Game of Thrones

Why didn't Bran just tell us in episode one that he'll be king?  Couldn't he see the future?

GOT has always been a "enjoy the ride" type of show.

Not sure what type of ending would have satisfied all of the diehard fans. 

The most logical criticism of the end that I've read is that the writers rushed toward it, so that when certain things happened, like Dany breaking bad, it didn't feel like there was enough build-up to that decision. I had been binge-watching the season last week, including watching episodes 2 and 4 twice, so I had picked up on the cues for that but they were subtle and where I think they were trying to give us something like the shock of The Red Wedding, some people were just too invested in Dany being a good Queen to take something like that.

Personally, I thought it was a fitting end to the series and I enjoyed it, but I can see why many didn't.

Oh, and if you want the biggest clue as to "why Bran", pick up the book and turn to Chapter 1. His POV is the first in the story, so it's not surprising that his would also be the last.

ridski said:

Oh, and if you want the biggest clue as to "why Bran", pick up the book and ...

 Stop right there, you lose a lot of people with "pick up a book".

As a reader of the books, do you think JRR Martin will do a "rewrite" when he finishes his work in progress?

nohero said:
 Stop right there, you lose a lot of people with "pick up a book".
As a reader of the books, do you think JRR Martin will do a "rewrite" when he finishes his work in progress?

 There's nothing to show that he will. He notoriously does not bend to the will of his fans, except when he auctions off being killed in a book for charity. But he has publicly stated that the end Weiss and Benioff wrote is basically the ending he has in mind. He's got another 2,500 pages left to write to get there yet.

ETA: I'm still about 2/3rds through the first book, BTW. I'm a terrible reader. But I've heard a lot (not all on MOL) of people shocked that it would be Bran, and it looks like this whole thing could have been Bran's story all along.

I don’t think Bran can see the future, only the past. Before the battle of Winterfell someone asked him if something would work,  he said he didn’t know because nobody had ever done it before. 

On a disappointment scale of Newhart to Lost, the finale fell somewhere around How I Met Your Mother.

Was not happy with the finale. So much sitting around for episode 6. Can't believe Grey Worm's self-control for not killing Jon. The dude killed the Queen, for heaven's sake! And all that exposition from Tyrion when he has been sentenced to die? Grey Worm should've been like "shut the hell up!" Slap across the head or something. A definite Hollywood ending as all the central characters head off to their various spinoffs! 

grob2 said:
On a disappointment scale of Newhart to Lost, the finale fell somewhere around How I Met Your Mother.

 Come to think of it did anyone really like the end of The Sopranos? Or Sienfeld?

Everyone hated the Teletubbies finale so much, they had to make a bunch more 15 years later to get the bad taste outta the kids' mouths.

To be fair though, the ending definitely wasn’t as good as the show finales for Blake’s 7 or Blackadder Goes Forth. I don’t think anything could match those.

No show finale was better than the last episode of Six Feet Under.

Except for M*A*S*H

dave said:
Except for M*A*S*H

 ayup

and Breaking Bad.

It wasn’t that it was a divisive finale- I get it, not everyone wants the same thing. It’s that it was so rushed and sloppy from a plot perspective that they ruined the whole show. And the ending was just lazy and silly. 

j_r said:
No show finale was better than the last episode of Six Feet Under.

It was a good finale but the show itself should have died two seasons sooner.

Breaking Bad was perfection in every way. Game of Thrones was awfully close up until Season 8. If the writing had been strong and they took a whole season to develop the plot twists, it might have gone down in history as one of the greats. Now, not so much.

drummerboy said:

dave said:
Except for M*A*S*H

 ayup

I liked the M*A*S*H finale well enough, but it pretty much set the template for deflated expectations and negative postmortems.

ridski said:
To be fair though, the ending definitely wasn’t as good as the show finales for Blake’s 7 or Blackadder Goes Forth. I don’t think anything could match those.

I probably saw about 80 percent of the Blackadders when Comedy Central ran them in the ’90s, but I must’ve missed the finale. Are you able to easily summarize it,* or am I better off Googling?

