Season 7 Episode 6 "Beyond the Wall" - "Book readers" - Spoilers from post 2

Paddy Cow

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The Hound threw a rock and knocked off one of their jaws. He threw another one but his aim was short and the rock landed on the ice near the wight. It started walking towards the rock and that set them all off.

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OneOfThem Stumbled

Shame about so many characters getting killed but I mean it was inevitable.

After 200 kilometers of truging through the haunted forest the cold had already taken its toll. It was a hard enough journey when Jeor Moromont made his well provisioned expedition, and that when it was still summer. After 400 kilometers, when they reached the mountainous region presumably near Hardhome they would have been near death already before they got swamped by an undead force 100,000 string. The last couple of them took refuge on a small island, but the lake was shallow and the undead poured into it to form a pontoon. By the time Daenerys found out a month later about the fate of the expedition, there was nothing to be done but note how Jon obviously did know nothing.

_____________________________________________________

But that's not what happened, this is what happened.

Daenerys gets on Drogon and flies over the land Beyond the Wall, spots the army of undead and flies home. No expedition necessary. Jon still at Dragonstone says "believe me now". Daeneys says "yeh, I'll mop up King's landing and then turn the South towards defence of the wall. Bend the knee." Jon says "K".

These are not plot holes. The plot is the hole, everything else is struggling not to fall in.

Also that bear was hella late to the party.

Gendry, send up a smoke signal so that Dorne can come to our aid! Thoros has been bitten extensively!

murpho999

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So why can't the Night King or a White Walker control them then?

Heffoman

I think questioning the strength of the night kings throw is a bit silly. I presumed it was a sort of magical spear like thors hammer or something like that.
As to why he shot the dragon in the air I thought watching it he was initially aiming at Drogan but he noticed the other Dragon was wheeling in the air towards him and looked like it would be coming towards him so was the immediate threat.

The white walkers only came forward in small numbers because it was obvious if they all came at once the ice would break like it did the first time under all the weight.

And as for Jon saying he was sorry for the death of her Dragon I read it as they had a chance to escape and Dany called to him a few times but he was going forward towards the Night King (he walks away from the Dragon fighting white walkers) and because of that she delays their escape and gives the Night King time to grab the spear and throw it.

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Daith

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I'm convinced that the Walkers are greenseers and wargs (or the Nights King is) and they control all their wights. A more advanced version of Bran warging the ravens. I guess killing the NK would also drop Ice Viserion?

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murpho999

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I think the WWs and Night King can see everything that their wights can see and then make decisions for them.

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Daith

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So maybe the NK wanted a wight over the wall? To see what is happening past it?

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Kunkka

I am still upset about the dragon and it's been 12 hours

Clegane Bowl has to be on? That'll be epic

D3sperado

Aside from the overall stupidity of the plan of going beyond the Wall in the first place, I really enjoyed it and its easily in my top 5 episodes ever.

On the timeline piece, someone on the Freefolk Reddit page did the maths behind it to see if it was possible (I won't link directly to the page as they freely talk about production spoilers and the script leaks).

Basically, he thought it would take about 4 days from Gendry starting his epic run until Dany arrived with the dragons. This is based the run for Gendry taking a few hours and the ravens flying a distance of about 2000 miles at 50mph in about two days allowing for some rest stops (though the speed is based on homing pigeons so its quite possible that these special 'Westeros' ravens could do it quicker). Then, assuming that Dragons could fly at least as fast as the ravens then it gives another two days.

The question is how long were they on the little island. well (http://www.outdoorcanada.ca/How_Fast_Does_Your_Lake_Make_Ice) says that depending on the weather conditions a lake would make about 6-12 inches of ice in 4 days. This (http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/thickness.html) says that about 8-15 inches is needed for cars etc. to safely cross and also it seems that the wights didn't realise straight away that they could cross until the Hound threw the rock. Is 4 days realistic to survive hypothermia based on their clothes? Maybe, if they were lighting fires at night, had some basic food rations and used the shape of the island for shelter if the wind was strong.

Even the likes of Breaking Bad and the Wire needed the odd suspension of disbelief, but the bigger problem for the show at the moment is that I think D&D want to wrap it up as quickly as they can to move on to something else and some of the pacing this season has been way off (a 10 episode season would have been much better).

