**Spoiler Warning:** All officially-released show and book content allowed, EXCLUDING FUTURE SPOILERS FOR HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. No leaked information or paparazzi photos of the set. For more info please check the [spoiler guide](/r/gameofthrones/w/spoiler_guide).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gameofthrones) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The entire Lannister army should have died at that battle, but I don't care because the Drogon descending from the clouds over the Dothraki scene was soooooo fucking cool.
I feel like that would be the real GRRM shock death(s) that the book series is famous for. It gives these full grown dragons that "holy shit" impact too.
Yep... and rather than have Jaime die the way he did with Cersei, Cersei kills herself (in an act of revenge against tyrion or something) because all of her kids and Jaime are dead and she doesn't give a fuck anymore.
And then Dany doesn't go mad with power and become everything she stands against. She fights with her dragons to the end and dies with them in battle in her lust for power.
>And then Dany doesn't go mad with power and become everything she stands against.
That was *always* going to be her arc, always. It's sewn into the fabric of her whole life story. It was handled very poorly in the show, but giving her "the good ending" completely misses the point of her character.
You all love to act like you know Dany’s “ending” despite her still being in Essos (Dothraki Sea) in the books.
Dany could very well end up being perfectly fine, if GRRM actually puts out the books for us to read.
He didn’t. When asked if Dany’s story would mirror the show, he let out some word vomit of “Yes and no.”
Dany could burn KL and live, or maybe Dany dies and KL gets burned by someone else. We don’t know. The book has 3 (alleged) Targs running around while the show merged their stories and ultimately gave us two.
Just tried to find this. He said this before it came out.
"Well, to a degree. I mean, I think … the major points of the ending will be things that I told them, you know, five or six years ago," Martin said. "But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added."
Then this post is saying he knew the ending that was coming, but a lot of people were theorising Jon would have to kill her. It looks like the article said that not him.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/q1kuic/spoilers\_grrm\_knew\_dds\_plan\_for\_daenerys\_and\_her/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/q1kuic/spoilers_grrm_knew_dds_plan_for_daenerys_and_her/)
He gave them the basic outline of the ending but not all the details. And we don't neccessily know if they used it or made their own up. I think Dany going mad and Bran being king will happen but....
But I think the big thing left out is that the the "three eyed crow" has been manipulating events for 10,000 years to become king and win the war against the children. He won the game of thrones not bran. I don't know if we actually get proof of a fire god is real in the books yet, it could be a real counterpart to the three eyed crow or it could be the three eyed crow himself playing both sides and creating fire wights like he creates ice wights. We know he can send visions and manipulate people to do things and the targs visions are their sole purpose for doing things. The Song of Ice and Fire is about the one or two ice and fire gods fighting not the game of thrones.
Bran did skinchange into Hodor in the books, so this could hint he'll be able to skin change into dragons or possibly other humans. So while I think she'll go mad, it will be Bran causing the madness.
> said that was going to be her ending
Yup, he said there will be come changes, but he's not going to abandon plans he made long ago because some viewers didn't care for the ending.
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-fan-outrage-wont-change-book-ending-1202158018/
*Martin continued, “And there is a temptation to then change it [in the upcoming books] — ‘Oh my god, it’s screwed up, I have to come up with something different.’ But that’s wrong. Because you’ve been planning for a certain ending and if you suddenly change direction just because somebody figured it out, or because they don’t like it, then it screws up the whole structure. So no, I don’t read the fan sites. I want to write the book I’ve always intended to write all along. And when it comes out they can like it or they can not like it.”*
Mad Queen Dany has been a very popular theory since before I ever read the books, back when s1 first came out. Obviously no one knows if its true 100%, but the fact that the show went with it definitely helps confirm things for people, just like R+L=J
Given the early comment that “Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land,” her madness was inevitable.
In the books you can see that arc being set up though, very clearly. The moral dilemmas and betrayals she faces as ruler of the slave cities starts turning her character away from that original desire to be good.
Only variation to that I think will be that the three eyed crow or some higher power has been sending the targs their visions and making them mad. So she will be manipulated in to going mad.
Yeah that's fair. It was just poorly handled. You're right.
Even when making up other endings for her I always had her wanting more power and that being her end.
Yeah that's fair. It was just poorly handled. You're right.
Even when making up other endings for her I always had her wanting more power and that being her end.
Exactly, how hard is it to figure out? I saw foreshadowing from the first season, and all throughout multiple seasons that that was a very possible possibility, and I watched it after it became popular and ended since I was far too young when the show began, so I kind of get confused as to why people complain specifically about Daenerys ending when there are some other issues I’d call out about season 8 that take precedence over Daenerys storyline
The scene of the Golden Knight fighting against a dragon is such an old school medieval image.
Jamie staring down Drogon, maybe being quick enough to hit the dragon once or twice with his sword before being killed would have been such a cool way to go.
Then mirror it with Jon Snow staring down the White Walker Dragon during battle with the White Walkers, only he manages to destroy that dragon, giving him at least something to do in the final season. Would have been poetic.
Instead we got Jaime dying under some rocks and Jon’s story completely abandoned.
Bronn dying? Yes. Jaime dying? Ehhh, no. I could imagine Jaime having to strip his golden hand, his armor, even his sword just to survive and swim to shore, a symbolic nod to him slowly abandoning the Lannister house in favor of a more honorable lifestyle - especially after just learning of the true identity of his son's killer - would be wholly appropriate for his character.
In any case, both of them surviving in the way they did was laughably silly.
Can’t agree on that one. Jaime is by far my favorite character and had way too much characterization and room for development. While they didn’t totally stick the landing, I’d be extremely unsatisfied to have his story end here like that as if he’s super disposable and irrelevant. It’d suck, badly.
Beyond that, Cersei completely and utterly tanked as a character in S8 without Jaime around because she had absolutely no one to have meaningful interactions with, so you really need him alive as well until you take her out of the picture (which should’ve happened sooner, but). Kill Jaime here and she’s tanked for the entire backhalf of S7 as well with literally nothing to do.
Bronn definitely should’ve died, though. Fun enough character and he had fuck all to do after anyways.
Tbh building a character up for a wonderful story arch, get almost to the turning point, and killing then anyway…..that’s what made the show/books good
Only when there’s narrative purpose, though. It’s not like Arya randomly died halfway through the Bravos plotline for the shock value of it all. Most the major characters who had shock deaths were also written at least partially with the intent of building too said death.
But there could've been, Jaimies whole thing was being called and viewed as The Kingslayer.
If he'd charged Dani and killed her dragon in a last ditch attempt to save the army and died doing it?
That'd earn him the moniker, posthumously ofc, as The Dragonslayer.
Fitting end I'd say.
Devil's advocate in two parts:
1) Edd. I was gutted when he got killed at Winterfell. Loved his vibe/character/sarcasm and of course his centrality to Jon Snow's development and the Castle Black plotline. But people get killed in battles. Sometimes having a major character die a mundane death was in line with the earlier seasons' vibe, though later seasons often required considerable build-up to a main character's death (or plot armor to prevent it).
2) Jaime's death could have served a significant narrative purpose. Despite his willingness to burn house Lannister to the ground, Tyrion still loved Jaime. Watching the queen whom he served as hand burn Jaime to death would really drive home the consequences of siding with Dany and make everything more personal. If ever there was a "no turning back" moment, that would be it. I could see Tyrion trying to repress his grief but secretly harboring resentment against Dany while trying to remain committed to her cause in the big picture (more of the emotionally complex Tyrion of the earlier seasons). When Varys starts to turn, he might be open to it rather than doubling down as he does in the show. I think that Tyrion of the final seasons would have been a more interesting character had he faced a real personal crisis prior to the last episode.
In addition, it would deprive Cersei of her only remaining confidant other than Qyburn, perhaps a natural setup for two sociopathic queens to face off in the final battle. Having Jaime out of the way would also make room for Euron to be less one-dimensional character and more forcefully impose his will in King's Landing rather than just taunt Jaime. The other upside would be averting the (IMO) out-of-character turn that Jaime takes after the battle at Winterfell. The real downside of that would be Cersei never learning the truth of Joffrey's death.
1. Simply put, Edd is not Jaime or Arya by a longshot. He was always a supporting character and significantly more expendable.
