I know, I know. The season ended last week. But seeing as how we were knee-deep in E3, I didn’t get a chance to watch the finale until much later in the week. So, I thought I’d do our normal post-GoT off-topic a week late.
What did you guys think of this season? My thoughts, briefly: It was a stronger season than season 2, and not just because it had big exciting stuff like the Bear and the Maiden Fair and the Red Wedding. The pacing was better overall, and it pretty quickly shed that disjointed feeling it had at the start to become much more focused.
Given how sprawling things get over the next few books, I’m thinking the show will always have to battle with its fragmented nature, but as long as they can have great scenes like the one in the finale with all of the Lannisters (sans Jaime) together at one table, I’ll be happy.
So, generally speaking, good season. I’m curious to see how they do season four and onward, since at some point they’re going to have to start combining the events of books four and five into several ongoing seasons. Can’t have whole seasons without certain character, or those actors will head off and find other work.
So, what did you think? Of the finale, and of the season as a whole? Let us know in the comments, and if you want to spoil some stuff that hasn’t happened yet in the books, do add copious spoiler tags. And as always, for a very interesting, in-depth look at the season finale, check out Charlie Jane’s recap over at io9.
Comments
37 responses to “What Did You Think Of This Season Of Game Of Thrones?”
Personally I loved it. I knew what was coming due to reading the books but think they handled it all very well.
Definitely my favourite season so far, plenty of shock moments. I thought the finale was a bit of an anti-climax but it was still good. The wait for the next season is going to be a long one!
Well after the season finale I bought the books off ebay, easily the best one for me so far.
The finale was a good end for me, it tied up a few loose ends and the end was emotional and just epic.
Awesome season, can’t wait to get into the story more
Edit: I read somewhere that they were aiming for 9 seasons, possibly more?
Well even though there’s only 5 finished the plan atm is for 7 books total. Season 3 only covered half of the third book from what I understand (I’m still reading the second >_<) so they’ll at least need 8 seasons, possibly more.
I’m glad they’re not going to try to cram a book into each season and that season 4 will carry over some book 3 stuff, not the least because it’s probably going to take GRR another 7 years to finish the last 2 books.
The more they can drag out GoT the better.
Given that season 3 is only half of the third book, and there’s bound to be 7 books (all of which are quite sizeable and jam-packed with characters and events) 9 sounds like a bare minimum. 😛
It’ll be interesting to see how they tackle books 4 & 5. Probably just combine events, as both books are set around the same time frame but each having a focus on different characters (this is what the author of this article meant by not being able to have seasons completely devoid of major characters.
It’s gettin’ real juicy.
We’re starting to see a lot of the changes and plot streamlining beginning to come together. I think overall its a good thing and the differences between the books and tv series keep things interesting. Personally, I’m looking forward to the next season as a lot of interesting things are still to come 🙂
Ramsay’s calling Theon “Reek” was a bit tack-on though, wasn’t it? 😛
I mean, I know it’s a big nod-off to the books, but it was a bit iffy watching him go from eating pork sausages to suddenly deciding upon a very particular pseudonym out of the blue. 😛
Remember that the Bastard of Bolton’s former, eh, friend, was named Reek. Ramsay didn’t suddenly decide on calling Theon Reek, he’d planned on breaking and training him all along.
On another note, I love the fact that the TV show takes time to go into some events in more detail. Theon losing his ‘best friend’ is a good example – in the books it’s only implied, and weakly, that Ramsay removed his genitals. Same deal happened around the relationship between Ser Loras Tyrell and King Renly Baratheon.
I’m midway through the second book now and with Renly dead, it’s hardly apparent that he and Loras had a relationship at all. Maybe it’s expanded on a bit more later on, but the only hint that Renly wasn’t into girls was a snide comment from Stannis that Margery Tyrell was likely to remain a maid while married to him. Considering Stannis was pissed off at Renly at the time, I would have ignored this as the equivalent to teenagers calling me a faggot on Xbox Live.
