Board 8 > Game of Thrones - How satisfied were you with the ending? [BEE Week 2]

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FAIR WARNING - I promise there will be zero spoilers in the opening posts of this topic series, however everything after that could be Spoiler City. After all, we're exclusively discussing the final moments of some of the most beloved and long running series in the history of popular media... so proceed with caution!

Welcome to Best Ending Ever, the topic series where Board 8 will decide the best (and worst) endings in the history of film, television, literature, and video games. Each week we'll cover a well-regarded or controversial new entry.

For this second week we'll be discussing the HBO television series Game of Thrones. Note: please vote based on the final episodes of Season Eight (The Long Night, The Last of the Starks, The Bells, The Iron Throne), NOT the original novel by the same name or anything else from the GRRM book series!
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Last Week's Result
* Breaking Bad earns an average of 3.32
Over 52% of B8 awarded BB the full Four Star Rating, setting a gold standard for this topic series that might never be matched. Even the posters who had minor concerns about the final episode thought the back half of the last season was strong enough to earn a 3 or a 4.

BEE All Time Rankings
* 3.32 w/ 117 votes - Breaking Bad


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Ng's Hot Take
To set the stage, here's what I had been hoping to see, as of the start of the final season. Cersei is dealt with in King's Landing at great cost of life, then the ragged band of survivors turn around and wage an epic battle against The Others. Pretty much everyone is killed in the struggle, including the last two dragons (ending the age of magic) but ultimately our heroes are successful and save the world. Dany ascends to the throne and Jon rules at her side, but because they can never have children, they "break the wheel" by instituting a representative democracy in Westeros (each of the Seven Kingdoms sends a representative to vote on who becomes the new leader whenever the former King/Queen passes away, it's never inherited).

With that in mind, here are my three major problems with how things went down in the back half of Season Eight. [WARNING, massive spoilers below, continue at your own risk!]

The Stuff At Winterfell
I was 100% on board with the everyone else provides distractions, Bran-as-bait in the Godswood, Arya saves the day situation. It gave weight to the hours we spent watching her assassin training over the years, and I'm fine with "The Prince Who Was Promised" ending up a Princess in the end. What I didn't like was wasting the Night King's lieutenants- they're supposed to be so fierce and terrifying, but spent the whole episode standing behind him uselessly before turning to dust. I wanted to see five of them having epic fights with some of our main heroes to keep them away from the Godswood so the NK could finish off Bran, and some of them cut down main characters while others are stopped just in time by Arya's dagger.

More importantly though, the final battle of good and evil was just way too bloodless. Sure, a thousand people died or whatever, but in terms of named characters it was just Lyanna, Edd, Beric, Jorah, and Theon. (Oh and then Melisandre afterward.) I liked all of them, but that's a pretty pathetic tally after nine years of hype over The Battle To End All Battles. At the bare minimum we should have also lost Rhaegal, Jaime (completing his redemption arc), and Tormund (saving Brienne or something).

The Stuff In The Throne Room
I was fully on board with Jon's stab- right move at the right time, given the circumstances. I'm also okay with Drogon leaving him alive (dragon blood, or something) and flying away with the body. What really bothers me, though, is Greyworm walking in on the scene and calmly putting Jon under arrest. Are you kidding me? In that situation there's zero possibility both of them leave that throne room alive. I'd have picked Jon to win the fight but would have been fine with it going either way, or them killing each other.

The Speed Of Everything
By far my most pressing overall complaint though has to be: everything happened way, way too fast! Season Seven already felt like it was happening on 1.5x speed compared to everything we'd seen in GoT prior, then S8 arrived and suddenly we were at 3x speed. Honestly the events of the last two years probably should have happened over the course of three complete 10 episode seasons, but even giving them the normal 20 EPs instead of the 13 we got would have been a huge help.

They'd spent 10 years of their life on this show, I get it. I just don't understand why they weren't willing to take one more year to complete the work and leave a strong legacy instead of rushing to wrap everything up. They had all the good will in the world and owned every watercooler in western society as the #1 most talked about event in pop culture- why rush that?

