They didn't build a 300 mile long, 700 foot high ice Wall to protect against Cersei frickin Lannister

I think the GOT writers forgot: - Tyrion is supposed to be smart. - Daenerys is magic. - Arya can change faces. - Bran can see the past, and warg into cooler things than birds. - Dire wolves are awesome. - The other white walkers can fight people. - And Main characters can die.

"They didnt sacrifice realism for spectacle" *looks at the God awful strategy design specifically to result in pretty cinematography* right

“It was always a conflict between humans” The first scene of the entire show is about the conflict between humans and the White Walkers.

Sam's plot armor came from Jeor Mormont. "Tarly I forbid you to die"

Walder Frey killed more main characters than The Night King

First time ive completely disagreed with you guys. Really felt you guys were reaching to cover so many poor decisions in this episode. Smart characters make stupid choices. Jorah died to a few whites while brienne and Jamie are surrounded by hundreds and nothing. It's missing so much. It's embarrassing, d&d really let the fans down.

"They didn't sacrifice realism for spectacle?" DID WE WATCH THE SAME EPISODE LOL

Nerd Soup is clearly in the first stage of grief: denial.

Apparently the spirals the NK and the children of the forest made, represented everyone’s theory’s and expectations going down the drain.

You wanna talk about realism? They charged their Calvary into the pitch black 😂😂

They didn't sacrifice realism for spectacle? What? It seems you watched something else, was sam swiming through wights and surving realistic, or the way the other characters were thrown into inescapeable situations, but the camera cuts out and they are still alive realistic?

Why is nobody talking about the fact that Ghost was CLEARLY not written into this season, and just slapped into scenes where no one acknowledges he is even there. He is a legit ghost.

“Winter is coming” *seven seasons later* “Winter is here” *one stab with a dagger* “Aaaaand it’s gone”

over the past 3 seasons they have been saying it doesn't matter who sits on the iron throne that the dead are the true enemy and now its about people squabbling over a throne

People keep saying it will be all politics now, well that's great and all, but where were they in the past few seasons ? The political aspects of the show vanished, the scheming characters kept getting dumber and dumber and being ridiculed. The show took a left turn and we were MADE to expect high fantasy and not the realistic harsh reality that was the identity of the show at first. And now we're supposed to take another left turn and go back to the schemes and politics ? It will not work, it will not make a satisfying ending.

I think we have to come to terms with the fact that Bran isn't special he is just a handicapped socially awkward millennial kid who plays angry birds during important life events.

"They didn't sacrifice realism for a spectacle" ... are you kidding me? The plot armor was thicker than Pod's rod!

Voldemort died in book 6 and now for book 7 we're going back to Hogwarts to finish our TRUE battle with Slytherin House. This is complete garbage storytelling. I don't care about the Houses anymore, Voldemort was supposed to be the true underlying threat since season 1, episode 1, scene 1. Bran better be the real NK or this will be the worst series finale in TV history.

The Dothraki are experienced light calvery. They would have never made the massive mistake in the beginning. Totally unrealistic.

"It makes sense guys, the red women said that one line that one time in that one season" Vs 7 seasons of Jon's arc in the north.

this is the equivalent of thanos dying halfway into infinity war and loki is the main bad guy for endgame

Way too much show love, all the story is out the window. Cersei>NK? Such a bad explanation.

Yall need to go back and watch your 10 best and worst changes video and see what yall said about the ending with the white walkers and then what the show did here.

Season 7: there is only one war that matters,the Great War. And it is here Season 8: JK

The screen is dark and the script is full of errors

I knew you were going to be a little too forgiving, but I didn't expect you to take the full length of this narrative failure down your throat.

I understand praising the technical and cinematic achievement that this episode clearly was, but you guys clearly had fanboy glasses to miss the fact that storywise this episode was a dumpster fire that ignored so many plot threads.

8 seasons was about "The only war is the one for the living, the rest is squabbling". Well, it's back to the squabbling.

Hot Pie will kill Cersei simply because its unexpected, And these two guys are gonna love it

Usually you guys do a pretty good job with this stuff. Couldnt even make it through this one...

Me in seasons 1-4 : please don't kill characters Me this season : why aren't you killing more characters?!

More main characters died in season 2 then in the biggest most hyped battle of the entire series

Just because something is unexpected and subverts expectations doesn't make it automatically good. Having Cersei killed by Hot Pie would still be a twist outta nowhere, but it'd be a shit ending. A good twist should take you by surprise but then make you say "oh of course, that actually makes sense too". This episode did not do that for me.

I can’t tell if this entire review is sarcastic or not, because everything they like is what is bad with this episode.

