Conan Troutman

With all these properly trained badasses here, I guess I'll have to think twice about what I write...

Thanks, that's great! I've been doing this manually with my mouse and the delete key (a really bad idea if you read the whole thread, click on quote half a dozen times and when you're finished you see that most of it has already been addressed) . Even Henry with his prehistoric joystick would be faster.

So Paige is going miss the first four episodes of next season? Yeah, it's pretty obvious: The show has been renewed for two seasons, but just couldn't afford the new salary for mail robot.

That part's still there, yes. At least she can point out that it's normal to have that type of training without having to be a trained assassin, which I doubted at first. I guess it also depends if she can act like she didn't do it on a regular basis. Paige may be willing to swallow the first one, but if Elizabeth just shrugs it off as business as usual, it won't go down well at all. Elizabeth is a pretty great actress though, so that shouldn't be the problem. If that scene had come in the episode directly after they bonded at the bowling alley, maybe I could see that. But we got it right in the episode after Philip and Elizabeth told Mrs. Groovyhair how absurd the thought is that they could kill people, so I guess that's not how it's going to play out.

Fair enough. So I guess this would make for a plausible explanation from Elizabeth then. Paige will probably still be more suspicious about her parents claim not to kill people, but the fallout from that scene will likely be less severe than I first imagined.

Sure, but are you taught to stab the guy in the throat with a knife? That seemed to be a little bit more than your regular self defense advice.

I don't know if the cops would even look that closely. The guy probably had quite the record, so I can see this thing basically becoming a footnote on page three: "Homeless thief/rapist killed in bad neighborhood. Whatever. Here are the lottery numbers:" I agree on it becoming yet another piece of the puzzle though, that seems to be a likely outcome. But there has to be a less likely to be lethal way to do this. I'm not blaming Elizabeth for killing him. But Paige is going to have the same reaction I did: "Whoa there, you sure as hell didn't hesitate to ram that knife in his throat!"

That raises a few questions though. Are you really taught in a self defense class to aim for the throat? It surely would neutralize the target, but aren't there other spots to strike that are non-lethal, yet have the same effect? And why would she deliberately chose to kill him when she knew full well that Paige was standing right next to her? Maybe it was more deliberate than I first assumed, but that doesn't really make Paige think differently about it.

That was my thinking. There are only two ways Elizabeth could b connected to the crime scene: The other guy, who most likely won't talk, and Pastor Tim. That one is a real possibility though, as he knows about Elizabeth. Though I'm not sure if he knew where she parked or if he would ever connect the dots. You'd think that wasn't the first dead guy found in that neighborhood. Philip said step mother. So that checks out.

I wouldn't say out of control, but also not really deliberate. More like, instinctive. Which makes it all that much worse - to Paige it has to look exactly like it is: Elizabeth' training took over, and that training made her go into kill mode, not self defense mode. I doubt anything plot wise will come out of it, though. The other guy will probably just make a run for it and the police will never catch him. But even if they do, what's important is the impact on Paige.

Yeah, that was a great move. Paige is certainly learning. That was just her purse. Another really good episode, although the dinner was a bit of a letdown (just that one scene, really?). I wonder if there are some scenes lying on the editing floor - the episode was a bit on the short side anyway, so maybe they just needed to save time? Paige was appropriately terrified when Elizabeth just killed the shit out of the mugger. I'm sure she's glad that Elizabeth saved them, but usually you'd expect someone who knows a thing or two about self defense to simply dispatch the attacker and immobilize him, not flat out stab him in the throat.

Great news, of course, but also interesting as I was thinking they were moving closer and closer to the endgame - so I was expecting the next season to be the last, simply because the story would demand it. But then again, there's a lot of stuff the showrunners seemingly want to tackle and the story didn't progress fast enough to allow them to do that (and they can't really move forward six or seven years in just one season), so two seasons makes sense.

Stannis doesn't know what exactly did the trick. He basically threw everything there was and more at it and has no clue what worked. He's only consulting in that he told D&D what's going to happen. He doesn't write dialogue. I guess they have access to the unfinished book, but as the show diverges more and more, they can't use any of the dialogue.

I guess in the books Sansa could just hate Ramsay for what he did to Jeyne. I don't think this gives anything away for Sansa, as she'll outlive Ramsay even if she were to die at some point.

Probably because they're both extremely powerful. Like, so powerful that they could potentially stop the WWs by seeing their plans, secrets and whatnot. The NK has probably been waiting for an opportunity to kill 3ER for a long time now, but couldn't get inside the cave until Bran did him a solid.

I'm not saying it's impossible to find a cure, just that they both have to know the chances are very, very slim. Stannis said he tried everything, bringing in all kinds of healers and wise men and whatnot, until something finally worked. Were Jorah to get the same treatment (which he won't), then maybe. But on his own, strolling through the deserts? Nah. Well, it did make sense for him to try to get rid of any pretenders. Asshole move, sure, but not just for the evulz. Wouldn't she know by now if she was pregnant? We don't know exactly how much time has passed since she fled Winterfell, but unless she got pregnant right before, she should've noticed it by now. Fad Walda gave birth for crying out loud after Sansa was gone and LF got notice and traveled all the way up to Molestown, so some time has to have passed.

