Game Of Thrones Season 5 Discussion Thread

@jonny_anonymous: "Well, What is it?"

FUCKING FINALLY. It took almost 5 god damned years but winter has finally come! WINTER IS FINALLY HERE. I'm so excited to have finally seen the White Walkers be awesome. God that was a great ending.

People keep claiming stuff like this, but everything that relates to the Nights King hasn't been in the books released so FAR. Presumably a lot of this new material is from The Winds of Winter.

@liquidprince: Technically Hardhome was a mystery in the books. Jon didn't go there, he only received a raven that pretty much said "dude, shit's fucked." I think they're definitely revealing information about stuff that might not be revealed until Winds of Winter, but the plot hasn't reached Winds of Winter quite yet.

I absolutely loved the episode, but don't get your hopes up. Remember the season 2 finale? People said: 'Winter is finally here' there too. We're nearing the end of season 5 and now people are saying the same as then. The White Walkers are still a ways off from even the Wall and apparently they can't cross water easily. I'm guessing - none of you book readers spoil this - we still won't see the army of the dead invade the wall even in the next season. Maybe at the very end.

My friend and I were just discussing this. Honestly, I see no way that this show is going to end in two seasons. D&D keep saying that they're only running for 7 seasons, but let's think about it for a moment. We'll need to wrap up the storylines of Jaime, Cersei, Baelish, Stannis, Melisandre, Brienne and Pod, Varys and Illyhrio, the Tyrells, Dorne, Jorah, Meereen and the Slaver's Bay story, the Boltons, the Freys, and Gendry. We'll also need to know the overarching purpose of Arya's training with the Faceless Men, and whatever happened to Benjen. We should probably also get some closure on the Hound, Mountainstein, and the Brotherhood without Banners. Speculative spoilers about prophecies and some info in the books: We'd also need to know the identity of Azor Ahai, have the wargs who are going to ride the dragons sorted and happy, get our hands on Stannis' stock of dragon glass, have Sam finish his maester training and learn to make Valyrian steel (presumably), and have Dany over in Westeros for dragons vs. zombies. Speculative Jon's parentage spoilers: In addition to all that, we'll need to know if R + L truly does equal J, and if so, we need to sort out the ramifications of Jon having the strongest claim to the throne. Dany probably wouldn't like that, but it's almost certain they'll need to work together against the walkers. Also, this would probably all need to be more or less done by the last three or four episodes of the seventh season so that the battle with the walkers can have some real weight to it.

That seems... impossible in two seasons. I have no idea how they're planning on doing it. Hardhome really feels more like a halfway point into the story, so unless they leave a lot of loose ends or we never get to the final walkers vs. dragons battle, I feel like there's at least three or four more seasons to go from here. I'd be extremely surprised to see them wrap at season 7.

Edit: I should mention you basically have nothing to fear about spoilers. Book readers have no idea if or when the walkers will invade the Wall, as Hardhome is pretty much the end of the most recent book's Wall story. That's not to say you should go read up on it until the end of this season (seriously, don't), but D&D are beginning to work past the books at this point. That crazy walker who was all "What up, Jon Snow?" at the end there? He's only been alluded to in the books, never shown up.

I don't think the night king wanted to chase Jon. I think he intentionally held back. He got what he came there for, and I doubt he thinks of Jon or the Night's Watch as a real adversary. He expects to trample everything in their path.

There's no way for them to wrap up in two seasons with any sort of satisfying resolution. They've had to cut and combine characters just to get us where we are at, and look how long that's taken us! It really makes me think back to the Red Wastes arc and all the time that was wasted; they really must of had a different line of thinking back then, as no show with a hard season cap would doddle that much in a fucking desert. In retrospect, they should have broken from the books earlier so they could accelerate the rate in which people would start meeting up, if they really wanted to keep this down to a certain time frame.

Hell, maybe they'll scrap Dany's planned invasion all together and just have her team up with Jon, kick the walkers out and then give him Westeros, as once she gets a taste for how fucked that place is, she'll beg Jon to handle that shitshow. If they don't and she does invade like she's been planning on all along, I have no idea if that'd come before the walker attack, after it, or even the same time. You'd have to devote nearly a full season to either war; the War of the Five Kings is still lumbering along after what, four seasons? And something tells me that conflict will be a lot smaller than either of those potential others, unless LOL DRAGONS is the true answer to every possible fight from here on out.

If we still assume they will follow Jon's story as it is in the book then this probably doesn't matter anyway, considering Jon's status at the end of the the most recent book.

@bollard: Jon will be fine. He is most likely Azor Ahai reborn. And therefore cannot die. Mellisandre never believed Stannis to be the one but instead be the one that would lead her to Azor Ahai. That's the most likely but otherwise there's also the chance of him warging into Ghost. Thirdly and most unlikely he comes back as a Coldhands type character, a friendly white walker.

