-start. At some point, it seemed like Jon and Dany took a 15-minute smoke break or something. The Night King just randomly chilling on the dragon was...weird. What exactly was Sam doing and how did he make it out alive?
Ultimately, this was a fantastic episode. The problems came nowhere close to the spectacle that was presented. I continue to excuse the showrunners and writers for any story issues, because paraphrasing Aron, they signed up to adapt, not to create original content.
And that's something we all need to consider actually. Maybe GRRM has really written himself into a very tight corner and there is literally no way for him to tie the story up neatly without even more books. Perhaps D & D have the right idea by just getting right to the point.
As for the characters, I liked that Sam was super scared and semi-useless. He isn't trained in battle but he seems to think he can contribute. I liked that Arya was really frightened but strong and useful and handy with her weapons during the battle scenes as that reflects her training. It made a lot of sense to me that the Hound became triggered because that has happened before and it's part of his character that he's afraid of fire. And of course all the heroes behaved as we expected them to behave.
I thought it was fantastic when Arya flew out of the fog and attacked the NK because it was kind of the ultimate moment for her character- she is one of the characters who has changed the most, learned the most and grown the most, and we were waiting for Jon to show up so we weren't thinking about Arya, nor was anyone when they made the battle plans. (Maybe thought her face was too young, hehe winky wink). Nor was even Arya (??) before that moment with Melisandre and she kind of came full circle and realized the higher purpose in this battle of all this training (killing the NK vs just killing a number of wights or whatever).
I just rewatched it. It's a slow motion scene with a very wide ring of wights with nothing to jump off of inside (I guess Theon's body eventually). They part and let NK and crew pass through and close ranks. The lieutenants pause and for several paces the NK crosses clear ground. Then the lieutenants hair blows in the wind as she passes by him, and he turns his head to the side to look at her as if he's looking at something at eye level (And they also showed an over head shot of how close to the sides of the lieutenants that the wights are leaving little space), and the turn isn't looking down at a shorter Arya passing him by. It's eye level. And then she appears mid-air and he catches her by the throat. To connect those dots, she's super-hero jumping at him from a pretty far distance away. That's just out of character of the show. It looks off.
'Oh, he's back ..'
Greyworm/Brienne/etc get visibly overwhelmed at the front lines? Well, let's just cut away and they're fine. Jon's completely surrounded on all sides by a massive army of wights just raised by the NK? Cut away, he's fine! Jaime/Brienne are literally backs up against the wall with dozens of Wights running at them? Again, just cut away, it's fiiiine. Greyworm's bouncing around all sides of the battlelines even though we explicitly know he was in the front? Don't worry, it's fine.
It sucked all tension out of the episode because I didn't buy any character actually being in peril, and that's despite Edd/Jorah/Theon/Lyanna dying. I could feel the creators tipping the scale way too hard as to what caused or didn't cause a death. Jorah and Dany's circumstance was about a dozen times less dire than Jon's was when he landed in front of the Night King, for example.
Worst of all, I don't really get what the showrunners are saving some of these supporting characters for. Tormund is pretty explicitly tied to the northern storyline. Is he really going to march south and just get offed by some redshirt Lannister? At least dying here would've been appropriate. After Beyond the Wall, I said, 'they must be saving them for S8!', and now I'm twice bitten, once shy. I'm starting to just plain think the show doesn't have the stones for *brutal* and *shocking* deaths. I'm worried everyone will get a neat dramatic Boromir moment, and we won't have anything like a 'Oberyn gets his head caved in unceremoniously', due to their love for the actors. Even Beric has to conveniently roll through the door with The Hound/Arya in order to die in close-up.
1. Jon survives because he is either one lucky son-if-a-bitch, or someone rides in to save the day. Would you bend the knee to him to fight Cersei?
2. If poor writing is the problem (and I do think it is) shouldn’t we all be blaming GRRM? He never finished, left storylines dangling, motivations undefined, and resolutions unclear. The series from the books were tight. Post-books? Not so much.
(And definitely there is hard proof that at least the dropping down from the tree isn't possible, unless you accept the way the other white walkers hair blew in the wind was from a random gust of wind, and way he turned his head was to look at something totally unrelated.)
List of military mistakes