The Watch - Breaking Down ‘Game of Thrones,’ S8E3 | The Watch

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

The Battle of Winterfell finally happened (1:01). We talk about the visual effects of the battle (7:29), who lived and who died (21:54), and the difficulties of trying to wrap up a major and beloved franchise (30:43). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Reefat. ringer.com and joining me in the studio, he's still alive. It's Andy Greenwald. I'd like to consider myself one of the main characters of this show.

You're one of the core five. Thus, my survival is guaranteed. Fantasy, Herman. Oh, am I still in the main cast? Yeah, that's right. That's great. Andy, what's up, man? It's Monday.

We are here, as we will be for the entire Game of Thrones season on Monday's talking exclusively about last night's episode of Game of Thrones. So while we want to get to Barry, we're going to get to Avengers. on Thursday when you see it? I haven't seen it yet, guys. Yeah. I'm going to see it this week, and we're going to do a special Thursday podcast.

Don't call the special 1-800 number that we have next to our computers here and spoil vendors for Andy. Has it not been spoiled for you yet? It has not. That's good. I was going to make a couple of references on last night to talk the Thrones to it,

where I was going to spoil it, but I didn't. That's good that you did that. Does Kaya know we want to do an early podcast Thursday? She does. She just psyched. She does. She's psyched.

She saw a stray Chihuahua on the road today, which is sort of like that done. Hanley song Boys of Summer. Did she stop and pick it up? No, she just seemed disturbed by it. She also saw a dog with sunglasses. I'm just filling in for Kyle here. Has she seen a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac recently?

Wow, this is, guys, we have content to get to. Last night, Chris, was season 8, episode 3, the long night, Game of Thrones. This was the one. It was a long night. This was the one everyone was waiting for. And it, you know, according to these parts, did not. disappoint. It was an hour and a half of dimly lit carnage. And I found it thoroughly engaging. I found it often exhilarating. I found it deeply entertaining. And I find it shocking that this episode is in

some ways divisive. So what's our best way in here? Well, because I want to talk about it all. I don't want to just immediately jump into the straw man. So let's do the episode first. Because I think that we should talk a little bit about why we liked the episode and then we can sort of, we can address some like of the critiques of the episode if you, if you'd like to. Yeah, because I think there are techniques, there are techniques. There are critiques on a technical level. It's too dark. That was people's critique. Yes.

Now, I just took it as an encouragement to invest in the latest 16K technology. And I found it to be a deep indictment. Did you make that case to your wife? of my television set. No, I think I told everyone on the podcast that I mentioned to her the other week that I thought maybe our TV was a tad small by current standards.

Didn't go with. She told me if I could find another room where I could put a large TV, I was welcome to do it. If you could find another room, like a secret library? In the Crips of Winterfeld below my home. So it didn't go great.

But let's talk about what we liked about this episode, first and foremost. I thought this episode was a Marvel. I thought it was incredible. I do not know how they do what they do. And I am saying that wearing the jaunty cap I've put on since I started trying to make television,

and I'm saying it wearing the drab press club cap with a little card in the bill that I used to wear when I was purely a critic. From start to finish, in terms of production, in terms of direction, in terms of choreography, and visual imagination, which is important considering it was a relatively dialogue light episode.

Yeah, a lot of... We have the close captioning on when we watch for Talk to Thrones in case there's any mythological nuggets we need to get written down there. And it was really just wind whistling, come on, retreat. Yeah.

A lot of the chestnuts you hear during battle. Man the walls. Yeah, archers. And I'm mostly judging it on a curve of mouth dropped emoji in terms of what they accomplished. And particular shouts to Miguel Sopachnik, it's one thing to pull off the battles that he's pulled off on the show in the past. It's another thing to come back knowing they've written something

that's double what you did before, and everyone's expecting you to be able to pull it off. Yeah. And I think that he did. Let's talk a little bit about it. So Sopachnik is known for doing these sort of huge action-heavy episodes for the show. He did Hard Home

and he did Battle of the Bastards. Both of those battles are shot during the daytime. Yeah. And features obviously iconic imagery. Naturally during the day, you're going to be able to orient yourself a little bit better in space.

So while I found Hard Home like thrilling, I don't necessarily, I didn't always know what side of like the gate I was on in Hard Home when they were showing like the whites attacking the gate and then there's some people beyond the gate, but then there were some people on the other side

and then there's the water. But for the most part, I understood Hardholm. I thought it had those incredible moments of John catching eyes with the Night King, all that. Shooting in the dark is a completely different beast. They obviously chose to shoot in the dark because they would be able to do different things VFX-wise with night than they would if they had shot this during the day. I imagine, right? Also, he ain't the day king. He ain't the day king.

You know what I mean? He ain't. Honestly. What if he back and he the Day King? Wow. I mean, why not? There's three episodes left. We have Charlie Day right.

