#red temple

Daenerys, Daario, Greyworm and the army meet up with Yara and Kinvara at Volantis’ Red Temple while Drogon flies overhead.

[Red Temple]

Promo picture by HBO.

This is unusual for me, but nonetheless I will be reviewing the entirety of the seventh season of Game of Thrones in hindsight, as it is panned out.

In order to keep this all from seeming like nothing more than one side, I will start by acknowledging that yes, there are some elements of this season that I enjoyed. Two parts in particular: Euron Greyjoy’s ambush of his niece Yara’s fleet and Theon Greyjoy’s brutal hand-to-hand fight with a nameless Ironborn raider.

The ambush was well lain out, and made military sense. Euron managed to catch the Dornish-Greyjoy fleet (hereafter called the Targaryen fleet) unawares, and the fight between his men and those of the Targaryen forces included casualties on both sides. Furthermore, unlike the attempted rescue of Theon in Season 4, the main antagonist of this arc actually is hit and suffers some damage, with his armor having meaning beyond being just metal clothing that has been ignored since approximately Season 4. Furthermore, he got rid of some characters who had grated on fans, though admittedly this is more a case of cleaning up the showrunners’ own mistakes than actually good writing in its own right.

Theon’s duel showcased a different kind of fight, one of pure endurance. There is nothing flashy about the hand-to-hand beatdown on the beach, just blood, punches, and kicks. However, the fight goes to show something that many recent fights have ignored: giving character progression in a meaningful way, with the actual possibility of death for a major person. Theon’s castration proves essential to this fight, giving a mixture of triumph, brutality, and even humor to the fight itself.

However, there is only one word that I really need to say when discussing the rest of Season 7 of Game of Thrones.

 Failure.

I see this entire season as a failure on almost every level. While there are a few good character moments, they are few and far between, with far more time spent treading water than actually moving forward in the plot. In order to best articulate this process, I will go into depth on the different elements of the plot, and its different developments, especially how they are presented (which is one of the most important things about the plotting).

First, I’ll go into the general problems that have cropped up in the season, then I will turn to specific elements.

  Fast Travel

For those who are unaware, the phenomenon of “fast travel” is a concept in video games where a player can move across a distance that would normally take a very long time (perhaps half an hour to an hour at times, if not more) in the space of about a minute with a single button press, only having to wait through a loading screen before they are spontaneously at their destination.

This phenomenon seems to have been injected into nearly every single force in Game of Thrones for this season, all in the name of moving the plot along faster. Euron Greyjoy can travel around the entire continent of Westeros over the course of fifteen minutes. A call for aid can travel to the far south of the map and allow for travel right up to North of the Wall (with time for a new outfit to be tailored) in perhaps the same amount of time, if not twenty minutes.

This type of problem would not have a significant effect on some fantasy stories. After all, the only thing anyone needs to say is that “a wizard did it.” The issue is, there is no actual mechanism to allow this kind of speed. In every other season, people would be hard-pressed to find transportation from one place to another. In fact, the entire reason the Red Wedding even came up in the first place was a lie about a deal that had allowed for easy passage of the Northern troops south. If this kind of mechanism were in place, we wouldn’t have ever needed to see the Freys or their castle in the Twins, instead able to just move the characters off screen and magically have them be on the other side of a major river.

The effect is similar to one people had in hindsight about The Lord of the Rings: if Frodo and Sam could have just used the eagles in the first place to just go right to Mordor, why walk all the way and allow so much death? Because it wouldn’t make a good story, yes, but it still relies upon a completely new system that could, logically, have existed earlier. But I digress.

In fact, the only army that doesn’t seem to have that kind of speed is that of the White Walkers. If they did have it, this season would have been over before it began, and, heaven forbid, the Night King would have had to actually do something more than once in a season.

 Plot Tailored to the Audience, not the Story

While television does have its own limitations, they should be tailored to making a good story, not just a vast spectacle or a shocking drama. The seventh season of Game of Thrones seems to fall into the trap of tailoring character actions to a plot for “intensity,” rather than creating an organic, interesting plot through the actions of the characters themselves.