What was the the point of a NK in the first place? The problem with Cersei is that she never sees the big picture, now there isn't a big picture for her to realise how flawed she is.

New words of House Stark: Winter is fine, no worries.

I think the reason everyone, me included, wants more death lately is because they keep faking us out. They put major characters in situations where there is no way they could live, and then save them. It leaves us yelling "bullshit, they should be dead" about our favourite characters. They needed to just tone it down with the fake suspense.

the white walkers were the first episode..................first scene...it was the GoT introduction ffs...

This is the first stage of grief 😂🤣😂 they are justifying the shows crap.

We all thought the battle against the NK was the real war, but we were wrong. The real war is the battle in these comment sections. That is the only war that matters.

I'm ok with Arya killing the Nightking. I'm not ok with her litterally teleporting outta thin air to do it.

Holy shit you guys completely missed the point of the whole story

It's funny how there are so many theories who the Night King was and his true motives on KZfaq, including this channel. Yet this episode just craps all over those theories, making them trivial content now. In other words, although Episode 3 had great cinematic scenes, it greatly suffered the last Jedi effect. Also, speaking of the last Jedi, Arya kills the Night King the way Rey defeats one of Snoke's red guards. How original. 😏

Sam literally was under a pile of wights yet he survived

I was fucking excited during the whole time, my heart was beating fast and I screamed a lot lol I was very pleased when the episode ended. But then I went to bed. And lying there I noticed that it actually kinda sucked. The more I think about it, the more flaws and inconsistencies I find, not to mention it completely destroyed all my small theories.

The threat is cersie? I’m sorry but multiple time the show has told us that “the only war that counts is the Great War” and they jus ignore that altogether now.

The show is called “Game of Thrones” because that’s the title of the first book. That is the first book in a series called, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The politics of who sits on the iron throne hasn’t been a big deal for awhile now. Jon says it himself in the last episode of season 7: “The only war that matters is the Great War, and it is here.” Cersei being the true “big bad” is terrible. The show has been leading to a showdown with the Night King since the first episode, not Cersei. Cersei only became a truly major force when she took the throne. Even so, her intimidation factor pales in comparison to the Night King. She has maybe 50,000 mortal men under her command, a mad scientist and a zombie. The Night King had over 100,000 dead who never tire, and exist solely to kill anything living, a group of white walker generals, of which not a single person in Cersei’s could touch, an undead dragon and of course, himself. He represented a truly terrifying threat to every character in the show. They pulled a DC. “You’ve killed Doomsday, our most powerful villain. Now, for Act 2, here’s Steppenwolf, who Superman could handle by himself. Tremble at his might!”

I swear Brienne, Sam, Jaime, Tormund, basically all the big characters were completely swarmed at one point or another during the battle and they didn’t receive one stab wound from it, some random gets swarmed and he literally gets torn to shreds in the span of 1 second ... The level of plot armor these characters had was unbelievable, I completely forgot that I was watching the same show that had the Red Wedding, Ned’s execution, Hardhome, Oberyn vs The Mountain and a million other phenomenal sequences... This is how I see it, if your going to throw all the build up out the window by killing the Night King in his first real battle with no reveal/twist/backstory then fine, okay, at least kill off the majority of the characters in doing so... who in this great green earth thought it was a good idea to kill the NK with no backstory at all and also keep 90% of the characters alive ... aaaand on top of that have NO White Walkers fight any characters during the entire battle... then proceed to sit back and think “I’ve satisfied the story, people will feel so fulfilled with this” put your feet up and smile... my god

S1: The winter is coming... S2: The winter is coming... S3: The winter is coming... S4: The winter is coming... S5: The winter is coming... S6: The winter is coming... S7: The winter is coming... S8: The winter was comic...

As Sansa said: The most heroic thing we can do now is look truth in the face. We have to face that GoT has become a shell of it’s former self and it has abandoned its core values. It became cookie cutter mainstream fanfic with mediocre writing and just have been subverted ala Last Jedi. I don’t hate the show. I just have lost the awe of what once was a great series. I’ll enjoy the last episodes as much as I possibly can and hope that there will be some redeeming quality to it, but I am not convinced. Let just hope that at least one more book comes out and we get what we ‘have paid for’.

Killing the night king in ep 3, and Cersei being the "real villain" is like killing sauron in two towers, and the men to the east are now the "real enemy" All the fantasy in this 'medieval fantasy' is gone

Can't wait to watch the golden company vs plot armor next episode 20,000 men vs 10 main characters. Damn the golden company doesn't stand a chance.