They kept making jokes about ‘holes that even Ser Loras couldn’t find’, so it was basically public secret, but they never focus on it too much.
Later books are fairly open about it. It was barely hinted at in the earlier ones, or when Renly was alive.
As good as this season was, and next season promises to be, the show’s very quickly going to start running out of content. And not just because AFFC and DwD could be pared back to max 2 seasons between them. The problem is that very soon, things just stop happening for a large percentage of the characters, and until the next book comes out (a year or more?) the producers are going to have to be careful with what liberties they take in case they paint themselves into a corner.
I’m thinking of Jaime and Brienne especially – they were built up so well this season, but there’s pretty much nothing at all for either of them to do other than Brienne meeting the Brotherhood. Same deal with Tyrion and Sansa after they leave King’s Landing, and Stannis…well ever. There’s a whole lot of people wandering the countryside that’s straight up boring in the books, but without knowing whose wandering is significant, the producers are kinda stuck.Book spoilers! Pretty massive ones.
I know it’s not much but the Lady Stoneheart stuff will please more than a few people, then probably upset them with Podrick. The Tyrion and Tywin toilet thing. Joffreys poisoning. Arya’s blinding. Plenty of awesome stuff still to come. 😀Dont forget the battle at the wall, death at the eyrie, dragon mayhem at the fighting arena all of these will be great tv fodderHaven’t read the books but I’d heard about
the Lady Stoneheart stuff, I was really surprised we didn’t at least see the beginning of that as a teaser for next season. Instead we got a big triumphant Daenerys moment. We get it, she’s great and has dragons! But we don’t need to spend quite so much time on this!I read an interview with George RR Martin and he said he is bringing in some plots from the later books in much earlier to the series. He also said he has given the shows producers the complete outline of the actual end of the story in case he dies before finishing the books.
Major book spoilers ahead~
Oh shush, there’s plenty. There’s Arya’s story as well as Daenarys’ further conquests and her fighting the Sons of the Harpy, getting married, her dragons coming unto their own, there’s the Dornish (and a whole lot of stuff related to that), OBERYN FUCKING MARTELL and his fight with the mountain, Uncle Freeze mentions Tyrion and Tywin above me; there’s Tyrion’s journey after said events to consider as well.I could go on, but there’s plenty of stuff, and a shiteload of characters just waiting to be introduced. I recognise that the fifth book especially does more character development and buildup than it does major events and battles (we’ll certainly see things escalate in the next book), but that’s not to say the producers are going to be running out of material, nor is it to say that nothing happens. If anything they still have so much that they’ll have to cut characters (or merge them / bypass) as they have been.
I’m more talking beyond the second half of book three – with the characters that the audience has been following for three years now, what happens? Jon Snow fights off the wildlings then just hangs around worrying about treason, Bran turns into a tree, Arya I’ll grant you gets to do cool stuff, Sansa nearly gets raped and watches Lysa die, Cat has like two scenes (granted, this could probably be expanded by the show to have all her Frey killing adventures included), Brienne wanders around looking for Sansa in places where we know she’s not going to find her, Jamie does absolutely nothing of interest, after the Purple Wedding Tyrion just sits in a cell or on a boat feeling sorry for himself, and Dany enters Mereen and then does even less than she did in Qarth. After killing off so many popular characters do you really think the audience is going to be happy with such a lull? I’d say that readers are a much more forgiving audience than viewers, in that a TV show is expected to always keep escalating, and with the War of Five Kings over, there’s not really much escalation to come in the next few seasons. Again, the sixth book will likely change that, but will viewers stick with the show for that long? Remember, assuming books four and five are a season each, you’ve got 30 hours of TV to make up, and I just don’t see that much content in the books.Man, I had the biggest grin on my face during that scene up there.