When questions are asked in this section, there is an implicit response you should assume: “Because the showrunners said so.”

  Blackwater Rush

The massacre at Blackwater Rush is highly praised by many a viewer, but there remains a serious issue that people tend to overlook: how would she even know that the Lannister-Tarly forces were still there? How would she get her own forces, her Dothraki horde, across the entire country in time to catch up with them? And perhaps most stupidly, why would she go into battle in nothing more than her regal dress, rather than, say… attempting to wear any sort of armor? Is she aware of the plot armor she has? I will discuss “plot armor” below.

  Great Wight Hunt

This hunt, first brought up in Episode 5, then carried out in Episode 6, is far and away the most infamous example of the plot being tailored to television audiences rather than even the most basic logic.

As anyone who knows about zombie apocalypse stories would know, the idea of grabbing a single member of the undead from a horde is virtually impossible without alerting the others, especially without it being killed. Jon, who has actually faced wights, would have known this and accounted for it, even told the others how stupid of an idea it was, had he been given an ounce of actual logic to use. And, surprise, surprise, it doesn’t go according to plan. Catching one wight led to a bunch of wights seeing the group, followed by some more, and then an entire army. Who could possibly believe this was a good idea?

On top of that, the reasoning for the hunt is completely pointless. If the idea is to bring back a single wight for Cersei Lannister to learn of the imminent invasion, she, being a narcissist par excellence, would ignore the threat and let other people handle it just so that she could gain more territory for herself on the throne. Again, surprise! This is exactly what happens. On this count, Tyrion, the one who has the most experience with Cersei, would have been the one to say how stupid of an idea it was… but the entire plan was his idea in the first place!

Let’s not fool ourselves: the real reason this plot even happened was because of the need for a traditional major event for the penultimate episode of the season. However, it failed at even that, owing to the imperviousness of plot armor (again, to be explained below).

  Sansa and Arya’s “Plan”

Some believe the “plan” that Sansa and Arya Stark had to trap Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish was very clever in hindsight, but that’s all it was: a good idea in hindsight. The actual plotting of the scenes leading up to the revelation in the season finale was idiotic at best, and nonsensical at worst. The two sisters would have had no reason to keep up their act of hostility to one another in private, especially given there is little indication at all that Littlefinger has actual spies in Winterfell. All of his “knowledge” is that which he gains by himself in this season. The only reason to keep up the charade is for the sake of the audience, which, again, does not actually exist in the world. Their scenes play out, especially in hindsight, as if they were acting out in a play to go off of reactions… to something that isn’t even there.

This all could have been solved by using a character with had almost nothing to do this season: Brandon “Bran” Stark. Given his omniscience, all that was needed was a single line after one of the Sansa-Littlefinger conversations about how the former’s brother wanted to speak to her, with her going off to talk to him off screen. That way, it wouldn’t come across as nearly as contrived as it was.

  Impervious Plot Armor

“Plot armor” is the phenomenon of people in a story surviving seemingly impossible, if not highly improbable, situations because they are important to the plot later on down the line, storyline logic possibly being ignored in the process. Game of Thrones once prided itself on the idea of nobody having such immunity, but over time, this kind of story-driven immunity has become more and more prominent. Though the most infamous case was Ramsay Bolton, who could wade into combat against heavily armored foes shirtless and come out fine, this season has given a serious case to all major characters with important roles. The most glaring cases of this phenomenon come in the form of the assault on Blackwater Rush (the battle of the loot train) in Episode 4 and the infamous “Great Wight Hunt” in Episode 6.

In the case of Blackwater Rush, not a single person with a name died in the entire battle (if one could call that massacre a battle at all). The only named deaths came after the fight was over, and were limited to Randyll and Dickon Tarly (who each barely had a role in the story in the first place). On the other hand, Jaime Lannister was tackled into inexplicably deep water in heavy plate armor, which should have been enough to drown him, and not only managed to get away more or less completely unscathed, but apparently managed to, with Bronn, swim the entire length of the apparent lake with said plate armor on, while underwater.