@top8gamer: Ah yes, those are good points.

While this series is pretty good I dont think that the series will really benefit from them stretching out the content for 4 or 5 more seasons. Keep also in mind that while the tv series has done a pretty good job when diverging from the books it is moving into some pretty uncharted territory with season 6 and season 7. George R Martin has told them the major plot points of what will happen but in many cases they cant adapt the books anymore for their episodes. This means that a lot of stuff that will happen isnt written by the author himself but by the screenwriters.

I havent read the books because I dont really want to watch the tv show with preconceptions of what will happen (Lotro trilogy was one of the few exceptions where the films were as good if not better than what i imagined from reading the books). But for me the series can be concluded with 2 or 3 more seasons. Just think what happened to dexter or to true blood as the seasons went by. Those series slowly went from pretty good to pretty horrible. It is better to end on a high note than just to keep a series going because it is popular.

I also have an idea on how the episode 10 will end for season 5. In the teaser/trailer for season 5 i think they showed the form of a dragon flying over a city ( i presume the city is kings landing). Having a real dragon flying over Kings Landing would be a pretty spectacular cliffhanger to end the season 5.

Also as an addendum: While the show is very popular it is also very expensive to produce (according to wikipedia each episode costs about 8 million dollars...so about 80 million dollars in total for the season) . At some point they will have to renegotiate the contracts with actors (those who survive the story twists) and that can potentially make the show too expensive to produce. Of course there is the option to recast those parts but that isnt also withouth risks.

This episode was definitely a winner. We finally got to see Arya do some cool assassin shit (at least the planning of it), we had some good battle and exposition in the North, Tyrion is already dropping truth bombs on Dany, Jorah is now an outcast with nothing to lose and honor to gain, Cersei deservedly continued to suffer, Sansa got good news for the first time ever, and Ramsay is apparently going to try taking on Stannis in a seemingly ill-advised move that hopefully ends in his death.

In terms of directing, this was the very best this show has offered. A few scenes stand out in particular. The white walker/wildling/Jon Snow battle was top-notch to the point of fully redeeming the amateur hour Sand Snake bullshit. Jorah's exile was appropriately somber. The closing scene with the single boat and the newly-expanded wight army was fantastic. That battle, though. Fuck yeah. Valyrian steel, giants stomping/playing homerun derby on skeletons, and the white walkers dropping their army from the skies. That was some cool shit. I'm also a sucker for the side-scrolling follow shots, and the shot following alongside Jon Snow as he cut wights/skeletons to pieces was terrific.

Can we talk about the awesome wildling lady as well? For a show that often struggles mightily in terms of character development, she was incredibly refreshing. Out of nowhere, she started kicking ass and taking names. You knew she was done for after she sent her kids on the boat, but she went out like a champ. Having the wight children break her out of badass mode was a good, poignant death. She was like an ancillary character out of Justified that you wish you could have seen more of and will remember despite a minimal role, and that's a huge compliment. More of that, please. (Also, go watch Justified. Fucking incredible show.)

The one development that irks me is the little farm kid on the Wall. He's primed to fuck up the tenuous Wildling/Crow alliance, and I'm not cool with that. I'd be far more on board with a large portion of the crows at castle black not being welcoming, barfighting it out with the wildlings, and ultimately bro-ing out a bit after both sides prove their mettle. Farm kid potentially taking some cheap shot to avenge his family would suck ass. Learn your lesson from the shit-ass Sand Snakes. "They kilt my pa" is not a compelling motive or story arc. Jon Snow needs to get that little shit in line ASAP.

Overall, this episode was great. The season appears to be closing strong, and it really needed to. I'm excited again. Arya's first assassination attempt should be great, success or failure. Jorah is primed for Gladiator time. Dany's campaign is now infinitely more interesting with Tyrion as hoped. Ramsay may be going down. Sansa might have fate smile upon her. Good stuff. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, though, because we're returning to Dorne next episode. Please focus on Jamie/Bronn/Dorne king interaction, with minimal Sand Snake shit. Dorne king needs to assert himself and show his cards, which had better be good to try and save this storyline. Two of the best GoT episodes followed two of the worst, so who knows what we'll get next.

Are we going to see the Brotherhood without Banners again, book people? Flaming sword guy and his priest are way too sweet to just forget about like that.

@quid_pro_bono: Wait, they said it was going to be 7 seasons? That sucks... the first 5 seasons were practically build up. 2 seasons to wrap up everything that's been alluded to? That seems insanely rushed for this series.

@zevvion: For most of the storylines we're either right near the end or already past the end of the books' precedent; also the show is officially in "I don't give a fuck, Martin" mode so it isn't really predictable anymore anyway.

@zevvion: That's IF they decide to wrap everything up. They might just drop storylines randomly like they have in the past with no closure like the Greyjoy story.

