I can't see Ghost in the preview clip :(

 

Yes I can

Edited April 29, 20196 yr by Severin

I can't believe I've been so bored by Arya's story arc over the past few seasons only for it to climax like T H A T. Herself and Lyanna stole the episode and the power was really in the female youth. So empowering.

 

My favourite aspect of it all was how minimal dialogue the episode contained. I can probably count the number of lines spoken on two hands and yet it was so moving, dramatic and poetic throughout through soundtrack and actions alone.

 

- Why send the unsullied charging into the night towards the darkness at the beginning and not just idk use the dragons?

I'm still racking my brains at sending them alone into the darkness, but the dragons didn't go guns blazing at the start because they were supposed to wait until the Night King showed up and then have a 2 vs 1 battle. Dany, seeing the unsullied die, then broke away from this and got on her dragon.

I can't see Ghost in the preview clip :(

Here honey

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/game-of-t...i/1100-6466520/

 

This review is scathing.

 

 

 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/game-of-t...i/1100-6466520/

 

This review is scathing.

Oh wow I actually quite agree with this review for the most part. I can't shake the disappointment I've felt after the episode and how underwhelming it felt. This pretty much sums it up.

 

"It's incredible to me that this episode was written by showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, because it feels like it was written by somebody who's never seen the show before, much less has any understanding of the source material."

The Long Night has 78% on RT. Good but WAY lower than it should be/what I expected :o In comparison, "Battle of the bast*rds" has 98%, "Blackwater" has 100% and "Hardhome" has 100%

 

Interestingly, season 8 is the lowest rated on RT

 

S1: 91%

S2: 96%

S3: 96%

S4: 97%

S5: 93%

S6: 94%

S7: 93%

S8: 86%

I do have mixed thoughts. It was certainly one of, if not the most epic TV episodes ever made and so many tense, jaw-dropping scenes.

 

But... as a player in an overall series, it does feel a bit odd. Cersei not having to face the White Walkers at ALL just feels completely wrong. Whilst Ayra killing the Night King was crucial to her storyline, it all felt very sudden for essentially the ultimate enemy in the show. I wish we’d seen (despite The Night King being silent!!) some greater form of interaction as there’s clearly some connection with Bran.

 

For all the foreshadowing, the Crypt was so underutilized! By the time, the dead had finally arisen, they’d died again! There was no opportunity for a proper heroic Sansa and Tyrion moment despite being promised like.. 2 minutes before.

 

And the survival count of the main characters is waaaay higher than I was expecting. I guess Theon and Jorah are the most high profile yet their time has been coming for a while now. I thought we’d get a couple of bigger shocks at least. Very surprised at Brienne surviving too (although I agree with Enviroment that it seemed like she’d died about 10 times :lol:) as, after last week, it felt her story had reached a natural end too. My heart broke for Lyanna though </3

 

When expectations are this high, I guess it is easy to criticise and there’s no denying how visually stunning it was and how crazy some of the scenes were. It’s just in terms of it’s place in an 8 season story, it feels...odd.

It was an omfg show.

 

The thrust of the ep was fulfilling destiny. Everyone did what they were destined to do, to save the key players, to defeat the dead, everything happened for that reason.

 

It was epic in the way the series plotted the characters journey to lead to this episode.

 

Perfect.

 

Brilliant episode, but I'm kinda surprised the white walker threat has ended with 3 episodes left. Can't say I'm really that invested in seeing the remaining characters take down Cersei and a bunch of glorified extras. George RR Martin is apparently a big fan of the "scouring of the shire" bit in Lord of the Rings that was cut from the films, so I guess it shouldn't be too surprising he has done/is planning his own version.

I'm really shocked so many key characters survived, like seriously how were Jamie and Brienne still alive at the end? I was expecting a much higher kill count. Also found the bit with the dothraki a bit annoying, like the whole army just wiped out in seconds yet the rest of them kept managing to fight them off for ages. They are supposed to be the best fighters out there...

 

It was still an intense episode though I had shivers with throughout the whole thing, and that ending WOW!! Queen Stark there is a reason you've been my favourite from day one :wub: :wub: :wub:

 

One thing which was incredible - the score. Had chills quite a few times thanks to some of the music.

