Last night's episode was very exciting, although there were some continuity issues, I thought. There are many spoilers in here, so if you aren't caught up, stay away!!
1: The whole reason Jon Snow went to Dragonstone was to fetch a bunch of dragonglass (obsidian), which apparently can kill wights and white walkers. He didn't ask for it right away but did some sparring and staring longingly with Daenerys before finally giving Tyrion the opportunity to ask him if there was some lesser thing that they could do for him. This added suspense but makes little sense.
2: The whole reason the 7 samurai and their redshirts went north of the wall was to come into contact with some wights so they could bring one of them back. They knew they'd have do some fighting with wights and white walkers. Jon had been mining dragonglass. Didn't he think to bring a few of these special weapons to arm them, just in case they ran into the very thing they were looking for? (7: Jon, Jorah, Tormund, Dondarion, Thoros, Hound, Gendry. The first part of the episode was used for exposition, just like in the Kurozawa and Yul Brenner versions) (perhaps they did use dragonglass weapons but you'd think they'd have made a point of it, which they didn't)
3: best I can make out, it's about 1500 miles from Eastwatch to dragonstone. I don't know how fast GoT ravens fly, but pigeons do about 50 mph and can only fly for about 20 hours without taking a rest. If ravens are similar, that's 30 hours of flying plus a few hours of rest. Let's assume the dragons can fly twice as fast (much more than that and a rider could not possibly stay aboard). Adding Gendry's run all the way back to eastwatch and time for a little discussion in both places lets say 60 hours. The 7 samurai experienced a little cracking ice, but the Wight army was too much for it and they pulled back. Starting from no ice, at 0F, 60 hours can produce 6 inches of ice. Enough for a person or maybe a small group to walk on but not enough for an army of wights. But they weren't starting from zero, there was already ice. The broken spots had to re-freeze, but they'll do that a lot more quickly than if they'd been starting from clear water. So, 60 hours is just barely enough.
4: the Hound's stone is much lighter than a wight army or even a single wight. The fact that the ice is now hard enough to support a stone is no indication that it can support an army.
5: I said, out loud, "oh dear, now he's got a dragon" the moment the dragon was hit by the ice lance. They can obviously make wight bears and horses, so it seemed pretty obvious. It's not clear which dragon it was, except that Daenerys always rides Drogon and that one made it out. I'm guessing it was Viserion, because Rhaegon is penciled in to be Jon's dragon once he realizes he's a Targaryen, being named for his real father.
6: What does a fire breathing wight dragon breathe? icy fire? ordinary fire? blast of freezing something? does the ice put the fire out? a non-fire breathing dragon isn't as scary as a fire breather, but still pretty scary.
7: when the Hound kicked their captive wight, a whole bunch of wights on the shore screamed. when Jon killed the White Walker with Valyrian steel, a whole bunch of wights suddenly died. The characters are thinking that they were in thrall somehow to that particular White Walker and he has to be alive for them to animate. I'm thinking this is some connection analogous to warging. There only seem to be a handful of White Walkers...perhaps emphasis should be on taking them out.
8 The 6 remaining samurai all owe Daenarys a lot. Jorah pledged to her long ago, Jon did from his sickbed, and Davos joked that he might too.
9: I think the Hound has a strong crush on the Stark girls. It's clear that he had a strong sense of decency and a little bit of a soft heart all along, but his relationship with his psychopath brother and his employment by the Lannisters had forced him to suppress this under a thick layer of cynicism. I wonder if he'll fall for Daenarys the way he's fallen for the Stark girls.
10: Way too much deus ex machina in this episode. The dragons arriving in the nick of time, Jon coming to the surface within inches of his sword, Benjen Stark arriving when he did and giving Jon his undead horse. How is it that other wights are in thrall to the White Walkers but Benjen somehow has kept a mind of his own? Did Jon realize that his uncle or his horse were undead?
11: The fight between the Stark sisters makes no sense. Arya knows enough about the Lannisters to know that Sansa had been forced to write the letter, and Sansa knows Arya could have done nothing about it. She is right to be creeped out by Arya's face collection but she took the explanation with surprising aplomb. Arya was understandably jealous of the attention focused on Sansa but she was also happier without it. Perhaps Littlefinger is concerned that if they join with Daenerys, his chances at the Iron Throne are basically gone, although he may still have a shot at Sansa and in a rivalry between the girls, Arya will side with Jon and Daenerys.
12: How are dragons born? apparently they need a big fire. Where do the eggs come from? Do they need a mating pair to make eggs? Do they need a Targaryen to go into the fire with them? We don't know what gender the three dragons are. Maybe all dragons can lay eggs and only fire and Targaryns can fertilize them. Apparently the first dragons came from a volcano in Valyria. Was this volcano also related to the Doom of Valyria?
21 August 2017
11 August 2017
Game of Thrones Predictions
We're 4/7ths through the 7th season. Daenerys has had some losses but just took a huge win with her dragons and Dothraki. Bronn just saved Jaime from a dragon but both are sinking into deep water, pulled down by the weight of their armor. Jaime appears to be unconscious. Jon Snow has been making friends with Daenerys but refuses to bend the knee. He's presumably busy mining dragonglass.
I predict that Jaime and Bronn survive by getting their armor off, but are captured. They will have a reunion with their brother/old friend Tyrion. They will both eventually switch sides but not for quite a while yet. They'll stay captive for a while. One of them will escape, probably Bronn.