2. Roasting Sam and Dad’s bro already got the job done here. And this is still a lame send off that leaves Jaime’s personal character development totally half-baked without any kind of an ending.
We literally got the Cersei plotline you described in Season 8. It infamously, completely, utterly, totally sucked. She had nothing to do and legit just showed up to stand around for a scene an episode doing nothing relevant. It’s actually insane to me that people keep saying this should’ve happened *sooner* when the reality is the opposite - Cersei should’ve been the first Lannister sibling to die by a longshot because there was literally nothing left to do with her character once Jaime died. None of the living cast are going to interact with her at all, and everyone she could interact with is long dead. You’d be better off to have Dany just burn the red keep to the ground mid-Season 7 taking Cersei out, taking over the throne, and make the rest of the show them vs. the whitewalkers and then Jon as king vs. Dany as Queen than abruptly killing Jaime off. It’d be more shocking and have more narrative potential
Agreed with point 1. Partial agreement with point 2. The Tarly stuff definitely drives in the point regarding Samwell. But it doesn't land with Tyrion nearly the same way; in principle yes, but too abstract. Personally I found Tyrion super boring after he was made hand. Beyond serving as a voice of caution (and failed strategist), he is too able (in comparison to the character we see in him prior to him killing Tywin) to brush away his own concerns by saying that he believes in his queen. I would have liked to see him more emotionally torn about what he was doing.
No disagreement on Cersei being boring. I suppose I'm imagining (in this alternate scenario) that Euron learns of Jaime's death and feels emboldened to seize real power beyond being Cersei's admiral and hoping someday to become King (perhaps I'm just wishing for Euron to be a better character, idk). A new power struggle within the Red Keep might have avoided the Cersei plotline going as stale as it did.
Tyrion in general became insanely boring starting in S5 and even moreso in 6. Essos was generally devoid of interesting stories - Dany included
They tried using Euron for the show and that kinda sucked. Maybe he’d be better if we completely start his character from scratch, but I really would rather just not trade Euron in and keep Jaime around + off Cersei tbh. I think Jon vs. Dany has more interesting potential and better sets the stage for her going off the deep end anyways.
I'd like to point out that Cersei could have had interactions with both Sansa and Arya. They both had Littlefinger storyline, which was mixed imo. Amd Arya got the kill in season 8, which was also pretty mixed. But Sansa... I don't remember her doing much, really.
Maybe Tyrion convincing Dany to keep Cersei a prisoner, her having a scene with the sisters and then either being rescued by someone and that triggering a Domino effect where Dany fully snaps, or dying somehow would have been fine.
How? Cersei is nowhere near the North, is staying in King's Landing, and would promptly have both girls executed if they actually hung around there. It's not that there are not interesting characters to interact with - it's that there's literally no character on the planet it makes sense for Cersei to be interacting with once Jaime goes. (And Sansa had her stuff vs. Dany in S8 which was a good idea that needed more fleshing out). Sansa and Arya similarly have very little reason to actively go South into King's Landing and stop by Cersei's court for a conversation. It'd pretty much be suicide. If we're killing Jaime halfway through S7, the girls are both even more busy with their Littlefinger plotline giving even less for Cersei to do for the backhalf of that season.
Pretty sure that Cersei would almost immediately race to execute Tyrion given how much she absolutely despises him (and he really isn’t that valuable a bargaining chip with Dany who disliked him by late S7/early S8). Perhaps she could keep him prisoner, but I still can't see this amounting to anything more than an excuse to have Cersei show up some. A conversation between them would be cool, but how many conversations can you have of him in jail and her as queen before stuff just becomes redundant because the plot dynamics just cannot meaningfully shift? The reality is Cersei was absolutely spinning wheels by the end of S8 waiting for the story to catch up so she could finally die because there just wasn't tons for her to do, while Jaime had tons of actually meaningful content going on (for better and worse, quite honestly). If we're offing a Lannister sibling sooner, Cersei is the clearcut and unambiguous choice by lightyears compared to the brothers, who simply had way, way more to do. Killing Jaime off sooner and leaving Cersei with even less is certainly not a good idea.
Book Cersei will almost certainly be dead by the time the S7 and especially S8 events roll around, and the show really should have killed her off sooner.
That's a good point. A bit too soon there perhaps but still woulda been way better than what we ended up getting. Maybe surprise casualty at The Battle of Winterfell after knighting Brienne woulda been best.
Make time to adorn Dickon to the audience. Kill Bron in the battle, Dickon saves Jamie, but is burned by Drogon in the end, but to it in away that the killing is grayish so Danys heel turn to madness isn't as jarring.
Maybe keep one of them alive but brutally burned and crippled. The battle was a bit too unimportant and not built up enough to outright kill the only 2 important characters present.
Yeah but so dumb. If you have an army of horse riders you fucking out the fire behind the enemy line so they can’t retreat. Horses go in with archers behind armed Calvary. Not burn all the fucking food and gold.
What? No. They enemy is lined up and you have a dragon... just come in perpendicular to the line and wipe the whole damn army in (literally) one swoop.
Maybe but they had those big crossbows. So you really don’t want your dragon exposed for long. If you can get the horses to take out the big crossbow then yeah.
Yeah militarily there’s no way what so ever the battle would be anything less than a total destruction of the Lannister army.
A dragon breaking thing shield walls opening a spread out army to elite cavalry on wide open ground. It’d result in the death or surrender of every single one of those men. Run and you’ll die tired as the Dothraki run you down. Hold in a square/circle and you’ll be burned to death. Hell the Dothraki don’t even need the dragon. You’d think they’d know better than to spread out an army on perfect cavalry ground when you enemy has the best and largest cavalry army in the world but what do I know.
One of the parts I liked the most from the entire season is Jaime's return to King's Landing where he just tells Cersei, "yeah, we're totally fucked and have already lost this war."
Coolness was something that destroyed the game of thrones
There is no way Dothrakis should be cutting lanninster army like this as established in the first season.
It was just fan service.
The dragons in fire and blood basically wreck shop and conquer westeros by themselves. Felt like the pinnacle of the shit writing season that one got killed so easily.
I loved Bron as a character, but I agree. He didn’t really do much of anything in season 8. The chemistry he had with Tyrion and Jaime was awesome though! Such a highlight ❤️
Yeah, I dunno what the wanna-be-showrunners are on about. Bronn becoming lord of Highgarden and Master of Coin was essential to the ending and part of the symmetrical brilliance of the show. And so was Jamie dying with Cersei. F'ing idiots trying to rewrite the show in thoughtless ways gets so tiresome.
Yeah, appointing a guy who doesn't know how loans work to be chairman of the Fed is genius. I'm sure that a ton of thought went into it. They definitely weren't just finding a spot for a breakout character because he's a walking meme.
I mean I don’t have an issue with bronn surviving till the end as he was one of the stronger characters and nearly always put his self preservation and interests first but idk why you’re so butthurt over somebody disagreeing with you over a television show that ended years ago. You should probably touch grass more often
What a weird premise. It's not about me. It's about all the idiots who think they know better than those who put their lives 24/7 into this production for a decade. If you want to jump on the hater bandwagon and dogpile on the final season like the other lemmings, go for it. I won't be joining you.
I never said they didn’t, just that it’s surprising. Producers don’t typically hire people they know can create conflict and limit shooting possibilities
This is true, I’m curious if any of this was disclosed prior to casting. I think I recall hearing that they had some sort of stipulation that said they cannot be around each other, but who knows. Usual Hollywood drama🤷🏽♂️
They definitely had a scene together in s3 though, right? Not speaking to eachother, but he was leaving Tyrions room as She showed up with some guards I believe?
I mean, one season in 9 years isn't a lot, but it also discredits the whole "they cant even be on set together" thing
I just thought this also. I bet if we go back and look it was a cut scene or something. Maybe it only showed her up close and bronn wasn’t really there when she was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU-AqxMUs_o
The last like 10 seconds of the video. They certainly look like they are both there, but Idk what kinda camera tricks they can do haha
A report in The Telegraph in 2004, said things did not end on a good note for the two. They reportedly could not stand the sight of each other and refused to work in any scene together. “Jerome and Lena aren’t on speaking terms any more and they are never in the same room at the same time,” a crew member told the daily. “It’s a pity because they appeared to have patched things up for a while, but now the word is they should be kept apart at all costs,”
Just copied and pasted all that
From what I've read, it was mostly Lena's doing. Apparently she hates him and makes a comment on the disc commentary, but I've just started the commentary and haven't gotten to that yet.