It's Night Day King. It's brother of the Night King. They were trying something different. They were trying something, by the way, even more difficult because I cannot imagine, was this a month of night shoots? I mean, that's hell. Marshaling this many people shooting from what I imagine was sundown to sunup for weeks. at a time. It's outrageous. It's outrageous. I also felt, and it's interesting to compare it to Hardholm, Hardholm was such a unique set piece because it was on the bad guys on the White

Walker's turf, more or less, right? They matched the terrain. This was kind of a intentional mashup of all the styles of battles we've seen before. There was horse combat, your favorite, although it didn't last too long. There was trench warfare. There was sea, Those horses would have been better off on the show luck. I think. Well, the Knight King would have done great on the set of luck because then the show would still be running because he just would have raised them.

Yes, that's right. It was all of the types of combat we've seen before. I guess not naval, although that's coming up, all at the same time. Ariel. Right, we hadn't really ever seen that before. Some might argue we still haven't seen it because it was quite dark. Anyway, I mean, just back to Spadrachuk, I just thought the opening, I thought he basically set it up.

This felt way more like a movie than an episode of television. It felt like even the beats where they were the sort of crescendo and the CODA to the extent that there was one briefly. It felt a little bit more like a feature than it did an episode of television. It obviously broke away from the traditional Game of Thrones story structure, which is room to room to room to room going from these two sets of characters. There was a lot more movement. There was a lot more running around. I thought it had half a dozen absolutely astonishing visuals.

You know, the dragons coming back down through the clouds, the swords lighting up, the fireflies going across the field, the swords extinguishing, the horses running back, the trench lighting moment when they figure out that the whites are going to just sacrifice themselves to get across the trench.

I do understand why people might have been, like there was just like 20 minutes of savage people being torn apart but didn't die. Like there was a couple of times where Jamie, Brian, Sam were literally like being swam being swarmed by whites, and we're able to somehow fend them off. It's hard, see, it's hard because we're dancing around some of the critical points of the show when, you know, I just, I thought it was breathless and I thought it was richly entertaining,

and I thought that in just, you know, we're talking about the direction. I'm not a battle guy. I often find battles visually incoherent and ultimately uninteresting. What I found very interesting was the way Sipachnik moved his camera, in the quieter moments to communicate everything they needed to be communicated between characters through the way they looked at each other, through the way they were oriented in space. And particularly coming in the heels of two episodes that were essentially characters talking to each other and getting to know one another again and reestablishing or resetting their

relationships, it was a very, very nice counterpoint to that because this was mostly visual. It was nonverbal. And yet, in many cases, just as powerful. I am not a fan of watching shows or movies for body counts. I do not have an aria-like hit list of people that I think, despite my joke last week, of people that need to die in an episode in order for it to be satisfying. Though none of the three people on my McBain hit list died last night,

I don't find that particularly disappointing. I also don't find it like a red wedding like twist that people we expected to die didn't. There are a lot of, not dangerous, but I was going to say, I was going to say dangerous precedents. They're not dangerous. but they are risky precedents established on this show

on the part of Beniof and Weiss. And a lot of that came from those first few seasons where it confounded our expectations to such an unprecedented degree that people were spinning. Now, if you had read the books, I'm sorry, if we had read the books, if one had read the books,

you wouldn't have been, one wouldn't have been surprised by the outcome of the Red Wedding or what happened at the Sept of Baylor, et cetera, et cetera. At the time, when we were talking about them on the podcast, and I was reviewing them in recaps and things like that,

I think we were very much acknowledging that these are the sorts of wild choices you can make only if you have a track that runs past the present moment. You can kill a main character if you know that there are three or four seasons of television based on existing beloved books to carry you. Or if you have plotted it that far out. The ability to do radical ripping up of the plan or of the map or of what you expected to see, the opportunity to continue to do that after something like the Red Wedding

or after you run out of books is extremely limited, right? The show profoundly changed two plus years ago and everybody acknowledges that but one of the ways that it changed wasn't necessarily in the shortcuts it was taking or the way certain characters

were written. It was that now it was about the end game and it was about steering to a destination rather than subverting our expectations of what that destination was. What I'm trying to say at great length is that when you're this far towards a destination,

and there's a destination coming at this point, you can't do shock for shock's sake. I don't think the Red Wedding was shock for shock's sake. That was storytelling. But we've left that script a long time ago. You cannot rip up the manifest, shouts to the popular NBC series, this late on the journey.

What I'm saying is people love to talk about, like, are they going to stick the landing? Are they going to lay on the plane, right? You know what I don't want to be pranked or surprised? when we are approaching final descent towards our destination. Well, let me make the devil's advocate argument. And so all I'm saying is they have a plan.

Right. If we don't like the plan, well, we've got three more weeks to decide that, and we'll see. People are still going to die if you're really watching the show with that kind of bloodlust, which I think is bizarre and counterintuitive.

