OT-Game of Thrones S6 E9: Battle of the Bastards
Someone say The Doors?
Really took one for the team.
Or more like he took 100.
One? More like a hundred and one.
One hell of an episode. The last 25 minutes were a pure adrenaline rush, and while the scene was nowhere near as good as the classic in Return of the King, the Knights of the Vale came through in true Ride of the Rohirrim fashion.
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The Boltons eat their own.
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I was kind of hoping that Sansa was going to chop off his dick personally. Then feed it to the dogs as an appetizer, before giving them the full bolton course.
But knowing Ramsay he probably would have enjoyed that somehow.
It is so rare that GOT gives you what you want. Tonight was that night (and probably the last). THAT WAS SO FRIGGIN GREAT!!!
This scares me. The protagonists won, we all got what we want, everyone happy. But. There's one episode left. Which means I'm thinking the finale will be a giant crater of despair and awful.
best episode ever
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It feels awkward to type this but...
I didn't enjoy the show as much as I should because everything happened exactly like I expected it to. Too much plot armor involved...
I don't know, its like GRRM has made me a skeptical reader and when everything goes the viewer/readers way it feels awkward.
visually it was amazing.
acting was good.
and the fight was brutal.
so I still give it an 8 out of 10, but this was just too much good vs. evil for a ten.
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I think that through 6 seasons we have seen nothing but bad happen to noble and honorable people. What has happenend this season is the people that are easy to root for are finally getting wins. It has felt deserved and earned. George R R has been great in world building, but I haven't really enjoyed the story as much because it reinforces this evil always wins mentality, which is just depressing, and while it has subverted normal story tropes in really cool and cruel ways, at times it really has felt like overkill. Last nights episodes was entirely predictable and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
While the plot may have been a bit predictable, the execution was flawless. Don't forget this is a weekly TV show that played as well as any movie you'll see. The battle scenes were outstanding, the dragon scenes were unbelievable, and the end result makes everyone happy. 10 out of 10 in my book.
I just hope they don't have to sell out to Little Finger. He has proven to be one of the smartest players in Game. After the way Jon was played by Ramsey, you have to put Ramsey in that category as well - brilliant tactician and totally evil personality is a bad combination.
I don't really see Jon staying at Winterfell. That's Sansa's role for now -- the only question is what place Littlefinger will have.
No, Jon is going to go off to find Bran, once they learn Bran is alive (also Benjen, sort of) -- the producers made a point of having Sansa point out to Jon in this episode that Rickon was the last legitimate Stark male heir, which means they don't know Bran is alive. Look for them to find out in the next episode...
He completely failed to track thousands of Vale horsemen moving up from the Neck. Even with that, he might have been able to salvage the battle if he had left some of his own force in reserve. He especially could have used his cavalry, which he squandered by having his archers fire indiscriminately into the melee of his men and Jon's.
Yes, Ramsay was an evil fuck, well documented and displayed ad nauseum over these several seasons - but how many lives did Jon cost with his stupid attempt to get to Rickon before an arrow could?
And did they not get to zigging and zagging in Rickon's education before he had to flee Winterfell?!
I'd say Jon cost more lives by his stupid solo charge. He could have run back to his lines, or at least been closer to them. Because his army got caught out away from their prepared position, that inward-facing hedgehog was making mincemeat out of them.
Rickon was the youngest, so he would have had the least training. He probably barely got to swinging a padded wooded sword at a target.
Jon blew it, Ramsay blew it, but Sansa nailed it.
At the core of GRRM's goal for ASOIAF, he's writing a high fantasy novel. High fantasy follows a pretty standard trend of good triumphing over evil. We've been bogged down in the "middle" of the books for so long that we dwell on all the archetypal subversion GRRM does with character deaths. That said, chances are (I don't know this for a fact) that the song of ice and fire has to culminate in the White Walkers vs. Fire (guessing dragons). So at some point, the pieces have to be in place for the "good" to be put up against the true "bad" (white walkers).
