Game of Thrones begins....

[Habbaku]

Plus, he's kind of a chav and would be struggling with alcohol regardless.

A chav? He comes from an aristocratic family (his father is a Baronet).

And his wife has her own castle.

Worse, she comes from a Covenanter family. Traitors, all!

[Valmy]

Well she is a wildling from north of the wall.

[viper37]

Not willingly.

From a certain point of view.  I doubt Walder Frey would have let Jaime catapult his grandkid.

He acted under duress. 

You DO know what "turncoat" means, don't you? 

acting on behalf of the ennemy?

No.  A turncoat is one who changes his or her allegiance to the opposing side.  That Frey threw him back in his cell tells us that he hadn't changed allegiance.

ha.  bad choice of words.  sorry.

[Sheilbh]

So I binged this on my sick leave and have thoughts.

Turns out many of you expressed them already

Although one additional point: I am furious at how much they ruined Tormund by turning him into a very broad comic character in the last season

[grumbler]

So I binged this on my sick leave and have thoughts.

Turns out many of you expressed them already

Although one additional point: I am furious at how much they ruined Tormund by turning him into a very broad comic character in the last season

Yes, badass Tormund was badass.  Tormund as Gimli was cringeworthy.  "Nobody tosses a dwar... er, Freefolk!"

What was the worst, though, was they built up this big last stand against the dead, said goodbye to all the supporting actors, and then not only didn't kill them off, but resolved the battle in a way that demonstrated that the battle was stupid and pointless from the start.  Nobody had to die except the Night King, as it turns out, and we never found out why he was so gosh-darned cranky!

[Sheilbh]

Yeah.

I mean I think part of that is structural because the whole army of the dead/night king are this big almost environmental enemy - they're silent, so there's no explanation of motivation or reasoning etc. That makes them really threatening in the early seasons but sort of makes resolving the threat more difficult. I feel if they'd maybe killed one of his deputies in an earlier episode and had that have an effect it might have worked better.

As I mentioned I think there's a pacing issue with the whole night army because the story in Westeros advances so much quicker than the story north of the wall that it sort of felt like they rushed to the end of that because they'd run out Westeros (and maybe Dany's) story.

[Tamas]

The writers got the ending from Martin but had no idea whatsoever how to get there. But, the series was super-successful by the time Martin stopped carrying their asses, and they were paid handsomely anyways, so they just winged it and threw the last two seasons together.

[Josquius]

I do hope Martin had something less dumb in mind for the winterfell crypts

[viper37]

The writers got the ending from Martin but had no idea whatsoever how to get there. But, the series was super-successful by the time Martin stopped carrying their asses, and they were paid handsomely anyways, so they just winged it and threw the last two seasons together.

Had they been given 10 years to think about it, maybe they could have come up with some better ideas

[grumbler]

The writers got the ending from Martin but had no idea whatsoever how to get there. But, the series was super-successful by the time Martin stopped carrying their asses, and they were paid handsomely anyways, so they just winged it and threw the last two seasons together.

Had they been given 10 years to think about it, maybe they could have come with some better ideas

[KRonn]

The ending of the show ruined the series for me. I felt it was lame and poorly done, no matter if it was Martin's idea or the studio's. I felt they over did it with how what was done with Daenerys, even if it was Martin's idea and the way the book (when done) will have it. There had to be better ideas on how and who would take the throne, not all of a sudden Bran gets appointed after having little interaction. Martin/studio could have made a case for John being King or for Dany getting the throne. After all Dany's story, coming from another land, all her work and accomplishments but it all comes to naught.

They also botched the battles at Winterfell. Why were the trebuchets outside the walls? And why did the horsemen all charge unsupported into an enemy they knew little about? Should have waited to flank the enemy after the battle joined, or something like that. After the great job usually done with battles that all was disappointing.

[grumbler]

The ending of the show ruined the series for me. I felt it was lame and poorly done, no matter if it was Martin's idea or the studio's. I felt they over did it with how what was done with Daenerys, even if it was Martin's idea and the way the book (when done) will have it. There had to be better ideas on how and who would take the throne, not all of a sudden Bran gets appointed after having little interaction. Martin/studio could have made a case for John being King or for Dany getting the throne. After all Dany's story, coming from another land, all her work and accomplishments but it all comes to naught.

They also botched the battles at Winterfell. Why were the trebuchets outside the walls? And why did the horsemen all charge unsupported into an enemy they knew little about? Should have waited to flank the enemy after the battle joined, or something like that. After the great job usually done with battles that all was disappointing.

All of that is true, but trivial, in my mind, compared to the real problems:

1.  The Night King turned out to be a complete McGuffin.  Why did he even exist?  He had no motivations, no plan, except to be "the big bad."  All the stuff about his origins had zero point or consequences.

2.  The battle at Winterfell was completely unnecessary.  No one needed to die.  Put Arya in the tree, Bran at the bottom of the tree, and have Arya assassinate the Night King when he came to kill Bran.  All of the extraneous death and sacrifice was meaningless because the NK could easily be killed by stealth ninja Arya, and his entire army died with him.  Bran could easily have known this from his ability to know everything through time.

3.  Dani going insane and wiping out the city was completely unnecessary for the ending they had planned, was way over the top, and was contrary to her entire arc to that point.  Jon could still have felt forced to kill her just based on the fact that she was proposing unending war and would threaten his family.  It would have been far more poignant a decision for Jon if she was not bonkers and clearly needing to be put down.  She could have been true to her arc, and he to his, and the audience could have been weeping at the idea that he was forced by concern for his stubborn family to kill the woman he still loved and honored.

4.  Bran's story, after so much investment in time and show budget, had no point.  The fact that he was made king was ludicrous and the claim that it was because he suffered was entirely absurd given what others had gone through.  Bran never consciously made a single sacrifice; all the bad things that happened to him were the results not of his choices, but the choices of others.  if they were really choosing the monarch based on the criteria they claimed, Meera Reed would have been crowned.

5.  Jon's parentage made zero difference, yet was made the central mystery of the show.  If he had just been Ned's bastard, thing would have played out exactly the same.  It would have been trivially difficult to show Varys actually working behind Jon's back to make make Jon king, and being very effective at it, and so set up Jon's conflict of interest (he loves Dani and supports her bid for the throne, but his obligations to his vassals and allies, and the desire to avoid the impending civil war if an outsider lie Dani takes the throne, would have forced him towards taking the throne himself).  A huge buildup that ended with a fart.

5.  Clegainebowl was pure fan service and had no impact on the story at all.  All that buildup for a fight that no one else would ever even know happened.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  The last two seasons didn't just end limply, they betrayed all the previous seasons by making them worthless to the final resolution.  I liken it to the ROTK batle of the Pelennor Fields and batle of the Black gates, wherein all the heroes would have lived and been happy had they just stayed in bed and let Aragorn's army of the dead trivially wipe out every orc, troll, and oliphant  in existence.

[Razgovory]

The Clegaine thing was disappointing.  I suppose that might have been the point, Sandor had wasted his life wanting revenge and only to discover that his brother was already dead.  Still it wasn't satisfying.

I also agree that the Night King was a bust.  Sometimes giving a villain no motive at all can be effective.  For instance in "No Country for Old Men", We never did find out why the hitman was a monster, and it worked.  It made him scary. He was like a force of nature.  The Night King actually was a force of nature, but he wasn't scary.  He just sort of happened.  It didn't help that he looked silly.

[Solmyr]

I have a suspicion that Martin was testing, which things in the ending would be badly received by fans. Now he can change the books to remove anything that would make the fans angry.

[Eddie Teach]

Ending, what ending?