Well...I would've enjoyed it a whole lot better if I could actually see anything, I get that it was a different style of filming, but it was like watching a pirate copy at times and was so distracting. We actually thought it was a problem with our TV so waited to watched it live, but the same problems happened! It really ruined the whole battle as it was impossible to see what was going on in the exterior scenes due to so much pixelated darkness :/

 

But I did have other issues besides the quality...primarily the conclusion to the battle, I loved Arya in that episode and her arc is really heating up, but how on Earth is the most powerful force in the world that easy to kill?! He survived dragon fire unscathed, clearly has perfect aim and flexibility, can raise the dead and see multiple visions...and he dies because he forgot to restrain both arms of a mortal. Don't get me wrong, it's fitting that she did it, but it would've been a lot more effective had she done it with the face of a White Walker rather than literally coming out of nowhere and his guards not even seeing her. It's just such an anti-climax for someone made out to be so powerful, and it feels wrong he'll never face Cersei and the dead are just done with now (and I guess Bran and the Night King didn't actually have much to do finally coming face to face, in fact, what on Earth did Bran do here? :unsure: )

 

Also, for a battle so brutal and action-packed, they really did take it easy with the side character deaths didn't they? Jorah, Theon and Melisandre all had a very fitting and honourable deaths, but otherwise there really wasn't many losses to the death pool sweepstakes, I mean I'm sure the show has still got a few tricks up its sleeve but you'd think this would be the episode to do it and it felt like a lot would've been fitting ends in some cases, so if anything it held back a bit too much, not something I'd think Game of Thrones would do! Hell, even the Crypts were actually fairly safe in the end, given half of them didn't die despite them not having any weapons :lol:

 

OK, positive things...indeed, the score was brilliant, the scope was fantastic, the slow piano-led parts as well as Arya in the library, were incredibly done and I would be lying if I wasn't extremely tense and unsure what was going to happen throughout, it never lost my attention that's for sure. Melisandre had a fantastic end to her arc and that was good as I was never really a massive fan of her character and always felt she was a bit too mysterious in her intent. So it's subtle moments were excellent, something this series is doing very well.

 

So yeah I'm certainly a bit disappointed given how high my expectations were, but then I suppose that's the consequence of getting your hopes high. I just hope Cersei isn't as easy to best, I mean severely depleted as they are, the army defeated the dead, it's hard to see what else can stop them now!

The battle was pretty much epic, I was glued to the set watching, what I liked from it there wasn't much of a dialogue from the characters, it was more like a action all the way from start to finish with a fantastic music score in the background to set the whole episode up. Bit disappointed none of the main characters got killed off early. Guess they are leaving that to the finale, the finale must be 2 hours long surely.

Well...I would've enjoyed it a whole lot better if I could actually see anything, I get that it was a different style of filming, but it was like watching a pirate copy at times and was so distracting. We actually thought it was a problem with our TV so waited to watched it live, but the same problems happened! It really ruined the whole battle as it was impossible to see what was going on in the exterior scenes due to so much pixelated darkness :/

 

But I did have other issues besides the quality...primarily the conclusion to the battle, I loved Arya in that episode and her arc is really heating up, but how on Earth is the most powerful force in the world that easy to kill?! He survived dragon fire unscathed, clearly has perfect aim and flexibility, can raise the dead and see multiple visions...and he dies because he forgot to restrain both arms of a mortal. Don't get me wrong, it's fitting that she did it, but it would've been a lot more effective had she done it with the face of a White Walker rather than literally coming out of nowhere and his guards not even seeing her. It's just such an anti-climax for someone made out to be so powerful, and it feels wrong he'll never face Cersei and the dead are just done with now (and I guess Bran and the Night King didn't actually have much to do finally coming face to face, in fact, what on Earth did Bran do here? :unsure: )

 

Also, for a battle so brutal and action-packed, they really did take it easy with the side character deaths didn't they? Jorah, Theon and Melisandre all had a very fitting and honourable deaths, but otherwise there really wasn't many losses to the death pool sweepstakes, I mean I'm sure the show has still got a few tricks up its sleeve but you'd think this would be the episode to do it and it felt like a lot would've been fitting ends in some cases, so if anything it held back a bit too much, not something I'd think Game of Thrones would do! Hell, even the Crypts were actually fairly safe in the end, given half of them didn't die despite them not having any weapons :lol:

 

OK, positive things...indeed, the score was brilliant, the scope was fantastic, the slow piano-led parts as well as Arya in the library, were incredibly done and I would be lying if I wasn't extremely tense and unsure what was going to happen throughout, it never lost my attention that's for sure. Melisandre had a fantastic end to her arc and that was good as I was never really a massive fan of her character and always felt she was a bit too mysterious in her intent. So it's subtle moments were excellent, something this series is doing very well.

