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The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones is the lowest rated episode in series history (critic reviews)
- Thread starter Deleted member 249
- Start date
I really can't state how much it sucks that the episode made it look like that was the pivotal moment for Dany. That Jon's rejection of her advance was what caused her to snap and break her moral code to go into full genocide mode.
It actually does.
Her support base either died or betrayed her. She is an egomaniac from the moment she knew she was born to rule. She has been told day in and day out that people would love her and respect her because she is the RIGHTFUL ruler of basically everything. It isn't a stretch to see someone like that snap given the circumstances and considering how easy the people she was supposed to rule just give up their ruler. Dany is a child. She has always been a child because she never grew as a person beyond the "praise and serve me for I am your queen" thing.
God complexes are fragile things.
It actually is character development. You just choose to not accept it because it's not the most bestest delivery of it. Like, would you say Tony's character development over the MCU isn't character development because he is reacting to things that happen to him or his circumstance? Probably not. The same goes for basically every other character ever created. No need to single out Dany.
But she totally did? Just a few scenes before Tyrion actually betrayed one of his closest allies and basically killed him for Daenerys. John stood next to her, repeating his support over and over again. Tyrion was her most important adviser and he proved to her that, no matter what, he would stand next to her. Along with Jon. Jon simply didn't want to have a romantic relationship anymore. He was still 100% on her side and she knew it. The framing that she was utterly alone with no one left to lean on is ridicolous.
Especially if your consider that her "heel-turn" was the murder of literally millions of men, women and children for absolutely zero strategic reason or out of any necessity. That's such an insanely huge jump from "I'm gonna burn people who resist me". Instead of turning from a conflicted Hero to a conflicted Villian, she just jumped straight from conflicted hero to Adolf Hitler incarnate.
The problem isn't that it happened, the problem is that in the moment, it wasn't believable at all. Nothing happened to set her off, she was just silently sitting there, having achieved everything she wanted to. You know what they could have done? They could have Euron kill the second dragon right then and there, when King's Landing supposedly gave up, everyone ready to put down their weapons, including Daenerys. But then Euron shoots one of the crossbows, muders her child after she gave them one last chance to give up and Daenerys freaks the fuck out and burns everything.
Not only would that have been a waaaaaaaay more believable turn of events, but it would have also fixed a lot of other problems in the process: The weirdly unemotional send-off of Rhaegal, the silly ambush, the fact that the Crossbows where undefeatable in the 4th episode but did absolutely nothing in the fifth. It's such a simple, obvious fix.
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Yes, but she was always shown to have a darker side with darker instincts. Its been a running theme for her character. The only thing that kept it in check was her friends and advisers surrounding her. She had nobody left to check those impulses. Combine that darker nature with all of the adversity and things that have happened to her and she just snapped. She has danced along the edge of dark and crazy for years. Just like her father did. She finally just went over the edge. Just like her father did. The Mad Queen. Daughter of the Mad King.
Oh well, I enjoyed it a lot. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I honestly have liked all of S8 which seems to be a very unpopular opinion. I will agree that this final season seems rushed and the seasons that had the books as source material were better. In an alternate universe GRRM would have finished the books and this show would have went on another 4-5 seasons with strong source material to work from.
Even so, I still consider GoT to be one of the best shows I've ever watched, still.
I honestly have liked all of S8 which seems to be a very unpopular opinion. I will agree that this final season seems rushed and the seasons that had the books as source material were better. In an alternate universe GRRM would have finished the books and this show would have went on another 4-5 seasons with strong source material to work from.
Even so, I still consider GoT to be one of the best shows I've ever watched, still.
Hah, after ep 3 all those cliffhangers of slow pans over wight/ww armies started to come back to me. It was teased to hell and back and what we ended up with... was disappointing to say the least.
When did she ever display darker instincts towards innocents and common folk? I may just be forgetting over 70+ episodes, but in my mind she was always compassionate to the plight of the downtrodden. That was a core theme of her character as I saw it.
I mainly feel bad to people who are so vehemently disappointed by this season, but they did it to themselves.
The show was doomed once it started passing the books. The very first few episodes of season 5 showed the immediate decline in quality of the writing imo.