The Great Wight Hunt is even more egregious. There are a grand total of three deaths, and only one of them is even a member of the crew on this completely idiotic plan in the first place. Jon not only offers to give his White Walker-slaying sword back to Jorah (despite the fact he could have tried to do this before leaving Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, outside of wight country), but is saved from imminent death no fewer than four times, including somehow killing two wights off-camera without a single weapon in hand in the freezing water (what hypothermia?). Tormund is seemingly nearly killed, and put into a position where he could logically die, only to be saved by Sandor Clegane because… reasons. Gendry is sent running back to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea without any weapons whatsoever, and his only real injury is exhaustion and perhaps cold. Jorah seems to almost fall off of the back of Drogon, only to be completely okay, negating that threat.

The only three deaths in this hunt were all more or less inconsequential (dragon-turned-undead be damned).  Thoros of Myr lost any relevance he really has when the magic system he uses spontaneously changed for the sake of spectacle (more on that far below), with his only real use thereafter being a means to bring Beric back from the dead if he falls. However, there’s only one season left, and Beric doesn’t really add much to the plot anyway, so who cares? Benjen dies as he unlived: appearing out of nowhere to save someone before leaving the narrative altogether without much importance. What interest he did have, from Jon finding out he’s still around (which he barely even mentions) to his employers the Children of the Forest (who are seemingly all dead), is gone, and his plot went pretty much nowhere. Viserion… while there is an interesting thing of an undead dragon (which can somehow still breathe blue [even hotter] fire despite fire being deadly to wights because… reasons), both Viserion and Rhaegal are barely even characters. Their entire role in the story has been “the other two dragons who aren’t Drogon,” so honestly, he wasn’t much of a loss. If anything, he’s marginally better undead (or a White Walker, or whatever) because he has something to actually distinguish himself. The plot didn’t lose anything by having him die; it gained an actual character, and one with somehow less personality than anything else (which given it’s in an army of thoughtless wights, is really saying something).

 Modernization of Symbolic Unimportance

 As said by Tywin Lannister in the “Histories and Lore” video for the Westerlands, “Fools look at the Westerlands and see gold. Fools see our wealth and call it strength. Gold is just another rock. The Westerlands are strong because of House Lannister. From strong leadership comes unity. From unity comes power.” In fact, the strong leadership shown by House Lannister is not because of their gold, but in spite of their lack of it. Their mines long since went dry, but they manage to keep an air of importance due to Tywin Lannister’s careful, ruthless politicking.

The fall of an ancestral home is seen as a major defeat in most seasons. The fall of Winterfell to the Greyjoys and then the Boltons meant the end of House Stark. Brynden “Blackfish” Tully died holding the line against invader to his own home of Riverrun rather than abandon it.

This season does away with all of that. Jaime sacrifices Casterly Rock to Tyrion, and both of them agree on it being a strategically beneficial move, for the sole reason of the gold mines having run dry. The importance of the fort was not the gold alone, but its symbolic power. By abandoning it, Jaime should have lost favor, as he would have shown its unimportance (and by extension his poverty) to the world, but none of that happens at all.

The increasing importance of the Iron Bank of Braavos can be excused as Cersei dealing with things very differently from her predecessors, but the overt decision to abandon all pretense of wealth doesn’t make any sense from a medieval perspective that the show is ostensibly supposed to use.

 Romanticizing Incest

Earlier seasons of Game of Thrones, while treating some incestuous couplings as loving, did not shy away from the idea that they were disturbed and often resulted in problems, the most commonly cited example being House Targaryen, with Cersei Lannister’s relationship with her twin brother being more up front in how it was shown.

In this season, however, the budding romance between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, unknowingly nephew and aunt, is treated as a true loving pair. The fact that they seem to have absolutely no chemistry aside, their relationship is disgusting to some in a way only outstripped by Lysa Arryn’s… mothering of her son Robin in earlier seasons. Is this relationship supposed to suddenly be okay because it is between two protagonists? Is incestuous romance only looked down upon when it is performed by villains? These seem to be indications by the showrunners.

