What did you think of the fourth episode of Season 07, “The Spoils of War”? Leave your feedback here and let us know! We’ll share your thoughts and discuss your reactions in our next episode!
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Loved it!
I thought overall they did a great job of editing this episode. It was shorter than normal, however I didn’t care about the length. The dialog was concise, acting was great and there’s a lot packed in here. I really liked the Dothraki/Lannister battle scene. I give this a 85 out of 100. I thought the Dany won this weeks Game of Thrones. (Arya was a close second.)
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Good:
*I loved especially in this episode how much it showed me how the Starks have changed. When they were children, Sansa talked about being a lady and now she is one and Arya talked about being a fighter and now she is one.
*The scene with Meera Reed really helped me see Bran’s transformation and that Bran did die in the cave (or a least a big part of him.)
*The scene with Arya and the guards shows how much she has grown (when you go back and compare it to her with the guards at King’s Landing in Season One.)
*Arya sparring with Brienne; fantastic! I thought it was well choreographed. The look on Little Finger’s face was priceless. Boy does he have to play nice now.
*Sansa’s interactions with Arya and Bran really show me how much she has become wise and unphased by life and I loved how she didn’t miss a beat after sharing a glance with Arya when Bran said Cersei was on her list and asked who else was on the list?. Their interactions definitely drew them closer together.
*George R.R Martin has hinted that the ending would be bitter sweet to Thrones. The way the Starks have all changed definitely shows this.
*Bronn’s struggle to get to the Ballista was a gripping couple of minutes. I don’t think I have ever seen this many folks on fire in a scene.
* I loved how they edited out dialog (like the conversation about Lady Olenna being defeated by Jaime.)
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The Bad:
*I didn’t like Jon’s response to Dany about what to do. It really didn’t give her much direction. As if the people of Westeros would stare in wonder to what she has achieved (make other impossible things happen) and then agree to allow her to lead them? Really? This I thought could have been better dialog.
* How and when did Bronn learn to shoot the Ballista? Bronn seemed surprised when Jaime asked him to shoot it (since he was one handed) which implied to me he didn’t know what he was doing.
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The Unknown:
*Does Bran know that Little Finger was the one that set off everything by convincing Lysa to poison Jon Arryn?
* Does Bran truly not know who the dagger belonged to? When Bran quotes Little Finger with ‘Chaos is a Ladder’, does Little Finger think that Bran is toying with him
and that he does know who the dagger really belongs to?
* Are the symbols spells that give the glass it’s powers or just to document what it is to be used for?
*Is Randyll Tarly dead? I didn’t see him get roasted.
*Is Meera Reed love Bran? Is that why she is morning his loss? (In his three eyed Raven transformation.)
More elaborating on the Bad
Clarifying the Bad areas:
*I didn’t like Jon’s response to Dany about what to do. It really didn’t give her much direction and I thought this was a great opportunity to have him give her sound advice that would draw them both closer together and also propel her to action. As if the people of Westeros would stare in wonder at the Dragons (and then hope she makes other impossible things happen) and then agree to allow her to lead them? Really? This I thought could have been better dialog.
He has already stated he thinks the fight for the Iron Throne is pointless and he does need everyone’s help fighting the White Walkers, so I think the best thing he could do to persuade her to help him is to help her win the iron throne first (with sound advice, troops or whatever) so he could then use her and her troops up North. The quickest way to do that is to tell her to use her Dragon’s against Cersei’s troops (in all future battles), which Dany did anyway in this episode. Otherwise Jon has to try and persuade everyone south of the wall that the White Walkers are real and an imminent threat to their existence and how is he going to do that?
The Dagger during the Arya/Brienne Sparring Match
Ha! I just realized that Little Finger saw Arya with the Dagger he gave to Bran when she was finishing sparring with Brienne. Arya gives a wink to the House of Black and White with her learning her training by ‘No One.’
More on the Dagger
Did you notice Arya’s Catspaw Dagger is in one of the Books Sam was looking at? Is it a special Valyrian dagger for a special purpose that is noted in the book?
http://tinyurl.com/y8rf446v
http://tinyurl.com/yaqbklsb
Contains Liverpool colloquialism
Hi lads,
I’m not even going to mention the dragon, except there. The Arya scenes were excellent. There was a bit of ‘old’ Arya at the gate and the main protagonists got to see ‘new’ Arya.
Good to see Baelish fill his kecks when Bran said ‘chaos is a ladder’. He’s got a lot more to think about than usual.