Alright so all the above sounds pretty negative, BUT as a counterpoint: I actually really liked where all the surviving characters ended up when things were all said and done! Let's talk about them.

Arya - saves the world, turns down an offer to become one of the most powerful "Lady" wives on the continent in favor of a new adventure and trying to do something else that everyone's always said is impossible. completely badass, totally in character (just like she told Ned on the stairs in S1, one of my favorite scenes), I couldn't give this more thumbs up

Sansa - the new Queen In The North will never be told what to do again (including who she needs to marry). after everything she'd been through, it's the most fitting reward I could imagine, and like she said, the North deserved it after the sacrifice they made to save the rest of Westeros. LITTLE weird for her to still demand this considering the new King was her brother who would have left her alone anyway, but that's okay!

Jon - if he needed to survive the throne room, this was a perfect end for him. he never wanted a throne or titles, instead he gets to return to Ghost and Tormond and help the Wildlings resettle in the only place where he was ever truly happy

Tyrion - was never going to be King, he drinks and he knows things and his best place was always going to be as an advisor. now, would anyone still want him as an advisor, after seeing him give Dany and Jon bad advice 100 times in a row over the last two years? apparently so! but yeah, I'd have been okay with his not surviving, but if he did live, returning to Hand is a fitting reward/punishment

The Hound - got everything he wanted and it was pretty cool, I wouldn't change a thing! (except it was weird how he just let Cersei walk by. let's be honest- she should never have been on that staircase, should have been getting digested by Drogon)

Sam - I loved how he tried to make my ending happen with the democracy plan, and everyone just laughed him off! at least he was able to win them over to a Council of Lords and Ladies, which is pretty much the representative system I wanted for them. finishing things as Grand Maester with a seat on the Small Council, and being the one to write the history of the Song of Ice and Fire is perfect for him

Brienne - becoming the new Lord Commander of the Kingsguard is just what I'd have wanted for her. whitewashing Jaime's career in the official history book was a bit much though ("Died defending his Queen?" more like "Should have died at Winterfell")

Dany - first of all, DID she actually "turn"? when people disobeyed her previously, she had them crucified. every time she faced adversity in the past, her answer was to burn everything. basically, I'm not so sure her disregarding The Bells was out of character in the first place... but even if you say it was, let's not forgot that this is a young woman who lost her husband, brother, son, two other children, best friend, closest advisor, and finally her lover. she sacrificed everything yet no one loved her for it. you take all that and add it to her bloodline's reputation for madness, and I have no issues with her choosing fear over love and wanting a worldwide dictatorship. her decisions made sense in light of everything she went through; it's just that everything she went through happened way too fast

Bran - "who has a better story than Bran The Broken?" uhhh, about half the characters who were still alive! (personally I was on Team Sansa.) still, Jon and Tyrion didn't want the job and there's certainly worst choices than having an all-knowing King, so I kind of get where they're coming from. plus if Bran knew this was coming and that's the only reason he traveled South, it raises some interesting questions about what else he had foreseen and allowed to happen. I was glad to see the Three Eyed Raven storyline had a payoff, but maybe a last sacrifice at Winterfell made a little more sense than ruling Westeros


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tl;dr version of the above post: for the most part I was cool with the stuff that happened, and liked where almost everyone ended up, but every storyline was way too rushed and should have happened over an additional 7 hours of screentime at the bare minimum


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SPOILERS (obviously)

I voted 2. Some things were done right; Sansa and Ary's endings, Mountain vs Hound ending exactly how I predicted, and I even liked the battle for Winterfell. I'm still pissed they threw away seasons of character development out the window for Jaime Lannister just to have him and Cersei die from rubble falling. And Bran? After that, I'd have greatly preferred The Night King.