  Character Developments

 Euron Greyjoy

While the newest King of the Iron Islands is a fun character in his own way, mostly in how he seems to be a more fallible version of what Ramsay Bolton had been before, he has an enormous amount of logistical problems.

First and foremost, his fleet of a thousand ships. Not only did he manage to have them made on a collection of islands that has almost no trees, but he managed to make them all in the span of…what, a week? A month? Not only that, but the ships are purported to be better than the original ones, again without any supplies whatsoever. Raiding can only justify so much.

On the other hand, we have his sneak attack on the Unsullied at Casterly Rock. The fact that his massive fleet that could be completely missed until the first shot is fired stretched credibility far beyond the breaking point. While their assault on the Targaryen-allied fleet commanded by Yara Greyjoy is possible, even well done, this one smacks of incredible stealth skills that do not at all mesh with the borderline psychopath Euron. Not only are his ships still black-sailed, but they are able to sneak up on the Unsullied fleet in broad daylight, rather than using the cover of a storm for a sneak raid.

The only possible excuse for this Euron ex Machina would be the Unsullied being one of the worst armies in the entirety of the world (which, given their incompetence in almost every single encounter they are a part of aside from the one in which they were initially freed, I can’t really deny), but even that discounts the idea of leaving even a single scout.

  Jaime Lannister

Jaime Lannister, infamous as “the Kingslayer,” is portrayed in an extremely bizarre way in this season. After the death glare he gave to his sister in the previous season finale for doing the exact same thing that he had become an oathbreaker to avoid, he spends the entire season, barring the finale, working with her. The only real attention given to the thing that should, by right, have him defecting, otherwise quitting, or outright killing Cersei to save the kingdom is for him to imply he might be afraid of her, after saying he does not hate her (despite his expression in the previous season showing that’s blatantly untrue).

Every single thing about Cersei’s treatment of Jaime makes him seem deliberately weak. She implicitly threatens his life with her “never betray me again.” She ignores his quite reasonable comments about the danger they are in and how the Lannister dynasty would only last a single generation. For all of his talk of being in love, he seems more like a kicked puppy than an actual threat, let alone someone with any real agency.

Yes, he managed to break free in the season finale, but it seems to little too late, and should have happened in the start of the season, even if it meant being rid of him for the majority of the season. In the very least, he should have died in Blackwater Rush to avoid this stupidity from continuing (as mentioned above under plot armor).

  Brandon Stark

When it comes to Bran Stark, it’s easy to say that the actor is playing a completely different character from the previous seasons, and not one that is really all that interesting. Rather than being afraid or uncertain about… anything, he seems to have had all of his actual personality removed.

Of course, that seems to have been the point in the story, but the presentation is extremely poorly handled. While Bran could reasonably have had this personality if he had shown it before, he seemed exactly the same as always when he absorbed all of the memories of the three-eyed raven. As such, Meera Reed’s “revelation” that he “died in that cave” rings hollow, and her surprise at his lack of emotion is understandable, but for all of the wrong reasons. All that needed to be shown was him having this personality after he escaped from the cave in Season 6, when he met up with Benjen Stark. However, this apparently had not been used, and from the sounds of things, was not even considered at the time.

His new identity as “the three-eyed raven” (a designation that makes absolutely no sense for him given his lack of any actual connection to that identity beyond having similar memories and powers) is one of the most stereotypical fictional children: the creepy child with supernatural powers. There isn’t anything really interesting about this archetype, only how it is used, and the showrunners seem to be unable to find any real use for him beyond “be creepy and stay in the corner” until the season finale. Even the chance to delve into the history of the previous three-eyed raven, to learn of his work with the Night’s Watch and his relation to the Targaryen family as Brynden “Bloodraven” Rivers, is not even given lip service, which would not be so grating if the show didn’t take its time to repeatedly show how nobody has any idea what the three-eyed raven even is.