They also have some serious highs and lows on the writing. I thought the banter beyond the Wall and the Dany and Jon scene at the end were very good. The Winterfell stuff on the other hand was very poor. I blame GRRM as much as D&D on this, the books should have been finished by now and if they were then D&D wouldn't be having to try and close out on all the loose ends and knots that GRRM created (the same issues that have caused him to only produce two books in the last 17 years....). A lot of D&Ds mistakes and issues can be traced to having to make certain things happen or certain characters to end up in a particular place to solve some sort of knot that GRRM created. This doesn't excuse crazy plot holes like everyone thinking the Fellowship of the Wight adventure beyond the Wall was a good idea but it does explain it a little.

alpha13

Paddy Cow wrote: »

The whole thing was weird. LF told her that Brienne would have her back against Arya and Brienne is probably the only person in Winterfell Sansa can trust 100%. Why would she send Brienne away and to KL of all places? It makes absolutely no sense She could have sent Cersi a PFO by raven.


This storyline is getting on my nerves. Arya should be smart enough to be all over LF like a rash and her seeming hatred of Sansa is ridiculous. Sansa going to LF for counsel is also ridiculous. She was showing real growth and emerging as someone who could be a match for him and this is regressing her character.

what if the scenes with sansa and brienne and sansa and little finger are actually arya pretending to be sansa to lure littlefinger into HER trap...
think about it.. brieene gone away leaves sansa open for little finger to show his true colours and sansa asking his counsel to make him think he has an opening to manipulate her!!!
arya was honest with sansa inthe room... probably judging her like she did doing the faceless man training... :cool:

peteeeed

better make sure jonathan ross in not on the thronecast next week with the wights and the white walkers heavily involved

TommyKnocker

alpha13 wrote: »

what if the scenes with sansa and brienne and sansa and little finger are actually arya pretending to be sansa to lure littlefinger into HER trap...
think about it.. brieene gone away leaves sansa open for little finger to show his true colours and sansa asking his counsel to make him think he has an opening to manipulate her!!!
arya was honest with sansa inthe room... probably judging her like she did doing the faceless man training... :cool:

Arya says to Sansa that all she (Arya) would have to do to become Sansa is "take your face". So for Arya to become Sansa she would have to kill Sansa and take her face, which she obviously did not do if she is having a conversation with her. Or am I missing something

Even in the house of the Black & White the wall of faces were those of the deceased.

mr_cochise

Jelle1880 wrote:

They are indeed starting to take the piss with the time jumps.

Jelle1880 wrote:

I can understand Davos for example showing up in King's Landing. But the raven thing and then Dany getting on her dragon the next scene basically is ridiculous.

Maybe the show is not for you then!
It's not like they would miss your viewership!

PhlegmyMoses

Starting to cringe reading some of the **** here and on Reddit. It's all deus ex machina this, plot hole that, redshirt the other. It's like people spent the last 10 years of their lives on that TV tropes site and have all come flooding out to collectively display their understanding of writing devices and overused set-pieces.

Yes, the writing is not as good as GRRMs. The ****er has been writing the books for 20 years at this stage, they are inevitably going to be better\be more subtle. And even if D&D are rushing things a bit, so what? As a book reader, I am kind of happy that I'm getting what looks to be a cliff notes finish to a series that will probably never actually be finished by the original writer.

mr_cochise

Jelle1880 wrote:

They are indeed starting to take the piss with the time jumps.

Jelle1880 wrote:

I can understand Davos for example showing up in King's Landing. But the raven thing and then Dany getting on her dragon the next scene basically is ridiculous.

Maybe the show is not for you then. How about some Downton Abbey!

Savage Tyrant

mr_cochise wrote: »

Maybe the show is not for you then!
It's not like they would miss your viewership!

He didn't say he would stop watching.
I'm not one for criticising the show non stop, but the timing of this episode was WAY off. It's a legitimate criticism.

mr_cochise

You do realise that there is only so much that they can show on screen!?

MarkR

I'd love to see the swim instructor in westeros. Some lungs on Jamie, Bronn, and Jon.

alpha13

TommyKnocker wrote: »

Arya says to Sansa that all she (Arya) would have to do to become Sansa is "take your face". So for Arya to become Sansa she would have to kill Sansa and take her face, which she obviously did not do if she is having a conversation with her. Or am I missing something

Even in the house of the Black & White the wall of faces were those of the deceased.

yes... but maybe she means that as in imitate her face, not literally take it... maybe not all the faces are taken from dead people... most of it is to become and know the person which she does with sansa... can we really say the face she wore when she got revenge of the boy... could have been anyone alive or dead.. unknown??

knipex

Nody wrote: »

And to add icing (Ha!) to the cake only one person died sleeping out in the significant sub zeroes all night long without any proper protection

A soft injured southerner died..

Look who survived.

King of the north, free folk, the hound (did you really think the hound was that soft), a man who survived death 6 times, a man who survived greyscale and the King of the North !!!

Nody wrote: »

along with Danerys who somehow is unaffected by the cold...