Personally I sat out 5-7, and now I'm watching season 8 while simultaneously watching 5-7, and not only am I having a blast, but it's all much better than I expected. Maybe it's my own low expectations, or the fact that I've been GoT-deprived, but I feel like they've done a perfectly fine job given that's they're trying to finish GRRM's story, and he's obviously a much better writer than DnD. Add the crunch of trying to fit it all into 8 seasons (and 8 episodes this season), I just don't see why people expected some revelation.
The show was doomed once it started passing the books. The very first few episodes of season 5 showed the immediate decline in quality of the writing imo.
Personally I sat out 5-7, and now I'm watching season 8 while simultaneously watching 5-7, and not only am I having a blast, but it's all much better than I expected. Maybe it's my own low expectations, or the fact that I've been GoT-deprived, but I feel like they've done a perfectly fine job given that's they're trying to finish GRRM's story, and he's obviously a much better writer than DnD. Add the crunch of trying to fit it all into 8 seasons (and 8 episodes this season), I just don't see why people expected some revelation.
I mean, to be fair, you could say that about Ned and Robb as well. The show did a great job at subverting expectations early on. Those moments felt better because they had better written material to draw on as opposed to some notes hastily scrawled on a bar napkin about how everything ends. But there are definitely story arcs in the good seasons that don't get the closure we would want either.
I just don't understand why they're rushing it... isn't it making money hand over fist?? If there was any show that could negotiate more time to end properly, it's fucking GoT..
She never actually cared for them if you think about it. The Unsullied and Dothraki are used as tools to claim the Iron Throne. She only freed those cities because it was advantageous for that goal. The ones who cared were her advisers but they're kind of gone and it's just Tyrion who she believes is both-sideing. It's hard to argue she cared for people at all. She was just too hyperfocused on the Iron Throne. Like, when she came to the North it kind of showed just what she is: a bully who will leverage what she has so she can make a race for the Throne and nothing more. Dany only helped against the Night King, not because he'd kill everyone, but because she'd have no throne if he lived. She then got a nice prize package which was the North vowing to fight for her.
She is kind of a selfish jerk when you think of it.
I hate Dany with a passion, and the ratings are deserved, in terms of the writing though.
No, it actually isn't character development. Bad stuff happening to a character is something that can prompt character development, but it is not, in itself, character development. To use your example, Tony getting captured by Not-ISIS isn't character development. Him changing his worldview due to seeing the consequences of his warmongering is. What your essentially arguing is that Dany had all the prompts she needed to become more hostile, more aggressive, more uncompassionate, and yeah, sure, if we had her deciding to do more and more wrathful things, THEN we might have accepted her going nuclear on KL.
But we didn't.
So no character development.
This is the most spot on description I've seen so far.
You are focusing too much on the common folk part. The people she has always helped had always supported her. When she liberated Mereen the people rose up and overthrew the Masters. They fought with her against their oppressors. Now flash forward to Kings Landing where the populace not only would not rise up and help her overthrow Ceseri they were actively against her and maybe even afraid of her due to lineage. She has been shown to be vindictive and unstable before towards those who were against her or did not support her. And that was BEFORE all of her advisers were dead and BEFORE the man she loved rejected her. Add onto that she is already genetically predisposed to madness and already had a dark side.
To me its not that hard to believe. Its obviously rushed and completely over the top, but not surprising. Especially when they have telegraphed the Mad Queen storyline all season long and dropped hints of it in the past.
David and Dan wanted to wrap it up so they could move on to other projects, but HBO was very much in favor of keeping it going. So it's all on D&D.
Yeah, she had those things happen to her. It made her do things she was already capable of because the show has shown time and time again she's got a god complex who uses people. She developed into who exactly she is. Her being nice before was her advisers keeping that complex at bay.
So, yeah, you're wrong.
I guess part of the issue was that the crunch was self-imposed. HBO, the cast, etc would have been fine continuing onward another season or two. D&D didn't want to. In fact they wanted more crunch. I think people give leeway when a studio is breathing down an artist's neck to get something done, but are less inclined when the studio would hand them a blank check if they wanted.
That's a shame. I would have guessed it was the other way around and some actors wanted off the show like what's been happening with The Walking Dead.
Really enjoyed it personally. The big twist was telegraphed from a mile away, so I'm shocked that others are shocked. For the complaints about characters "teleporting" from one side of the map to other -- do we really need to see what happened to them along the way? Is that minutia really germane to the plot as a whole?
Wasn't there a massive gap between seasons the time too? I mean as soon as you see them lopping off episodes to shorten the season you know you're in trouble.
