Winter is Coming (GoT is back)

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It seems like they kind of have to expose the R+L =J concept this episode, it's been building up for too long.

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Biggest unanswered question: Does Meera have the upper body strength to carry Bran over the Wall?

Was thinking the same - bit of a dck move by Benjen to leave them without a horse or sleigh or anything

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I wonder if the books will also feature the Tyrells getting wiped out like that. I guess some of the characters murdered by Cersei (eg Kevan and Pycelle) also die in the books but at the hands of others. Really disappointed in the use of Kevan though tbh. Seems like he literally had no point whatsoever in the show.

Cersei seems utterly and royally fcked now though. Like what's even her end game here? It looks like she is facing a Dorne-Tyrell-dragons-Unsullied-Dothraki-Greyjoy alliance which as far as I can tell would be a match for the rest of Westeros combined. She won't get help from the Starks (obviously, duh). She must be controversial as hell even in the Westerlands having murdered her uncle and cousin and forced her son to suicide. She must be wildly unpopular with the common folk and the Faith having murdered the High Sparrow in the fricking Sept. The Stormlords and Riverlords can't like her much given her wars with their rulers and Walder Frey, one of her few allies, is dead. What's left? I guess maybe she could make an alliance with Euron but with the Greyjoy split I doubt he has much of a force to bring. And she could attempt to ally with Littlefinger. However, it seems like a) he'd run into trouble in the North if he tried that and wouldn't be much use and b) he doesn't have that much authority - it's difficult to imagine the Knights of the Vale being gung-ho about joining the Lannisters given the history. They certainly expressed strong animosity towards the Lannisters in the past.

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For one thing Euron will probably steal the dragons with his magic horn.

And I guess with the way things have been going awful for the good guys so many times something like this sort of had to happen at this stage.

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On the subject of the Wall, if it is true the dead can't pass it then how did that zombie that Jon killed in season 1 get into Castle Black?

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I thought that I had a sense of where Arya's arc was taking her based on the books, but the show's past season has me baffled. I'm not sure how it makes any sense. We'll see soon enough, I guess.

On the subject of the Wall, if it is true the dead can't pass it then how did that zombie that Jon killed in season 1 get into Castle Black?

It was a corpse when the NW dragged it through the wall during the day and only "woke up" during the following night.

IIRC Benjen's comments are the most that we have ever heard about how the Wall works. Also the first time that we've heard it phrased in a way that suggests that it's not just WW and their zombies who can't pass.

Not sure that makes so much sense to me, but fair enough I guess.

What was your Arya theory (I've also read the books so interested to hear)

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I mean, I thought everyone who read the book was like 99% sure about this theory. So I'd imagine lots of the actors could be aware of it.

While I agree that it's likely Arya's stories diverge between books and show I'm not entirely sure about exactly how.

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I mean, I thought everyone who read the book was like 99% sure about this theory. So I'd imagine lots of the actors could be aware of it.

They could be aware of it, but I doubt they would actually play a scene in a way that casts doubt on Ned being Jon's father unless one of the showrunners straight up told them to play it that way.  I don't think they would alter their performance based on popular fan theories alone.

No, sure, sure, I agree. I more meant that I don't think of this as something where there would be great concerns about leaks since it was pretty well known already. As opposed to things like Jon's resurrection for example.

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A) It might make sense for her character (although for someone who's supposedly all about her children, she didn't give much thought how Tommen might react to losing Margaery... but fair enough, I get it, she's a spiteful and deluded). That doesn't make it a good narrative choice. Maybe I was the only one who found the King's Landing plot interesting, but even if you didn't there's something awfully lazy about wrapping up a storyline by suddenly killing all the participants but one in a way that turns all that preceded into a shaggy dog story. Oh, and the utter pretentiousness of showing the sparrow desperately trying to extinguish the candle when it's obvious he's gonna fail... It's a detail but it's frankly an insult to the viewer.

B) She was never going to win, why? Because she's not popular enough as a character? I love how everybody fawns over Tyrion's charisma and intelligence (nothing wrong about Tyrion per se, he's a good character, but the hype gets annoying after a while) yet completely overlooks Margaery who proved just as apt at maneuvering through a variety of political situation and has if anything more noble purposes than Tyrion. She was unique because, even in a show like GoT that plays around with gender tropes more than most Western shows, she had a rare twist on the "strong female character^TM" routine. She actually drew her strength from stereotypically "feminine" qualities (seduction, emotional intelligence, even temper, etc.) yet wasn't portrayed negatively for doing so as women in fiction almost always are. She could be devious, scheming and manipulative, and at the same time kind, true to herself, and actually trying to make the world a better place. A morally complex drama about politics in a pseudo-medieval context should have made good use of a character like this, not squandered it in a way that made it completely superfluous to the story.

And yeah, the High Sparrow and the general idea of a theocracy taking hold of King's Landing was also a very interesting concept that deserved to be sent off in a more ceremonious way that that.

C) Whether it's shown directly or implied, it's still torture porn. It's not necessary to the story in any way, it's just there to SHOCK viewers (and possibly titillate some). For the record, I feel the same about Ramsay's death scene (Sansa is supposed to be better than this, for f**k's sake).

Well, I guess she wasn't as apt in the end.

Part of the issue might be that this clever Margaery is a bit of a show invention. As far as I recall from the books there isn't much of that aspect to her character there.

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it was SOOOO tense, I don't know if I've ever been so tense watching a TV show before.


So...Bronn or Daenerys, who were you rooting for?  I was so torn, but I knew I didn't want Bronn to die more than anything else.

Bronn since Dany's really annoying; even though I knew it would happen, I was genuinely disappointed Qyburn's ballista didn't work.

Why?  It was clear to me from the moment that I saw it in the basement of the Red Keep that aiming it would be its weakness.

B/c I really want Dany to die b/c she's sooooooo annoying.  Stannis would've been the best of the possible rulers prior to Shireen's burning (which probably isn't gonna go down in the books the way it did in the show).

It won't go down the same way, obviously, (I'm almost certain Stannis wins against the Boltons in the books) but I believe Stannis burning Shireen is one of the few specific events GRRM gave to the show-writers in advance.

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Where did people see these chains carried by the army of the dead before they got the dragon out?