She is sitting on a nice toasty, fire in its belly, dragon and she has dragon blood..

turnikett1

PhlegmyMoses wrote: »

Starting to cringe reading some of the **** here and on Reddit. It's all deus ex machina this, plot hole that, redshirt the other. It's like people spent the last 10 years of their lives on that TV tropes site and have all come flooding out to collectively display their understanding of writing devices and overused set-pieces.

Yes, the writing is not as good as GRRMs. The ****er has been writing the books for 20 years at this stage, they are inevitably going to be better\be more subtle. And even if D&D are rushing things a bit, so what? As a book reader, I am kind of happy that I'm getting what looks to be a cliff notes finish to a series that will probably never actually be finished by the original writer.

I don't get why you're getting offended at other people's criticisms. To you, it might be nitpicky or whatever the f**k, to a lot of us (it's really not some insignificant vocal minority), GoT has become significantly more dumbed down and almost childish. The premise of pretty much all of season 7 has been ridiculous. I won't even get into the Euron thing.

Fair enough if you disagree but no need to say it's cringey and act like it's totally unreasonable when the truth is a notable segment of the GoT viewership have been pretty damn disappointed with season 7. As a book reader I too am happy with what are essentially cliff notes, but the cliff notes we're given are just dumb. Benjen coming in at the very last minute to save Jon? The 3rd time in one episode that the main characters have been miraculously saved at the last moment? No thanks.

martingriff

mewso wrote: »

Whats the limit Martin? If Jon decides to hold an ice skating competition do you still say watch and enjoy? If a plot makes no sense within its own rules then its perfectly fair to point it out. I love "turn off your brain" shows but if the show reaches out and hits my head with a hammer so hard it forces my brain back into action its the shows fault.

Well I haven't seen the episode but and I apologise if I am getting this wrong the main fault is the timing of the show and we are getting posts here of how long birds can fly and how quick in the internet that to me is nitpicking so yes that is miniscule. In this season alone we have seen Arya killing Freys travelling x amount to Kings Landing and back again in 3 episodes, we have seen a fleet of ships go all around the work in the space of 30 mins or less and Jon reach the wall in under 5 minutes (all screen time) are you saying that it is beyond possibility that there is no chance Dany can't get to the wall. I will let that quip about limits go as you know what I mean

I will agree the time skips are jaring at times but with the shortened season (which I do not agree with as I need my fix) time skips were going to happen especially with where everyone is

Liam O

I forgot about the line Jorah says that was absolutely hilarious in the context of being surrounded by an army of Wights but given the way that this show goes it probably sounded reasonable to some.

Paraphrasing but it was basically "If we kill the white walkers maybe we have a chance".

I absolutely burst out laughing at that. He wasn't even joking. I mean yeah if you kill the people reanimating the corpses that are surrounding you you'd probably be doing well.

Liam O

D3sperado wrote: »

Aside from the overall stupidity of the plan of going beyond the Wall in the first place, I really enjoyed it and its easily in my top 5 episodes ever.

On the timeline piece, someone on the Freefolk Reddit page did the maths behind it to see if it was possible (I won't link directly to the page as they freely talk about production spoilers and the script leaks).

Basically, he thought it would take about 4 days from Gendry starting his epic run until Dany arrived with the dragons. This is based the run for Gendry taking a few hours and the ravens flying a distance of about 2000 miles at 50mph in about two days allowing for some rest stops (though the speed is based on homing pigeons so its quite possible that these special 'Westeros' ravens could do it quicker). Then, assuming that Dragons could fly at least as fast as the ravens then it gives another two days.

The question is how long were they on the little island. well (http://www.outdoorcanada.ca/How_Fast_Does_Your_Lake_Make_Ice) says that depending on the weather conditions a lake would make about 6-12 inches of ice in 4 days. This (http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/thickness.html) says that about 8-15 inches is needed for cars etc. to safely cross and also it seems that the wights didn't realise straight away that they could cross until the Hound threw the rock. Is 4 days realistic to survive hypothermia based on their clothes? Maybe, if they were lighting fires at night, had some basic food rations and used the shape of the island for shelter if the wind was strong.

Even the likes of Breaking Bad and the Wire needed the odd suspension of disbelief, but the bigger problem for the show at the moment is that I think D&D want to wrap it up as quickly as they can to move on to something else and some of the pacing this season has been way off (a 10 episode season would have been much better).

They also have some serious highs and lows on the writing. I thought the banter beyond the Wall and the Dany and Jon scene at the end were very good. The Winterfell stuff on the other hand was very poor. I blame GRRM as much as D&D on this, the books should have been finished by now and if they were then D&D wouldn't be having to try and close out on all the loose ends and knots that GRRM created (the same issues that have caused him to only produce two books in the last 17 years....). A lot of D&Ds mistakes and issues can be traced to having to make certain things happen or certain characters to end up in a particular place to solve some sort of knot that GRRM created. This doesn't excuse crazy plot holes like everyone thinking the Fellowship of the Wight adventure beyond the Wall was a good idea but it does explain it a little.