 

So yeah I'm certainly a bit disappointed given how high my expectations were, but then I suppose that's the consequence of getting your hopes high. I just hope Cersei isn't as easy to best, I mean severely depleted as they are, the army defeated the dead, it's hard to see what else can stop them now!

 

But she has to kill to wear a face.. and if she’d have killed a white walker.. they’d have just exploded into ice.. 🤣

 

I’m buzzing from this episode, Jon Snow never learning from his mistakes and Arya doing something she has been training to do for seasons now (not kill the night king, but kill. Surely she’s the most highly-skilled fighter in the series)

The score for the last 10 minutes was unreal.

 

I enjoyed the episode and it was tense, edge of your seat stuff, but yes.. I guess I was expecting something more? I don't think it helped the way it was shot. Certainly compared to some of the other battle sequences. Did Gilly die??

There was so much expectation that going this route does attract criticism, but I think we were always guessing that the theme was overcoming a greater outside threat to put aside squabbles. And it was! Just because Cersei wasn't there, it doesn't mean that's not valid (though her forces being there might have alleviated that). So many people who were previously enemies were fighting together in that battle.

 

Because, in the end, no matter how the Night King was defeated, the central question on our character's minds is going to be the throne, and beating an undead overlord together won't turn them away from that. There's even tensions in our surviving characters. I think how well this episode holds up will be based on how they finish off the story. Maybe the last three episodes will confirm that it was necessary to do away with the dead army before the final part.

 

I do agree that it wasn't shot as well as it could have been... why did the entire battle have to be at night anyway? Dawn coming halfway through, perhaps after the library scene, might have been a better directorial choice, visually distinguish some parts of the battle from the darkness in the crypts and allow the audience better vision on those parts.

 

(YES on the score too, it was amazing)

I think it was genius that Arya is the one killing him, made sense

actually reading the books I never understood why Arya had such a weird storyline with all her training to be a killer, now it makes sense

I'm usually the first to pick plotholes, but the point of events going as they did is that they were DESTINED to: The Big Baddie was overly confident having just killed Theon, defeated dragons, wiped out armies and was going in for the helpless prize. let's be honest, did ANYONE expect Arya to suddenly jump out and do what she had been training to do? No. So why should an undead.

 

The Hound saved Arya, just as he was destined to do. He only did that because he was goaded into acting instead of his usual giving up self pity. So that was his purpose, now he survives to fulfill his own destiny: presumably to kill his brother. The Red Woman was already dead, only the magic was keeping her going to do what she was always supposed to do, having suffered trials of faith and ego bashing over what she thought she was doing - Stanis was not the answer, his role was to help save Jon Snow and the Northern folk. That could only happen if The Red woman was where she was supposed to be - at the Wall. And so on.

 

As I said, this should have been the finale - but really it couldnt be or there would have to be a follow-up episode showing how the survivors sorted out the 7 kingdoms which would have been largely exposition. Or fighting. It couldnt have been anything else. Those are the 2 options, and dramatically ending on an episode of political agreements would be an anti-climax.

 

 

Seen quite a few saying "how easy was it to defeat the main enemy in the show!?1" but on reflection, the Night King isn't the central antagonist. It's Cersei in my opinion so it was perhaps a conscious decision to make it seem "easyish" to eventually overthrow him without a fight. It's the power for the throne and the greed that leads to that that is the main threat.

It is funny to think about how defeating the Night King has been the primarily goal for a good 2-3 years now at least (obviously more or less depending on the characters) but at its heart the show is about the Game of Thrones. All of Ned, Cersei, and Littlefingers quotes especially from the earlier seasons are still the core of this show. It’s about who ends up on the Iron Throne and all the bumps in the road along the way. The show centres around Kings Landing but these 3 episodes have mostly been focused on The North, now that threat is over we move back to what GoT was about in the beginning.

 

Saying that, IF the books are ever completed I can see the final book being wildly different from this final season. “A Song of Ice and Fire” doesn’t make you think of kings and crowns, war or politics it makes you think of what is now the war between fire and ice. If ASOIAF finishes with the Night King sitting on the throne or at least dies AFTER The Last War I think it would be the perfect ending to the book series and fans would be very happy.

 

It means that the rest of this season is moving on from the Night King which in terms of climax it does seem like we’re over the hill from an audiences point of view, but as far as the game of thrones is concerned we’re back on track after a huge detour ever since the Battle of the bast*rds