Charles Dance IS Tywin. They should rename it: Game of Thrones: An Autobiography of Charles Dance. 😛
I thought it should have ended with red wedding, having it finish afterwards didn’t have the same “this is the end of the season” impact that the previous 2 seasons did, in fact I didn’t realise the season had actually ended.
That said, it was still a solid season but the Theon arc could have been condensed somewhat, it just seemed to take up a great deal of time for what was ultimately a fairly short chain of events.
TV spoilers…
Season 1’s Baelor was the ninth episode in which Ned Stark died and episode 10 wrapped things up in preparation for the next season; season 2 did much the same, with the Battle of Blackwater being the ninth episode and the tenth wrapping up. It’s been pretty much formula to cram all the climactic stuff into the ninth episode and then have the tenth wrap things up. It just so happens that this time the Red Wedding is probably the most shocking occurence so far, not to mention it killed off a fair few major characters all at once. I don’t think it could have really ended there, no matter how little the final episode impacted you. 😛I thought it was great 11/10
Loved it!
HODOR!
It was really great but I didn’t feel it was as strong as the last season. Some of the characters felt gimped. Tyrion especially spends most of the season on a leash, devoid of his cunning, manipulative activities. Sam and his new crush just seem cute but superfluous to the whole tale. Daenerys battle for that city ends up reduced to the heroes wandering back into camp saying “we won”. The Knight’s Watch suddenly imploding and turning on each other didn’t make a lot of sense. I could go on but even at it’s low points, Game of Thrones is better television than just about anything else on TV and I found myself counting down the days until each next episode.
The stand out moments for me was Jamie losing his hand, in fact all of his performances were incredible this season (despite the fact that I dislike his character). His exposition in the bath scene wove a stronger mental scene than any flashback scene ever could. And of course the red wedding had my wife and I yelling aloud in horror. George’s penchant for brutally and suddenly killing main characters is clever because in any other show I know the main characters are wearing their main-character-armour and can’t be hurt but so often during this season I often found myself on the edge of my seat, every muscle in my body tensed and ready for something horrifying and tragic to occur.
The Jaime bath scene was the highlight of the season. Wasn’t too keen on the character initially, but now he has really matured from his
incestuousways. Or has he?Yeah, I’d say he could go either way. He could turnover a new leaf or go back to his old ways when he gets around familiar company. That bath scene was really good. Nornall characters dumping large amounts of exposition, particularly while being motionless, is the most boring and cheap story telling. But the actor really brought the whole thing to life. And props to the camera work, editing, music, lighting etc. it was like a perfect storm.
I aint gunna ruin the only tv series I like by reading the books!
Never been a huge fan to be honest.
I found this season dragged on a lot. The last few episodes actually had some substance.
I watch fantasy for cool fights and dragons. Not bitchy pre-teens.
Obviously it’s not that kind of story, but I can’t help feeling like more dragons and less torture of an insignificant and unlikeable character would make a more enjoyable show.
I am glad they did away with to extreme amounts of nude women. Don’t get me wrong, i love nude women, but i felt that in the first two seasons it was just trying way too hard to be edgy. It was screaming “look at this new show, we have tits”. It’s the main thing that put me off GoT in the first place.
I am a fan of the show, but I tend to agree about it dragging. I found the pacing terrible and really found myself thinking that not a whole lot happened in most episodes, and then something cool would happen
like the dragon BBQ that guy with the ‘trade’ for the unsulliedthat would take up 10 minutes of the episode, then nothing again for AGES.You do realise that A Song of Ice and Fire is a deconstruction of the entire Fantasy genre right?
If you want classic fantasy with elves and dragons, then watch The Hobbit movies I guess.
sssslllllooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww
I love the pacing of the show, people have such low attention spans these days! All the characters are deep and have such rich, back stories, they need time to be fleshed out properly.
Why can’t they double the length of the seasons to 20 eps? They must be rolling in it now! Surely they could extend it somewhat? 1 chapter per episode would be delicious, no?…