Sure. But this was what they gave us and the deaths were, you know, dramatic, if not altogether meaningful. although Jora and Theon were major characters that I think were kind of yada yotting. Yeah. They certainly had a lot of screen time.

They did. I think that the problem people have... Okay, so here's a couple. One is that... We went right into strut, man. That's my fault. But I mean, like, there's no point in it's just... I thought the episode was incredible.

You thought the episode was incredible. We can go through every scene and be like, this is why I like this scene. I can also say it didn't bother me that X, Y, or Z happen. We can do that. That's fine. What I'm saying is that like there was a specific...

I think, the Game of Thrones the show has gotten, it's lost hold of slash perpetuated some unfortunate like tropes about the show itself that they now can't control. So it's one thing to be like, who's going to sit on the Iron Throne? It's going to be another thing to be like who's going to die next week. And it just becomes this thing that even if it's not the intention of Bennyoff and Weiss and the people who are making this show becomes the dominant discourse around it. Is death is the only sort of meaningful, meaningful thing that can happen. that being said

the Dothraki are like pretty much like late 80s early 90s UNLV and they go out and get smoked in the first 30 seconds of this battle but pod lives like I get that there are some things that it's like don't make a ton of sense

well the podrick thing doesn't make sense but frankly it's not important enough for me to care yeah I mean like but that's that's the other thing is that like just like watches Lord of the Rings once you know I mean like you know I know I know it's weird that people were saying, and I saw a bunch of this criticism, that the show just

doesn't understand the fantasy world that it's based in. But in my understanding of a lot of fantasy mythology, there's hero myths, and good guys for the most part win at some cost. You know what I mean? That's not necessarily what the fantasy critique is. No, and no, I know. I'm misrepresenting it. And I do I. Yeah. So do I. I'll say, honestly, I was, maybe this also took some of the wind out of my critical sales. I was, there's no way for this to sound good, but I was bizarrely and perversely cheered to witness the death of Our Lady of Perpetual fan service.

Liana. Liana Mormon. Yeah. A character whose continued strong presence in the show was to me a larger indictment of the problems of the show. An incredible take by you. This is my, this is my purest take. The episode was good, which I agree with. And that...

They should have killed more children. The good death was Leanna, which I definitely expected you'd be like, that's fucked up, bro. No. Okay. That character is a cartoon character. Yeah.

It was supposed to be in one scene. And then, you know, in the words of Paul Wall, the internet was going nuts. I'm sure that's who David Benioff and DV-Wise quoted. You think David Benioff was like, the tweets are talking about Leanna. We've got to get her some more screen time.

For the first time ever, I watched the bros talk about, the show afterwards. She's blowing up on Soche. And let me just tell you, their Oxford game does not speak to someone who's been listening to DJ screw tapes. I'll say that. Nor does mine.

Yeah, nor does mine. I'm just saying, I don't think they do. I thought, weirdly, I thought that was a brave and appropriate choice for a character that really just seemed to be there for the tweets. Yes. And I thought it was a well-constructed end. I mean, I thought a lot of the stuff that happened in this

and this battle stuff was not that different than Battle of the Bastards. You know, and I know people had some issues with parts of Battle of the Bastards. I think it was a lot more coherent because it was during the daytime. I also thought it was a little bit duller because it was essentially just a pile of bodies

until Sonsa finally rode in with the Vale Knights. Right. I mean, like that was essentially that battle. And it had a really, really, really cool image of John pulling out his sword as like thousands and thousands of soldiers were running towards him. Yes.

But it wasn't any more unlikely that he survived that initial clash in Battle of the Bastards or survived being at the bottom of a pile of bodies than it was Jamie and Brian pinned up against a wall by dozens and dozens of zombies somehow surviving until the moment Aria kills the Night King. Right, but also Battle of the Bastards also had the moment where young Rikon didn't get the memo that offenses have changed. Sure. And just ran a straight line. He didn't respect the route treat. And we had a lot of fun with that talking about, you know, how he needed to be doing an RPO, not just the one route I had Jerry Rice run on the Madden Games on Genesis in the 90s.

Mark Clayton, TechMobile route. Just straight. But this stuff is hard. You know, I don't really know what else to say. I think that you're always going to be cutting corners. And ultimately, you want the show to be, I want a show that if it's going to make mistakes, because all shows make mistakes or not be completely thorough about something.

It's going to be in battle mechanics. And I say this is someone who criticized aspects of last season or in the sort of yada yodding of journeys. The emotional journey and the character beats you have to be true to. So when I watched last night's episode and I see what happened to Theon, I think that fits. That is an appropriate arc for this character

who was given a send-off that was appropriate to his journey on the show. Do I then think he should have just hung out for an extra second and not died? Frankly, I don't. You could make that argument all you want. I didn't think, I mean, like, yes, that's true.

