Not in my eyes. That was Greyworm basically getting his humanity back because of Missandei. He had something to live for.

Still a dick move to sacrifice everyone else though.

That whole battle plan was stupid from the ****ing beginning.

I'm sorry you missed the part where I said it was a GREAT hammer not some dinky blacksmith hammer. Also when every swing is to preserve your own life you tend to put everything into it. Also they fought for hours. Just stop. I'd conceivably believe the ones with swords would have lasted longer simply because the fact they are lighter than a huge chunk of rock attached to a stick. :rolleyes:

All of this. :clap:

From a tactical perspective, they've spent 4 seasons building up the WW's true weakness, which was the NK. The hope was that they could hold off the WW/Wights long enough to isolate the NK - and it worked.

Together Jon and Dany unseated the NK from the ice dragon and Dany got him 1v1 to roast him alive. Unfortunately, the plan always went in not knowing if Dragonfire could finish the job.

Jon then ran in with Longclaw, but the NK wasn't going to risk going down in a 1v1 with Jon.

The plan was designed precisely by Jon and Bran to expose the only weakness of the army. The walls of Winterfell never would have held against an undead force (walls only work when you can wholesale slaughter the enemy as they're trying to make their climb).

Now, criticisms of the execution of Arya delivering the final blow and characters surviving on plot armor are totally cool with me. I was livid when I first saw it, but have calmed down a bit on those points that since.

Wipes out the fodder armies like nothing. Main characters can hold them off 1 on 10+ for hours.

I felt like they rolled about a 12 on their Tactics roll, too. But after thinking about it more ... the goal of the battle at the castle wasn’t to repel the wights and win. It was all about killing the Night King. That was a delaying tactic.

The Dothraki, the Unsullied, and those who died outside the walls... pawns that had to be sacrificed to get the king to come forward.

Think of it like the survivors of the battle at Gondor rushing the gates of Mordor. It was a distraction.


I read the books in a blink in 2007 (seriously, like one month) and I don’t agree with the criticism of the writing.

The whole point of Martin’s story is that traditional tropes and key points don’t matter.

The heroic son avenging his father with brilliant battle tactics and honor? He dies.

The wise wizard/witch knowing the future and perfectly setting a prophecy into motion? She misunderstands and is wrong about a bunch of things (still fulfills her purpose though).

The clear inheritor(s) of the prophecy not ultimately being the one(s) to slay the big bad.

Etc.


In the history of warfare, horse soldiers were effective for a few reasons:

Shocking formations and forcing cracks and breaks in formation due to human reactions and self-preservation.

Using mobility to pick at flanks and break formations, again due to human reaction and self-preservation.

That stuff doesn’t work against a mass of undead thralls that have no self-preservation sense.

The traditional charge, shock, wheel tactics of horse warriors would simply not work against an uncaring mass of thralls.

Same thing with the Unsullied phalanx. Shield walls were great against human enemies who didn’t want to just throw themselves on the spears. Against an enormous mass of undead, it just would get slowly buried.


If the tactics were to preserve as much of the army as possible, sure. Though who could have known what tactics would work and how many of the dead there were?

If tactics were to convince the NK he was winning and it was safe to sally forth to take Bran... different story.

Well, they could have at least gotten a better feel for it using one of their two giant flashlights before charging into the darkness.

I've not finished the books, so I can't speak to that.

It's a continuity error in the show, then. Since the wights far outnumber the white walkers, why bother with making all of the dragon glass weapons, embedding dragon glass on the barricades, etc. Why have Jon Snow say what he said in the clip from Season 7? Apparently the writers forgot the Hardhome episode.

What's your explanation? (show only, please)

We have no actual idea of how long the actual battle took or how long those characters had to hold off.

You’re assuming it took hours. That assumes that all events shown took place sequentially and none of the scenes happened simultaneously. Faulty assumption.

Yeah, GoT went a little Hollywood on us. So what. Still rocked.

Even with plot armor that episode is better than what we'll see in most movies this year.

Did they think they would shock an army of undead to get scared and run away? Dothraki went out like chumps. The fire visual was cool though.

Why was the Night King such a smug **** out of nowhere?

He was always a smug ****.

Maybe the show implies that they go down quicker with dragonglass? Or that they'll at least stay dead? :shrug:

This.

This is pretty much where I'm at. There was some stuff that I would have loved to have seen. And like I said earlier....I was looking for more main characters to die....but **** if that episode wasn't intense and crazy for the entire 80 minutes.