"That's not what game of thrones is. From the very first episode, it's going to give you a realistic take on how these events would play out" **Arya leaps from out of literal nowhere to stab and kill the night king** Guys.......

I don't take the plot or characters too seriously anymore, but the fact you guys are actually praising the directing and editing of this episode is absolutely disturbing.

“The best villains are the ones you don’t understand” yes that’s why everyone loved the ending of Mass Effect 3.

You literally have a video dissecting what the Night king wants, but now all of a sudden you don’t care and it doesn’t matter?

BTW: There's a difference in subverting expectations and not meeting them.

When Marvel writers has bigger balls and better creative ideas than Game of Thrones writers.

"They didnt sacrifice realism for spectacle" Lmfao what is this channel? A parody?

How in the bloody 7 Kingdoms of Westeros did Samwell Tarly survive?

4:22 "They did not sacrifice realism for spectacle" did we watch the same thing? They had great minds and experienced knights planning their defense. So their plan was to have most of the men outside a defensive structure that is a castle, open up with a blind cavalry charge. The dothraki did not even have dragon glass weapons, good thing Mell came in to light their swords on fire else they would have been proper useless. Each one of the catapults fired one single time and then were never used again (maybe because the catapults were left on the front lines by the master tacticians). Thousands of men only managed to dig a single, shallow trench and it was not even between the enemy and them, but between them and their castle. The first half hour to me felt like illogical action for the sake of epic action... You later even say "that shot (of dothraki charging with flaming swords and their light going out) was brilliant" pure spectacle at the cost of realism.

Biggest complaint about the episode is: how Ghost is 1/2 the size he should be, and how Jon didn’t acknowledge Ghost at all. 🐶😢

Alt Shift X did a better job reviewing this episode 🥶

So, we can call bad writing "Subversion" and everyones happy 😁

When GRRM is catching up with the books and gets to this fight, the chapter is gonna be printed black on slightly lighter black

This is by far the worst commentary on an episode that I have seen from you guys.

The only reason that I sat so close to the screen with intensity and anticipation was for the following reasons: I was waiting for a single character that I cared about to die... not a single one did. I was waiting for someone to betray someone else... no one did. I was waiting for John Snow to be revealed to everyone that he was a Targarian (perhaps by surviving being burned by a dragon)... didn't happen. I was waiting for something to go wrong with their plan... nothing surprising occurred with their plan. I was waiting for the red woman to drop some major prophecy... didn't happen. I was waiting for Bran to find out something new about the night king... he literally did nothing this episode other than make you think he was doing something. was waiting for Bran to fulfill that which he was told by the Three-eyed raven: "you will never walk again, but you will fly" and worg into a dragon (perhaps die in the process and become a dragon permanently, similar to something that had occurred in the books)... Nope, Bran just sat there the entire episode. I was waiting for them to lose the battle and have to retreat and head further north than they ever have (like the cast said they would) perhaps because Bran found something out about the night king which meant that they had to travel to his castle in search of the only thing that can kill him (in the books, he has a castle)... they didn't... he just got poked with the pointy end. I was waiting for ANY character with more of a history with the night king to kill him in some creative "work smarter, not harder" kinda way... nope, he just got poked with the pointy end I was waiting for the dead to immediately rise from within the crypt from the start of the battle, thus demoralizing everyone from the start ... nahh I was really just hoping that this episode was intended to make its audience undergo an intense level of pain... but it was just a (very unlike GoT) good vs evil non-witting action-packed battle where good wins just because they're good and the only people left standing are the ones who everyone cares about, even when most of them are the least suitable to have survived it. It's noticeable that GoT have lost their cleaver plot writer. That entire episode was like point-based boxing... The biggest twist in this episode was that there was no twist at all... Cool action scene though :)

they didn't sacrifice realism for cinematic? lmao.

Minor changes that would have made this episode better: Sam is down in the crypts and kills the wights attacking the weak. He could realistically survive this and he's still a warrior. Arya should have been killed while escaping, making us think she's gone for good. Then Beric brings her back, i feel like this would hammer the point home that HE had to be there to save Arya, no one else could. Also would throw the audience off guard temporarily. Bran wargs into zombie dragon when he's warging at the end, instead of crows. This would save Jon and free him up to spar the night King. Just as the night King has Jon by the throat about to kill him ARYA jumps out and he catches her too! But he doesn't have a free hand to block her dagger drop. Makes more sense for Arya to get the drop if Daddy Ice is distracted and gives Bran something to do. Otherwise he's just bait. All 3 Stark warriors working together to take him down makes more sense

I disagree with the Cersei final boss. From the opening of the show the WW and the NK were built up to be the final boss and it was ended so abruptly without any explanation.