@mechakirby: They have put out a casting call for a character for season 6 that is important to the Brotherhood without Banners storyline so they might be bringing it back in season 6.

It was a good episode, but considering they've been fucking about for almost the entire season before this, naturally the episodes where they finally start letting stuff happen are going to be good. Taking that into consideration I'm still pretty down on this season, but if they keep up this level of quality in the last couple episodes then I'll be happy.

I could possibly see them going over 7 seasons, but it doesn't really seem necessary considering how incrementally the story has been moving. Depending on how many battles of this size are left in the series it might be difficult to pay for all of them in only 2 seasons. Personally I'd prefer they take their time. I would hate if Martin went over 7 books though, which seems more and more likely.

Neither was most of the worst shit this season.

I don't share your optimism here. They have already screwed up stuff that was supposed to be good. Just because something happens, doesn't automatically make it great. I really like the way that final battle was shot. The shots of Jon as he moved from left to right, fighting the White Walker and ultimately striking him down with his sword. It looked absolutely awesome, and it could've looked awful.

That said, I'm pretty much a Jon Snow fanboy right now. He is my favorite character left and I think the most significant stuff happens at the Wall and has to do with him. I like his motivations and personality. So anything with him, I probably like watching.

I just rewatched this last episode and I have a pretty important question for you guys.

As Jon approaches the hut to find the dragon glass, we see Wun Wun (the giant) burst out, chucking necroes around and stomping on some too. How did he get in that little hut to begin with?

I think the chance that Jon stays dead in any capacity is basically nil. We know that he is almost certainly Azor Ahai, and probably Targaryen/Stark so he has the strongest claim to the throne (Prince That Was Promised). I've been thinking that either Jon is resurrected as a wight like Coldhands as someone else in the thread mentioned, or that Melisandre is the one to bring him back, literally making him "reborn in fire" through her fire based magic as the Azor Ahai prophecy states. We'll probably wind up with Jon dead this season, but I'm quite sure he'll be back early or in the middle of the next.

Did anyone else see Benjen Stark cast in episode 10 on IMDB? Balon and Asha Greyjoy are going to be there as well. Perhaps next season we'll see some Euron and Victarion.

@spoonman671: They built the hut around him so the giants could be involved in city council discussions.

IMDB is rife with trolls and theres been a ton of fake casting news. Yara/Asha I believe has been said to be in a ep, but I thought it was 8 and we know it isnt true. Maybe 9 or 10?

And casting seems to be all for an ironborn invasion, which I feel less and less excited for with how poorly the dorne arc has been

Like others have said that dumb Ollie kid is gonna do some dumb shit and fuck with the alliance. Don't do it kid.

Also this pretty much confirms what we all thought. White Walkers are the end game and everyone will have to put aside their shitty differences to fend off the real threat. Fuck the Iron Throne. There won't be anyone to rule if they don't make a stand.

So many exciting things are happening. Can't wait.

@fredchuckdave: Hmm... but where does he poop?

@spoonman671: That fire had to be fueled somehow...

By the way are clams with vanilla a real thing? Maybe the gambler that Arya was casing just really likes vanilla. For all I know it's a delicacy but I don't know, it sounds pretty gnar gnar to me dude.

@mezmero: uh. That was vinegar, dude! Clams with vanilla sounds disgusting!

Ah that makes way more sense. I swear some of these British accents are totally fucked. Every other word sounds like something else entirely. It doesn't help that they have all these ridiculous fantasy names and locations to mumble. English is my first language and they still manage to confuse the hell out of me.

Then I think it's best the place was destroyed. It was only a matter of time before the other Wildlings decided to move the meetings outside of Wun Wun's shit-hut, and then he'd be stuck in there by himself, soaking in a perfume of his own design.

I thought he said vanilla too

Same here, I thought he said vanilla. My spouse and I had to rewind to hear it, and you can "slightly" distinguish vinegar. But, I'm with ya on that one.

Davos is going to lose his fucking mind.

I thought this episode sucked. Possibly my least favorite of the season to be honest. I knew Drogon was coming at the end and didn't think that scene was particularly well done. Dany riding Drogon looked super fake. And everything before that scene was either garbage filler or horribly unpleasant in a way that I don't think actually adds to the story.

Lol. Yup.

So I've been pretty positive on this season so far, including some places where people have pretty much unanimously said, "This isn't so great..." But man, I wasn't too thrilled with this episode, especially considering it's the anticipated 9th episode of the season. Compared to last week, this episode was pretty dull (though not too much can beat a giant fucking zombie battle in the North, to be fair). I am now firmly in the camp of people who say that everything in Dorne is total garbage. I understand that since Jaime's and Bronn's adventure never happened in the books, not too much of consequence can happen there, but the writing just feels lazy and the characters one-dimensional.