That said, I do think the fact that the showrunners do seem to be pushing towards a conclusion is going to make Occam's Razor a pretty valid guesstimate at how things play out. If we had the next 5-10 years like GRRM will take to write the books (*sob*), then maybe we'd have a lot more twists and turns, but that's not how it will work for us sadly.
Anyway, not disagreeing with your point, just some thoughts from me on why it may be that way.
The last few episodes have been just too "straight" with no twists.
- Arya really was that stupid to walk in broad daylight and get stabbed. It wasn't someone else. She wasn't playing the waif at all. Then she survives multiple fatal stab wounds, falls into dirty water, and not only lives, but is able to run, jump, and fight thereafter.
- Dany arrives in the nick of time to save the city. All goes her way. The slavers really are that stupid to not account for her dragons. No trick up their sleeves.
- The Battle of the Bastards pretty much is The Return of the King. No major unexpected twist. (I was waiting for the wall to fall down, just before the battle started, due to Bran walking through it. Then the Starks and Boltons have to grudingly put aside there war to fight the walkers. Ramsey does some heroics to save Jon Snow, Sansa, or just help the human cause, giving you a classic George R. R. Martin character interpretation conflict.)
The show is still awesome, but it feels like now that the show is ahead of the books, the producers are giving the audience what it wants instead of what George would give us. The unpredictibility of te show over the past 6 seasons is what's made it one of the best shows of all time. The plot armor and predictibility is getting too thick lately.
Yeah, this is EXACTLY what is going on. The show has gone past the books, and the showrunners now seem to be wrapping up the story the way that people WANT it to go, rather than the way Martin would write it (which to be fair, they can't know unless he has told them.) I don't think it is an accident that more "good" shit has happened this season than in every other season combined. That just isn't the way GRRM's world works IMO It's fun, and the production value is outstanding, but it suddenly all feels way too easy. I mean, Jon even won this week after doing everything pretty much exactly WRONG. Sansa even told him not to fall for the trap, and he still just drove head-first into it. And yet he was rewarded for it. That felt extremely un-Martin like. GRRM doesn't generally write his characters as idiots saved by deux ex machina.
Amazingly well done from a TV show perspective, but I feel like the story has gone off the rails from what Martin was writing.
I think you guys might be getting ahead of yourselves. Let's see how next week goes.
I think there's clearly some conflict brewing between Sansa and John... And I fear Ramsay may have worn off a little too much on Sansa (NTM Joffrey, Cersei, Little Finger, etc). We'll probably have to wait until next season for any of that to play out. Not sure what to expect next week.
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If the theories are true, Jon is still a bastard descended from the house and can be legitimized by a royal decree, the laws of the realm are full of Lords doing what they have to do to stay in power so imagining a Sansa stays a Stark scenario isn't wildly out of character.
Lots of sadness in this episode, especially with Wun-Wun the last of the Giants dying, but I like that there was unflinching cost to everything.
That issue is still easy enough to get around in any number of ways.
1. As far as everyone knows, Jon is Ned's son, not Rhaegar's. His ruler can easily legitimize him, as Stannis offers to do in the books. If it turns out to be more convenient for the people calling the shots to legitimize him as a Targaryen, that's what will happen instead.
2. Houses don't need male heirs to continue. Lyanna Mormont is Maege Mormont's daughter; her father is unknown. Sansa or Arya could just do the same thing Maege did.
3. Bran and Benjen are probably impotent, but no one can prove this. They could marry and have Jon impregnate their wives, and no one would be able to tell the difference.
I feel like you're missing the point. Yes, he could be legitimized. He'd still be a (presumably) Targaryen. The male Stark line is extinguished, with Bran the lone exception. That's what Reader is getting at, and no amount of subterfuge can change that.
edit: I forgot about Benjen, so we'll have to see how the books handle him.
Well, I'm not sure about Benjen. In the books he's still missing, and according to GRRM, he is not Coldhands. So...
Still not getting it.