I’d like to think the Stark ladies will utilise their brothers insight from here on.
Jon was a bit of a let down to be honest. Behaving like a love struck teenager when Daenarys shows up or is mentioned. The sooner he’s back in the north the better.
And of course I’m going to mention the dragon. We’ve seen the power of them before. In Astapor, Meereen and to a lesser extent Qarth. But even then they create a scene even more spectacular than we’ve been treated to before. I always like to see a characters first reaction to seeing the beasts and Nikolai Costar-Waldau absolutely nailed it this week.
I decided to stay up until 2am UK time to view the early edition for the first time. Nearly ran out of beer, but it was a wise choice.
Thanks for all your efforts and keep up the good work.
I love it all but the part when they shot the dragon I cried on that part I hope Jamie and his friend are dead that will teach cerci to mess with the mothers of dragons and I know dany will help the north and save them at all cost wait and see
One of the best episodes
Superb episode this week! There was so much to love and it featured one of the best battles in the whole show.
I enjoyed a vast majority of this episode. I’ll tackle the episode in order. First of all, I was overjoyed to see Bronn return! He is one of my favourite characters and it was a crime that he didn’t appear in the first three episodes. He instantly brought back his usual energy when talking to Jaime and Dickon.
Bran’s scenes with Littlefinger and Meera were excellent. His cryptic threat to Littlefinger by saying “chaos is a ladder” was really tense and let Littlefinger know that his scheming won’t be possible because Bran knows about it. I’m intrigued to see what Littlefinger will do now. Combined with Arya’s return, I wouldn’t be surprised if Littlefinger has some unfinished business he suddenly has to take care of elsewhere. Bran’s conversation with Meera was very strong. It highlighted his transformation over the last few seasons and cleared up why he was so awkward with Sansa in the previous episode. He isn’t the same person anymore and it hurt to see him coldly dismiss Meera after all they have been through.
Arya’s return was very emotional and delivered on my expectations. I loved the callback to season 1 when she was faced with the guards and it really showed how much she has changed. Her reunion with Sansa also helped show their change as they have both now accomplished what they had wanted in season 1. Arya is a fighter and Sansa is a lady. Their reunion showed some excellent respect between them and sisterly love. I love that Sansa didn’t believe the kill list as a serious thing, but boy has that changed now that she has seen what Arya is capable of.
Jon and Dany’s scenes were solid and enjoyable. they are developing a relationship and I am enjoying the process. I also enjoyed Dany teasing Missandei about her relationship with Grey Worm.
Brienne sparring with Arya was excellet and brought Brienne’s story full circle as she has effectively brought Arya and Sansa together without really doing much. Their sparring match was very well choreographed and I really enjoyed seeing the 2 fight. Littlefinger’s face was hilarious.
Now finally onto the battle. It was superb and really fun to watch. One of the best battles in the series for sure. I was pleased to finally see Drogon in action and there was some genuine tension as there were a lot of characters we cared about involved in the action. The sequences with Bronn going for the crossbow and Jaime making the choice to attack Dany were excellently done and had me at the edge of my seat. It was a real spectacle and was extremely enjoyable all the way through.
However, there were some flaws with this battle that took away a little from the episode. I’ll list them out since they are mostly just logic gaps; the usual problems I have with battles in this show.
-How did the Dothraki get to the mainland of Westeros without Yara’s fleet to transport them? And how did they travel so quickly?
-How did Jaime get no notice of an army heading towards him until they were literally right there?
-How did the Dothraki horses just ride through dragon fire?
-Why did Dany burn the supplies? She needed the supplies too and it would have been more efficient to kill the enemy and take their supplies.
-How did no Dothraki soldiers see Bronn attacking Dany with a giant crossbow and attempt to kill him? He was unarmed too.
I also had a problem with the ending. Unfortunately The Walking Dead has completely killed “is he dead?” cliffhaners for me, so I groaned when the episode ended with Jaime sinking in the water. I’m sure he’s not dead but it still annoys me that the show did that.
Other Notes:
-Jon and Theon’s reunion was awesome. Short but sweet, and it had all the emotion you would expect it to have.
-Jon, Bran, Sansa and Arya are back home and are completely different from what they were before. Lovely bit of writing.
-Jon apparently has a thing for Dany. This would be sweet, but considering they are aunt and nephew, it just got a whole lot more awkward.
-I was happy to see Dany suitably annoyed at Tyrion after his strategies kept failing. It fit her character to decide to charge into battle with dragons.
