Game of Thrones (TV)

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Allstar
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Yeah the Children of the Forest reveal was brilliant.
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ChristNolan
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Great stuff. Children of the Forest makeup took 9-10 hours to apply. Imagine having to go through that and then go work for a full day. Talk about exhausting.
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Allstar
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Such a huge upgrade from season 4. Initial look was so boring, wish they got it right initially but whatever.
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ChristNolan
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Allstar wrote:Such a huge upgrade from season 4. Initial look was so boring, wish they got it right initially but whatever.
TV development is ever evolving since it happens over years and years and a growing budget probably helped a great deal as well.

Also I'm with you on Bender's direction, really impressive stuff. I hope they give him more episodes to work on in the future. (He only has one more ep under his direction, the next one)
eGregiovs
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Of course, the show negates the 4,000 year Pact between the First Men and the Children that was interrupted by the Others leading to the Long Night. And, the Battle of the Dawn where the First Men, the Children and possibly Azor Ahai drive back the Others, Also, there is that item where the souls of the Children are absorbed into weirwood trees, so having a warg/greenseer like Bran only helps to expand their power.
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Nomis
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Vader182 wrote:late to the party but amazing ep, what everyone else is saying. one of the biggest episodes of the entire series for ten million reasons

mainly being....

The implications of changing the past, which as I understand it has been fan spec for years, go wide. Mad King, Bran the Builder, etc. Bran being able to...not change the past since it's already been changed, but to have a relationship with the past can mean a LOT of stuff going forward, especially in the context of all the other Greenseers and what they may have "changed" as well. Wide reaching implications through the whole show up to this point as well as going forward. Bran may very well wind up becoming a nearly divine being and influencing a huge percentage of the overall direction of the story from a very early day in the history of the show. The Three Eyed Raven (we're pretty sure) isn't crazy ancient but he said he's been waiting a thousand years...which implies he's existed through the tree network and saw 1,000 years of history. The possibilities here aren't just endless but are capable of reorienting our entire perception of significant events through the whole show.

Interesting also that the Three Eyed Raven "made sure" bran could fuck Hodor up almost as a way to illustrate "be carful" in a way that's etched in blood.

Other thing to mention, if Bran's "mark" means the white walkers could penetrate the Children of the Forest's magic barrier there.... Bran better stay away from the wall. Especially after Jon's foreboding final words when leaving. Of course I'm incredibly curious how they'll survive on their own in the middle of nowhere...

OTHER-other thing to mention and this is kind of critical to the overall thematic scheme of the show... pretty compelling that since the Children of the Forest is basically GoT's stand in for Native Americans being whipped out by white faced invaders (although Columbus and them would have a more olive skin tone due to being Spaniards...), it's interesting instead of having a "white savior" Martin subverted expectations by having them basically create a WMD (weapon of mass destruction) to combat probably the Andal's and obviously things got out of hand. Sort of a pretty compelling riff on the cold war nuclear holocaust scenario where the CotF invented a superweapon that might inadvertently wipe everyone out. It might be the show's most "modern" allegory instead of Rome/War of the Roses, etc.

Even if the reveal was presented to us rather nonchalantly it has deep-rooted thematic/narrative implications that I think are profound and compelling and enriches the overall fabric of the entire series retroactively. Smart, smart stuff.
This season is rocking. If the season maintains quality or continues to grow (since every episode, more or less, has been better than the last) it'll be one of the best seasons period.


-Vader
Agree. Fantastic stuff
PowerDump
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Gosh this season is really good (and while ep 1 wasn't the best in the series I didn't see anything terrible). The 73 it has on Metacritic seems like a joke seeing as I'm sure most of the people reviewing it would probably say every episode since is really good in comparison.
I didn't think the reason Hodor only says, "Hodor" would be such a epic reveal (and oh so sad).
Batfan175
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Isn't it interesting that Arya both in observing the death of her father in real life and in witnessing the play is actually in the exact same position (meaning a spectator who is unable to intervene)? I also wonder what her impression of Tyrion is going to be. It is also ironic that the woman playing Cersei seems a good person when Arya wanted to kill the real Cersei since season 2.

A lot of privilege being deconstructed here, which is easy to forget, given how badly the Starks had it in the show. Arya is told she's different from the other members at the House of Black and White because of her noble birth, Sansa is able to make her House name count with the Stark bannermen, Bran is being protected and generally treated like a very important person by the people around him...most other people would not have some of these advantages and none of them have this impactful a destiny within the story, which is why the ending worked so well for me.
Hodor is essentially a low-born servant of the Starks and Bran messed up his life pretty much from the get-go it would seem, giving him a destiny but also an inevitable fate as a tool to protect Bran and while I'm sure Bran did not mean to cause any of this, it was still the result of his choices, his quest for knowledge and the fact that the Three-Eyed Raven did not warn him enough about the implications of the sight. It's appropriate that this would be a time paradox because story-wise it is also a paradox in that Bran made Hodor the way he is but Hodor also deeply cared about Bran.
Then there's the privilege of being a man in the Ironborn culture. They are pretty chauvinistic in general and Yara/Asha is an exception to the rule in their eyes. All Euron has to do is appeal to the toxic image of masculinity that views feelings, pity and humanity as a weakness and associates them with femininity in his society in order to succeed. This image of masculinity is destructive to men (they can likely never really live up to the ideal and are under a lot of pressure to succeed, whatever that may look like) and women (they are not given much thought, let alone power, in Ironborn society). The scene is actually pretty well-done because both Yara and Euron propose to build a large fleet but Euron is more charismatic and he keeps going on about how Theon is not a man and that THIS is the ONLY reason from his point of view why Theon could possibly support a woman being ruler of the Ironborn and how he is going to seduce Daenerys and bed her. It doesn't matter that Yara has proven herself; she naturally faces challenges to her claim just because many of these guys would not want to have a queen instead of a king, mainly because they've been raised in an environment that tells them that men handle ruling better than women.

Varys and Baelish got taken down a peg as well, which makes both of them uncomfortable and I find it interesting that the priestess phrased Tyrion's request as 'being worshipped and obeyed'. He's seemingly making the same mistake as Cersei but in different circumstances because he does not understand the Meereenese society or the Faith of R'hllor.
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Cilogy
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so my question is
was it actually Hodor holding the door, or was it Bran controlling Hodor

I'd hope it's the former, since it sort of proves Hodor to be a hero at a critical moment

though, like Vader implied, the latter means Bran leans how his power can affect people more than he realizes if he isn't careful
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Vader182
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Cilogy wrote:so my question is
was it actually Hodor holding the door, or was it Bran controlling Hodor

I'd hope it's the former, since it sort of proves Hodor to be a hero at a critical moment

though, like Vader implied, the latter means Bran leans how his power can affect people more than he realizes if he isn't careful
I think it's pretty intentionally a little ambiguous, to such a degree that
Bran might not even know.

In a sense it ultimately doesn't matter, agency or not if Bran didn't "take control" of Hodor they all would've been dead instead of just the big guy. So that's (in my opinion) the less important thing to focus on and it's more that either way Bran arrogantly went into the weirwood (sp) network and caused the whole thing in the first place.

Either way, Bran literally caused the death of the Three Eyed Raven, the 12,000 year old Leaf (or however old she is), the direwolf (not googling name), Hodor, etc. Leaving a high body count behind him at this point just to protect how "important" he is. Although the Three Eyed Raven seemed to know this was coming anyway.

-Vader
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