And everything you said about Jon and Greyworm

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FUCK THAT SHIT OUTTA TEN

caps

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Voted 2, but mostly because the few episodes leading up to it had tanked my expectations so low that it surpassed them by being merely bad instead of terrible

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Voted 2, but mostly because the few episodes leading up to it had tanked my expectations so low that it surpassed them by being merely bad instead of terrible

this is like textbook definition of a 1
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this is a 1.5-2; the majority of the core ideas were solid but the execution was bafflingly poor. it still managed to be largely entertaining, though admittedly i'd never bought in to the show as a great piece of art anyway - at best an adaptation of one - so my standards were probably lower than some people.

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I could go on forever probably, but it's terrible.

Even if Sansa got to a place she "deserved", her ending was awful because she'd been terrible for several seasons. They dropped the ball compeltely with her, and it was pretty clear we just had to accept she was suddenly the best thing anyone could ask for to have on their side.

Declaring independance for the North was so weird then. Like, why? The showwriters clearly worship Sansa, so I'm thinking they just wanted her to be queen of something, and that Bran being king came from the books or something so they had to do it without wanting to. Robb declaring himself King in the North was a move against the throne because they killed his father, now his brother is on the throne, like, what's the point? What made the scene more annoying was that Yara didn't do the same thing. The Ironborn has wanted to be indepedant forever, it made no sense for Yara to think "sure fine, I don't need it". Several other kingdoms declaring it would've made more sense too.

Let's not even get started on the Dothraki's role this season.

Or that Tyrion could walk in and move a single rock to find Jaime and Cersei. I actually enjoyed their death scene, but when it became clear they could have moved away a little and survived, that became offensively bad.

Or Varys suddenly being stupid.

The small council making no sense, because it was filled with their favorite characters alive. Davos made little sense. Bronn made no sense at all. Sam being grand master also made no sense. Yes, it's a good end point for him, but not anytime soon. And he should have been in the crypts during the long night.

The Long Night was all kinds of awful on top of that. It was also incredibly predictable who went down. Lyanna might have been the biggest shocker there. Edd's death scene was flat out stupid, they also kind of forgot what that character was in the end. Theon's was done pretty horrible too despite the fine intention. You could think to yourself "who has plot relevance in the King's Landing conflict and who does the showwriters clearly love a lot? Those all survive" and you'd be at least 95% right.

The kind of forgot memes are perfect, because it was stupid in the context used and it applies to every single stupid decision in that season, ranging from theings like the aforementioned forgetting Sam isn't a front fighter to things like forgetting to divorce Tyrion and Sansa so that Tyrion is technically King in the North.

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I'm convinced this poll is a bunch of people trolling because it should be an almost unanimous terrible

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1 is literally too high a vote.

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Eh, I thought it was a 2 but it's more just because I didn't expect all that much, it basically became a michael bay esque action flick, the pacing and the road to get there was more of a problem than the actual journey. There really wasn't all that much development of characters.

wonder how different it would be if we got 10 seasons like HBO wanted. (probably little, but eh)

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Nestled perfectly between a 1 and a 2 for me, which I guess unfortunately means I have to round 1.5 up though it doesn't deserve it.

The stuff with Jon and Dany could've been handled better, but it was ultimately acceptable. In my heart I know Mad Queen was the logical conclusion, and yet I hate how the show arrived at it. Missandei's death was so contrived (like how only SHE managed to get lost overboard in the wreckage) and Dany just FORGOT about one of the only TWO things in the ENTIRETY of Westeros that could kill one of her fucking dragons are you shitting me? Fuck right off with that.

I refuse to accept that ASoIaF Jaime will go crawling back to Cersei so GoT Jamie is now fanfiction, and the crap with Bran the Broken, ruler of the seven- I mean six or is it five kingdoms can kiss my ass as well. Who has a better story than Bran? Um... Jon is RIGHT there, that man came back from the dead, fought two major battles, rode a dragon, and killed his lover, but sure Bran played in the snow for a whole season COOL STORY BRO.

The only characters that had good endings as opposed to mediocre ones were the few that stayed true to their character arcs that had been built up for seasons (e.g. The Hound, Brienne, and Arya). Everyone else had varying degrees of shit endings and the more I think about it the more I wish I rounded down instead of up because holy crap did that last episode make me angry even if there was some good leading up to it.