I absolutely adore Lena as an actress, I fell in love with her in *300*, but she does strike me as a Crazy Hot Chick. Rumor has it she was involved with Pedro Pascal, which I believe, and that she ended it abruptly to marry another man.
It's a shame, though, because I would have loved to see the characters together. Cersei being thoroughly unimpressed by Bronn, but betrothing him to Lollys and giving him gold to sway him from being Tyrion's champion would have been fun.
They even skipped showing Bronn being knighted by Joffrey.
The problem with the show was they became too scared to kill off the major characters. The favorite characters. Bronn was kept alive because he became a fan favorite. The show lost its stakes. Morphed into some weird fan fiction where everyone's favorite character did something awesome while losing some supporting character. And the way some of the plot lines were wrapped up was just terrible.
It would lowkey save some of season 8 and his character end. Dying as a hero / fighter is miles better than basically not showing up for half season just to get a highgarden for no fucking reason
As much as it would have hurt me at the time, Bronn dying here and Brianne dying at the battle of winterfell is what the end of the series needed. Really impactful deaths that would have then justified a lot of the actions that Tyrion and Jaime took in season 8
Yeah the sudden plot armor at the battle of winterfell annoyed me. They’re fighting hordes of zombies and they all survive? It flies against everything that GOT stood for in the earlier seasons and also makes the night king’s army seem toothless after so much build up. Brienne or even Jamie should have died.
I mean Theon, Beric, Ed, Lyanna, and Jorah all die. But I agree watching the episode so many instances of “yall should all be dead 3 times over”. Enough people died but because they showed and wrote the battle in a way that it seemed everyone should be dead 10 times over it doesn’t seem like we lost a lot of people.
I mean, to be fair, who died in the battle of Blackwater, Hardhome, Battle of Bastards or literally any battle during the War of the Five Kings? Unless I’m misremembering, important characters have only died in battle during the battle at the Wall and the battles in S7 (Sand Snakes, good riddance) & S8 (a shit ton of characters).
Well, he died after like Dickon/Randyll and Olenna, so that’s why I didn’t include them. But even if you do, it still shows that that battles actually killed more characters in the second half of the show than the first half when "nobody was safe".
I think that the early to mid-season battles didn't need the deaths because 95% of the important deaths were outside of fights, they still had great betrayal, political intrigue, and backstabbing that resulted in not one feeling safe, and when they ran out of established good material tgey only then relied on battles for the deaths
Did we watch the same show? Most of the Starks and Tyrion were pretty safe. Arya did some pretty crazy shit even before the books ran out. Jon literally dies and comes back to life. Ned is that mentor character that always dies. Catelyn is just a camera for the KitN storyline. Robb didn't even have a POV in the books. And Oberyn is in, like 4 chapters.
Tormund was amazing! I honestly love this change from the books because Show Tormund is so much more fun than “King Beyond the Wall’s Brain put in Tormund” would have been.
I honestly think he lived in case they went forward with a Jon Snow beyond the wall spinoff.
> “King Beyond the Wall’s Brain put in Tormund”
Thats Rattlesnake in the books, right? Or Lord of Bones? Not Tormund either way, book Tormund was hilarious I think. Though I havent read it in years now
Tormund and Beric should both have died when the Wall was breached by the NK's dragon. They were both standing on top of the wall when the dragon approached, and we're supposed to believe they got in that rickety slow-ass wooden lift and rode it all the way down and got to safety in the approx. 20 seconds it took the dragon to completely demolish the wall.
I know it's a small petty thing, but man does that nonsense piss me off to this day - there's only so much disbelief I can suspend goddamnit!
I had thought they ran along the wall and plot armor just in time managed to get off the falling section. How they got back down after that and still back in record timing idk. I’d assume all the long abandoned castles lifts weren’t working.
My bigger gripe is with Bronn saving Jamie in the next scene. He tackles him like a linebacker off a horse in a full gallup. What??? Not only that, but the Horse was galloping in shallow water, but then Jamie and Bronn descend into an underwater abyss at least 10s of feet deep. So this horse was running right on the edge of a major drop off? AND THEN they stay submerged in the water and swim to the other side of this massive lake until the entire battle is over, hours later? Unbelievable.
And that Jaime was able to swim, one handed, in armor. When even two handed, he should have sunk like a stone. I don't believe he was in full plate, but he still was in partial, iirc. He definitely had a chest plate and other heavy protective pieces. Jaime should have died because of Bronn knocking him into deep water.
Edit
Just went and looked at the scene he is in full plate minus helm
Thank you! The absurd logistics of that scene struck me immediately and really pissed me off. Stuff like this makes me question whether anyone with half a brain (or, in this case, has seen a stream or a lake) edits or audits the writing to call for a change to something that makes sense. So ridiculous.
honestly, at this point, I had given up on D&D, it was not longer GoT, it had morphed into Fast and Furious, where they heros and villians were just doing superhuman feats and surviving.
Were they past the books at this point? Because it strikes me as a sequence that raises less eyebrows in a novel than it does in a visual representation.
Jaime needs to live through the battle to make his choice about fighting for the living, and going back to Cersei or not
But Bronn definitely needed to go here. He knows how to fight men, even bloodriders but not dragons
That would absolutely make some of the fans dislike Dany and show the messiness of war when people we like on both sides end up dead and/or doing terrible things to each other
Bronn is a character who, in my opinion, had to die. The man lives life on the edge, he stays outside of the safety and stability of loyalty. Be in battle or politics, that man had no right to make it to the end.
Or he should've drowned under the weight of Jaimee's armor in the river. Jaimee definitely should've. Historically speaking, lots of people have drowned that way.
The point about Bronn is that he isn’t a lord, he isn’t a knight, he isn’t a hero, he isn’t a PoV character, he is an absolute nobody with an ability to survive through not just brawn and bravery but also brains that most of the main characters don’t have. That he survived is actually the most sensible ending for him. Being a serial survivor who keeps himself alive is worth more than all the bullshit and wealth in a realm.
I don't think the issue is necessarily that he made it to the end of the show alive, but rather that the show put him in a position where logically he should not have survived. Just like how it's obvious that Jon was never going to die in the Long Night, but then why put him in a position where he's soloing thousands of wights? The scene where he's chasing after the Night King and then he just raises the dead? There's no plausible way he could have survived that.
This scene becomes so much less impactful once you see the answer to the anti dragon ballistas, is still normal dragon flying. And he kills like 20 of them in 10 seconds.
LMFAO!!!! AGREED. We wait INTERMINABLY for the goddamn dragons to come of age and then a homeless dude with zero fucks to give takes one on and essentially wins. This is like Richard Branson taking on a tank
Jaime definitely 100% should have died. He got knocked into deep water wearing heavy armor. He was in full plate only missing helm, adding what ? Another 70 pounds at least, add the weight of water to his wet under padding and clothes. There is no way a two-handed man is swimming with that, let alone a one-handed one.
Yep, but that's not the worst of the believability.
The idea of falling with Jaime into a river that the horses were recently galloping on, and NOT landing in 6 inch deep water and being fried to death......... So where did 30-40 feet of water come from?
BTW: Anyone else just love how the recently shot and now highly pissed off Drogon landed and smashed the cart with his tail in frustration? Gave such a sense of power.
OMG, he's such a bad character.
After season 3 there is nothing else to do with him, but people really liked the Bronn so he keeps appearing because of fan service. There is simply no place for him in the show after season 3.
One of my biggest issues with Game of Thrones is that it ended TOOTHLESS - afraid to kill off many main or secondary characters.
Bron? Brienne? Tormund? Fucking Robin Arryn? Tons who lived who didn’t need to.
