The Downfall of Game of Thrones

Honestly the smaller list will be one that tries to name things that season 8 doesn’t ruin, but I will try to press on.

• Battle at Winterfell being the worst designed battle ever
• No idea what to do with Bran
• Sansa made out to be a super intelligent person, despite always having been the stupid one and never showing this intelligence
• Arya’s faceless assassin training amounting to nothing, along with having record setting plot armor
• Jon Snow being out of character delusional
• Daenerys Targaryen breaking character
• Tyrion becoming king of breaking character
• Invisible fleets again
• Out of place superhero elements and fan servicing
• The show forgot all about Wildling culture
• Inconsistent timeline again
• Bran Stark taking the throne is worse than Cersei and evil Dany, yet the writers think it’s a good thing

I’ve never seen a more poorly written, designed battle in my life than the great battle against the undead in season 8 episode 3, The Long Night. Let’s start with the above photo. Yes, that’s artillery IN FRONT of the infantry. What the…? Who thought of this? Why? What drugs were they on? Not to mention this is a castle defense, so they should be on the walls.

This episode is about a defensive battle set at the castle of Winterfell. In the very front, they had the cavalry. Behind them was the artillery for some reason, then all sorts of infantry, then one trench and finally the walls of the castle itself. A child has more common sense. The artillery should be behind the infantry lines to protect them so they can keep firing. The infantry should be behind a TON of obstacles, not just one trench, to break the charge of the overwhelming forces of the undead. I also don’t know why there were so relatively few archers on the walls.

Let’s not forget how they completely sacrificed their cavalry, sending them charging alone, unsupported, into the entirety of the undead army. It seems like the writers were saying it was 10,000 Dothraki (even though earlier in the show the number was around 10x that I believe?) being sent alone to fight over 100,000 undead, without even the dragons to support them. This is NOT how you use cavalry. Cavalry (and this is mixed melee and missile cavalry mind you) is meant to harass flanks, and in the process it’d ideally break up formations somewhat.

If they employed the most basic tactics then perhaps the undead wouldn’t have even breached the walls of Winterfell. Instead, they end up breaching the walls and killing virtually everyone but the fan favorites with obvious plot armor, but then afterwards apparently only half of the forces were killed. Another inconsistency. Let’s not forget the overwhelming fan servicing, like Lyanna Mormont becoming an undead giant slayer. Is this a comic book adaptation, or is this Game of Thrones? Clearly the former.

Speaking of plot armor, during this episode you begin to understand that Arya’s plot armor is thicker than almost anyone’s from any other show or movie. The battle is finished when she teleports, then materializes out of nowhere to sneak attack the Night King. Apparently when Jon Snow stands up to shout at the undead dragon, he is distracting it so Arya can advance, but this does not synchronize with her killing the Night King. The timing doesn’t make sense again.

Speaking of our dear departed Night King, what the hell did he actually want? We’ll never know. I guess we’ll have to come up with our own explanation. I suppose they merely wanted to extinguish all heat sources from the world, like the fodder enemies of Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason. The truth is, we don’t know and neither do the writers.

What we do know is that the White Walkers are built up to be the ultimate threat, only to be crushed within one episode before the real threat really begins. Nice contradiction from the show itself.

The show never knew what to do with the White Walkers, but it REALLY never knew what to do with Bran Stark. Why did he become the Three-eyed Raven? Certainly not to tell Jon Snow of his true parentage, he already had Samwell Tarly to tell him this and Bran would’ve seen this. Why then? And why did the Night King want to kill him so badly as if he is the ultimate threat? What the hell was the point? Just to become King, when he had no interest in being Lord of Winterfell? He doesn’t do anything else.

Since when? I’m paraphrasing here, but rewind to season 1 and watch Arya prove how stupid Sansa is over and over again. Yes, people learn and improve, but what on earth made Arya say this? Sansa has yet to show this groundbreaking intelligence or cleverness to any degree. The most she contributes is telling Jon not to trust Dany, which alone doesn’t amount to much. Otherwise she also doesn’t do anything in these seasons and is totally irrelevant. Bran Stark is the one who reveals Littlefinger’s treachery.

Plus, Arya knows better than anyone that Sansa is the stupid one. Now all of a sudden the opposite is true.

Just to kill the Freys? That is literally the only thing she uses the talent for outside of her training. Not to mention she is now the captain of some adventuring fleet, so her faceless talents are useless again.

The show writers simply didn’t know what to do with this, like so many other things in the later seasons. As a side note, Arya suddenly being able to get the best of Brienne of Tarth in sparring makes absolutely no sense. Arya did not train as a duelist, she’s an assassin whose kills all come as a surprise. She wasn’t able to beat the Waif in a straight fight, so how the hell is she now a better duelist than Brienne of Tarth, who is legitimately an excellent fighter?