* More work for you and less for me. What I learned from the 80 percent wasn’t wasted.

so many stupid things... 

Sansa won the popular vote but Bran had the electoral college.

— snark hoppus. (@markhoppus) May" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/markhoppus/status/1130308921938210816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2019

bran wasn’t even on the ballot. That’s the issue.

What was that silly scene with Tyrion preparing for the meeting with Bran and the others.

 He would have been a very cool king. A slightly debauched Yoda.

Morganna said:
What was that silly scene with Tyrion preparing for the meeting with Bran and the others.
 He would have been a very cool king. A slightly debauched Yoda.

 Tyrion was moving the chairs so Bran's wheelchair could pass to the head of the table.  It's what the Hand of the king does.

it really was such a silly ending around that table. Why was Bronn there (or anywhere really)? I could go on with questions but I’m just going to make myself mad again.

DaveSchmidt said:
I probably saw about 80 percent of the Blackadders when Comedy Central ran them in the ’90s, but I must’ve missed the finale. Are you able to easily summarize it,* or am I better off Googling?
* More work for you and less for me. What I learned from the 80 percent wasn’t wasted.

 As always, Captain Blackadder is trying his damnedest to outsmart his superior officers, who are a combination of complete imbeciles and total psychopaths, and get out of the trenches of WW1 and back to his cozy life in Blighty. After hearing that they will be going over the top at daybreak, one final night of desperation ensues but to no avail, until Private Baldrick says he has "a cunning plan."

Cpt. Blackadder responds: "Well, I'm afraid it'll have to wait. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad. I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?" At that point a whistle blows in the distance, signalling the advance. "Good luck everyone," Blackadder says, and he, along with Baldrick, Cpt. Darling and Lt. St. Barleigh goes over the top of the trench into the fog and smoke of No Man's Land as gunfire and shells explode all around them, and a melancholy piano version of the main theme plays.

Then the scene dissolves to reveal a poppy field and the sound of birdsong. Roll credits. Cue the weeping of millions of viewers who really did not see that coming.

conandrob240 said:
it really was such a silly ending around that table. Why was Bronn there (or anywhere really)? I could go on with questions but I’m just going to make myself mad again.

 Bronn is lord of Highgarden and Lord Paramount of the Reach, that's why he was there.

So was Yara Greyjoy, the new Prince of Dorne, Davos Seaworth, Brienne of Tarth, Gendry of Storm's End, Lord Une of the Stormlands, Sam Tarly, Edmure Tully of the Riverlands, Robin Arryn, Yohn Royce, possibly Howland Reed, and two unnamed Lords.

unicorn33 said:

> The dragon roasts the throne but not Jon? Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

 My wife was a viewer, not me, but I watched the finale with her and have enjoyed reading the post-finale commentary. This one comes up a lot, and my wife’s reply was: Jon is a Targaryan, and dragons don’t kill Targaryans.

ridski said:

Then the scene dissolves to reveal a poppy field and the sound of birdsong. Roll credits. Cue the weeping of millions of viewers who really did not see that coming.

 Stunning. Thank you.

DaveSchmidt said:

unicorn33 said:

> The dragon roasts the throne but not Jon? Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

 My wife was a viewer, not me, but I watched the finale with her and have enjoyed reading the post-finale commentary. This one comes up a lot, and my wife’s reply was: Jon is a Targaryan, and dragons don’t kill Targaryans.

 To my mind it showed the intelligence of Drogon, that the Iron Throne had driven Dany - and damn near everyone else who wanted it - insane, and the best thing to do was destroy it before it did any more damage to the world.

Also, again there's a circular poetry to Drogon destroying it - it was made using Balerion's dragon fire, and unmade using Drogon's.

ridski said:

 To my mind it showed the intelligence of Drogon, that the Iron Throne had driven Dany - and damn near everyone else who wanted it - insane, and the best thing to do was destroy it before it did any more damage to the world.

Also, again there's a circular poetry to Drogon destroying it - it was made using Balerion's dragon fire, and unmade using Drogon's.

 S. liked this explanation, too. It reminded her that in mythology, dragons are often portrayed as being smarter than humans.

.