RobertDeSneero

I disagree with that somewhat. I think she had a battle plan that included burning the city. I think Tyrion tried to prevent that by sending Jaime to try to get Cersei to surrender. I think Dany snapped when the bells rang and decided to burn it all down anyways.

In terms of pacing her story, I think it is important that she be seen as heroic after the battle at Winterfell and her turn comes afterwards. It has to be quick enough so that we don't think the other characters are even dumber for not noticing and trying to stop her. At the point that the bells ring, we're not supposed to think that her torching the city is inevitable.

For GRRM, the universe isn't always just and people don't always get what they deserve. We see this when people who deserve to live end up dying gruesome deaths, but the other side of this is that sometimes people who deserve to die end up living or at least having a much kinder fate than they deserve. It's only odd if you expect justice. The game of thrones goes on and we don't enter a golden era of justice now that the Big Bad has been defeated.

I'm fairly certain that Dany burning King's Landing is unpublished book material. The Night King and Clegane Bowl are examples of things that I think D&D added that won't be in the books.

She believes that the North can protect itself, that it will never accept an outsider ruling over then again after having reasserted it's independence.

I don't think Dany is bad. I just don't think she is better than anyone else playing the game. She's not as bad as Cersei, certainly not as bad as Joffrey. She's not better than Sansa. She's not better than Stan is Baratheon or Olenna Tyrell or Doran Martell. One point of the show is blasting apart the trope that defeating an existential threat such as the Night King is a signifier of moral superiority. She's not going to surrender if it just means being taken prisoner and executed. Tyrion believed that the key to getting her to give up was to provide a way for her to save her baby.

I think a lot of viewers didn't get that because they seem to think Dany would never attack innocents when she was already planning on it in the show. It was edited in a way so that people who thought of her as the good savior of Westeros were supposed to miss it and be shocked by her actions.

I have a different theory. I believe Dany was discussing plans to attack the people directly because she saw them as enemies and not hostages and Tyrion saw Jaime as his best chance to get Cersei to surrender before Dany could do that. Then, Dany did it anyways despite the bells ringing.

My favorite part of the books in The Scouring of the Shire . GRRM is also a fan. Tolkien was grounded in myth, so he has Aragorn be the winner of the final battle who becomes a wise and just ruler. Martin is grounded in history. For him, outcomes shouldn't be so neat because that's not what happens in the real world. Defeating the Night King doesn't lead to the end of the game of thrones and the establishment of a golden age of Westeros. The wheel keeps spinning. Breaking the wheel is the new draining the swamp. For all of her rhetoric, Daenerys is still part of the same game. Dany is just another warmonger who is quick to choose violence as her path. (Note that Martin was a conscientious objector during Vietnam.) If we follow this to its logical conclusion, Jon either needs to be a game player or he becomes the next Ned Stark, unless another player (Sansa?) finds him to be a useful tool. Or maybe he can head north beyond the Wall with the Wildlings and leave the game altogether. Maybe Dany's best path is to abandon the game and go back to Essos. Dany believes she can rule through either love or fear. She is not loved in Westeros, so she chooses fear. Arguably, this is the correct choice if she cares about ruling. She decides that the way to be feared is to go with shock and awe now, that being merciless in the present will be a mercy to those in the future who she won't have to kill to maintain her power. The show would be better off making her choice one that was reasoned rather than a moment of madness for a crazy woman with a weapon of mass destruction between her legs. I wish the show would present her as a "Mad Queen" who isn't really mad, who may be well-intentioned but who chooses means that we find abhorent to justify an end that we thought we wanted.

That's as silly as ending The Lord of the Rings with Aragorn becoming king.

I don't think they wanted her played differently. They wanted her played in a way that was consistent with a heroic arc.

The actor who plays Bran seems to think that the character believes that history should unfold naturally while he watches.

I suspect that this really is GRRM's endgame for Dany. Bookreaders have speculated for years that she will be the final villain in what is known as the "Mad Queen theory".

I wouldn't be surprised if the next episode begins with Dany explaining that her decision to burn King's Landing was not impulsive, but one that was planned in advance. Now that Jon's secret may be out, she had to make the various Houses too afraid to challenge her rule. If Dany needs to die, the show has a track record of characters not necessarily dying how you expect them to die. The table is set for viewers to expect that Arya or Jon would kill her. The way the show goes, it wouldn't be shocking if one of them tried and failed, only to have a different character deal the fatal blow. Tyrion, perhaps, trying to rectify his mistake.

Martin's most important characters are Jon, Arya, Bran, Dany, and Tyrion. I'm not even sure that Cersei would be alive and on the Iron Throne if the book series reaches its endgame.