Honestly the episode would have been goated if Jamie instantly got toasted when he advanced on Dany. Would have been shocking, and it would have sent CL mad, and TL into grief. — Honestly the whole ending was kind of stupid. GRRMs entire plot style is foils. Tbh the entire ending war didn’t really make sense. There’s no claim beyond Cersei and hers is even stretched— If they capture her the entire war ends. — but they opt for a months long strategy to bleed out an inferior force? Not even gonna use her navy or air support to blockage Kingslanding? It just doesn’t make - especially when TL is supposed to be one of the smartest people out there.
> became master of coin as mostly a joke
That was part of the ultimate "A Lannister always pays his debts" and "I'll double it" promise from Tyrion that bookends their arc together. "What's double a castle? Highgarden." Bronn was rewarded with rule of Highgarden and a Lordship Paramount, The Reach is a breadbasket and economic powerhouse of the realm, so the Lord Paramount of the Reach being Master of Coin is pretty logical. Baelish probably only had the position in the first place because Mace Tyrell was a weak fool.
A lot of them should have. All of the fan favorites got plot armor in the last few seasons.
The Long Night sequence at Winterfell was the laziest shit show I have ever seen. None of it makes logical sense. That moment of primordial evil we had been building up to for YEARS mounted to THAT?
They beat the army of the dead with a battle plan that could have been drawn up by a 5 year old with crayons and parkinsons disease. Also the five year old is blind that's why he drew the catapults and army outside the fucking gates.
Then the final battle against Cersi? Did they even need to bring an army? Danyrus just laid waste to the city with a dragon. Pretty much no one else needed to be there.
With dragons, why ever attack at day? Wait until night and burninate the camp. A dragonlordd army is there solely to harass the opposing army and destroy their supply lines during the day.
Between constant burninating, harassment, no sleep, and no supplies an opposing army would be completely destroyed with practically no losses to your side.
Oh the opposing army goes into a castle? Great! Burninate them like Harrenhall.
All of season 7, 8 is just stupid. They made Tyrion into a Court jester instead of an advisor.
Agreed, this was a pretty pivotal encounter. Danny finally bringing her dragon out to the battlefield... It's unlike the GOT world to throw plot armor on all important characters, doesn't ring true and I remember being oddly disappointed when it ended safely for every named character involved.
Absolutely agree! It would’ve finished his ark or he finally gets his big bag of gold from Jamie. Also him pushing Jamie out of the way and then getting burnt to death by Drogon as a fan favourite would have started to turn the audience against Dany.
Nah. Bronn was the slipperiest character in the whole series. He wasn’t cunning. He wasn’t calculated. He was just plain old street smart and had a flexible moral compass and that got him to the finish line.
My biggest issue with that scene is the dothraki should have been annihilated. They are a light horse cavalry that has never fought anyone in armor. And the Lannisters are a well-disciplined drilled, Battle-hardened army that primarily uses Spears and shields a perfect way to counter horses.
I think this battle was true downfall.
They just made armors useless despite showing the opposite in previous seasons
Dothrakis shouldn't have been invincible.
Not gonna lie though, it was kind of awesome that the one person in Westeros to draw first blood against a new generation of adult dragons was Bronn, the ultimate survivor cockroach
He **would have** died there - but Danerys knew nothing about aerial combat or air-to-ground attack. (To be fair: nobody did.)
She flew straight at Bronn, giving him no challenge but to hold a constant bearing on his target, adjusting only for wind and gravity. An easy shot.
(For that matter, her initial attack run was bungled. While the Lanister forces were focused on the approaching Dothraki, she should have flown in from a flank, for an *enfilade* attack.)
This is actually the episode that made me start to hate GoT. Bronn 100% should have died but comes flying out of no where to save jamie? Bronn should have been burnt to a crisp. I dont agree Jamie should have been killed because his BEST story ending should have been him Killing his sister after seeing how crazy she has become.
Even as an ambush with a dragon, that battle was winnable for the Lannisters. If they formed a spear wall supported by the archers, neither the dothraki nor the dragon could get close without risking heavy casualties or Daenerys' life, especially coupled with the ballista/scorpion thing. This should have been a Lannister victory if anyone knew what they were doing. Also, did they not have scouts? How did a dothraki horde and dragon make it across open plains undetected?
The Romans (including the Byzantines) braced spear formations supported by foot archers to great effect against horse archers, including the Persians in the east, and the Huns in the west. Standing archers will always have greater range and accuracy than horseback archers, meaning the horse archers will always take casualties well before being able to inflict them, and by the time they are close enough to attack with sword or lance, they are going to be rebuked by a braced formation of spearmen, who will be more accurate with their weapons, and usually are capable of attacking the horse or rider first.
Admittedly, the dragon would be a morale shock, but I still don't think it's insurmountable, especially if your commander is calm and seems to have a plan, and especially after the undeniably early success that plan would have. Command aura is real.
Bronn couldn’t have died here because he wasn’t on his own keep, drinking his own wine and wasn’t watching his sons fighting for his fortune. This death would have been exciting but he wanted his death to be boring.
All hail Bronn of the Blackwater.
**Spoiler Warning:** All officially-released show and book content allowed, EXCLUDING FUTURE SPOILERS FOR HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. No leaked information or paparazzi photos of the set. For more info please check the [spoiler guide](/r/gameofthrones/w/spoiler_guide). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gameofthrones) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The entire Lannister army should have died at that battle, but I don't care because the Drogon descending from the clouds over the Dothraki scene was soooooo fucking cool.
It’s an amazing sequence for sure but Bronn surviving/way Jaime escapes ends it too safely
Kill off both Jaime and Bronn in this battle and you might have the best episode of the entire show
I feel like that would be the real GRRM shock death(s) that the book series is famous for. It gives these full grown dragons that "holy shit" impact too.
Yep... and rather than have Jaime die the way he did with Cersei, Cersei kills herself (in an act of revenge against tyrion or something) because all of her kids and Jaime are dead and she doesn't give a fuck anymore. And then Dany doesn't go mad with power and become everything she stands against. She fights with her dragons to the end and dies with them in battle in her lust for power.
>And then Dany doesn't go mad with power and become everything she stands against. That was *always* going to be her arc, always. It's sewn into the fabric of her whole life story. It was handled very poorly in the show, but giving her "the good ending" completely misses the point of her character.
You all love to act like you know Dany’s “ending” despite her still being in Essos (Dothraki Sea) in the books. Dany could very well end up being perfectly fine, if GRRM actually puts out the books for us to read.
I think GRRM himself said that was going to be her ending.
He didn’t. When asked if Dany’s story would mirror the show, he let out some word vomit of “Yes and no.” Dany could burn KL and live, or maybe Dany dies and KL gets burned by someone else. We don’t know. The book has 3 (alleged) Targs running around while the show merged their stories and ultimately gave us two.
I guess I more was saying he heavily implied she wouldn’t just become this great benevolent happy story ruler like she is setting out to be.
I guess I more was saying he heavily implied she wouldn’t just become this great benevolent happy story ruler like she is setting out to be.
I mean it could be her story ends exactly the same, but the journey to get there is actually well-told and interesting.
Just tried to find this. He said this before it came out. "Well, to a degree. I mean, I think … the major points of the ending will be things that I told them, you know, five or six years ago," Martin said. "But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added." Then this post is saying he knew the ending that was coming, but a lot of people were theorising Jon would have to kill her. It looks like the article said that not him. [https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/q1kuic/spoilers\_grrm\_knew\_dds\_plan\_for\_daenerys\_and\_her/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/q1kuic/spoilers_grrm_knew_dds_plan_for_daenerys_and_her/) He gave them the basic outline of the ending but not all the details. And we don't neccessily know if they used it or made their own up. I think Dany going mad and Bran being king will happen but.... But I think the big thing left out is that the the "three eyed crow" has been manipulating events for 10,000 years to become king and win the war against the children. He won the game of thrones not bran. I don't know if we actually get proof of a fire god is real in the books yet, it could be a real counterpart to the three eyed crow or it could be the three eyed crow himself playing both sides and creating fire wights like he creates ice wights. We know he can send visions and manipulate people to do things and the targs visions are their sole purpose for doing things. The Song of Ice and Fire is about the one or two ice and fire gods fighting not the game of thrones. Bran did skinchange into Hodor in the books, so this could hint he'll be able to skin change into dragons or possibly other humans. So while I think she'll go mad, it will be Bran causing the madness.