  Daenerys Targaryen

If there is one character I am irritated by above all others, it is Daenerys Targaryen. She is the epitome of the creator’s pet to me, someone for whom the narrative bends over backwards to justify every action, and whom fans actually agree with. Actions such as roasting the Tarly heads of house alive are seen as justified because she “gave them a choice” and going back on her word would cause the threats to lose their menace, ignoring the fact that she is the one who came up with the choices in the first place, making her responsible one way or another. It’s hard to take someone seriously as a heroine when their entire character revolves around their own self-importance, such as her “courting” with Jon Snow.

Every single action since the end of Season 2 has resulted in victory, even if she is momentarily captured. When someone is rarely in even the slightest bit of danger, why bother to think they have a bad time anymore? It’s the world of Game of Thrones, after all, and if you don’t have a serious amount of bad luck, you’re probably either disconnected from the plot altogether or you’re one of the villains, and even the latter isn’t a guarantee. Her loss of Highgarden, Dorne, and the Unsullied are glossed over quickly in Season 7 by her aforementioned attack on the loot train going through Blackwater Rush, where her Dothraki horsemen easily slaughter the Lannister and Tarly pikes (which are specifically engineered to hold back a cavalry charge), making any additional army seem superfluous (after all, she doesn’t even seem to need to wear armor to a battle, unlike literally everybody else). The assault is also praised for being “awesome,” but it involves the destruction of food stores rather than bringing them back to the people from whom they were stolen, given Jaime had already discussed the fact that all of the gold had been sent to King’s Landing.

Case in point is the reaction to the end of the aforementioned Great Wight Hunt. Her loss of Viserion (who is barely a character, more a prop alongside Rhaegal next to actual important dragon Drogon), the first real important loss since Season 2, actually gained her the loyalty of Jon Snow, a man who explicitly would not bend the knee to her for sake of Northern autonomy and his place as their king. Contrast the doings of Robb Stark, where his biggest mistakes led to the defection of segments of his army and ultimately led to the vast majority of them dying in the Red Wedding. While he lost everything, including his standing in the North, Daenerys gains even more forces, loses a dragon that hadn’t even done anything important in the series, and as shown by the very next episode, didn’t even permanently lose the Unsullied, who are easily brought back without fuss.

The worst seems to be the fact that enormous amounts of dialogue are about her beauty, benevolence, and overall perfection, including how she is totally not like her father even when she does the exact same things he would have done. It’s not as if I am asking for the showrunners to say she is the worst person ever. But admitting she is flawed in the show and showcasing her as just as much “not always right” as everyone else would be a nice change of pace, especially when it comes to such things as getting Jon Snow, who couldn’t possibly care any less about allegiance to foreign queens over his work with the North and staving off the end times, to bend the knee to her.

At a certain point, it becomes entirely plausible that the characters in the story will, one and all, bow down and accept Daenerys Stormborn as their goddess forevermore, such is her perfection in the story’s eyes.

  Night King

On the surface, the idea of the Night King (apparently created by the showrunners, and distinct from the Night’s King of myth) is disturbing. On paper, he is a silent villain who has lived for eons, capable of raising an army easily and a harbinger of an apocalypse. However… what has he actually done? His accomplishments to date have been killing a defenseless old man, standing in place, walking a little bit, riding a horse slowly, raising White Walkers and many wights, possibly bringing a winter storm, and throwing a javelin. He hasn’t even gotten into a single fight, and on the whole, he’s become more of a plot device than an actual character.

His performance in the penultimate episode of Season 7 showcases some of the veritable James Bond villain qualities that this entity has. He has the heroes at his mercy for what seems to be hours, stuck on an island in the middle of a frozen lake. However, as he showed earlier in the season and was explicitly stated by Jon in the same season, he does not merely come with the storm, but rather he brings the storm. If he could summon up a winter blizzard to cool down the water to the point of it becoming ice again, he could have done so, thereby killing all of his enemies with his own forces before they could be rescued.