Tyrion loves his brother, but Jaime loves his sister and is loyal to what's left of the family. Tywin and Cersei have made that loyalty impossible for Tyrion, but Tyrion doesn't want his brother to die. It's a tough one. Jaime dying heroically would resolve everything, but that would wreck the drama of the story, so the writers probably won't do that.
Jon Snow will have an incident soon where one of the dragons takes a shine to him, probably the one named for his biological father. I'm guessing the dragon will invite him to go for a ride but it may play out a different way. He doesn't yet know yet that he's a Targaryen. When he and Bran get together finally, he'll find out, and suddenly all will become clear. The writers are drawing this out for as long as possible.
Nobody seems to be concerned that the one-time Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, who is an exceptionally duty-driven person, is now King in the North. Everybody knows that the only way out of the Night's Watch is to die. There are hundreds of Stark bannermen who don't know that Jon Snow did die and was resurrected, yet are nevertheless pledged to what must seem to be a watchman who has violated his vow. Sam Tarley was already on the way to the Citadel when this happened and doesn't know. He sent a raven (which apparently got to Winterfell somehow) to Jon telling him about the dragonglass at Dragonstone, but the Citadel seems pretty isolated. Sam probably doesn't know that Jon died and that his departure is legitimate, albeit unorthodox.
Sam has been assigned to copy a bunch of scrolls that are decaying. I predict that some of them will prove very interesting and one will have some information, forgotten for centuries, that will be crucially important in the fight against the Night King. I think the Archmaester suspected that this might be the case and Sam's punishment will prove in fact to be a huge reward.
I'm guessing nobody else in Winterfell appreciates just how deadly Arya has become, although there are quite a few hints. When asked who had taught her the trick with the dagger, she told Brienne "no one". Brienne took it to mean that she'd just figured it out on her own, but she meant she'd been taught by the faceless men. If Arya (or somebody) is able to kill Cersei, just about all the POV characters remaining have a good reason to get along with each other and are already friends at some level, and can get to the real business of defending the realm against the Night King. I suppose this means that Cersei can't be killed for a while, if only for dramatic purposes.
Gendry is probably out there somewhere. He is already friends with Arya, and her reunion with HotPie a few weeks ago is probably foreshadowing. He realizes he owes his life to Davos, but he'd been penciled in for the Night's Watch. Gendry is a notch more legitimate a holder of the Iron Throne than Cersei (he's the illegitimate son of Robert) so Cersei would probably kill him if she heard about him, but she doesn't know. I'm guessing Sam plays a role. Once Sam gets his Maester's chain, he's destined to return to the Watch; he didn't die like Jon, but he effectively has a wife and child, which is a violation of his oath too.
I predict that Jaime and Bronn survive by getting their armor off, but are captured. They will have a reunion with their brother/old friend Tyrion. They will both eventually switch sides but not for quite a while yet. They'll stay captive for a while. One of them will escape, probably Bronn.
Tyrion loves his brother, but Jaime loves his sister and is loyal to what's left of the family. Tywin and Cersei have made that loyalty impossible for Tyrion, but Tyrion doesn't want his brother to die. It's a tough one. Jaime dying heroically would resolve everything, but that would wreck the drama of the story, so the writers probably won't do that.
Jon Snow will have an incident soon where one of the dragons takes a shine to him, probably the one named for his biological father. I'm guessing the dragon will invite him to go for a ride but it may play out a different way. He doesn't yet know yet that he's a Targaryen. When he and Bran get together finally, he'll find out, and suddenly all will become clear. The writers are drawing this out for as long as possible.
Nobody seems to be concerned that the one-time Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, who is an exceptionally duty-driven person, is now King in the North. Everybody knows that the only way out of the Night's Watch is to die. There are hundreds of Stark bannermen who don't know that Jon Snow did die and was resurrected, yet are nevertheless pledged to what must seem to be a watchman who has violated his vow. Sam Tarley was already on the way to the Citadel when this happened and doesn't know. He sent a raven (which apparently got to Winterfell somehow) to Jon telling him about the dragonglass at Dragonstone, but the Citadel seems pretty isolated. Sam probably doesn't know that Jon died and that his departure is legitimate, albeit unorthodox.
Sam has been assigned to copy a bunch of scrolls that are decaying. I predict that some of them will prove very interesting and one will have some information, forgotten for centuries, that will be crucially important in the fight against the Night King. I think the Archmaester suspected that this might be the case and Sam's punishment will prove in fact to be a huge reward.
I'm guessing nobody else in Winterfell appreciates just how deadly Arya has become, although there are quite a few hints. When asked who had taught her the trick with the dagger, she told Brienne "no one". Brienne took it to mean that she'd just figured it out on her own, but she meant she'd been taught by the faceless men. If Arya (or somebody) is able to kill Cersei, just about all the POV characters remaining have a good reason to get along with each other and are already friends at some level, and can get to the real business of defending the realm against the Night King. I suppose this means that Cersei can't be killed for a while, if only for dramatic purposes.
Gendry is probably out there somewhere. He is already friends with Arya, and her reunion with HotPie a few weeks ago is probably foreshadowing. He realizes he owes his life to Davos, but he'd been penciled in for the Night's Watch. Gendry is a notch more legitimate a holder of the Iron Throne than Cersei (he's the illegitimate son of Robert) so Cersei would probably kill him if she heard about him, but she doesn't know. I'm guessing Sam plays a role. Once Sam gets his Maester's chain, he's destined to return to the Watch; he didn't die like Jon, but he effectively has a wife and child, which is a violation of his oath too.
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