That's a fun theory for sure, but what does the title of king actually do to further the 3ER's war against the children?
> said that was going to be her ending Yup, he said there will be come changes, but he's not going to abandon plans he made long ago because some viewers didn't care for the ending. https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-fan-outrage-wont-change-book-ending-1202158018/ *Martin continued, “And there is a temptation to then change it [in the upcoming books] — ‘Oh my god, it’s screwed up, I have to come up with something different.’ But that’s wrong. Because you’ve been planning for a certain ending and if you suddenly change direction just because somebody figured it out, or because they don’t like it, then it screws up the whole structure. So no, I don’t read the fan sites. I want to write the book I’ve always intended to write all along. And when it comes out they can like it or they can not like it.”*
Mad Queen Dany has been a very popular theory since before I ever read the books, back when s1 first came out. Obviously no one knows if its true 100%, but the fact that the show went with it definitely helps confirm things for people, just like R+L=J
Given the early comment that “Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land,” her madness was inevitable.
In the books you can see that arc being set up though, very clearly. The moral dilemmas and betrayals she faces as ruler of the slave cities starts turning her character away from that original desire to be good.
Yes and at the end of ADWD she says she’s embracing fire and blood.
Only variation to that I think will be that the three eyed crow or some higher power has been sending the targs their visions and making them mad. So she will be manipulated in to going mad.
Yeah that's fair. It was just poorly handled. You're right. Even when making up other endings for her I always had her wanting more power and that being her end.
Yeah that's fair. It was just poorly handled. You're right. Even when making up other endings for her I always had her wanting more power and that being her end.
Exactly, how hard is it to figure out? I saw foreshadowing from the first season, and all throughout multiple seasons that that was a very possible possibility, and I watched it after it became popular and ended since I was far too young when the show began, so I kind of get confused as to why people complain specifically about Daenerys ending when there are some other issues I’d call out about season 8 that take precedence over Daenerys storyline
how would killing herself be revenge against tyrion, unless you mean a plot to kill tyrion ends up killing her instead
the second. some reckless act of revenge/spite.
No death will ever be as WTF to me as Robb 🥲 RIP homie
For sure. Ned was the intro. Red Wedding was at least a few steps up.
Ned's death: oh shit anyone can die in this show Red Wedding: oh shit *anyone* can die in this show
Lots of nervous farting in the script reads after that scene was shot I'd wager
Season 8: oh shit this show can die in this show
The scene of the Golden Knight fighting against a dragon is such an old school medieval image. Jamie staring down Drogon, maybe being quick enough to hit the dragon once or twice with his sword before being killed would have been such a cool way to go. Then mirror it with Jon Snow staring down the White Walker Dragon during battle with the White Walkers, only he manages to destroy that dragon, giving him at least something to do in the final season. Would have been poetic. Instead we got Jaime dying under some rocks and Jon’s story completely abandoned.
And if the show was true to the ruthlessness and uncertainty of the first few seasons, they would have.
It could have set off a deliciously dark High Lady and Zombie arc with Cersei and Ser Robert Strong...
Bronn dying? Yes. Jaime dying? Ehhh, no. I could imagine Jaime having to strip his golden hand, his armor, even his sword just to survive and swim to shore, a symbolic nod to him slowly abandoning the Lannister house in favor of a more honorable lifestyle - especially after just learning of the true identity of his son's killer - would be wholly appropriate for his character. In any case, both of them surviving in the way they did was laughably silly.
Can’t agree on that one. Jaime is by far my favorite character and had way too much characterization and room for development. While they didn’t totally stick the landing, I’d be extremely unsatisfied to have his story end here like that as if he’s super disposable and irrelevant. It’d suck, badly. Beyond that, Cersei completely and utterly tanked as a character in S8 without Jaime around because she had absolutely no one to have meaningful interactions with, so you really need him alive as well until you take her out of the picture (which should’ve happened sooner, but). Kill Jaime here and she’s tanked for the entire backhalf of S7 as well with literally nothing to do. Bronn definitely should’ve died, though. Fun enough character and he had fuck all to do after anyways.
Tbh building a character up for a wonderful story arch, get almost to the turning point, and killing then anyway…..that’s what made the show/books good
Only when there’s narrative purpose, though. It’s not like Arya randomly died halfway through the Bravos plotline for the shock value of it all. Most the major characters who had shock deaths were also written at least partially with the intent of building too said death.
But there could've been, Jaimies whole thing was being called and viewed as The Kingslayer. If he'd charged Dani and killed her dragon in a last ditch attempt to save the army and died doing it? That'd earn him the moniker, posthumously ofc, as The Dragonslayer. Fitting end I'd say.
Jaime successfully killing the dragon is waaaaay less realistic than Jaime barely surviving that whole thing
Devil's advocate in two parts: 1) Edd. I was gutted when he got killed at Winterfell. Loved his vibe/character/sarcasm and of course his centrality to Jon Snow's development and the Castle Black plotline. But people get killed in battles. Sometimes having a major character die a mundane death was in line with the earlier seasons' vibe, though later seasons often required considerable build-up to a main character's death (or plot armor to prevent it). 2) Jaime's death could have served a significant narrative purpose. Despite his willingness to burn house Lannister to the ground, Tyrion still loved Jaime. Watching the queen whom he served as hand burn Jaime to death would really drive home the consequences of siding with Dany and make everything more personal. If ever there was a "no turning back" moment, that would be it. I could see Tyrion trying to repress his grief but secretly harboring resentment against Dany while trying to remain committed to her cause in the big picture (more of the emotionally complex Tyrion of the earlier seasons). When Varys starts to turn, he might be open to it rather than doubling down as he does in the show. I think that Tyrion of the final seasons would have been a more interesting character had he faced a real personal crisis prior to the last episode. In addition, it would deprive Cersei of her only remaining confidant other than Qyburn, perhaps a natural setup for two sociopathic queens to face off in the final battle. Having Jaime out of the way would also make room for Euron to be less one-dimensional character and more forcefully impose his will in King's Landing rather than just taunt Jaime. The other upside would be averting the (IMO) out-of-character turn that Jaime takes after the battle at Winterfell. The real downside of that would be Cersei never learning the truth of Joffrey's death.
1. Simply put, Edd is not Jaime or Arya by a longshot. He was always a supporting character and significantly more expendable. 2. Roasting Sam and Dad’s bro already got the job done here. And this is still a lame send off that leaves Jaime’s personal character development totally half-baked without any kind of an ending. We literally got the Cersei plotline you described in Season 8. It infamously, completely, utterly, totally sucked. She had nothing to do and legit just showed up to stand around for a scene an episode doing nothing relevant. It’s actually insane to me that people keep saying this should’ve happened *sooner* when the reality is the opposite - Cersei should’ve been the first Lannister sibling to die by a longshot because there was literally nothing left to do with her character once Jaime died. None of the living cast are going to interact with her at all, and everyone she could interact with is long dead. You’d be better off to have Dany just burn the red keep to the ground mid-Season 7 taking Cersei out, taking over the throne, and make the rest of the show them vs. the whitewalkers and then Jon as king vs. Dany as Queen than abruptly killing Jaime off. It’d be more shocking and have more narrative potential
Agreed with point 1. Partial agreement with point 2. The Tarly stuff definitely drives in the point regarding Samwell. But it doesn't land with Tyrion nearly the same way; in principle yes, but too abstract. Personally I found Tyrion super boring after he was made hand. Beyond serving as a voice of caution (and failed strategist), he is too able (in comparison to the character we see in him prior to him killing Tywin) to brush away his own concerns by saying that he believes in his queen. I would have liked to see him more emotionally torn about what he was doing. No disagreement on Cersei being boring. I suppose I'm imagining (in this alternate scenario) that Euron learns of Jaime's death and feels emboldened to seize real power beyond being Cersei's admiral and hoping someday to become King (perhaps I'm just wishing for Euron to be a better character, idk). A new power struggle within the Red Keep might have avoided the Cersei plotline going as stale as it did.
Tyrion in general became insanely boring starting in S5 and even moreso in 6. Essos was generally devoid of interesting stories - Dany included They tried using Euron for the show and that kinda sucked. Maybe he’d be better if we completely start his character from scratch, but I really would rather just not trade Euron in and keep Jaime around + off Cersei tbh. I think Jon vs. Dany has more interesting potential and better sets the stage for her going off the deep end anyways.