This is the ending I've been expecting ever since I read that GRRM saw Aragorn as a mythic figure who wins the battle, then rules wisely and just as a king, but that he was interested in going in a different direction. So, I think that the book's goal is for the defeat of the Others to be followed by a resumption of the game of thrones, in which Dany is found to be wanting as a queen.

Warren is tough to find a hook to hang a comedic impression on. She's an intelligent, competent, no-nonsense person without a facet that can be exaggerated in a way that is funny. It's sort of like how the show struggled to find a good take on Obama. I think a good portrayal might be as the straight woman who remains sane and unflappable amidst the insanity that is the political circus we exist within.

Maybe she told Tyrion to try and drive a wedge between him and Dany so that he wouldn't have divided loyalties and could be with her. Or to get him to propose a marriage between Jon and Dany. Maybe Dany burns down King's Landing in a way that makes her seen as unsuitable for the Iron Throne and Jon has to choose between following her into exile or accepting the crown to stave off civil war.

The books and show have tended to build up something in the beginning of a trope, then pull the rug out from under thereafter/viewer. Ned and Robb Stark were built up as heroes, then shockingly killed off. The greatest threat ever doesn't end the game of thrones. This isn't supposed to end with a just ruler taking the throne and ruling wisely. After defeating the Night King and, presumably, Cersei, politics remains and is still messy. The point of getting you on her side is so they can pull the rug out from under you again and give you an ending that you weren't expecting. I thought it would have been funny if the books had built her up as a conquering hero only for her invasion to fail and her getting killed shortly after making it to Westeros.

Well, that's why she's a villain. People can react to the same stimulus poorly.

I don't get the complaint about this being a filler episode. It felt more like the start to the final sequence. Where I think the episode made a mistake is that the team found out that Emiko is leading the Ninth Circle because she told Rene. I think this is something that the team needed to uncover on their own or at least gather enough evidence to confront Emiko before she admits anything. Halfway through, I was expecting it to turn out to be a cover-up to protect Dinah. I can understand why she would hate all things Queen. The Queen name taints everything for her. Imagine if someone hates Muslim terrorists for what they have done to her and she now hates all Muslims and refuses to accept the possibility of a good Muslim. Emiko ones not acknowledge the possibility of a good Queen. Now, you may say that Emiko is half-Queen and should hate herself, but I known an ex-Muslim who thinks this way. Emiko doesn't see herself as half-Queen, she sees herself as an ex-Queen. She could only accept Ollie if he renounced his name, which he would never do.

I could tell Arya was going to kill the NK because of the storytelling. They kept checking in on every character except Arya after she said "Not today". She was clearly being saved as a surprise to save someone. I think it effective pacing that probably drew a lot of watchers into the stories of other characters so they weren't wondering where she was because they assumed she was barricaded in a room with no way out. They had the Theon attack which reminded me of Spike at the end of Buffy season 6 and they left him moving on the ground so that the audience could wonder if he might make a last gasp attack on the Night King from behind. There was always the possibility that Bran had a trick prepared but, no, it was going to be Arya. They foreshadowed it with Mellisandre telling her that Beric had a purpose that he fulfilled, but let's not forget that after Beric fulfilled that purpose, he died. If Arya has fulfilled her purpose, will the universe feel free to discard her as soon as the next episode? I think we were supposed to be reminded of Lyanna vs. the giant and be worried that Arya was going to kill the Night King with her dying blow. People have brought up comparisons to Tolkien. That was a massive war that turned out be a more of a distraction so that the real task. The war keeps Sauron engaged so that Frodo can sneak into Mordor. The battle draws the Night King out into a situation where he can be attacked. The main reason that Peter Jackson's trilogy wasn't a complete triumph for me was the excising of the Scouring of the Shire. We get that now with the resumption of the fight for the Iron Throne. While post-war was messy for the hobbits, it is less messy for everyone else in the book. I think ASOIAF is meant to show the aftermath for everyone.

They are there to hit Barry over the head with a sledgehammer about the importance of family. Cisco was consulting about ways to track Cicada. As someone who has proven to be capable of some very inappropriate rage-induced behavior, I can relate to both Barry and Nora in this episode.

This episode was not filler. On the eve of a battle to save humanity, this episode established the humanity of every character and showed what they have to lose, what spark would be gone if they ended up not just dead but undead. The point is to manipulate viewers into remembering why they should care about anyone who might die. As a viewer, I find it helpful to remind me how to tell apart the different white, dark-haired bearded guys. If it's all just dense plot, the story is lesser. The battle is coming. We know it's coming. The characters know it's coming. By making us wait along with them, we can identify with their anxiety. They just have to follow through and make the battle worth the wait.

I can buy it because I can see myself acting the same way.