The use of his ice javelin just makes things worse. First, he could have used it earlier to, if he could not freeze the lake again, at least throw and kill Jon and perhaps some others, who could be seriously injured by such a strike, especially in the midst of battle with wights or exhausted from the cold. Second, his choice of dragon to kill was rather nonsensical, both from the perspective of the character and from the perspective of the plotting. Drogon is the only important dragon in the entire show, let’s be totally clear on that. Everything important that ever happens with a dragon is far more likely to be his doing than that of the other two dragons, to the point that many viewers forget their names and cannot tell them apart easily. He is the one who is most battle ready, and the one who is burning the wights alive in the center of the battlefield, not to mention the only one of the dragons who seems capable of easily carrying all of the remaining heroes and the captive wight. However, the Night King decides, for some reason, to throw the javelin of ice across the entire battlefield to kill Viserion, who, along with Rhaegal, has had almost no importance to the story. If anything, Viserion has more personality as a member of the undead than as one of the living, and losing him feels more like a boon than a detriment. If the showrunners wanted to make an actual impact on the plot in terms of a loss of forces, they could have had Drogon be the one who is killed instead, especially since he is the biggest, and thus the most threatening.

  Rhaegar Targaryen

Rhaegar Targaryen’s annulment of his marriage to Elia Martell is treated in a very bizarre manner. Rather than following the idea of love ruining the realm to its logical conclusion, the showrunners seem intent on the idea that Rhaegar is the one in the right, having his marriage to Lyanna Stark be portrayed as a beautiful ceremony instead of the fact that it ruined any possible standing with House Martell and rendered Elia Martell’s death even more tragic and pointless. The fact that Rhaegar and Lyanna named their son Aegon accentuates the dissonance between the loving atmosphere and the irritating effects, as he took the time to give the name of his son with Elia to his son with Lyanna as well. Did he have no other choices in mind? Did he just not care? Did he forget he had a son beforehand?

Further, this beneficial treatment of Rhaegar also gives Robert Baratheon the appearance of someone who is entirely in the wrong. While he was wrong in his reasons, believing Lyanna to have been kidnapped and raped, he still saved Westeros from a psychotic king, with Aerys II being essentially Westeros’ version of Roman Emperor Caligula.

  Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish

While the excuse could be made that Littlefinger is love drunk while in his plot at Winterfell, this falls apart instantly when one goes through the means he utilizes. He seems to view the North and the Vale, both places with high degrees of honor with some very rare exceptions, as identical to King’s Landing, trying to use his mind games when the people he is manipulating are not mere unknowing pawns, but people who outright despise him. The idea that he would seriously believe that Sansa would fall for Arya, who he can plainly see is more interested in combat than politics, being interested in usurping her position as the Lady of Winterfell is extremely stupid, and even moreso when one considers the fact that he outright stated his intention to claim the Iron Throne with Sansa at his side to her face.

  Mechanical Changes

One thing that grates heavily on those who like a consistent story is a change in the laws of the world to fit a story, rather than changing the story to fit the laws of the story. If there are no set laws, anything can happen, and nothing matters as a result. It all becomes nothing but meaningless spectacle. Season 7 is extremely bad at keeping anything set, to the point of only the most basic rules staying in place, those that could apply to any fiction ever that involves fire or zombies, and as a result are completely unoriginal. The changes in magic are split across several areas: greyscale, White Walker magic, and Red Temple magic.

  Greyscale: From Leprosy to Acne

In earlier seasons, the progression of greyscale was seen to be akin to a supernatural form of leprosy. It would turn the victim’s body to stone over time, or close enough to it, changing them from the inside out. Jorah Mormont’s condition was so horrific because it was likely impossible to resolve easily. Shireen Baratheon’s survival was considered a miracle, needing the help of healers from both sides of the Narrow Sea, and left a permanent scar on the left side of her face. On seeing the fact of how far Jorah’s condition had gone in Season 7, Archmaester Ebrose claimed that there was nothing that could be done for him.