He could have, but like, clearly when Bran is like, you're a good man, this is now, I already know what you're going to do here. This is the end of it, yeah. And then that by, like, slowing him down by eight seconds allows Aria to be exactly where she needs to be to do that. Here's the other thing that I have to cop to do about this. And I am legitimately curious what others think who watch the show regularly, religiously.

Sure, they will reach out. They are not shot. I do not watch the show for profundity. I've never, with a few occasional moments, I've never found it to be a deep and meditative reflection of the human condition. I found it to be visually dazzling with storytelling verve and ambition. and risk-taking and bravery. Dragons.

And dragons. That is unparalleled. Yeah. And for me, that's why last night was a towering achievement. I think that it also was a smart reflection of the facts on the ground. The facts on the ground were quite deadly last night. But I think the facts on the ground in general for a show like this, where it was going, is you can only go so far with a mute super villain.

people arguing that they wanted more Knight King. Why? I want to talk about him as a character. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and then we'll come back and we'll talk about I want to talk about the Night King problem. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Oreo cookies. The most epic cookies of all time are here.

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That's awaytravel.com slash watch and use promo code watch for $20 off a suitcase. All right, we're back. Let's talk about a bunch of the characters and what happened to them last night. Maybe that's the best way to discuss this. And the one that I want to start with is the Night King. Because I think he is this enigmatic cipher

and like whatever you kind of think about Game of Thrones you're going to put on what happened to him last night. It was a really distinctive turn. I think it was a very like difficult turn this show made a few seasons ago where they made the threat of the Night King the larger threat than the people who were cutting each other's throats at weddings. Right. And you could be a person who's just like,

I wanted an existential empire, Soron level bad to focus. on because it wasn't a really, for me, I never cared about who sat on the Iron Throne. Fair enough. Then you can be like, I actually always preferred all the backroom dealing and never really gave a shit about zombies, nor did I understand the mechanics of like what they wanted. I think both of those parties probably left last night. If you were really strong on either one of those sides, I think you probably left last night

a little bit disappointed. That being said, I didn't really walk out of last night being like, I don't know what the Night King's motivation is. I felt like the Knight King's motivation for doing what he was doing was spelled out pretty clearly. Now, did he get a rich mythel, like, backstory other than the few flashbacks we saw of his creation? Not really.

Often those characters don't really, like, I don't, you don't often get like a huge explanation as to why. That guys want to be bad. They want to take over the world. Yeah, ultimately. For you, was that a satisfying conclusion of what was a multi-season arc that really ends pretty abruptly. Yeah. And two, what do you think it says about like

the larger decision of like how much of an investment they made in a character and in a threat to just sort of like brush the chessboard off? Well, look, if it was a MacGuffin, as some people were saying it was, it was a MacGuffin to bring the disparate two dozen characters of the show together in one place. So it worked. I think as a uniting concept, it worked. If I'm going to peek ahead and...

So he's the... He's the infinity gauntlet. Basically, if I'm going to peek ahead and think about some of the lines from last week's episode about what we do after and Deneris's creepy smile that she gave to Sansa that then took over the internet, I would say that the show is trying to say something potentially sneakily profound, which is to say that you can't beat a made-up enemy like death. That's not the point. I think someone last night said we can't, you can't beat death.

You could maybe... That's what the hound said that. Right. He was like, it's death. You can't beat death. death. And that's when Barrack's like she can or she is. But all of these

outrageous sacrifices and behaviors and triumphs, all of it in the name of something that felt larger than life. It was truly existential. And then now what? And I'm pretty curious about a show that it's giving us three plus hours of now what.

Point two to your question is, I'm not sure if it's done. There are many people who think that Brand becomes the Night King somehow and that there's some sort of time loop stuff. Now, I don't get the strong vibe that that's what the show is doing. The moment for that to happen was last night.

Probably. Yeah. My third point is, back to this idea of having a mute super villain. The Night King kind of sucks. He's boring. We don't want to spend time with him. Circe is fascinating and loathsome and compelling

and interesting. And she talks, and she has a history with these characters. I'm glad that the show rightly decided that she was the big bad or the final boss or whatever you want to put it, however you want to put it. not only does the Night King kind of suck,

Brand kind of sucks. I get that that is hearsay if you have read the books in all the accompanying literature and the mythology and everything. But the books of mythology and the books period are the place for those stories.

That is the best way to be delivered those stories. You could spend a season on it. You could tell me that he's no longer brand, that he's a three-eyed raven. You could have a character literally turn to the camera and say, all this is because he wants to kill Brand,

because Brand is living memory and without memory, we're all dead. Fine. I'm still not that interested in. Frankly, it's kind of empty to me. And I think that this idea that some people feel cheated because John kept saying, oh, there's only one war left and it's the Great War Against Death. Well, that's life.

