I was a little disappointed they had Arya go to discover America instead of founding the organization she imagined the Faceless Men were when she set out to join them to replace Varys and his little birds. I might have read too much into the pale horse appearing out of nowhere. Other than that it was fine given that there was a lot of stuff than needed tying up in not much time.
It bothered me that there was 'not much time', yet we had plenty of time to watch Tyrion shuffle chairs... And still (I felt) a lot of loose ends. Everything was just incredibly rushed, and I felt like that marred the significance of what was occurring.
The argument that things were "rushed" is an interesting one to me. The Night King gains a dragon and the wall comes down. There are 8 90-minute episodes left. That's more than the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Two thirds of Harry Potter. It's as many episodes as the last "season" of The Sopranos, except each episode is half again as long. It's more episodes than the last season of Mad Men, more episodes than the last season of Breaking Bad. The final season of Game of Thrones is twelve hours. All four Avengers movies is ten hours. So - in more time the ENTIRE AVENGERS SERIES we have to kill the night king - who is either killable or not - and defeat Cersei. That's the show. We go from "undead dragon marching on Winterfell" and "Barbarian hordes landing at Hastings" to "final, inevitable battles" in eight. Ninety minute. Episodes. If you keep in mind that George "RR" Martin worships John "RR" Tolkien, Frodo throws the ring into Mount Doom at Part 2, Chapter 3. That's 2/3rds of the way through Return of the King. Arya kills the Night King at the end of Episode 3. The rest of LoTR is all mop-up. We could have had four episodes of "Who will Sansa marry" and "what book will Samwell write" and "will the Unsullied sail off to chickless Club Med" but instead we had "and also Danerys is Hitler" which, as above, she's been raised in a revenge plot environment since she was a mewling babe. The Starks wanna be left alone in a world free of White Walkers. Danerys wants to wipe out everyone who doesn't bend the knee. We got six hours of "how do you solve a problem like Maria" and yes. We got to watch two minutes of shuffling chairs. Because in the end? We had 73 episodes to show us it's nothing but shuffling chairs. Just had my teeth cleaned. The dental hygenist was mad because she doesn't know what the dragon is gonna do with the dead queen. You're not supposed to know. Some ends are supposed to be loose. Although someone on Twitter did quip "behind every king there's a woman who dragged him around for three years never to be heard from again." I appreciated that one.
When you put it into that context it is a lot of time. And absolutely it could have been a snooze-fest after the Night King's demise. I'm not unhappy with the plot at all (other than what the hell was Bran doing warging in Winterfell? Was he just trying to get a better view of the battle? - actually, maybe I'm just super slow... Was he warging so the Night King would be able to find him?) the dragon is gonna do with the dead queen. This made me chuckle a bit. I'm going back to work today after a week on holiday - it will be interesting to see what my colleagues made of the finale. If I'm honest... I had a horrible premonition as Drogon flew off of some stupid dragon egg unhatching reveal a la Godzilla (1998). Very glad that wasn't the case.The dental hygenist was mad because she doesn't know what
Did you read the books? I don't say that to indicate "you are not a true fan if you didn't read the books" because fuckin' hell, the last book was a snoozer. But an early and often divergence between the books and the series is "warging". Arya makes one appearance in the entire fourth book - having gone blind in the third - and that's to "warg" around and kick the shit out of her master amongst the Faceless Men. Martin makes it crystal clear that what makes Arya such a ninja badass is her ability to "warg" into whatever random creatures are around long enough to get a good sense of the battleground and then "warg" back to open a can of whoopass. I think the showrunners took a long, hard look at the source material and said "let's minimize this 'jumping into other bodies' bit as much as possible because it's confusing and off the spine." I also get the sense that they reduced the airtime of the wolves. They were a lot more important in the book. I don't think this was a bad decision - but I think it made the whole "warging" thing confusing and weird. Bran was drawing attention to himself, plain and simple. Which is a pretty weak use of the all-seeing, all-knowing eye but really, battles are often won by the stupidest shit.
I did read the books, but that was so long ago that I'm not confident enough in my memory of the source material to draw any real comparisons. (I completely forgot that Arya was even able to warg). Having said that, I think you're right about the downplaying of the wolves. They seemed a much more integral part of the written material than the series. I'll definitely have to go through the books again for a refresher.
Arya has never been a joiner. She told us in the beginning she didn't want to be a princess. She is given exactly three chances to do something other than satisfy her vengeance in that show - the first time she saves the faceless man and gets an invite. The second time she leaves the Hound for dead (and robs him) but he comes back and becomes her only friend. The third time she tries to lead a mother and child to safety and they're burned to death by a dragon minutes later. The white horse is for us: - Revelation 6:7-8 Arya legit beholds a pale horse and turns her back on death. She goes from "murder list" to "marco polo" because while she's wandered all over creation looking for better ways to kill, she hasn't stopped to smell the flowers. Arya ends the series going where she has no wrongs to right, no enemies to slay and no reason to open a can of whoop-ass on anyone.When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.
Yeah, I got the allusion to Revelation, I just thought it meant the Many-Faced God was watching out for her for some reason, because she did pass her initiation even if she didn't stick around after. Giving up violence for sailing is a nicer ending than the one I thought was coming, and it makes sense, it just seemed out of the blue because I was expecting the Westrosi Inquisition.
