So, just throwing this out there for speculation about season 8...
Regarding that shot of Tyrion looking very concerned about Daenerys and Jon\Aegon hooking up. Some people are saying its because he had feelings for Daenerys and now his little dwarf heart is broken. I know Cersei made that comment about her being the type he'd fall in love with and even though he obviously feels a sense of devotion to her, I never got the impression his feelings were on the romantic side. I think he's thinking of their getting together more of a complication in the overall plan to get Daenerys on the Iron Throne. With Jon by her side and since he is fairly rational and reasonable, you'd think this wouldn't be cause for concern. So, I'm still wondering what he could be so worried about.
My other thing about that look, is perhaps Tyrion will see Jon as somehow coming between him and Daenerys. Maybe, with Cersei pregnant with another baby, this will stir feelings in Tyrion about being loyal to his Lannister blood and it will cause him to betray Jon and Daenerys at some crucial moment. if he were to do this, I'd doubt he'd survive, but I'd hate to see one of my favorite characters go out like that. Also, what would his betrayal cost Daenerys and Jon?
Thoughts?
It could be something else entirely. Tyrion might have in mind to play a kind of Queen Elizabeth game with the other major houses, offering Dany's hand in marriage as incentive for everyone to behave. Or at least keeping open the possibility of alliances down the road. If she hooks up with Jon, that closes the door on that plan.
Agreed. Plus, this whole Sansa/Arya/Bran(?) setup was silly and poorly executed. It seemed like the showrunners were so eager to hide the plot that the narrative they laid out was all contradiction, convolution and plot holes - and honestly, they telegraphed it anyway. Did anyone watching not expect Sansa to turn to Littlefinger at the decisive moment? Also, what happened to the streamlined, cutthroat nature of power and betrayal in GOT? With all the important life & death stuff going on, does Sansa really have time for playing these kinds of court games surrounding one traitor? I don't even know who knew what, or when, but it doesn't feel like this twist satisfactorily addresses how stupid the two sisters came off in the buildup to the "twist" - it just seems like Bran told them what's up right before that scene. Nothing to do with Arya's training or Sansa maturing or even Littlefinger finally making a fatal mistake, just a kid who can see the past in a convenient way. The character arcs which could have been actually satisfying were left to rot...
Yeah...they botched that whole storyline and it's entirely due to the fetish of surprises on TV.
Too often, shows think brilliant TV = big surprises. But in this age of peak television, that kind of thing just doesn't hold up anymore. Sure, big surprises can be entertaining, but in my experience, most writers cannot handle good plot twists. They either hide the ball too much, or they don't hide it enough. In this case, they kind of did both: they hid the ball enough to leave the audience asking "But how the hell does any of that make sense?" while simultaneously failing to sell the audience on any dramatic tension within the story itself.
I never once believed that Arya or Sansa would kill each other. Mostly because they didn't give that story time to breathe. To make a story like that work, you need
at least a full season to sow distrust between the sisters, showing them gradually falling out with each other over real issues. You probably need to devote about 15 min of your 50-60 min episode runtimes to this story to effectively flesh it out, and you need to do that over the course of probably 10-13 episodes.
Compare, for example, the Arya/Sansa rift with the Cersei/Jaime or Cersei/Tyrion rifts. I don't know about any of you folks, but I at least thought it was
possible if perhaps unlikely that Cersei would kill one of the two of them. Why? Because the writers had built up the foundation of those two rifts over real issues (by "real" I include Cersei's batspit crazy notions of everything bad being Tyrion's fault, because it's real to Cersei). None of that was contrived or created for the moment. With Arya/Sansa, the whole thing felt rushed and contrived. The emotion of them meeting in the crypt? That worked. That fit. What followed thereafter
started as what could be the basis for a good rift (e.g. Arya's newfound ruthlessness set against Sansa's more politic approach), but the build up never came. It went from 0 to "I wanna murder you" in a heartbeat. The resolution played out the same as the rest of the rift, just kinda...happening now because it needed to happen now. Not because it was organic to the story.
Ultimately, I think the conflicting goals of an 8-episode season, wanting the whole thing to be a surprise, and wanting to introduce dramatic tension between the characters was unrealistic. And in my opinion, given how they so often play out, I say ditch the surprise.
Look, we're in the endgame here. We don't
need surprise anymore. Not for its own sake, anyway. Hell, for that matter, surprise was
never used in this story
for its own sake. Events didn't occur because they were purpose-built to create watercooler moments on Monday. They occurred because they followed a logical path. Ned's beheading and The Red Wedding, for example -- possibly the most shocking moments in the series -- were shocking because they upset the tropes of the genre,
but not because they came out of nowhere. There were clear antecedents for the action in both cases, and they all made sense in context. When Joffrey decides to behead Ned, we're stunned...but it makes sense. We've demonstrated that Joffrey is a terrible person and a terrible king. We've demonstrated that he's a sniveling little brat who is prone to abusing power and assuming his supremacy over all. And we've already set up Ned being outmaneuvered by everyone around him because of his stubborn insistence on honor and decency. So, when he dies, it all fits. It stuns the audience because "good guys aren't supposed to die," but it all fits. The groundwork has been laid ahead of time.
Same story with the Red Wedding. Walder Frey's betrayal fits perfectly. We've seen he's a petty, nasty man. We've seen the way he interacts with people. And we know he harbors deep resentment for the Tullys. When Robb marries Talisa, it sets in motion the chain of events that leads to Robb's overthrow, just as when Robb beheads lord Karstark. So, when The Rains of Castamere starts playing, and the band starts firing quarrels into Robb, it all fits. It's horrible to watch, and it's again a subversion of the "good guys win because they're good" trope, but the groundwork has been laid.
With Arya/Sansa, there is no groundwork. Stuff just...happens. It happens because it needs to happen for reasons external to the show's in-universe reality. It's not organic to the tale itself. Sadly, as satisfying as it was, Littlefinger's death plays out the same way. Realistically, that moment could've played out exactly as we saw,
but with more build-up and more logical A-to-B-to-C in laying the groundwork for that moment. But because the writers prized surprise/twist storytelling over narrative cohesion, they had to hide the ball. All of which makes the ultimate resolution feel both telegraphed and unearned. We know what's going to happen because it has to happen now for meta-story reasons. But we also know that the moment hasn't been earned by the story; it's just happening now because now is when it has to happen per the showrunners.
I agree, Winds of Winter probably will still not be done by the time the show ends either next year or in 2019. I also really, really hope that Martin won't be particularly involved in the prequel(s), the last thing he needs is more distractions to keep him from finishing up the bloody books.
I dunno. I actually could see him releasing it anywhere between this fall and 2019. A Dance with Dragons came out in July, 2011. That's six years ago. And it followed 6 years after A Feast for Crows came out, and during the period right after the show had really taken off and he was still writing at least one episode per season. So, it's not like he hasn't had enough time. He's also not (presumably) dealing with the whole issue of trying to split what had been a single enormous book into two separate books and then figuring out what went where like he did with AFFC/ADWD.
What I could see being the case is that The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring end up being published in much closer succession and that part of what's taking so long is him writing parts of A Dream of Spring at the same time as The Winds of Winter. Because really, that'd be the only thing that would justify him taking this long. It just doesn't make a ton of sense otherwise. Although, I suppose when the whole thing is finally done, he can explain what the hell took him so long and how his process worked.