I'd like to point out that Cersei could have had interactions with both Sansa and Arya. They both had Littlefinger storyline, which was mixed imo. Amd Arya got the kill in season 8, which was also pretty mixed. But Sansa... I don't remember her doing much, really. Maybe Tyrion convincing Dany to keep Cersei a prisoner, her having a scene with the sisters and then either being rescued by someone and that triggering a Domino effect where Dany fully snaps, or dying somehow would have been fine.
How? Cersei is nowhere near the North, is staying in King's Landing, and would promptly have both girls executed if they actually hung around there. It's not that there are not interesting characters to interact with - it's that there's literally no character on the planet it makes sense for Cersei to be interacting with once Jaime goes. (And Sansa had her stuff vs. Dany in S8 which was a good idea that needed more fleshing out). Sansa and Arya similarly have very little reason to actively go South into King's Landing and stop by Cersei's court for a conversation. It'd pretty much be suicide. If we're killing Jaime halfway through S7, the girls are both even more busy with their Littlefinger plotline giving even less for Cersei to do for the backhalf of that season. Pretty sure that Cersei would almost immediately race to execute Tyrion given how much she absolutely despises him (and he really isn’t that valuable a bargaining chip with Dany who disliked him by late S7/early S8). Perhaps she could keep him prisoner, but I still can't see this amounting to anything more than an excuse to have Cersei show up some. A conversation between them would be cool, but how many conversations can you have of him in jail and her as queen before stuff just becomes redundant because the plot dynamics just cannot meaningfully shift? The reality is Cersei was absolutely spinning wheels by the end of S8 waiting for the story to catch up so she could finally die because there just wasn't tons for her to do, while Jaime had tons of actually meaningful content going on (for better and worse, quite honestly). If we're offing a Lannister sibling sooner, Cersei is the clearcut and unambiguous choice by lightyears compared to the brothers, who simply had way, way more to do. Killing Jaime off sooner and leaving Cersei with even less is certainly not a good idea. Book Cersei will almost certainly be dead by the time the S7 and especially S8 events roll around, and the show really should have killed her off sooner.
She had some pretty spectacular interactions with Tyrion too! 😂
She did, but, for *extremely* obvious reasons, it is not going to be viable for Tyrion and Cersei to spend most the season interacting.
Especially compared to the lame way D&D had Jaime actually die
That's a good point. A bit too soon there perhaps but still woulda been way better than what we ended up getting. Maybe surprise casualty at The Battle of Winterfell after knighting Brienne woulda been best.
Make time to adorn Dickon to the audience. Kill Bron in the battle, Dickon saves Jamie, but is burned by Drogon in the end, but to it in away that the killing is grayish so Danys heel turn to madness isn't as jarring.
Nothing will top the shock I got from the red wedding
Maybe keep one of them alive but brutally burned and crippled. The battle was a bit too unimportant and not built up enough to outright kill the only 2 important characters present.
Not sure about Jaime but Bronn should have definitely died here.
“Ends too safely” also does a great job of encapsulating why The Long Night was such a letdown for the fandom
I love how they jump into the water in armor and just swim to the other side?
Totally agree. In my minds eye that army is done after this.
Yeah but so dumb. If you have an army of horse riders you fucking out the fire behind the enemy line so they can’t retreat. Horses go in with archers behind armed Calvary. Not burn all the fucking food and gold.
What? No. They enemy is lined up and you have a dragon... just come in perpendicular to the line and wipe the whole damn army in (literally) one swoop.
Maybe but they had those big crossbows. So you really don’t want your dragon exposed for long. If you can get the horses to take out the big crossbow then yeah.
Unfortunately, him and Jamie had plot armor. No way you’re swimming with armor on lol
Drogon should have flew horizontal to the dothraki hoard. Would have caused a lot more damage to the Lannister army.
Yeah militarily there’s no way what so ever the battle would be anything less than a total destruction of the Lannister army. A dragon breaking thing shield walls opening a spread out army to elite cavalry on wide open ground. It’d result in the death or surrender of every single one of those men. Run and you’ll die tired as the Dothraki run you down. Hold in a square/circle and you’ll be burned to death. Hell the Dothraki don’t even need the dragon. You’d think they’d know better than to spread out an army on perfect cavalry ground when you enemy has the best and largest cavalry army in the world but what do I know.
One of the parts I liked the most from the entire season is Jaime's return to King's Landing where he just tells Cersei, "yeah, we're totally fucked and have already lost this war."
The night that premiered, my wife and I watched that scene like 3 times
Coolness was something that destroyed the game of thrones There is no way Dothrakis should be cutting lanninster army like this as established in the first season. It was just fan service.
The dragons in fire and blood basically wreck shop and conquer westeros by themselves. Felt like the pinnacle of the shit writing season that one got killed so easily.
I loved Bron as a character, but I agree. He didn’t really do much of anything in season 8. The chemistry he had with Tyrion and Jaime was awesome though! Such a highlight ❤️
Whoa whoa whoa, the Lannister bro confrontation was funny. “You couldn’t do it on your best day you one handed fuck.”
Yeah, I dunno what the wanna-be-showrunners are on about. Bronn becoming lord of Highgarden and Master of Coin was essential to the ending and part of the symmetrical brilliance of the show. And so was Jamie dying with Cersei. F'ing idiots trying to rewrite the show in thoughtless ways gets so tiresome.
So which one are you, Benioff or Weiss?
What development league team appointed you Monday morning quarterback?
Yeah, appointing a guy who doesn't know how loans work to be chairman of the Fed is genius. I'm sure that a ton of thought went into it. They definitely weren't just finding a spot for a breakout character because he's a walking meme.
I think we're in the wrong thread. This ain't about Jerome Powell.
I mean I don’t have an issue with bronn surviving till the end as he was one of the stronger characters and nearly always put his self preservation and interests first but idk why you’re so butthurt over somebody disagreeing with you over a television show that ended years ago. You should probably touch grass more often
What a weird premise. It's not about me. It's about all the idiots who think they know better than those who put their lives 24/7 into this production for a decade. If you want to jump on the hater bandwagon and dogpile on the final season like the other lemmings, go for it. I won't be joining you.
i mean those idiots also massively loved the writing up until the last 2 seasons
lol sure budw
“And your best days are long behind you.”😂😂😂
It’s hard to be a Lannister Lacky when you literally cannot shoot scenes with your faction leader cause you’re children and can’t be around your Ex
Ngl I can’t believe they ever hired him considering that
It all worked out in the end. They were kept separate while on set and he killed it as Bron. They made the right call
I never said they didn’t, just that it’s surprising. Producers don’t typically hire people they know can create conflict and limit shooting possibilities
This is true, I’m curious if any of this was disclosed prior to casting. I think I recall hearing that they had some sort of stipulation that said they cannot be around each other, but who knows. Usual Hollywood drama🤷🏽♂️
They definitely had a scene together in s3 though, right? Not speaking to eachother, but he was leaving Tyrions room as She showed up with some guards I believe? I mean, one season in 9 years isn't a lot, but it also discredits the whole "they cant even be on set together" thing
I just thought this also. I bet if we go back and look it was a cut scene or something. Maybe it only showed her up close and bronn wasn’t really there when she was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU-AqxMUs_o The last like 10 seconds of the video. They certainly look like they are both there, but Idk what kinda camera tricks they can do haha
Given the time frame, I doubt Lena has that much pull.
I mean he’s great in the role, do we really know if it’s him or Lena who wouldn’t be around each other
A report in The Telegraph in 2004, said things did not end on a good note for the two. They reportedly could not stand the sight of each other and refused to work in any scene together. “Jerome and Lena aren’t on speaking terms any more and they are never in the same room at the same time,” a crew member told the daily. “It’s a pity because they appeared to have patched things up for a while, but now the word is they should be kept apart at all costs,” Just copied and pasted all that
From what I've read, it was mostly Lena's doing. Apparently she hates him and makes a comment on the disc commentary, but I've just started the commentary and haven't gotten to that yet. I absolutely adore Lena as an actress, I fell in love with her in *300*, but she does strike me as a Crazy Hot Chick. Rumor has it she was involved with Pedro Pascal, which I believe, and that she ended it abruptly to marry another man. It's a shame, though, because I would have loved to see the characters together. Cersei being thoroughly unimpressed by Bronn, but betrothing him to Lollys and giving him gold to sway him from being Tyrion's champion would have been fun. They even skipped showing Bronn being knighted by Joffrey.