Literally the show starts with white walkers and we are reminded for 8 seasons "Winter is Coming" and who sits on the throne is not important .. no idea what show u guys watched .

I’m cool with Cerci being the “real” villain, in theory. But DO NOT say that that is always how it was supposed to be... they were very explicit many times throughout the entire series, that the “TRUE” enemy was the army of the dead. There are at least a dozen quotes that are not remotely ambiguous about this.

Here are my complaints: 1. The Dothraki charge made no sense. 100k wights out somewhere and you charge them with your... 5k cavalry? I thought the plan was to play defense and buy time. I get the sword lights made a cool effect, but jeez what a nonsensical death. 2. The battle shots had a lot of inconsistency. There is a part where the Unsullied are protecting the retreat of the other fighters. You see 4 rows of unsullied left before the trench. You think "oh shit, they're not gonna make it". Then you see grey worm call to light the trench, they pan up and .... there are at least 15 rows of unsullied. Huh? Also did Grey Worm just doom them to die by pulling the bridge pre-maturely? 3. Sam Tarly is on the front lines.... and he doesn't die. The guy thats so fat he can't run and so inept that he has at least 3 scenes in the battle crying. The wights couldn't kill HIM? Seriously? 4. If the wights swarmed the castle and Daenarys fell off her dragon outside the gates... how did Jorah get to her? 5. When the ironborn in the godswood start to engage the wights you see them almost immediately being overwhelmed. The next cut we see them doing fine shooting the wights with arrows and not being overwhelmed at all. 6. 30k soldiers are dead and coincidentally the only people that seem to have survived are Hound, Brianne, Jaime (who can't really fight), Gendry, Sam (wtf), grey worm... and basically anyone we would recognize as a regular character. Really? None of them got stabbed the whole time? 7. The NK is about to kill bran and he's surrounded by white walkers and wights in a circle. Arya.... somehow penetrates this circle ninja style and leaps at him? What? How the f did she get into this circle of bad guys? How did she get a running start to jump at him? WHY would she leap at him to begin with? If she's sneaking up on him... why is she screaming out loud? They blew an opportunity IMO to have her wear the face of wight to sneak in and then charge him. Thats a little fan fiction-y but at least it would make sense, as opposed to "A wild arya appears! She used LUNGE & SCREAM"

why did the nightt king even care about killing bran? All he can do is fly with ravens.

Hey Arya, did they teach you to scream before attacking in order to be extra stealthy as an assassin? Great training....

Nerd soup: “if ghost died like that, it would be disappointing “ Night king: am I a joke to you

1 episode. It took 1 episode to destroy the show. This was The Last Jedi of GoT.

From a cinematic standpoint, it was great. From a storytelling standpoint, it was absolutely terrible. Sad but true.

The problem is I don't really care who ends up on the iron throne at this point. I mean, there's no one I'm particularly rooting for. Jon never wanted it. Daenerys believes it's hers by blood which is silly and isn't true anymore anyway. Plus she's many times shown herself to very cruel in reaching her goal. And Cercei is nuts. They could stick Tyrion or someone on it, but that would just be another twist without much meaning or finality. The show changed from being about the fight for the throne in the early seasons to being about the white walkers over the last two seasons. The mystery behind them and the threat they were. That storyline gave me something to be curious about and people to root for. They sold it as the more meaningful fight. Now that's all gone, with nothing much explained. If the two storylines could have been combined I think it might have been more effective than brushing the bigger threat out of the way to get back to politics. The hero/es who saved the human world from extinction in the final battle could have been declared rulers by the people. That's what could have decided it. Hell, the last stand against the walkers could have been in Kings Landing itself with winter brought there by the Night King after he pushed them back across the Seven Kingdoms. The dead could have been taking over everything. It would have made a change from it all happening in the North. Cercei's armies could have betrayed her of their own volition to fight with Jon and Danny against the existential threat facing them and then declared loyalty to them in the aftermath. The people who saved the world, not just one family fighting another. I dunno, just spitballing. I know writing such a thing is complicated and its easy to throw out ideas, but I'm sure something could have been worked out to bring the storylines to a close in a unified manner. I'll continue watching for sure. Maybe they will make it feel meaningful in the end. But right now it's more curiosity about how they handle it than any particular emotion for what happens.