That's a metaphor, homies. That's what life is. I can't believe anyone would want more than 90 minutes of that. Were they going to, I mean, we even suggested this last week, were they going to fall back to the Iron Islands and then re-engage the forces of death at a later date? Were there going to be a series of skirmishes with death over three to four more episodes? No, I mean, there was no, obviously, like, what we saw last night in that battle was there was no way to beat them without going around back and cutting off the head. Right. So there was never going to be like we had a, we had like a military victory over those zombies.

So I think it was best that it was in parentheticals of this 90-minute movie that, featured highs and lows and very different types of storytelling. I mean, when we talk more about ARIA, we could talk about the zombie movie that they put in the middle of the battle movie, which I thought was really clever. I wouldn't be so quick to say that it meant nothing. Solely because television shows are about journeys, not destinations,

and everything except maybe the Dirty Dozen Mission was kind of worth it to get here. And whether I think that there are the master storytellers that some do or not, I'm not even weighing in on it when I say that there are more cards left to play. Yeah, I definitely think that the next episode could have a huge twist where Brand and the magic fantasy element of the Night King and their transference between one another could come into play or not.

Or it could immediately go to Sanzo and Danny giving each other like death stares across conference tables and that could be the story for the rest of the episodes. I think it's complicated, man. that they're, because what also happens, and this happened a little bit with Lost, and this happened a little bit with Breaking Bad, and this happened a little bit with the Sopranos. I mean, with Lost, I'm getting incredibly, like,

heavy Lost vibes off of the, you know, the discourse around Game of Thrones. Now, I agree that lots of people, like, I understand why people didn't like the end of Lost, totally. But I think that in some ways, this is a story that probably should have, the Game of Thrones story should have been told for, like, 10 seasons or 11 seasons,

If you wanted it to have that perfect balance of the every moment seems earned and built up and explained and properly motivated and everything is coherent and clear. But that's just not what's happening. So I'm kind of enjoying it for what it is, I guess. The Night King stuff is interesting. It's like I don't know what the alternative to last night would have been. I think that what you're, one thing also to remember, remember, in light of the conversation we had the other week about how everything is an extended universe now, did they have the confidence to write off essentially a major mythological portion

of the show as a character beat, which is what it was. It was essentially they turned it into an aria test, the final test for Arya. Were they confident enough to do that because they know that there are going to be prequels and sequels and spinoffs of the show for the next two decades that will have a lot more stuff to play with. I think the pre... Mal brought that up last night about whether or not there was some element of the long night prequel coming

that they were like, we'll answer all the questions you have about the Night King with this other show. I think there has to be a part of that. I think there... And I don't even say that in a cynical way or in afarious way.

I'm not suggesting that someone at corporate told them to pull their punches and their reveals because there are more stories to tell. I think the knowledge that there would be more stories gave them the confidence to make it a character beat, which is probably what they always wanted to do anyway.

It's funny. This is why it's taking him probably so long to write these books. Yeah. It's because to actually write out this story, the way people have it in their head, and the way to answer all the questions and to show all these things. I'm sure that beat for beat,

this will probably be what's in those books if they ever get published. But to tell them in the way that Beniof and Weiss have told them, and it is, I grant you, that it does feel like it's listening. listening to a podcast on 1.5 speed right now. It is, it is racing towards a finish line. But, I don't know, it didn't bother me.

I thought it was a really cool moment. I guess people, you know, let's talk a little bit about ARIA. Just to say, this is one of the chestnuts I bring up all the time, but I'll say it again because it feels very relevant here, which is that endings are hard and people are very, very uncomfortable with endings because an ending is the moment where you have to stop pretending that your version of the show is the canonical version. the version of the show that you carry with you, the character that you think is the,

that you actually think is the hero, the ending that you've dreamed up, that the... This is why people lost their minds about Last Jedi. Right. All the theories that you've been working on and tending to and publishing or blogging about or the entire industry in the case of Game of Thrones,

us included that has grown up around it, ultimately, it's not our show. It is, and I don't even mean it's HBO's show because I think that HBO, like many, TV networks have in the past when these circumstances over the last two decades let this be

David Benioff and Dan Weiss's show and this is the ending for these characters that they've decided on. Now yes, was there George Martin influence? Did they get secret scrolls from him? Probably.

But you mentioned loss, that's the piece of loss that is most relevant to me that Damon and Carlton ended the show the way they wanted to end it. The show they were making the whole time and people lost their minds. Because nobody wants,

both people don't want things to end full stop, but they also don't want it to be taken away from them. There's a possessiveness of fandom, and particularly television fandom, that is one of the reasons why television is so unique and fantastic, but it also can be cancerous during the sort of last skirmishes before the end. Yeah, and I also think that things have changed so much in the last 10 years where our engagement with popular culture is largely seen in terms of return on investment. Was this worth the time that I spent on it?