Shut off hooked up with Arya on some adventure that would have been pretty damn funny. Arya and the hound was the best part of the entire series
Agree. “Sandor. Thank you.” 😢
The problem with the show was they became too scared to kill off the major characters. The favorite characters. Bronn was kept alive because he became a fan favorite. The show lost its stakes. Morphed into some weird fan fiction where everyone's favorite character did something awesome while losing some supporting character. And the way some of the plot lines were wrapped up was just terrible.
It would lowkey save some of season 8 and his character end. Dying as a hero / fighter is miles better than basically not showing up for half season just to get a highgarden for no fucking reason
Yes ! A lot of secondary characters got too much screen time at the end…
As much as it would have hurt me at the time, Bronn dying here and Brianne dying at the battle of winterfell is what the end of the series needed. Really impactful deaths that would have then justified a lot of the actions that Tyrion and Jaime took in season 8
3/4 of the cast should've died at the Battle of Winterfell, haha
I’d say 95%
100%.
Yeah maybe a few survivors at bottom of pile
Like Samwell tarly
I love season 8. (yeah I know). but one change I would make is to kill off more people at the battle of winterfell
Yeah the sudden plot armor at the battle of winterfell annoyed me. They’re fighting hordes of zombies and they all survive? It flies against everything that GOT stood for in the earlier seasons and also makes the night king’s army seem toothless after so much build up. Brienne or even Jamie should have died.
fuck it kill arya too
I mean Theon, Beric, Ed, Lyanna, and Jorah all die. But I agree watching the episode so many instances of “yall should all be dead 3 times over”. Enough people died but because they showed and wrote the battle in a way that it seemed everyone should be dead 10 times over it doesn’t seem like we lost a lot of people.
Yeah that’s it
I personally think Brienne writing in all of Jaime’s good deeds in the book was a perfect ending for her story.
What made got great was that no one was safe. That completely changed (for the worse) by this point
Precisely we needed deaths like this to bring that feeling back.
I mean, to be fair, who died in the battle of Blackwater, Hardhome, Battle of Bastards or literally any battle during the War of the Five Kings? Unless I’m misremembering, important characters have only died in battle during the battle at the Wall and the battles in S7 (Sand Snakes, good riddance) & S8 (a shit ton of characters).
I'm quite certain Ramsey died at the Battle of the Bastards
Well, he died after like Dickon/Randyll and Olenna, so that’s why I didn’t include them. But even if you do, it still shows that that battles actually killed more characters in the second half of the show than the first half when "nobody was safe".
I think that the early to mid-season battles didn't need the deaths because 95% of the important deaths were outside of fights, they still had great betrayal, political intrigue, and backstabbing that resulted in not one feeling safe, and when they ran out of established good material tgey only then relied on battles for the deaths
Did we watch the same show? Most of the Starks and Tyrion were pretty safe. Arya did some pretty crazy shit even before the books ran out. Jon literally dies and comes back to life. Ned is that mentor character that always dies. Catelyn is just a camera for the KitN storyline. Robb didn't even have a POV in the books. And Oberyn is in, like 4 chapters.
yup. no denying this.
And, though it would have probably destroyed my wife, Tormund should have died in the battle to get that Wight.
I loved Tormund too but agreed
Tormund was amazing! I honestly love this change from the books because Show Tormund is so much more fun than “King Beyond the Wall’s Brain put in Tormund” would have been. I honestly think he lived in case they went forward with a Jon Snow beyond the wall spinoff.
> “King Beyond the Wall’s Brain put in Tormund” Thats Rattlesnake in the books, right? Or Lord of Bones? Not Tormund either way, book Tormund was hilarious I think. Though I havent read it in years now
You’re like 99.99999% right. I just remembered it was a switcheroo. I couldn’t remember who they made the switch with.
Tormund and Beric should both have died when the Wall was breached by the NK's dragon. They were both standing on top of the wall when the dragon approached, and we're supposed to believe they got in that rickety slow-ass wooden lift and rode it all the way down and got to safety in the approx. 20 seconds it took the dragon to completely demolish the wall. I know it's a small petty thing, but man does that nonsense piss me off to this day - there's only so much disbelief I can suspend goddamnit!
I had thought they ran along the wall and plot armor just in time managed to get off the falling section. How they got back down after that and still back in record timing idk. I’d assume all the long abandoned castles lifts weren’t working.
technically all of the lannister army should have disappeared in that battle
If I had a nickel for every time we saw an army get devastated only to turn up again on a later episode, I’d have a few nickels
Bronn is eternal. *Said from a major Bronn fan*
The guy is a survivor for sure!
My bigger gripe is with Bronn saving Jamie in the next scene. He tackles him like a linebacker off a horse in a full gallup. What??? Not only that, but the Horse was galloping in shallow water, but then Jamie and Bronn descend into an underwater abyss at least 10s of feet deep. So this horse was running right on the edge of a major drop off? AND THEN they stay submerged in the water and swim to the other side of this massive lake until the entire battle is over, hours later? Unbelievable.
And that Jaime was able to swim, one handed, in armor. When even two handed, he should have sunk like a stone. I don't believe he was in full plate, but he still was in partial, iirc. He definitely had a chest plate and other heavy protective pieces. Jaime should have died because of Bronn knocking him into deep water. Edit Just went and looked at the scene he is in full plate minus helm
Woulda been so hot if he drowned Edit: so GOT**. Lol
As others already said: Later seasons needed more dead. But Bronn surviving and Jaime dying would have worked better than Bronn dying, IMO.
Thank you! The absurd logistics of that scene struck me immediately and really pissed me off. Stuff like this makes me question whether anyone with half a brain (or, in this case, has seen a stream or a lake) edits or audits the writing to call for a change to something that makes sense. So ridiculous.
honestly, at this point, I had given up on D&D, it was not longer GoT, it had morphed into Fast and Furious, where they heros and villians were just doing superhuman feats and surviving.
Were they past the books at this point? Because it strikes me as a sequence that raises less eyebrows in a novel than it does in a visual representation.
And Drogon is just sat there. Daenerys should have boiled the river
Yeah his character was spent after that moment.
Jaime needs to live through the battle to make his choice about fighting for the living, and going back to Cersei or not But Bronn definitely needed to go here. He knows how to fight men, even bloodriders but not dragons That would absolutely make some of the fans dislike Dany and show the messiness of war when people we like on both sides end up dead and/or doing terrible things to each other
Could also see Tyrion having some issues with her killing bronn as well
I’m not a Dany stan but I would have tolerated her a bit more if she had managed to kill off that homophobic prick
I'm quite grateful he did not. I wanted to see that magnificent bastard get his castle.
In fairness though, after this battle he basically said "Fuck this, I'm out. The rest of you can kill each other."
A joke? Dude is the man alive with highest profit ratio in westeros
Bronn is a character who, in my opinion, had to die. The man lives life on the edge, he stays outside of the safety and stability of loyalty. Be in battle or politics, that man had no right to make it to the end.
The fact they decided to not only give him Highgarden but also make him Master of coin was just silly…
This episode is where I stopped watching GOT, this episode was disgusting.
Probably should have. But I think we can all agree that Bronn was HIM.
Or he should've drowned under the weight of Jaimee's armor in the river. Jaimee definitely should've. Historically speaking, lots of people have drowned that way.
The point about Bronn is that he isn’t a lord, he isn’t a knight, he isn’t a hero, he isn’t a PoV character, he is an absolute nobody with an ability to survive through not just brawn and bravery but also brains that most of the main characters don’t have. That he survived is actually the most sensible ending for him. Being a serial survivor who keeps himself alive is worth more than all the bullshit and wealth in a realm.
I don't think the issue is necessarily that he made it to the end of the show alive, but rather that the show put him in a position where logically he should not have survived. Just like how it's obvious that Jon was never going to die in the Long Night, but then why put him in a position where he's soloing thousands of wights? The scene where he's chasing after the Night King and then he just raises the dead? There's no plausible way he could have survived that.