Even after Daenerys burns all of King’s Landing down, and at least tens of thousands of civilians along with it, he is still delusional about her, which is totally out of character as Jon used to be a more realistic person. “She’s muh Queen!” He keeps saying. He denies that she is a mass murdering villain even though the evidence is right in front of him. This is most unlike the real Jon Snow who would’ve taken matters into his own hands long ago.

They may have planned this all along, but due to season 8 being so horribly rushed, the final transformation of Daenerys Targaryen from hero to supervillain is poorly executed. The Daenerys we’ve come to know over these eight seasons would never randomly decide to deliberately massacre an entire civilian population. At the moment pictured above, the most Dany would have done is go burn down the Red Keep. That still would’ve allowed for the prophecy she saw in the House of the Undying (the show’s version) to come true.

Tyrion suddenly becoming a blind follower of Daenerys, shutting himself out to the truth of the situation, is the absolute strongest example of breaking character I’ve ever seen or read in anything. Some of the worst character writing I have ever been exposed to. Tyrion was always portrayed as the ultimate realist. He never, ever held blind loyalties to anyone. He is loyal to himself first and foremost. That isn’t to say he is treacherous, but he was always portrayed as being the opposite of a blind follower.

Yet in season 8, he decides to become a blind follower to what is clearly a dangerously insane woman, and rat out his best friend in the show. Do I need to explain how Tyrion would’ve noticed Dany’s unstable state and the danger this represents, and how he would put his close friends before any ruler let alone an insane one? Tyrion as he had been established would’ve supported Varys in overthrowing her, because he is a realist and he sees how unstable she is. Tyrion would much more likely poison her himself than give up Varys.

Well, at least this is consistent with the previous season. This man’s fleet is still invisible. Dany is flying towards King’s Landing all happy, then one of her dragons gets shot and killed out of the sky by Euron’s fleet. You know, fleets are easy to see from a distance, especially from high above it. Why the hell is his fleet always invisible?

This issue dates back to season 7 but continues into season 8. Both seasons are about a small group of superheroes banded together under a somewhat fragile alliance to battle the ultimate evils. Then we have Lyanna Mormont the undead giant slayer, Bronn being so powerful that he can not only nearly slay dragons in season 7 and sneak in and out of highly secure military camps here in season 8, but he’s so scary that he intimidates Tyrion and Jaime into making him Master of Coin after it’s all said and done (when Tyrion/Jaime would’ve just told the guards about what had just happened). And most of all the utterly comical, stupidly hilarious showdown between the Clegane brothers.

He looks like a giant parody of Darth Vader, and his presence is identical to that of a comic book supervillain. It is utterly unlike Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire to be able to predict this showdown 2+ seasons ago in the first place, but as expected it happens anyway. The outcome is even the one most people predicted during season 6. The Mountain seems borderline invulnerable, surviving a dagger through the face and just pulling it out. The entire comic book duel is just ridiculous and out of place for what was once supposed to be a brutal but believable show.

As a side note, I wonder what was the point of Jaime finally leaving Cersei’s side at the end of season 7 (far later than in the books, during which he hasn’t been leeching off of her for some time) only to return to her and die in her arms this season? Old habits die hard, sure, but the show just had to give us a reason to have another predictable showdown, this time between Jaime and their mockery of Euron Greyjoy. And of course they had to deliver more fan servicing by letting Jaime and Brienne hook up.

Tormund Giantsbane is a fan favorite character, and the de facto leader of the Wildlings at this point in the show. He desires Brienne of Tarth. When a Wildling wants a woman, what do they do? According to ASOIAF lore and the show itself, they steal the woman. Take them against their will, especially when there is competition, like Jaime Lannister. They hope to actually win their favor eventually, but that is how they do things. And if two men are in competition over a woman, they fight. Instead, Tormund just silently allows Jaime to win. This is not believable and it is out of character for Tormund.

It is one thing for season 8 to totally forget that Wildlings (and Dothraki, and all sorts of other cultures plus starving people) would be causing some amount of trouble in Winterfell, mixed with all these other people from all corners of the realm, but this was just too obvious.

The timing of Arya’s sneak attack on the Night King doesn’t add up. The show makes it look like the cast travels from Winterfell to King’s Landing in the same day; go look at a map of Westeros and see why this isn’t possible. Everything just happens out of sync. Also, while not a timing issue, King’s Landing suddenly undergoes a total geographical change.

For a show that originally began with an emphasis on grey morality, it tries for a black and white conclusion of good prevailing over evil with Bran Stark taking the throne. Only Bran Stark at this point in time is an inhuman omniscient creature incapable of empathy. At best, his distant nature would make him ignore a lot of immediate problems, but at worst he’d represent a more dangerous super-empire than most of what has ever even been written in fiction. Yet the writers present this to us as a universal good, leaving out the important question of Bran being some kind of transcendent monster.

So that pretty much wraps up how Game of Thrones went from being top tier television to the most disgraced show in history. Did we miss anything? There are so many moments of gargantuan stupidity that we probably have missed a number of things. Let us know in the comments!

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