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Game Of Thrones Season 5 TV Only Discussion (Spoilers)

They were setting Olly up for weeks to be involved in the assassination. However, I would've preferred had Thorne not been involved. It was a little too obvious. I think it would've been a nice twist had he come running in trying to save Jon - in keeping with his recent depiction as harsh but fair.

Incidentally, Harington was announced in the trades today as replacing Robert Pattinson in a movie. Coincidentally, it co-stars the actress who plays Melisandre. I don't think too much can be read into his being cast one way or the other - after all, Peter Dinklage, Sophie Turner, Emilia Clarke and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau have all balanced Thrones duties with high-profile movies.
 
Okay, so...Jon Snow's "death" was pretty anticlimactic. What's the over-under on whether Melisandre fixes him up in 6.1 or they wait a week or two?

Dani's in danger. Uh-huh, right...

Very pleasant to see Cersei and Stannis get their comeuppances. Okay, Cersei will be back and more evul and weird than ever next year - does she have to last until the series climax, probably? - but Stannis was a piece of shit who deserved worse than he got. Delightful.

Half-Man! Half-Man!
 
^ Kit Harington still hasn't cut his hair and has been spotted numerous times in Belfast the last month or so, so you can probably guess the rest. My bet is we don't see Castle Black in episode 1 but that we do see Bran and that he sees flashbacks to Jon's conception or birth.
 
So, is the betting still that he's Lyanna and Rhaegar's kid or Lyanna and Robert's? He has Robert's looks.
 
^R&L is most people's thinking and would explain why Ned kept schtum about his parenthood; Robert hated Targareyns so much that he'd have had the infant killed if he thought it was Rhaegar's. Particularly if he thought Jon was conceived in rape. Remember the curious look Littlefinger gave Sansa when she referred to her aunt being raped by Rhaegar? Many are interpreting that to mean that there was a little more to the R+L relationship than the official story.

Had he been Robert's, he'd just be one of many of Baratheon's bastards.
 
Captaindemotion said:
Had he been Robert's, he'd just be one of many of Baratheon's bastards.
Click to expand...

Not if he were Robert's by Lyanna.

The whole backstory is flexible enough for him to be either, really...and either probably serves just as well as a motive for Melisandra to want him back among the living.

There also seem to be several possible ways that he could return - including that we can't swear that we watched him take his dying breath at all - and most of them will be viewed as something of a reach by at least a segment of the audience but any one of them will work.
 
^ yeah, I was thinking a little more about his being Robert's by Lyanna. That would make him more special to Robert than Gendry or the like. But if he was, there'd be no real reason for Ned to keep his parentage quiet. He would've told Robert and I suspect that Robert would've legitimised him and made him his heir.

It's possible that Ned didn't reveal that Robert was Jon's father because he was afraid of the Lannisters killing him, so as to ensure that one of Cersei's kids became king. But I'm pretty sure that it's stated somewhere in the books that Lyanna never slept with Robert, because she knew how promiscuous he was and that he'd get bored with her if she did, or something like that.

However, I think the focus seems to be on the three heads of the dragon and the importance of the dynastic Targs. I'm not sure that the Baratheon family are quite so important anymore; most characters on the show view Robert's reign as, in Vary's words, 'an utter disaster.' Whereas Rhaegar is mourned as the great king who never was. So that's why I don't think there's any real significance to any apparent resemblance between Kit Harrington and Robert Addy.
 
Don't you think that closing out the series with a royal marriage between a Targaryen and a Baratheon might settle down the politics of the Seven Kingdoms for a bit? It would be a nice bit of narrative symmetry. ;)
 
Dennis said:
Don't you think that closing out the series with a royal marriage between a Targaryen and a Baratheon might settle down the politics of the Seven Kingdoms for a bit? It would be a nice bit of narrative symmetry. ;)
Click to expand...

Never thought of that, TBH. However, I've always thought that the clue is in the title of Song of Ice and Fire - the chilly Starks of the North being the Ice and the dragon-riding occasionally flame-retardant Targareyns being the fire. I tend to think of the Baratheons as being basically a temporary interlude, a historical aberration.

Plus, let's face it, GRRM isn't really big on happy endings!
 
Ah, but Jon in his way is a Stark as well and quintessentially a Northerner by experience - and he is, of course, the best choice among the Westerosi themselves to lead the fight against the ice critters.

I'd guess that whatever the permutations of plot, excursions and misdirections and surprises are in store over the next couple of seasons the endgame breaks down with Dani and her dragons fighting alongside Jon Snow and rag-tag Westerosi armies raised from all over against the ice monsters. I don't think it'll be as straightforward as Dragon Girl swooping out of the sky with her children to make puddles out of everything north of the Wall.

There will be enough sadness, death and ambiguity to satisfy Martin's proclivities, I'm sure. There are a lot of characters in whom enough narrative investment that they can be expected to endure into the last season but not necessarily be standing at the end - other Stark children, Jaime, Half-Man to name the most obvious. I'll give odds that Baelish ends up successful and unhappy.
 
^Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. Perhaps Bran will control the dragons by warging, as Dany hasn't quite mastered control yet? But knowing GRMM, I think the emphasis is likely to be on 'misdirections and surprises', as you put it.
 
Also bearing in mind two things about the narrative - the producers apparently know the "broad outline" of Martin's plans rather than all the details, and they depart from and often simplify his plotting quite a bit for reasons of television drama.
 
Dennis said:
I'll give odds that Baelish ends up successful and unhappy.
Click to expand...

...a friend thought that Varys' "But he would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes" line might be prophetic. Especially since I don't see what basis we have to expect a happy ending from GRRM, as it might undermine his whole subvert-the-trope approach.
 
GRRM doesn't just subvert-the-trope for the hell of it, the main thing with ASOIAF is that the good guys don't just win because they're the good guys. When they screw up, they get screwed. Conversely, he's not just making the story dark; when the good guys are smart, they're rewarded.

So while GRRM has said the ending will be bittersweet, considering how 'bitter' the series has been I think it's the 'sweet' that's important.
 
I think folks who expect some kind of desolate ending to all of this are barking up the wrong tree for quite a number of reasons. It's going to be an ending where some of the folks the audience roots for will accomplish some of what the audience hopes they will, and some of the folks the audience hates will be punished...and some more nice people will die

Thus far two characters who were set up as primary protagonists have actually died, Ned and Robb Stark.
 
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