Was this worth the time that I spent reading about it? Was this worth the time that I spent thinking about it? Was it worth the time to orient my week around Sundays so that I was home to see this thing that I was told was supposed to be the most important battle sequence ever filmed? And et cetera and et cetera, et cetera. And all the time that we spent wondering about whether or not Bran was the Night King or whether time travel was possible and whether or not one of the core five characters was going to die in the Battle of Winterfell because, the show has taught me that a main character could die at any time, and the whole point was to subvert our understanding of these hero stories rather than to just execute along the same beats that we always see.

All those things, I think that largely what happens is you're like, that was not worth my time. That was not worth my effort. When was the last time a major Game of Thrones character was killed in a surprising way, like in a way that caught the universe off guard and no one was prepared for? Oberyn? I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think so too. It was all from the book.

It was all seasons ago. And we've been coasting on that outrageous, not just goodwill, but on that sense of danger ever since. Aspects of the storytelling, once it became a TV show, by the way, not an adaptation of open-ended beloved books, the storytelling got more traditional. And it happened years ago. And it's interesting to me that people are suddenly complaining about now that the bill is due.

You know what I mean? I'm fine with that. Yeah. let's talk about aria let's talk about are you who became the hero of the show last night in some ways I mean has always had that and then if you go back and there's some great writing

about it but there's just they've basically been pointing towards this for most of the show you know I thought that that moment was really cool I mean that the staging of it has its detractors I thought it was pretty neat I didn't really worry about like how she got there or how she managed to get by undetected

I mean we spent so many seasons with her in Esos, like doing different crap that I didn't need to see her, like, quietly. She got out of that library. Also, we saw her not just fight, but be the most interesting fighter on the show. Yes. And I thought it was a really amazing moment. I think that there needs to be another beat about it. I don't think that if that next episode is like, we killed the Night King.

It's over. Yeah. That's going to be a little bit abrupt. but what this means for her, what this means, Mao brought this up last night, what this means for all the messianic prophecies in the story and like for the assumptions about who should be

the king or queen of the seven kingdoms, but also who is the prince or princess who was promised is all really, really fascinating to me now. Yeah, I mean, look. That's your payoff, though. Arria is the return on investment. Stark's got to protect Starks.

I mean, I, I think that what the show kind of did was say that it was just about family protecting your house. You know, the Melisandra part was great, great having her back. Loved her calm under pressure. One last geriatric nude scene for the people. But what was she doing?

And what did she do? And what about her prophecies were right and what was wrong? Because she had magic power and the Lord of Light definitely could light stuff up. But, to your point, this final thing happened in the place that is most representative of the old gods.

And the death blow was delivered by someone who is deeply steeped in some multi-faced eastern prophecies. She basically read the liner notes to three Wu-Tang albums and then came home from college. It was like, guess what? Sheldon. The Wu-Tang could be dangerous. I mean, but ultimately she was just protecting her brother.

Yeah. who's not her brother, as he loves to say. So I'm interested in all that. But truly, I have never cared about anything less than how she got from the window. To the wall. I have the ancient prophecies of the Ying-gang twins told me how she was able to do that.

I mean, that was when I was, when they got me tweeting again last night, man. They got me tweeting. I, logging onto Twitter after watching the episode last night. I felt a little bit like Tyrion and the Crips where I was like, I should go do something and someone should have said, you're here for a reason because you're smart,

you'll die if you go out there and I was like, nah, I can go out there. They need me out there. That was my mistake. That was the one character I related to and the other character I related to was the hound being like, fuck this. Like, I don't think I could really defend or shoot arrows, but have a panic attack and a knave somewhere? Yeah, I could manage that.

Anyway, Anyway, it really was significant for me in the spirit of the show that we've watched and the character that we've watched and the actor that we've watched to suddenly see her be the hero, to be really good at fighting, to be really good at fighting in a unique and interesting way that speaks to who she is, who she was, and what she became. and to see her bring all of the trauma and torment and stress of her journey to bear in her decision making. What version of last night's show is more satisfying if we tipped what she was doing and saw her make her way to the tree?

Yeah. No version. That sort of stuff now. Maybe that speaks to a larger flaw with the episode that many people were immediately drawn. you know, they want to get into the metadata and see where everyone was at every moment and what it means and how they were able to pull it off.

As opposed to saying, look at the editing here and the emotional storytelling that has woven together in these last minutes to get us to a point where I did not know what was going to happen.

Where all this brand Night King stuff, I expected him to just like, you know, dab him up and be like, okay, let's do this. Let's become the same person. I don't know. Yeah. I didn't see that coming.

the sleight of hand is really impressive. Do you go to the Magic Castle? And you're like, that was great, that was great. But how did you do it? No, seriously, how did you do it? Some people do. And that's fine, I guess. Brand, largely out of commission for this episode,

working out, flying crows. Brand is super. Not helping anyone out with his crow recon. Really not doing anything with that? Also, now that the Night King is dead, Brand's utility, it's like, the bill is due on brand. Yeah. You know, it's like a startup that everybody has put their VC into.