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Perfect post, Genny, really well formulated and I agree with everything, although I did have my issues with Brienne and Arya in the later seasons. They still ended fine.

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1

regarding sansa, the fact that her "brother" (a tree computer that isn't even really her brother anymore) is the king makes no difference. she is not asking for northern independence so that she can do whatever she wants. she is asking for northern independence in the interest of defending the idea of freedom. so that 100 years after she is dead, whatever fuckface is ruling in king's landing can't send people up north to try and tell the grandchildren of all the people she is currently sworn to protect that they need to come fight in some dumb, pointless war.

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That's a good point, but it doesn't justify everyone else just listening and thinking "yeah, sure thing, the North becomes independant and we do not".

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ctesjbuvf posted...

That's a good point, but it doesn't justify everyone else just listening and thinking "yeah, sure thing, the North becomes independant and we do not".

or agreeing to utter stark domination of the entire continent
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SeabassDebeste posted...

or agreeing to utter stark domination of the entire continent

had to wait until arya got off the continent tbqhhh

she was like a level 25 DnD Assassin/Illusionist in a world where everyone else is like a level 4 fighter

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ctesjbuvf posted...

That's a good point, but it doesn't justify everyone else just listening and thinking "yeah, sure thing, the North becomes independant and we do not".

Bran was king and he didn't care and thus nobody else did. And as the eldest Stark Sansa probably has more weight in challenging him but just wants seccession.

Honestly I think that Bran getting to be king by doing nothing was kinda the point that the showrunners (and possibly Martin assuming the plot points were similar) were trying to make, it was just... kinda poorly executed.

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Why didn't they just go back to being seven separate kingdoms. It was such a perfect way to bookend. The dragon-rulers are gone, and the kingdoms split apart as they were before the Targaryens. Ugh. The way they did it is just so stupid.

high fives the one other person who voted 3

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Okay the people that said it was excellent they are either trolls or don't really care for the story/characters.

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I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again.

At its absolute worst, Game of Thrones is still better than 90% of TV. At its best, it's unbeatable.

There are definitely things that stop Game of Thrones' last two seasons from being all they could've been. Namely, the rushing of Dany's character arc conclusion and (imo) the disservice it did to Tyrion and especially Varys.

That being said, there is even more that is done right. While people don't like the suddenness of Dany's break, it's still an incredible episode. The destruction of King's Landing was one of the most terrifying and spectacularly crafted things to ever happen on TV as far as VFX and action cinematography are concerned, and on top of that it gave excellent payoff for The Hound, The Mountain, Arya and Jon. Plus, say what you will about how she got to that point, but Dany being tearfully slain by Jon just after she finally touches the throne is great.

On top of that, great conclusion for Jon again in the finale, along with Brienne, Sam and Sansa. In fact, many supporting characters had great conclusions to their arcs: Lyanna, Jorah, Theon, and Melisandre all went out in ways that couldn't have been much better given their characters. Davos gets his moment with the scarred girl, Littlefinger gets what he fucking deserves.

They did my boy Varys dirty though

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It is beyond me how anyone can accept Littlefinger's ending. Doesn't matter what he deserved or didn't deserve.

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Little finger got the worst ending. I still have fits of rage over it. Sansa was supposed to outplay him- or basically anything better than what we got- but he got beat by magic visions ugh

Varys > Doran/Hotah > Euron > Littlefinger on who was messed up most

well if we aren't counting the night king plot.

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Varys was really bad but it was wrapped up in how bad the ending was as a whole and Littlefinger had his own space for it to just be bad before we knew how bad all of it was gonna be.

Legendarily bad.

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I like Littlefinger's ending because it emphasized his flaws. He's extremely clever and devious and so on, but when it comes to Catelyn and Sansa, he gets sloppy. He gets cocky and thinks he can outplay everyone with ease, but fails to recognize all the pieces in play, and dies because of it. He didn't get beaten by magic visions, he got beaten by his own arrogance, the visions just confirmed it.