Throughout the entirety of the series, Arya has been my favorite character, and I am still super interested in her arc. A lot of people I've spoken to aren't huge fans of her training with the Faceless Men, but I am personally loving it this season. Also, they set up her killing that poedophile Trant next week, and I'm super excited for that. I wish we had seen that this episode rather than wasting time watching Jaime and Sand Snake Lady talk about incest, but hey, something interesting has to happen next week, right?

Even though I knew it was coming, part of me kind of hoped they wouldn't sacrifice Shireen. Maybe I've just been watching the show too long, but I honestly didn't feel as much emotion as I thought I would. A lot of the shock value of scenes like this have been lost on me over the years and after the huge battle last week, this felt a bit too by the numbers to me. I can't wait to see Davos lose his shit (hopefully) next week though.

Overall, I thought that this week's episode was really weak, especially when you consider that it was episode 9 of the season. Hopefully they were just saving a bunch of exciting stuff for the season finale, but I guess we'll next week. Also, I swear to god if they paired Tyrion up with Dany for like 3 scenes and that's it, I'm gonna be super pissed. And just when it looked like Jorah was gonna make it out of the friend zone too :'(

To put it bluntly, this episode was a wet fart after that amazing episode last week. I still have high hopes for the finale. Game of Thrones, I believe in you, you can do this. Make the season 5 finale good. Please.

@afabs515: Jorah is Forever Friendzoned. :(

Thought the episode was pretty good. They save all the bigger events until the last half of the season which is why people typically find the first half boring.

How sad is it going to be when we see Davos riding back into camp holding the little doe figure that he widdled himself?

I was kind of hoping Hizdahr zo Loraq would reveal that he was in league with the Sons of the Harpy. I was waiting for the moment, but it turns out they just stab him.

Man this shows quality has really gone downhill this season.

It wasn't as good as the last episode, but I'm really glad the Dragons are starting to do shit, granted there was some silly flying CGI and logic failure during the last few moments where she was in the open walking towards the Dragon clearly exposed and no one was even so much as throwing a rock at her yet throwing spears at the dragon, so... whatever.
That didn't take away from a dragon flying in and biting and burning people, so that was cool.
This better be the major catalyst for getting her out of that fucking place finally though, they clearly hate her, failed experiment, the last episode of the season better have her on a boat looking towards the other side of the show.

I loved he Davos and uh... girls name here scenes so that was a complete fucking bummer, I kind of half expected Davos to pop out at the end and cut down witch bitch and save the day but I guess Game of Thrones has to depressingly kill people off sometime.

Got to see more cute snake girl. Yay.
Got to see more of her mother who is by far the whiniest useless character on the series, boo. Is she supposed to be that pathetic? Like, at any point were we ever supposed to take her serious or threatening? She basically whined, failed her goal, and is just moping around the place. Any other character on the show would have taken not going to jail to do literally anything stab someone, plot something, do something. What a garbage character, was she this shit in the books? Holy hell.
Seriously though the other snake girl is cute as shit.

Gotta wonder what they are holding out for the season finale, they blew their load with the white walkers and had some dragon fun with this episode. The hell is going to happen in the last episode that could be a minder blower at all? Ah well, wait and see.

I...what? I don't even.

I didn't read the books. Are we catching up to the end? I heard this season's been doing stuff from the last two and adding their own stuff, but I still have no idea how close I am to actually being able to read wikis without fear.

That episode was pretty terrible. Saw the sacrificing Shireen coming from the beginning of the season with how they were building her up. Building her up so much so that actually going through with the sacrifice was so dully predictable it hurt. Ellaria is the most wishy washy character in existance. Goes from DIE LANNISTERS DIE to BFFs at the drop of a hat. I was cheering for Doran to execute that bitch so hard. And seriously. Why did they waste 2 minutes of air time on sand snakes playing slap hands. Like WTF! Wish they would of done more practical effects with the dragon using animatronics because the CGI on it was not so great.

And Ramsey seriously goes into the camp with 20 dudes just kills 100 of them and burns all there shit like it's nothing. There's suspension of disbelief and then there's drinking the coo-laid.

OK. Yup. Between that and last week's episode, we're in full on fantasy mode. The effects were a bit ehhhh, but that was still pretty awesome at the end.

And yeah, the Lord of Light can eat it.

@csl316: yes, we are pretty much caught up at this point. There is one more shoe to drop on a handful of story lines and I expect it will come next week.

Next week's episode in a spoiler-heavy nutshell:

• Cersei will do her naked walk of shame through Kings Landing
• Arya will kill Myren Trant (doesn't happen in the books but pretty obvious)
• Brienne will help Sansa (and Theon?) escape since Mance Raydor is dead on the show
• Stannis will get his ass kicked by the Boltons.
• The season will end with Jon getting stabbed, probably by that kid whose name I forget

I'm not particularly excited to see any of this.