However, Season 7 also shows that “advanced” grayscale is nothing more than magical acne. The treatment of the disease, which leaves not even a single scar, consists of peeling off the infected flesh (which seems to be just a more painful version of peeling off burned skin) and applying a special ointment to the place where the flesh had been. In fact, the flesh itself does not even seem to be infected, but covered by a kind of coating of grayscale that is held on with pus. How exactly was this supposed to be dangerous, again?

  White Walkers and Wights

Outside of the Night King’s ability or lack thereof to call up winter storms, the White Walkers’ magic and their wights’ capabilities changed significantly in this season with no justifiable explanation.

First, we have the wights’ sudden weakness to dragonglass. In past seasons, they have only been weak to two things: fire and being torn to shreds to the point of being unable to even move their disparate parts. What distinguished them from the White Walkers was the fact that the latter had both different abilities and different vulnerabilities, and the lack of an easy win factor made the wights that much harder to fight off. The reason for gathering dragonglass was not to kill the wights, but to kill the White Walkers, who could only be harmed by dragonglass and Valyrian steel. This distinction changed completely, and with no real reason. What does a skeleton care about being stabbed in the ribs with a glass dagger? It doesn’t have functioning organs, anyway. Fire both made sense (destroying the body) and was consistent, in that you needed to change tactics to fight different foes. With the “revelation” (rewrite) of this weakness, which the show treats as though it were always the case, fire actually seems to be less effective, such as during the altogether pointless and poorly shot fight against the wight polar bear. The flaming swords of Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr (to be discussed below) barely do anything at all to the beast, while a single stab from Jorah’s dragonglass dagger brings it down. In fact, using dragonglass weapons, the undead threat seem to be nothing more than another human army, as they don’t even have much real threat at all and can be killed in a single blow in combat.

Another problem is the use of synchronization between the White Walkers and their wights, which flies in the face of everything we have seen before. If killing a White Walker destroys all of the wights it had raised (a common theme in necromancy or other summon magics), why was there no effect on the force at Hardhome after Jon killed a White Walker? To say that there were no wights at that location raised by that White Walker stretches plausibility to the breaking point, especially when one brings into account the fact that the “Behind the Show” segment for the season’s penultimate episode had both showrunners talk about how they were scrambling to come up with a way for most of the people who went on the Great Wight Hunt to survive. Translation: this wasn’t actually an element of the story before. They made it up on the spot. This fact itself would be a problem, but it also fundamentally changes the nature of the story. If all you need to do is kill the Night King (who, again, doesn’t seem to even exist in the source material), then the story turns from one of war and survival to one of assassination. Just send Arya up there if that’s the case. She seems capable of assassinating anyone she feels like on a moment’s notice if you let her go off screen. There, plot solved, we can go home.

  Red Temple

The primary rituals of the Red Temple, shown through Thoros of Myr in this season, have had distinct, deliberate differences from earlier seasons, ones that make Thoros himself useless, and his eventual death have no real meaning. 

First comes the ability to see visions in the flames. Thoros does not appear to treat the fireplace in which he has Sandor look, but the latter is able to see their destination and the movements of the White Walkers easily, saying things that even Thoros doesn’t seem to have witnessed. If a red priest can’t see something in the flames that a pyrophobe can, what use is being a red priest at all?

Second, and most importantly, comes the use of the flaming sword magic by both Thoros and his companion, Beric Dondarrion. In its prior usage in Season 3, this magic appeared to need the expertise and faith of a red priest, in addition to Beric’s blood. However, its usage in the Great Wight Hunt has the wielders able to light their swords individually with their gloves on, without having direct contact between the blood and the blade. Furthermore, Beric is able to use the spell even after Thoros dies, showing that the latter is not important anyway.

While Thoros is needed to bring Beric back from the dead, the latter is going into the final season of the show having accomplished very little, if anything. Would Beric’s death even be much of a loss?

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Wat Ratchathammaram - Thailand

Also known as Wat Sila Ngu (which means ”Snake Stone”), the Red Temple is in Koh Samui. Famous for its terracotta color, the walls of the temple are embellished with sculptures and bas-reliefs depicting scenes from Buddha’s life, warriors, and mythological creatures. A golden statue of Buddha is present inside the temple.

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