Donnie Starko?

I'm not sure we should take the cure thing too seriously. They probably both know it's bullshit, Dany just couldn't say goodbye and Jorah just went along with it. Nice job, autocorrect... Yeah, that was one of the theories I always thought had a good chance of being correct. It did cause contradictions with some of the other theories I thought were plausible, at least we can scrap some of them now and work from there. But that's for the speculation thread.

But why didn't he prevent it? He could've told Bran what he saw. The past may be written, but does this apply to the future, too? Well, if you go forward in the time, the now-future would become the past. So maybe that's what he was talking about when he said "the ink is dry". Ugh, time travel is the last thing I needed on the show. Now my head hurts.

So when exactly did Bran's visit to the WWs happen? Where they already outside the cave? Was it in the future? They got there pretty quickly after that. Either way, you'd think they would get the hell out of dodge after what happened. Instead, they were taking the time for another trip to the past. I can only assume 3ER knew how this would turn out and thought it would be necessary.

Good point. I hope she kills him after the battle (in the trailer, we did see LF in the godswood with a character dressed in black approaching him) and is like "well, thanks for the help, but you're no longer useful now". LF would be proud of her. Uh-oh. This week on Arrested Westeros: "I made a huge mistake"...

We may get that in the books, but the show might leave it out for budget reasons. The can use real horses and just CGI the undeadness on them, but more exotic animals (not to mention fictional or extinct ones) are far harder to do. I thought "Wouldn't it be funny if he just died totally anticlimactically?". Yeah, I think Jorah will get to do one last thing and I bet it will have something to do with Old Valyria. But I'm not sure it's just some Valyrian steel. Maybe one of the Targaryen swords, but there has to be something else there. No idea what, though. Or maybe that was it for Jorah and we simply never see him again. The voice in the flames refers to the sorcerer (remember the sorcerer from season two or three that Varys got delivered in a box?) cutting his dick off and burning it. Then he saw a flame and heard a voice. The priestess seems to infer that it was R'hllor himself who was speaking to him (how else would she know it?).

I hope that's it, because otherwise it would be pretty confusing and might sink the show/books into a giant logic wormhole. Maybe Bran won't be able to influence stuff in the, um, future, because he won't have access to the really powerful weirwood tree any more and the lesser ones are only good for visions. Or he chooses not to do anything, as he learned how dangerous it can be. I hope you're right and that's the explanation. I really don't need any major conflict or jealousy between Sansa and Jon. Turning down the army (though LF never mentioned it explicitly) might be a mistake, but maybe she was banking that LF would come to help them regardless (has she seen the trailer?). No Tower of Joy is indeed a curios choice. I'm sure we'll get the full reveal eventually, but it may not be via Bran. What do you mean, it's not a coincidence? They're probably both from Asshai and I wouldn't be surprised if she's even older than Mel - she's the highest ranked priestess for a reason. I wouldn't mind a bit less self-control as the actress is really stunning, but I don't think Dany would be especially receptive to that. Some other thoughts: - I'm okay with Summer dying like that. I hated the other deaths of the direwolfs, but in this case Summer actually fulfilled his purpose and sacrificed himself to save Bran (and probably humankind along with him). Way better than getting slaughtered by some random asshole. - RIP Hodor! - So the CotF created the WW. Not a big surprise, as that was one of the options I strongly considered, but nice to finally get some confirmation. Curios that they more or less dumped that info in the beginning of the fifth episode, but whatever. - Speaking of the CotF, are they extinct now? Or are there other children somewhere? - Sorry Yara, but Euron actually had a great point. Building a giant navy is fine, but actually putting it to good use in allying with Dany and conquering the seven kingdoms is the far better plan. Hopefully she jumps ahead off him and makes the alliance with Dany herself. Those aren't a ton of ships and won't get the entirety of her army over the Narrow Sea in one swoop, but you can use those things multiple times. - I think Arya will retrieve Needle in her next episode.

I think they're skipping that whole angle. He's not even mad at Jaime in the show. Whether that's a smart choice or not, you can really only tell with certainty once both the show and the books are done.

Here are the dots: - Her dad's been absent a couple days a week for quite some time - They live next door to an FBI agent - Someone at work or said FBI agent turns out to be a Russian spy/working for the KGB - Just when that secretary's cover was blown, her dad suddenly spends way more time at home She doesn't know about the exact timing yet, but the first three should be enough to make her go "wait a minute!" and wanting to further poke Matthew or maybe Stan until she learns about the fourth one. The second one is actually a false lead, but Paige can't know that living next door to Stan had nothing to do with Martha, so it can lead to a suspicion nonetheless. This could foreshadow something about the Kimmie story, too, but this was mostly about Philip and Paige. Maybe it makes him understand Paige's need for confiding with an adult better, maybe it's something else, but it was clearly there as a parallel to Philip's own daughter. Yep, I could totally see both outcomes. I'm glad she said "yes", and while it probably ultimately won't matter as far as the Young Hee situation is concerned, it was still a very important moment for her character. Elizabeth is starting to show cracks, too. I've been wondering if next season will be the last for that reason and the show is slowly moving towards the endgame.