8x04 Review Thread (Spoilers)

A mess. Parts of it I liked, but a mess.

Of course it's great television, but I absolutely hate the direction the story is heading. It really looks like they're gonna give us the most downer ending possible.

I lowkey wish the show had ended with 8x03.

I'm so ready for this show to be over, holy shit.

I thought this episode was much better than last week, but still not great.

Pros:

Opening - I really liked the cold opening and the funeral pyre scene. It was really heart warming to see Sansa pin the Stark broach on to Theon before the procession. Apart from his ridiculous charge into the Night King, I was happy with the wrap up of his arc and his redemption. He was a good man in the end.

Drunk Tormund was pretty funny. I'm guessing we won't see more of the Wildlings, which I guess is fine, so I hope he and Ghost have a happy life together. It's something that won't ever be answered in the show, but I can't recall if there were many Wildlings who didn't join Mance and thus are still out there (though of course a lot would have been wiped out at Hardhome). They weren't many 'Northern Wildings', if you will, left.

Varys . Finally, finally, finally they allow the Spider to once again spin his web in our final Act. I am so glad after so many seasons that we finally see Varys back to his scheming origins, and having the same motivations of protecting the little person and the Realm. I thought Conleth Hill was fantastic tonight, especially in the Throne Room of Dragonstone with Tyrion. I guess Jon is our fAegon in a sense.

Sandor. As always, I'm happy to get more Sandor scenes. I thought his scenes with both Sansa and Arya were well done. I hope he makes it out of the season alive.

Meh

Greyjoys - On the one hand, I am happy to see the Greyjoys dominate a naval battle. This is something the show has seriously neglected, in my opinion, and it is great to see them just outright destroy Dany's fleet. That being said, them hitting 3/3 bolts on Rhaegal whilst they're hiding behind a rock and the missing a dozen or so on Drogon? Fuck off.

Cons

Battle scars, or lack thereof. I thought it was just insult to injury that the majority of the characters had minor scrapes and bruises after the Battle for Winterfell. Brienne had a bruised eye, and I think one bruise on her leg, when she was constantly swarmed by the Army of the Dead. Jaime had nothing. Arya had her head smashed against concrete and nothing of it. Fuck off.

Jaime. Him going back to Cersei is such a yawn-fest. The whole "I'm a bad man, I've done bad things speech" really irked me. Fuck his arc, I guess. He's just bad. I thought Gwendoline Christie's acting in the final scene between them was excellent, and it's so sad to see Brienne get her hopes ripped away from her once she's attained what she always wanted; but that's GoT for you I guess.

Bronn - the whole Bronn scene was a big cringe-fest and a yikes from me. I don't really have much to say about it. If he does end up getting Highgarden, I guess it is kind of poetic (?) considering the Tyrells only got it from being in the right place and bending the knee. 

General thoughts

Missandei - she just conveniently survives the Battle for Winterfell, the naval destruction, somehow gets found and captured, just for the purpose of being executed to drive the plot forward? Yawn. They should have had the Greyjoy fleet do what they did previously and raid the ship Missandei was on and take her that way. Though of course you'd have to write something for that, and not just cut away and make things up off screen. I did think her getting fucking yeeted off the walls after she died was visually nice, however.

Cersei's innocent meat shield is going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Will Dany just be another Aerys II who will do whatever she needs to, to obtain/retain power?

I thought it was laughable that Drogon is sitting still in the back, behind Dany's lacklustre showing of Unsullied and the multiple Scorpions and archers do not fire at him. Cersei is ruthless and pragmatic, I doubt she would give two shits that Dany was there trying to negotiate peace. If you could take out your enemy's last nuke, why the fuck wouldn't you try?

I'm used to seeing mixed reactions to GOT episodes, including the best ones, but this time what I'm seeing is a mostly negative reaction from everyone.

TBH I think he had her until he said the word "lady". The show has made it a trigger word for Arya.

If D&D don't hate Arya completely, she will have a chat with the Hound and a nice ending with Gendry, either in Storm's End or somewhere else.

But after Arya saying she is not coming back to WF (her goal for 5 seasons) I imagine the dreaded "what's west of Westeros" theory will come true. Because that's bittersweet and shocking. They seem to be going for Mad Queen Dany because no one expected it besides Dany haters, Jaime is going back to Cersei (hopefully he lied to Brienne to protect her and is going to KL to stop her), Varys conspires against Dany with no regard for the huge losses she has suffered lately, Sansa once again puts her own self-interest ahead of her family, Bran still has barely any personality despite not having to monitor the NK anymore. Is like the character progression they had for the last few seasons doesn't matter anymore.

I'm drained. I was wondering if the show would be able to engage me in the war with Cersei because episode 3 felt like the ending, and this episode has done nothing to spark my interest. Last week I wanted episode 4 ASAP. I don't feel the same about episode 5. I'll watch the last two episodes because I'm not going to quit now, but I feel really detached from the show and unless they do a 180, I think I will stay that way.

The White Walkers turn into ice shards when they die but Wights just crumble. So if they're skeletal and the only thing keeping them together is magic then they'll collapse into pieces, but it seems freshly-dead corpses will just fall down since there's still other stuff holding all the bones together.

lmao

Ugh. I really did not care for this episode. The writing was horrific. The acting carried this one.

I will update this post in a bit.