Now they're like, guess what, Doc? No, he's like, you've got to go public. He's like, he's like the team with championship aspirations that keeps a lugy on its roster. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's just like, well, that team has a power, that team has a left-handed power bat. You can't pitch, but you can do one thing really well to neutralize the other guy. Yeah.

And then that guy goes on the injured list. His, he probably has the most crucial episode of his character's arc next episode. Because if they just keep wheeling him around and he's just like, I know what's going to happen but I'm not going to tell you. It's going to be... Let's talk. That actually is going to be like

what is happening, guys. Because, and this is where the rubber really meets the road for the fantasy storyline for me because in the beginning, I think the show brought on a lot of skeptics and even the HBO brass because they were saying,

it's set in this world, but it's not that thing. This isn't Tolkien. This is Deadwood, right? We were saying this last week. This is the wire. This is all these other prestige dramas that are about life or how to live life.

Power and power and all these other dynamics. And I'm the type of fan that is hopeful we can return to that again and be about these characters interpersonal relationships and the actual busy work of governing and asking these tough questions that are rarely asked in an epic of this nature. What now? What are we supposed to do? Yeah. And having this sort of vestigial tale of fellowships,

of the ring hanging around, Wargan, who's just like, yeah, you can do this thing, but it's already been done. That's exhausting. Yes. And ultimately not that interesting. So can they pivot again? Can they find an interesting way to integrate that?

I'm curious to see. I will say that my biggest critique of last night's episode was that, and this is not a critique so much as like it is, it's almost an impossible equation to solve against, is that they brought all these characters together. They obviously gave a tip that, they tipped that any, of them could go because we are going to sing Jenny of the Old Stones and

Night Breyan and drink a lot and it's going to be a nice send-off. Was Jenny of the Old Stones on an early Bell in Sebastian EP or was that later? The Trevor Horn album. It's on Tiger Milk. Yeah. They they then basically only had enough room to give

half of the characters something to do during the fight. Other than not die. Yeah. Like Clegane had a plot Aria had a plot. To some extent, even Tyrion and Sonsa had a plot because they were able to talk

with one another in a coherent way. John and Danny had a plot in so much as they were flying up in the air and getting caught in a blizzard. Really can't wait for my next cross-country flight winter. And then you've got characters who are incredibly interesting like Brian and Jamie,

who were essentially just background. And that was one of the things I was just like, at the end of the day, Jamie didn't have to be there. Right. Like Jamie's purpose was filled when he knighted Brienne and more so when he just told him

by the way, Cersi's not coming. Well, and that he did this with them and has now experienced this side of the world and is now bound to his companions in this world. Right. I thought that that was a fair critique that it's just like you've got these main characters who are essentially spending the entire time

somehow overcoming impossible odds to stay alive until the moment Ari is able to make everything all right. I mean, the bummer can be when characters who were compelling, interesting, entertaining in their own right, secondary tertiary characters, their deaths are purely in the service of more important characters. Dolor said, by the way, should have been number one on any ranking, just when they spent time on him being there. Yeah. Because he survived for such a long time. But as soon as he helps up or reaches to help up, Sam, you know he's going to get that surprised look men only get. when a spear enters in the back of their skull.

Yeah, that is a really distinctive look. It is, but similarly... I'll give you that look one day. You've given that look when I told you I wasn't coming on Thursday show at the last minute. You have felt the show... What? I've seen it in your eyes.

I mean, look, this is also the limits of a TV show versus the book. I always really like the character of Barrick-Dand-Derry, and he looked cool. He had a flaming sword. Great actor. interesting point of view coming into the action but deeply a supporting character because we're never really

going to tell his story or what it means or that he only has one life left so he gives his one life left in support of keeping Are you alive? That was the purpose he was supposed to serve

according to Melasander Right, okay then that was it Let's wrap up this way What's a satisfying way for next week to begin? For you? Greyworm

blows up Just spontaneously. 62 minute tracking shot of gray worm getting on a boat and leaving. Yeah, no. Just gray worm luxuriating in an open field where no one has a crossboat bolt aimed at him. Where do you want this to go? I do want to just take a moment and say, before we get to that, because the one thing we didn't talk about was, you know,

Denares is real reckless with her dragons. I know. Just because you have three. Like, you shouldn't go to a casino with her. It's like pull up, Maverick, pull up. That's what I'm saying. Like, we've talked about this before many times in person. Yeah.

Occasionally on the podcast. I don't understand gambling. I don't understand the desire to do it. If I won $5, I would be like, that's fantastic, good night and good luck. De Neres is sitting down at the blackjack table being like, I love craps. Yes, yes. AKA how do you play craps? I just feel like

there are probably better ways to utilize what we all thought was the nuclear codes. She's quite literally a hot head. Yeah. So that gives me some, gives me pause. Yes, sure. That's it.