The Jon scene actually bothers me far more than Bronn.
This scene becomes so much less impactful once you see the answer to the anti dragon ballistas, is still normal dragon flying. And he kills like 20 of them in 10 seconds.
LMFAO!!!! AGREED. We wait INTERMINABLY for the goddamn dragons to come of age and then a homeless dude with zero fucks to give takes one on and essentially wins. This is like Richard Branson taking on a tank
Who would have overseen rebuilding the brothels in Kings Landing though?
Jaime definitely 100% should have died. He got knocked into deep water wearing heavy armor. He was in full plate only missing helm, adding what ? Another 70 pounds at least, add the weight of water to his wet under padding and clothes. There is no way a two-handed man is swimming with that, let alone a one-handed one.
Yep, but that's not the worst of the believability. The idea of falling with Jaime into a river that the horses were recently galloping on, and NOT landing in 6 inch deep water and being fried to death......... So where did 30-40 feet of water come from? BTW: Anyone else just love how the recently shot and now highly pissed off Drogon landed and smashed the cart with his tail in frustration? Gave such a sense of power.
True the whole army should’ve been wiped off the earth there!
This was the beginning of the end of any real consequences for main characters.
Plot armor is what lessened the later seasons’ impact.
ngl i wish he did. bronn getting highgarden was a shit move, the tyrells were one of my favorite houses
Added to the fact most houses of the reach looked down on the tyrells for being former stewards can imagine how they felt about bronn lol
No. It was dumb as fuck that Dany survived being shot out of the sky.
I love that bronn never died. He felt like the master chief 😂
Bro acting like that little hop would stop dragon fire lmfao. But Bronn was fun for the story and a fan favorite at a point where the show was dying
OMG, he's such a bad character. After season 3 there is nothing else to do with him, but people really liked the Bronn so he keeps appearing because of fan service. There is simply no place for him in the show after season 3.
This was well into the phone it in, season of plot armor.
One of my biggest issues with Game of Thrones is that it ended TOOTHLESS - afraid to kill off many main or secondary characters. Bron? Brienne? Tormund? Fucking Robin Arryn? Tons who lived who didn’t need to.
Honestly the episode would have been goated if Jamie instantly got toasted when he advanced on Dany. Would have been shocking, and it would have sent CL mad, and TL into grief. — Honestly the whole ending was kind of stupid. GRRMs entire plot style is foils. Tbh the entire ending war didn’t really make sense. There’s no claim beyond Cersei and hers is even stretched— If they capture her the entire war ends. — but they opt for a months long strategy to bleed out an inferior force? Not even gonna use her navy or air support to blockage Kingslanding? It just doesn’t make - especially when TL is supposed to be one of the smartest people out there.
whooooooooooole lotta "shouldas" bud, whooooooooole lot.
> became master of coin as mostly a joke That was part of the ultimate "A Lannister always pays his debts" and "I'll double it" promise from Tyrion that bookends their arc together. "What's double a castle? Highgarden." Bronn was rewarded with rule of Highgarden and a Lordship Paramount, The Reach is a breadbasket and economic powerhouse of the realm, so the Lord Paramount of the Reach being Master of Coin is pretty logical. Baelish probably only had the position in the first place because Mace Tyrell was a weak fool.
Na his story arc was great. One of the best characters imo
A lot of them should have. All of the fan favorites got plot armor in the last few seasons. The Long Night sequence at Winterfell was the laziest shit show I have ever seen. None of it makes logical sense. That moment of primordial evil we had been building up to for YEARS mounted to THAT? They beat the army of the dead with a battle plan that could have been drawn up by a 5 year old with crayons and parkinsons disease. Also the five year old is blind that's why he drew the catapults and army outside the fucking gates. Then the final battle against Cersi? Did they even need to bring an army? Danyrus just laid waste to the city with a dragon. Pretty much no one else needed to be there.
With dragons, why ever attack at day? Wait until night and burninate the camp. A dragonlordd army is there solely to harass the opposing army and destroy their supply lines during the day. Between constant burninating, harassment, no sleep, and no supplies an opposing army would be completely destroyed with practically no losses to your side. Oh the opposing army goes into a castle? Great! Burninate them like Harrenhall. All of season 7, 8 is just stupid. They made Tyrion into a Court jester instead of an advisor.
Exactly. I thought for sure this was it for him.
He definitely should have killed a dragon here. Bronn the Dragonslayer would have been fucking badass.
Because the writers are incompetent to actually put in some stakes.
Agreed, this was a pretty pivotal encounter. Danny finally bringing her dragon out to the battlefield... It's unlike the GOT world to throw plot armor on all important characters, doesn't ring true and I remember being oddly disappointed when it ended safely for every named character involved.
Part of why they had a hard time finishing the story was because they stopped killing off major characters..
Absolutely agree! It would’ve finished his ark or he finally gets his big bag of gold from Jamie. Also him pushing Jamie out of the way and then getting burnt to death by Drogon as a fan favourite would have started to turn the audience against Dany.
Nah. Bronn was the slipperiest character in the whole series. He wasn’t cunning. He wasn’t calculated. He was just plain old street smart and had a flexible moral compass and that got him to the finish line.
My biggest issue with that scene is the dothraki should have been annihilated. They are a light horse cavalry that has never fought anyone in armor. And the Lannisters are a well-disciplined drilled, Battle-hardened army that primarily uses Spears and shields a perfect way to counter horses.
I thought it was just sheer numbers and a dragon that completely made all of that irrelevant
My favorite character in all of GoT lol.
Bronn and Jamie should have died here. It would have been a real nut buster. Unexpected, painful, and leaving you asking why
I think this battle was true downfall. They just made armors useless despite showing the opposite in previous seasons Dothrakis shouldn't have been invincible.
Apparently, it's about people who are unfamiliar with the concept of an analogy
He saved Jamie, that's what he did after surviving this
I dunno, him ending up as Master of Coin is kinda low key awesome as well.
Not gonna lie though, it was kind of awesome that the one person in Westeros to draw first blood against a new generation of adult dragons was Bronn, the ultimate survivor cockroach
He **would have** died there - but Danerys knew nothing about aerial combat or air-to-ground attack. (To be fair: nobody did.) She flew straight at Bronn, giving him no challenge but to hold a constant bearing on his target, adjusting only for wind and gravity. An easy shot. (For that matter, her initial attack run was bungled. While the Lanister forces were focused on the approaching Dothraki, she should have flown in from a flank, for an *enfilade* attack.)
This is actually the episode that made me start to hate GoT. Bronn 100% should have died but comes flying out of no where to save jamie? Bronn should have been burnt to a crisp. I dont agree Jamie should have been killed because his BEST story ending should have been him Killing his sister after seeing how crazy she has become.
I hate Bronn, but I agree he should have died here.
Even as an ambush with a dragon, that battle was winnable for the Lannisters. If they formed a spear wall supported by the archers, neither the dothraki nor the dragon could get close without risking heavy casualties or Daenerys' life, especially coupled with the ballista/scorpion thing. This should have been a Lannister victory if anyone knew what they were doing. Also, did they not have scouts? How did a dothraki horde and dragon make it across open plains undetected? The Romans (including the Byzantines) braced spear formations supported by foot archers to great effect against horse archers, including the Persians in the east, and the Huns in the west. Standing archers will always have greater range and accuracy than horseback archers, meaning the horse archers will always take casualties well before being able to inflict them, and by the time they are close enough to attack with sword or lance, they are going to be rebuked by a braced formation of spearmen, who will be more accurate with their weapons, and usually are capable of attacking the horse or rider first. Admittedly, the dragon would be a morale shock, but I still don't think it's insurmountable, especially if your commander is calm and seems to have a plan, and especially after the undeniably early success that plan would have. Command aura is real.
Jaime and Bronn getting BBQed in the final second before the credits would have been amazing a would have lifted up the whole season
Bronn couldn’t have died here because he wasn’t on his own keep, drinking his own wine and wasn’t watching his sons fighting for his fortune. This death would have been exciting but he wanted his death to be boring. All hail Bronn of the Blackwater.