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This isn't related to the ending (I voted 3 points in the poll, by the way), but is it just me, or does anyone else think Bronn was meant to die in the convoy attack in season 7? I say that because that's the last time he does anything of note, as he just gets the odd line here and there for the rest of season 7, and his season 8 subplot goes nowhere and is quickly dropped.

The convoy attack seemed to be building up to his death, as back in season 1, Tyrion plucks him out of obscurity to be his champion in trial by combat, and from there he keeps increasing his status and fortune. This changes when he encounters the Dothraki, a foe he can't outwit or bargain with. One of them even cuts the fat sack of cash Bronn had at the time from his belt, which I thought was symbolic of him beginning as a nobody, building himself up and then going back to being a nobody just as he's about to die, because death is the great equaliser that doesn't discriminate between rich and poor. Of course, he ends up surviving, so I wonder if the showrunners chickened out of killing him at the last minute due to him being one of their favourite characters, but also having nothing for him to do from there because the rest of the series was planned without him being around.

They just had no idea what to do with Bronn, its that simple.

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They also had to rework some story because of the real life shit between Bronn and Cersei

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I was stuck between 2 and 3 here, went 2 in the end, but I still liked it on the whole. It was very clearly rushed and two of the episodes - 7x05 and 8x04 - were fucking ridiculous in the way characters were just thrown around the board. With that in mind, I have to question the wisdom behind 8x02 especially. It had really good character stuff but fundamentally spun its wheels. During 7x07 when some of the characters reunited and walked towards the Dragonpit, I commented that the show should have been a little more brutal and edited out some of the conversations to make it tighter - even if they served the fans the episode would have been less bloated without one or two of them. 8x02 was like that in episode form, and given that they only had 6 episodes to play with it's hard to understand the logic behind that decision. In a 10-episode season it would be better but given how chaotic 8x04 was, it's harder to understand.

But I was never less than entertained even as it became more about spectacle and fanservice (like Davos' "rowing" line) than the richer character stuff.

I liked the finale mostly - everything up to and including Jon killing Dany was some really compelling TV, particularly the Jon/Tyrion scene which I thought was fantastic. It was good to see Harrington more or less matching Dinklage (whereas when they shared scenes back in the first season Harrington was really not that great, and largely outclassed). Everything after that was a little bit too neat, but could have been worse and I liked the conclusions for a lot of the characters. I liked the way they used Jon's lineage not to give Jon the throne - which would have been unsatisfactory to me - but to further Dany's breakdown.

Johnbobb posted...

At its absolute worst, Game of Thrones is still better than 90% of TV. At its best, it's unbeatable.

This btw. By the end I was invested enough in the world and the characters that I found its missteps mostly forgivable. It traded a lot on its former glories - I lost count of how much of the dialogue was a callback or a reference - but I'm OK with the show cashing in its chips like that.

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I remember those carefree days when I thought the worst way the show could end was with Jon becoming king.

XIII_rocks posted...

This btw. By the end I was invested enough in the world and the characters that I found its missteps mostly forgivable.

forgiving the show/being invested in it is acceptable, but that doesn't make it better than 90% of tv
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ZeroSignal620 posted...

I'm still pissed they threw away seasons of character development out the window for Jaime Lannister just to have him and Cersei die from rubble falling.

Yeah, overall that's the character arc I found the most upsetting, as I hinted at.

Even if Sansa got to a place she "deserved", her ending was awful because she'd been terrible for several seasons. They dropped the ball compeltely with her, and it was pretty clear we just had to accept she was suddenly the best thing anyone could ask for to have on their side.

This is a little harsh for my taste. I'll admit I was upset when it looked like they were setting up the sisters to be at each other's throats, but when it turned out they were just tricking Littlefinger to fall into their trap, that was okay. Alright, it was also weird when she didn't tell Jon her plan before the Battle of the Bastards. Aside from that though she was pretty on the money- right about needing to store up food for the long winter, right about not trusting Dany, right about needing to give the armies a short rest before marching on King's Landing, and so forth.