Just for posterity, I'm gonna point out that you just completely reversed your argument, in that this is now no longer character development but her inner character being revealed. She didn't develop into this, she was always a depraved psychopath and she was only just pretended to be kind and empathic to fool....????
Anyway, like I said before. It's a goddamn motherfucking crock of bullshit. Straight up character assassination.
The writing was on the wall last season, but I was hoping it was just a fluke. It's just gone so downhill.
Which is a shame because I thought season 6 was phenomenal.
Which is a shame because I thought season 6 was phenomenal.
Actually no, because both of those led somewhere. Ned's and Robb's death are both major moments in the show that set many things into motion. Those only led to nothing ultimately if you follow the echoes their deaths left because those end up at these final episodes where all build-up to things is just thrown in the wind. Also, it's not true that their deaths came out of nowhere, both were actually pretty well telegraphed beforehand, you just have to look a bit harder for the hints, but they're there.
The problem isn't that it ends in a way "we don't want". I don't give a shit about what I want, the problem is that it completely undermines years of character development and is seemingly just done because Benioff and Weiss think unexpected equals good for some reason.
- Did I expect Jaime's entire character arc to have been pointless because in the penultimate episode he reverts back to his season 1 persona?
- Did I expect that he's apparently been lying this entire time about why he killed Aerys because "he never really cared about the civilians of King's Landing?"
- Did I expect that Bran's storyline would climax with him sitting at a tree during the big White Walker confrontation doing fuck all?
- Did I expect that there seems to be no real reason why Jon Snow was brought back by the Lord of Light?
- Did I expect Arya to kill the Night King despite not even knowing about him until two episodes before it happens?
- Did I expect that the reason that Beric was able to come back so many times was to save Arya in a hallway?
- Did I expect the White Walkers, this Eldritch horror that has previously shrouded the entire world in darkness for hundreds of years, to be killed off in just over an hour of television time by a single knife stab?
- Did I expect Euron Greyjoy to kill a dragon out of nowhere?
- Did I expect them to last-minute try to make a tragic character out of Cersei?
No, of course I didn't expect any of that, because that is all fucking stupid.
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I wonder if the series would have overall been better revieved if they ended it series 8 episode 2 with the characters making peace with each other before their potential deaths at the hands of the white walkers. Solemn and ambigious.
Probably the most disappointing episode of TV I've watched in years, especially due to my time investment in the series. Everything from S7 onward is junk. (arguably it's been bad since they passed the books)
Normally I'd be annoyed by all the blatant teasing regarding the finale, but after this episode, don't even care anymore lol
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If it were telegraphed from a mile away, people wouldn't be upset.
The problem is that it wasn't. Literally near the end of the previous season, Dany was making a speech reminding the audience that she's there to save the innocents. She's constantly talking about saving the innocents.
For seemingly no reason, she disregards that because of some bells.
Those are different though. Those story lines ended as a direct consequence of their character's actions (Ned trusting Littlefinger, and Rob choosing the wrong woman).
The Night King getting ganked had nothing to do with a decision he made aside from I guess not knowing Arya existed as a character?
Arya should have gotten to Cersei before Jamie. Killed her. Then looked Jamie in the eyes and said, "2 to 1" then walked away.
If that moment had cut straight to her destroying the Red Keep, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. Her wanting to unleash dragon fire on her enemies has been a thing for years, and she was often talked down. In that most vulnerable moment and with advisors around, I'd argue it even would have made sense for her to raze the Red Keep after the Lannister forces surrendered. Those civilian around the castle die in the collateral damage, but I don't think that would have like a character assassination of Danny
Killing thousands of civilians along the way, for some reason, came of nowhere. Everything the show was showing wasimplying through the visuals was her going to confront Cersei. And then she just starts killing everyone. Wait, what, why??
What if the show ended at episode 2 with one of those epilogue text scrolls or pictures describing how things turned out for the character with sad music.
"Jaime and Brienne went on to fight valiantly on the battlefield that night. They died as warriors to protect the fathers, mothers, and children of the Seven Kingdoms."
Episode 2 ended so good, I was so happy for Brienne.
"Jaime and Brienne went on to fight valiantly on the battlefield that night. They died as warriors to protect the fathers, mothers, and children of the Seven Kingdoms."
Episode 2 ended so good, I was so happy for Brienne.
Anyone else think we'll get another ASOIAF adaptation in 20-40 years? I've had this thought for a while.
