Because I was planning to give it an 8 or 9. This is nowhere near as good as Watchers on the Wall, Blackwater or Rains of Castamere. Those are the only episodes that got a 10 from me.
Well, here it goes.
The episode was hyped as the best GoT episode ever, so my expectations were extremely high.. and I was kinda disappointed. Here it goes.
I thought that Meereen was good this episode. It's always fun to see Tyrion use his wits.. and finally good to see Dany getting a top adviser. The conversation between Dany and Tyrion was great.. except I felt that Emilia Clarke was mediocre at best in this scene. The wheel speech was quite forced, but Tyrion absolutely nailed that scene.
Cersei prison scenes were top class, Lena Headey was so good in this episode, easily the best performance in the entire episode. The despair, the anger, tremendous stuff! Qubyrn was good, Cleganebowl is getting closer and closer.
No Stannis no party. The scene between Sansa and Theon might be one of my favorites this season. Of course it doesn't beat the confession at the heart tree, but it's good enough. Sophie and Alfie have been so good this season. Reek is starting to think more like Theon and that's good to see. The scene was so emotional, first Sansa's anger and then realization struck: Bran and Rickon are still alive. Someone call the Greatjon so that he can bring Rickon.
Roose didn't give the rue the day speech, but at least his scene about tactics was quite good. I'm praying that Ramsay's guerrilla tactics don't work on Stannis. He's trying to start a mutiny.
Ah.. Hardhome. The negotiation scene with Jon & the wildlings was fantastic. I loved it. It was great to see leaders from different clans and some were ready to co-operate. Jon's speech was great. Then came the army of the dead..
I have never seen a got scene so hyped up, so I was expecting it to be superb. But for some reason it wasn't. Like Fire and Blood said, there was some quite floppy and queer camerawork. Some scenes felt like they were on a fast forward and the fight was too quick at times. We got more
spooky scary skeletons. Then the WW came and saved the day. I loved the fight between Jon and a White Walker. That WW looked fantastic. The slaughter was quite brutal, as it should be. The death of the random wildling woman (I don't remember her name) was quite sad. Wun Wun is always a plus. For some reason, I was disappointed with the Night's Kings, he didn't look so kingly and I liked his season 4 look better.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the Hardhome scene, it was intense, but IMO it didn't live up to the hype and somethings just didn't work. Also Kristofer Hivju and Kit Harrington deserve a special mention. Those 2 were solid. After re-evaluating I decided to give it a solid 9. It was action packed and probably in the top 3 episodes of season 5.