Declaring independance for the North was so weird then.

They had different circumstances versus all the other kingdoms, getting decimated by the Bastard Battle, the Wildlings, the winter, and finally the Others. I'm 100% with Sansa when she says they'd taken the brunt of the burden and literally saved the world and deserved to be rewarded by not bending the knee.

Or Varys suddenly being stupid.

Well, he was totally right about Dany. But yes, not being subtle about it and sticking his neck out like he did was not very Spider-like.

The small council making no sense, because it was filled with their favorite characters alive. Davos made little sense. Bronn made no sense at all. Sam being grand master also made no sense. Yes, it's a good end point for him, but not anytime soon.

That's a fair point, Bran talked like Tyrion having the Hand role pressed back on him was a punishment for all his mistakes, but the Council being the "All Tyrion's Best Buds Club" pretty effectively bursts that bubble.


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Honestly just the fact that the war against the White Walkers was ended FIRST, and then the battle for King's Landing happened NEXT was bullshit. It doesn't even matter how any of it turned out (not that it was good anyway!), just that the entire series had been building up the Army of the Dead as the big threat that would consume the world and the petty squabbling over thrones and titles was meaningless compared to that, and then to reverse that and make the throne the big ending seemed like a betrayal of the narrative.

I'm not sure how I'd have preferred it exactly, but going into S8E3 I was definitely hoping for the good guys to lose and have to flee to the south with the Dead on their heels for a last stand at King's Landing. I just can't approve of the White Walkers essentially remaining a "North Problem" for the entire series. It was supposed to be the war for all life and most people outside the North never even knew it fucking happened, and probably wouldn't believe it if they'd heard about it. Bullshit.

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Ngamer64 posted...

This is a little harsh for my taste. I'll admit I was upset when it looked like they were setting up the sisters to be at each other's throats, but when it turned out they were just tricking Littlefinger to fall into their trap, that was okay. Alright, it was also weird when she didn't tell Jon her plan before the Battle of the Bastards. Aside from that though she was pretty on the money- right about needing to store up food for the long winter, right about not trusting Dany, right about needing to give the armies a short rest before marching on King's Landing, and so forth.

Maybe that part is more an issue with Littlefinger than Sansa, but I didn't enjoy that part at all. The issue probably started when Littlefinger gave Sansa to Ramsay which is a good contender for absolute stupidest plot element, so it was likely a lost cause by then. She was suddenly just arrogant and confident in everything she did. Her path from naive little girl to that was basically just a lot disaster and then she was the smartest surviving them.

Right about not trusting Dany is misleading, because Dany lost Viserion, Jorah, Rhaegal and Missandei in addition to being betrayed by Varys after Sansa started thinking that. She had basically made her mind up about Dany from the start and it ended up being correct, but she might very well have been part of what pushed her there.

That process included Sansa telling a lie in front of the godswood in Wintetfell, when she swore Jon not to tell and then told Tyrion instantly afterwards. Not only was that awful to her step brother to begin with, it's literally the worst thing you can do as a person from the North. I know it's probably another "kin of forgot" bit from the show runners, but it's a terrible crime and her becoming queen of the North right afterwards is just further insulting.

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MrGreenonion posted...

Honestly just the fact that the war against the White Walkers was ended FIRST, and then the battle for King's Landing happened NEXT was bullshit. It doesn't even matter how any of it turned out (not that it was good anyway!), just that the entire series had been building up the Army of the Dead as the big threat that would consume the world and the petty squabbling over thrones and titles was meaningless compared to that, and then to reverse that and make the throne the big ending seemed like a betrayal of the narrative.

i disagree

i think it's very important to show that the end of the world doesn't stop politics from mattering - because after the world ends, you still have to deal with humans

the execution of it was shit though so it didn't work out
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MrGreenonion posted...