I think that John's journey from rookie to quite literally Maverick and Top Gun on a dragon that he is flying without speaking any of the dragon language that he's flying just by holding on really tight. It's pretty impressive. But to catch up, because again,

I had the wrong TV for this episode. I got the message. What dragon survived? Hers? Both hers and John survived. Where's Johns? He's chilling. He crashed landed.

He's just relaxing with some... He's like Embed. He's icing his knees. He's just... Oh, I get it. Load management. It's going to be a game time decision, wink, wink, wink. Did you see he has gastrointestinitis today?

Embed? Yeah. I've never related to anyone more. Okay, so that... I am very fascinated by the fact that... Will they take everything that happens and basically, like, stick to it? Because Aria is supposed to be reckoned with now.

Now, Sansa, still on the verge of zombie death, was still throwing shade at Dineris. Yeah, she hates her. John his whole platform is gone his whole thing was like the Night King I looked into his eyes this is the real threat

existential death we can worry about other stuff later and P.S. My name is Agon Targaryen By the way, yeah, I'm your nephew and then Danny in the trailer looks like she's doing quite well that everybody's toasting her that everybody's just like thanks for doing that you got it

sorry what'd she do let me just revisit She did kill like 10,000 whites with her dragon I just feel like she could have done 10,000 thousand more. Okay. I've got notes. See, you're just like everybody else.

No, no. You've got your fatigues. What's satisfying about next week? I mean, I am very curious what this show is now. This was the existential threat. This was everything that we were building to. This was what John and De Nera's united for. This is why there were unsullied and Dothraki and Northern soldiers and a

Lannister all on the same battlefield for the first time in the show, and essentially, it'll be the first time in the show's fictional history. So with that out of the way, what have we got? And one concern I have is the show is now quite top-heavy, in that it's CERC and Uron Greyjoy who no one cares about. I care about it. Yeah, but Uron Grayjoy, no one cares about. I'm sorry.

Yeah, Cersie is enough to care about quite a bit. Yeah. but Circe the mountain Kaiburn and you're on Greyjoy and I guess just Braun as wildcard

is not exactly a stack deck against every other character surviving if Brian kills Jamie like in the next episode where he's like I'm here I got

paying gold by your sister you're dead that everybody will get their death that they were like it's a ruthless show that would be quite ruthless

but this is also the people I think who are complaining most about the deaths are probably also the people who care a lot about prophecy in the show.

And so you knew going into this that Jamie wasn't going to die. It was weird that people thought he would. You know, you knew that or that the hound. The hound is going to fight his brother. But the argument against that is that John Snow was the wolf of the north,

the king of the north, and that he was like the one who was figuring it all out and that he got a throat slit for love. You mean Rob? What I say John? Yeah, Rob.

Oh, yeah. Look. Yes, but Rob didn't have a prophecy, did he? He had, there was expectation both in the world of the show. I don't think we were as aware of prophecy at that point in the show, right?

Like, if you were just watching the show, I don't know that Prince who was promised was, I mean, it was Stanis, you know what you mean? Like, that was like a fringe kind of like idea. Right. I think. And now the only people who are mad are the diehard Stanis. Right.

Stanis is Stanis. Stan I. I'm really curious. I think that this was, I stand by what I predicted last week, which is, that this was an unprecedented episode. I think it was a marvel of execution

and a production and of visual storytelling. I loved watching it. I thought it was thrilling. I thought it was fun. And now I'm really curious. I'm really curious what... Now that we've cleared the debris, we've de-iced the plane.

We're going to stick with this metaphor. I'm very curious where they are landing it. What is the show that most interests and motivates them? is it a show about that some of us hoped from the beginning? Is it a show about power dynamics and the impossibility

or of compromise and change over long periods of time especially in such an entrenched and deep, dark and violent world? Or is it the plain that I think some people, and I mean this charitably and honestly, some people fear and accuse the show of being,

which is essentially at this point unworthy airs doing kind of fan service to characters that they love from the outside. Sure. That they don't have as adapters of the work, that they don't necessarily have profound things to say

about either the world, fictional world or the real world. What they are doing is trying to service the world and characters that they and now millions and millions and millions of others thanks to their efforts love. Yeah. Which is a very different kind of thing and should be judged on kind of a different scale.

We'll see what we get. But I just say again, like, what a pleasure it was to watch that show. And to know that everyone else was watching it. It's cool. It's cool even to have the debate. To mix it up in the trenches. We're arguing about really interesting stuff.

So we'll be back on Thursday for Avengers. Yeah. Are you committing to me? Yeah. Yes, I want to see this movie. All right. I'm not going to stab you in the back. I'll see you Thursday.

You're looking at me like I'm not going to be there. If I said I would meet you at the tree, I'll be at the tree. Which one of us is Theon? I have your mark on me now. I'll see you Thursday. Thank you.