My personal Ratings of the best battles in the show:
1. Hardhome
2. Loot Train Battle
3. Battle of Castle Black
4. Blackwater
5. Battle of the Bastards
Overall, this was one of the show’s very best episodes. An excellent battle sequence accompanied with several heartfelt scenes makes this very strong.
What I learned the most from this episode, perhaps from the season so far, is that hubris is a bad thing. Yara is so supremely confident that she is in no danger that she does not even bother sending out scout ships or I guess even posting lookouts, so she is ambushed by Euron. Tryion is so confident that he, a man with no formal military training or experience in grand strategy, decides to ignore those with training and advise the initial attack phase of Danny’s campaign. Why are there never any Dothraki in these war councils? They are supposed to be the most feared warriors on the planet but no one thinks to ask them.
The show talks up how good of a general Randal Tarly is but he is so confident that in one scene he is talking about his fears of a possible ambush (and his desire to flog stragglers, confirming his place as a show villain) but fails to post scouts thereby ensuring that he is ambushed.
Initially Danny was very confident in her victory. Last week Cersei was very confident in her victory. Sansa, Littlefinger, the Lords in the North, all of them are just too confident in their position.
The only person who lacks hubris is Jon Snow. I wonder if that means his plot armor will remain so strong that he will sit the Iron Throne when all is said and done.
Arya and Brienne was an epic fight, everything I wanted to see as a fan, but when did Arya become a master swordsman? She had sword training in Season 1, when she was a little girl, and now she is the equal of Brienne of Tarth, who was the equal of the Hound, who was the equal of the Mountain? I know what you are going to say, “she was trained by the faceless men” but during her training montages she used a staff and the faceless men are supposed to be assassins not swordsmen.
Also, Brienne was using Oathkeeper, a sword that broke other swords on TV but somehow that magic power is no longer in effect.
The battle was great, my inner nerd loved it. I wish they had showed those five guys that Arya bumped into a few episodes ago. It would have given some personality to the nameless redshirts that were burned alive. A shot with Ed, whatever his name is, dragging the nameless soldier who was talking about his new baby out of harm’s way only to be burnt alive by dragon fire would have been nice and it would have reminded the audience that all of these soldiers are just farmers with moms and dads, wives and children. Everyone on this show is very willing to throw away these men on useless missions, no wonder why the small folk hate the nobility.
I am looking forward to next episode. I am really interested in seeing the reunion between Jamie and Tyrion and Bronn. That should be epic. I hope that Bronn switches sides
I guess the teleporting plot device that everyone has access to is somehow blocked by the Wall. The Army of the Dead has been moving south ever since episode 1. They are undead, they don’t need to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom. They don’t get frostbite or complain about crappy officers. They should be everywhere by now.
Is Drogon medically down for the nest few episodes? The last time he was injured Danny was captured. Will Jamie, Randle and Dickon bend the knee? I am sure that Jamie will not but what about the other two?
Winter powered walkers
Re “. The Army of the Dead has been moving south ever since episode 1. They are undead, they don’t need to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom. They don’t get frostbite or complain about crappy officers. They should be everywhere by now.”
I suggest the White Walkers have been using their finite magic to activate the Wights – the more Wights, the more spread out the magic becomes.
As magic grows stronger and the cold Winter weather spreads, the White Walkers will get magically stronger and move faster.
Amazing
An excellent story that pulled together 7 years of plot threads and gave us another bittersweet Stark reunion.
I suspect that Ser Davos helped with the idea of Danerys attack on the food supplies, especially as he was knighted by Stannis for relieving a siege and knows how strategic food is to a city in wartime. Speaking of Stannis, it was good to see Davos’ s call back to him with his grammatical correction of “fewer” to Jon.
Jon interpreted the ancient cave pictographs as “look at everyone working together to fight the big badguys”. But the pictographs also tell the stories Bean knows – peace, then two races together, then conflict and the walkers made. Perhaps the pictographs tell both stories at once.
I noticed also that some of the symbols were 7 armed spirals, some of abstract trees, some looked like sea creatures. I wonder if the symbols represent all the gods.
As to the finale. Wow! Yet again I had to remind myself that this is a tv show and not a very expensive movie. Such interesting and compelling staging of the scenes. Superb stunt riding. A stunning battle.
I’ve no doubt the end is a Winds of Winter cliffhanger.
Amazing 2
Typo correction “But the pictographs also tell the stories Bran knows”