Honestly just the fact that the war against the White Walkers was ended FIRST, and then the battle for King's Landing happened NEXT was bullshit. It doesn't even matter how any of it turned out (not that it was good anyway!), just that the entire series had been building up the Army of the Dead as the big threat that would consume the world and the petty squabbling over thrones and titles was meaningless compared to that, and then to reverse that and make the throne the big ending seemed like a betrayal of the narrative.

I sort of get this. I think they took a narratively easy route of basically cleaving the season in half - half to deal with the Walkers, half to deal with Cersei - but I think with more time they would have done something more complicated. I think, with more episodes to play with, it would have been better to have them lose the battle of Winterfell and force the main characters to retreat/escape Winterfell and be forced south, leaving them between a rock and a hard place.

Edit: and then I went back and read the second half of your post which basically said the same thing. Whoops.

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Yeah. That would have been a good ending.

It kinda reminds me of the 7th Harry Potter book in a strange way.
Going in I thought they were going to destroy the horcruxes throughout the book in this evenly-spaced sort of way, but it ended up being nowhere near that neat. I think they still had 3 to destroy even as the final battle began? So it ended up being more messy and chaotic and much more thrilling as a result. If they had done it as neatly as I thought, it would have lost a lot of tension.

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Dany should've focused on King's Landing and ignored the White Walker threat.

Jon gets revealed to be the true blood heir who deserves the throne, but he fucks off because he says the White Walkers are the threat, and nobody follows him.

Dany vs Cersei
North vs White Walkers

Heartless Bran eventually says "okay guys, Winterfell is fallen, we need to leave" because the North falling was necessary to defeat the Night King or something, and Bran being inhuman has more room to play out.

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I loved Dany (before the final season) and that would have been a much more organic way for things to play out. Sure Dany loves the people and saving slaves but going with the theme of when it comes down to it getting the throne is more important to her so she goes against Cersei instead of the Whites at the beginning of the season would have been a much better jumping off point for mad Dany.

Yeah now that you mention it, that would have been a good way to split up the season and drive the conflict to a boiling point.

Also we're only 3 votes away from matching last week, nice! We'll give another day or two for discussion before moving on to the next ending (which should also have no trouble clearing 100 votes- it's the biggest story of the decade).


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Hmmm, lots of people didn't like how things ended up for Littlefinger. I get it, but I don't think "killed because a tree computer had powers he never could have known about" is quite fair.

He knew Sansa and knew her ambitions, but Arya was a blank slate to him. All the info he had is that the two girls didn't get along well together before the war, so he put two and two together and assumed (quite naturally) Arya was just as ambitious, meaning he'd be able to sow chaos by getting the girls to fight over power and inheritance and who deserved to be Queen in the North. That was a bad bet and IMO it was always going to cost him his life, Bran or not.

Now if you want to argue it was a bad way to go because taking such a risk without doing his homework wasn't in his character, I might agree with you. To be fair though he came from nothing and was always going to need to take huge gambles to grab power, and they'd come close to landing his head on the chopping block more than once before. We ARE talking about Mister Chaos Is A Ladder after all, and chaos is always messy.


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But all the stuff about not understanding Arya and Sansa and getting booted because he cant fathom familial love and Sansa is his huge blind spot and all that leading up to the end was solid gold and super hype

and then Bran runs in and tree magic beep boop I drain the life out of every scene Im in now you are dead Littlefinger after setting off the entire story of the show.

Ngamer64 posted...

Hmmm, lots of people didn't like how things ended up for Littlefinger. I get it, but I don't think "killed because a tree computer had powers he never could have known about" is quite fair.

He knew Sansa and knew her ambitions, but Arya was a blank slate to him. All the info he had is that the two girls didn't get along well together before the war, so he put two and two together and assumed (quite naturally) Arya was just as ambitious, meaning he'd be able to sow chaos by getting the girls to fight over power and inheritance and who deserved to be Queen in the North. That was a bad bet and IMO it was always going to cost him his life, Bran or not.

This makes sense. Unless Bran told his sisters off camera before that scene, there was the possibility that they wanted him dead the whole time throughout season 7.

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Last chance to have your say, we start the new series tonight!


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