GBear4Life said:
Questions about plausibility of plot/characters:
What were Sam, Arya, Brienne and Bran doing at the rather odd meeting discussing terms? They are Lords of nothing. (And the inclusion of Sam and Edmere injecting their 2 cents and then getting clowned were awkward and unnecessary)
At this very meeting, an imp tied up in chains as a prisoner is leading a decision regarding who should be King (wow, what a bunch of spineless Lords). He chooses Bran and they all heed his suggestion. Then, instead of getting a sentence, he -- a Lannister -- is demanded to be the King's Hand rather than punished (mind you, Jon, a nobleman with kinship to the Lords present, is not given same treatment). The unsullied is content with this. This all was ridiculous, IMO.
The Unsullied, spending years following their Queen in battle to Westeros, see their Queen killed and are easily convinced to sail away to other lands. OK, bro.
Ary and Sansa, going to great lengths to fight and seek revenge for family for 8 seasons, decide to accept banishing Jon to the Night's Watch despite Bran now being King who just pardoned Tyrion - a f'ing Lannister. Furthermore, Arya and her great love of Jon and her Stark family, decides to abandon her family on a voyage to NOWHERE. Sansa and Bran love Jon, are so grateful for all he's done,and who now have tremendous power, but then justify his sentence as a necessary compromise. Warden of the North, heir to the Iron Trone that helped saved Westeros, will again be forced to live like a peasant in blue-balls Hell despite killing on his family's/hand direction and his family now being the King/Queen of Westeros/North. ROFL.
Dany finds herself with no guards in sight at the Iron Throne. Jon goes from a Dany sycophant to someone willing to kill her in a span of 6 minutes because of a conversation with Tyrion. Then Drogon for no apparent reason sets the iron throne ablaze.
Jon says goodbye to his "family" at the docks and it never occurs to them "hey, you don't have to do this, we're the King and Queen of Westeros and the North!" Hard to invoke a sincere emotional response form viewers over a goodbye that is ridiculously implausible.
Brienne mysteriously has access to adulterate Jaime's Wikipedia page.
Martin did say a big thing for him was showing evil/honor were ambiguous. Fair enough. The issue is characters were pawns in plot service, creating twists for the sake of twists itself. It's one thing to not have the endings you had in mind for these characters that you had in mind. The bigger thing was forcing characters and plots to an ending.
People having to justify and rationalize behavior proves your point that the last two seasons consisted of characters acting merely to service the plot.
What made the books and the first 5 or so seasons so amazing was that, despite existing in a world with dragons, knights, and magic, there was truth to the way the characters behaved and the way the consequences followed prior actions.
All that went away in Seasons 7 and 8. The characters choices seemed untrue and illogical, and completely inconsistent with what we were told in prior 6 seasons.
I was not happy with references that the show "foreshadowed" Dany's madness, as if we are to ignore all of the other character development, including the sacrifices she made for the North and the compassion she had for her friends and displaced/oppressed.
What they did to Dany based on "foreshadowing" would be similar to:
Turning Arya into a mad serial killer after she kills the Night King because there were scenes foreshadowing how she took pleasure in killing. After all, not all of the people in the House of Frey were guilty. Then, based on someone saying that Arya has gone mad, having Jon kill her. Would that not erase all prior 7 seasons of character development?
Or turning Sansa into another Ramsay Bolton after she is made Queen because there were scenes foreshadowing how she takes pleasure in cruel punishment. After all, she took pleasure in watching Ramsay being eaten by dogs and having Littlefinger killed without a real trial. Then, after someone saying that Sansa has gone mad, having Jon kill her. Would that not erase all their prior experiences and all prior 7 seasons of character development?
None of that would feel true even if someone could argue that they were foreshadowing this. It would not feel true because there was not enough story development where, even if we wished those things did not happen, it would still feel true to what we had seen as a strong possibility.
Subverting expectation does not make it clever or interesting. I would not have been impressed if they subverted expectations and turned every Stark into frogs. No one would have expected that, and it would have felt untrue and nonsensical.