Game of Thrones: Season Five: Episode Four (Spoilers for Books and Show!)

[douglascohen]

Welcome to what in all likelihood will be my final writeup on HBO's Game of Thrones. I'm about 90% sure we've reached the point where I'm going to need to stop watching due to fear of spoilers in the unpublished books.  As I've been doing since this season started, I didn't watch the episodes when it aired.  Instead, I recorded it on my trusty DVR

Comments

[ckastens]

I had joked years ago that when they made two seasons out of book 3, they would only need one season to make books 4 and 5. Now it looks like that's not far from the truth. While books 4 and 5 have a lot of interesting material, they don't have nearly the intensity of the first three books. HBO had to make some major changes or risk slowly losing audience. Of course, they have changed storylines in ways I couldn't have imagined (Sansa being the most surprising), chopping out huge numbers of characters. If they could go back and start over, I'm sure they would cut even more characters from seasons one and two. I'm not sure what's a spoiler anymore, since this is no longer the same story. I think the only true spoiler will be how the whole thing ends, as I'm pretty certain the series and books will converge on that point.

As for what's going on now:
- I have a feeling we're going to catch up to Jon's story by the end of this season. They show him ever more questioning his decision to remain neutral, and we still have six episodes left.
- I'm pretty sure Mance is dead and I'm guessing Brienne will serve his role at Winterfell in the books. Then she can move on to an eventual meeting with Jamie in a future season.
- Dropping the name "Thoros of Myr" in this episode leads me to believe that he'll be back. That lends credibility to the Stoneheart hypothesis. Putting her in may have been prompted by last season's fan outcry.
- The Unsullied are great soldiers, but not brawlers. They're used to fighting in formation, in unison, and spears aren't great weapons for an alley fight, so I do think there is some justification there. At the same time, that group they used for the Harpies wasn't all that intimidating.

[douglascohen]

I'm not sure what's a spoiler anymore either, and once we get to that point I have to stop watching.

--Brienne serving Mance's role at Winterfell certainly seems possible, but she could just as easily by intercepted by Stoneheart on company on the way, much as she was while looking for Sansa in AFFC.

--It may have been the plan all along to bring Stoneheart back later on. As I said, she's only been in two chapters since her death, and both of them involve a hanging. There really isn't too much finagling that needs to take place. And if they hold her reintroduction until later it spares them the nececessity of having to keep putting her on screen for the benefit of the viewers until her storyline heats up again, which it probably will in the last two books.

--Fair point about the Unsullied, but aren't the Sons of the Harpy supposed to be the sons of nobility? It's not like they have a lot of fighting experience to being with then. I think the action still favors the Unsullied in such a situation.