Night King: Am i a joke to you HBO: Yes you are

While I liked the episode more than I disliked it... I've said it before and I'll say it again, the reason why people like me get "nit picky" about these later season episodes is pretty simple: We were super fans of the first 4-5 seasons (most of us). They set up the rules of this universe in a way that is veeery grounded in reality. Distances are far, anyone can die, expectations are subverted, etc. Even the fantasy elements have this in a way. They run out of source material and the original author leaves from writing/plot consultation. So it's left to Hollywood writers to figure it out. And in typical Hollywood fashion, they pollute the story with the following: Predictability, Deus ex machina, plot aromor, one liners, fan service, and all around unimagination. This could have been the greatest show in television history, and it was ruined by Hollywood-ass Hollywood writers that just got sick of it, lost all inspiration, wanted to move on with their lives, and took the easiest way to the finish line all while pandering to the lowest common denominator. So yeah, we're picky. And angry. And disappointed. Because we feel betrayed. So kindly fuck off.

24:32 Sansa definitely won the battle for Jon by getting the Vale to come in and save their bacon, but she also had emotional ties to that battle. It made sense that Sansa won the battle for them because she was a huge player in that storyline. Arya had nothing to do with the Night King other than the fact that she was at Winterfell.

The battle of the barstards. That was the point where I wanted Sansa dead. She allowed so many to get slaughtered, instead of saying hey the knights of the vale is coming, so let's wait till we get some heavy cavalry.. John was only attacking because he thought no one else would join them. The giant. All the wildlings. The houses that joined John was mostly the small houses. How many family's line ended because of Sansa? To quote Sansa about Cercei "I learned a great deal from her"

The way arya killed the NK is like something out of an anime, not GRRM's universe.

I know the episode was dark but I thought Arya's trampoline should have been better lit.

This is a perfect example of people who don't care about plot and just want to watch the pretty colors.

The best villain is someone you can sympathise with. I thought ASOIAF fans would be able to understand that.

They didn't sacrifice realism? Did you not see all the plot armor in this episode dude jesus christ.

*_"And now my HYPE is ended"_* Night King

everyone loves the Dothraki sacrifice scene. Why? it's a complete waste of their best troops and shows they have no leadership whatsoever...

I would have loved it if Jorah, while he was helping Sam, shook him and said "stand up Tarly", as a throw back to LC Jeor

Visibility? Low Plot armor? Extra thicc Logic? Out the window NK? Slayed I could go on but it is just tiring to continue.. I’m just numb at this point

I said in your review of the preview, I asked why the Dothraki would be at the front. Putting light Cavarly on the front line and charging forward without a plan was the most foolish thing I've ever seen on this show. Right behind the northern forces going out there with swords and just hacking away instead of everyone outside of the wall being in formation with the unsullied. We see the northern forces use a Phalanx during the Battle of the Bastards but here they just hack away like in L.O.T.R? Why were archers not constantly shooting while the fire barricade was up? Why were all the siege weapons outside instead of constantly raining fire from the walls? Why were the ramparts not guarded? Why would everyone just let the direwolf charge headfirst ahead of the Cavalry? Why didn't Bran ask Theon to wait? I have been looking forward to this battle for years, and we got just terrible planning, and the grand threat was never the real threat. This was ALWAYS the threat. It was the opening moment of the show, and its always been looming but no, death was never the real enemy. It was always the woman who had three kids and happened to be ex wife to the third last king. A nearly omniscient being who can effortlessly control over a hundred thousand creatures and slay dragons with a flick of the wrist, was just the opening act for Cersi, because that's what we waited 8 seasons for. Who cares about the living dead, did you know that Cersi fucked her own brother?

I kinda enjoyed the episode overall, but there was SO much wrong with it: -No WW fights -Jon could have at LEAST fought a WW (pref the NK) -More people should've died (Bran could've been killed and then Arya kills NK)(Brienne, Pod, Tormund, Davos, Greyworm & F-ing SAM, hell Varys, all could've died) -The hype was too much for this battle and it did not live up to expectation -Dothraki -Ghost -Bran could've warged Viserion - What was up with Melisandre's death? But I absolutely understand why the NK needed to be killed so quickly. He would've just kept raising the dead until there was no one left. The actual battle was intense even if the writing was bad. And this is a Game of Thrones. It was always going to end with Cercei and Dany

All they did was sacrifice realism for spectacle. 1000s of the most well trained fighters dead but if you have your name in the credits you got a scratch on your face

Aaron: I am out when Arya kills Cersei. Arya kills Cersei. Aaron: I loved it. Makes perfect sense.

This is realism? Explain how Sam had 9 lives after being buried under wights?

Basically GoT is like Fast and Furious now, only with dragons instead of cars... It turned from intricate and realistic to utterly mindless and moronic entertainment.