Before I start actually explaining the title, I'd like to say that, although the final season was noticeable worse than prime Game of Thrones, I still loved it in the way that I like both fancy Angus Beef burgers and homemade frozen burgers. S1-S7 (imo even 7 was really good) were amazing and S8, while definitely worse, is still enjoyable and fun for me.
Now onto my actual post: I've been thinking about S8 a lot recently and I'm just noticing some things that happened and were shown as one thing that was terribly executed (King Bran) but if it were shown in a more "nobody is all good or all evil" way, it would have been amazing. Some of these may be retcons but if it makes the show more likeable/watchable/bearable, it's worth it to me.
1) King Bran. Bran doesn't have the best story, not by far. In episode 4 he says he doesn't want anything at all, but in ep. 6 he asks "why do you think I came all this way" when asked if he would be king. All of the Lords seem to want that, without any apparent reason. One explanation is that they didn't. Tyrion didn't think Bran had the best story. Bran played them all, with or without his psychic powers. Most of that council was loyal to the Starks at one point, and Bran had been playing Tyrion for 3 episodes with his "story", all the while embedding the idea that he was fair and wise into Tyrion's mind. Bran wasn't the good guy, he was as much a villain as Cersei who, in the end, did nothing evil except for not sending an army, that was basically destroyed before eastern mercenaries reinforced, to fight a seemingly hopeless war. And executing a prisoner, that was pretty bad.
2) Master manipulator Sansa. She learned from the best. While she was painted as this brave and incredibly intelligent young woman who wants the best for her people and was the only one to see Dany for the monster she really was, her actual story involved more Littlefinger style politics than heroics. Dany felt alone because of Sansa. Sansa sent girls to all the survivors of the Battle of Winterfell which slowly led to all the people Dany knew leaving the party, making her feel isolated. Sansa used reverse psychology to get Dany rushing her army south so she was weak. She turned Varys against Dany in one episode. She even turned Arya, who was seen to admire Dany and her dragons in S8 and who was inspired by the Targaryen warrior queens, against Dany. And after she took an army that had been through hell twice to lay siege on her allies to free her brother, she sacrificed him so she could be queen of the North. This was political scheming that surpassed even Littlefinger, but D&D painted all of the Starks as heroes that were 100% definitely good.
3) Arya killing the Night King/ Jon yellingat a dragon. I don't really have a problem with this on like many people do. The way I imagine this scenario is this: Arya sneaks through Winterfell, trying to get to Bran. The final gate is blocked, however, by undead Viserion fighting Jon. Jon too was trying to get to Bran. He spots Arya, or maybe Bran was actually useful and told Jon through magic. Jon decides to sacrifice himself, so Viserion is distracted and Arya can go save Bran. He gets out of cover and screams for Arya to go (if you listen closely to the clip you can interpret a "GO! GO GO GOOO!" in his scream). Arya runs over, visible sneaks past the White Walkers and attacks the Night King. This way 2 dumb scenarios are turned into one sad one.
These things combined, with a bit of different storytelling and some season 4 dialogue, would change the ending from "good Stark family saves Westeros and rules, happily ever after except Jon" to "after all these wars, another family comes out on top, with some better people (Jon) being manipulated and cast aside by political masterminds and, in the end, the world is probably a worse place than at the start". I like the latter ending a lot better, and I probably didn't explain it well and left a bunch of holes in my scenarios but that's because I'm really tired and not a professional writer. I hope this has made some of you appreciate the show a bit more, or got you thinking about things that will make you appreciate it more.
By the way: These are not excuses for the bad writing of D&D, I lost faith in them as writers after them not showing up anywhere and the "Game of Thrones was just an expensive school for us" comment, and as people after it came out they pressured Emilia Clarke to do nude scenes. All in all however, the show isn't only the writers and I love it despite of D&D
Submitted December 27, 2019 at 07:59PM by Hkrlje https://ift.tt/2SzjHSa
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