The show deviated severely from the books in season 2 and started adding reams and reams of characters that they had no plan for and eventually realised this in about season 5 when people were hating the Sand Snakes and just started a cull.

I believe at the start they had plans for Aegon et al but I mean in the last couple of seasons they've destroyed the Martells, Tyrells, Freys, Tullys (where is Edmure?) and Baratheon amongst others in very lazy ways that indicates there was no long term planning for the show at all even that early.

They were clearly winging it and you can say that's because of a book not coming out but the show was too diluted a long time before the lack of a 6th book became an issue.

Poor Viscerion. I suggested recently enough that one one of the dragons would be sacrificed to help show the immense power of a villain. Be that villain Euron, Cersei or The Night King.

However, I didn't expect it to happen this season. Or if it did, not until the final episode. Even watching Dany and all three dragons depart from Dragonstone to head North, I didn't think "Right, here comes the death of a dragon".

That all changed though when I saw the Night King reach for that spear of ice. From then on, I knew exactly what was coming. And the scene was perfect for me. From the CGI, character reactions, to the Night King's powerful statement. Seeing Viscerion sink into the lake, while our heroes watched, it was then I thought "Holy shít, they better burn that dragon, somehow". I'm still adjusting to the show's faster pace, so I was surprised to see Ice Dragon by the end of the same episode.

Couple of things...

- The ability of the Night King to throw that spear has generated some funny memes and javelin references. Still though, I can laugh at those and still appreciate the scene, rather than have the scene ruined on me. The spear is primal, it's much better than the Night King holding out his hand and commanding an ice storm or something to freeze Viscerion in the air.

That would be cool to see on a visual, in-the-moment level, but the producers have to be careful not to over-power the Night King to the point of 'How in seven hells are mere mortals and two dragons supposed to defeat this super-villain?'. They already dance close to that line, but didn't cross it yet IMO.

Two episodes ago, we saw one of the dragons get hit with a mechanically-thrown spear. It affected Drogon the same way as a paper cut would affect a 3 year old kid - He had a wee bit of a cry, collected himself, then quickly got back to playful destruction. Now, we see the Night King absolutely obliterate a dragon with an ice-spear launched from his arm, and we don't even know if that was his good arm!

Job done with that Night King/Viscerion take-down for me. The Night King is extremely formidable, but not over-powered to the point of being unbeatable. That second spear though which just missed Drogon, I wouldn't be surprised to see it firing through space as the very last shot of the GoT series :pac:

- While our heroes were stranded in the middle of the lake with the NK and his Night Kingsguard looking on, you have to think that the NK could have done something to end that stand-off anytime he wanted and didn't just have to wait for a few yards of water to freeze over.

This is absolutely fine with me as someone who takes the NK as not just cunning, but someone who possibly has similar seeing powers to Bran. The NK could have 'seen' the call for help sent to Dany, and thought "If I hang out here for a bit and use these as bait, I might get myself a dragon or two".

What's not fine with me...

- Deus Ex Benjen and that whole situation with Jon hanging around for nothing, but Deus Ex Benjen.

The way that scene was swaying once Jon pulled himself out of the ice lake, the music building in the background as he realised his likely imminent demise with the Wights approaching (similar to that moment when the Boltons were charging him in BotB) - I really thought they were going for much more there than a last minute Benjen save. I felt it was building to, and maybe would have earned, something more towards the level of Azor Ahai reborn territory, than another convenient last minute save for one of our heroes...in the same episode.

Sure, we saw the power of the Night King in that episode, and for that to happen our heroes had to have come out of the conflict at a loss. I still think though that there was room to demonstrate something positive/progressive on the side of the antagonists, more than them abducting a Wight.

Jon was left behind on the field of battle in impossible odds with grave consequences. It was going to take something miraculous and/or which required a suspension of disbelief to have him come out of the situation alive. A fiery sword perhaps or something greater hinting at Jon's eventual destiny?

Nope. Never mind Dany and the dragons getting there in a nick of time and record time a few minutes earlier, Benjen has been watching on a hillside for who knows how long and is just swooping in now to not only save the day, but needlessly sacrifice himself in the process - There was plenty of room on the horse and time to get Bran and Meera onto it as the wights surrounded them in the aftermath of 'Hold the door', but now when the producers feel a character death is needed, there's no room on the horse. It's not the faster pace of the show which really bothers me, but things like that.