Or her demon baby.

Sam won't be on the throne. He's the one that writes the Song of Ice and Fire that is the "source" document for what we are watching. Pretty sure he'll do that in the Citadel, if he hasn't started on it already.

The elephants. What about Cersei's elephants? Did she get some? Will they help her?

Interesting theory about that here:
http://time.com/5579736/game-of-thrones-bran-stark-lord-of-light/

I did that before I started watching. Didn't help much, just showed up the compression artifacts better. They really shot it in the dark (stupid), so there's not much more detail there to see by turning up the brightness.

Arya pulls a very similar assassin move she does on Brienne in the courtyard of Winterfell when they were sparring last season, dropping the knife from her upper right hand to her lower left hand, then stabbing. The main difference is this time the hands were reversed and the drop from hand to hand was longer.

Both living dragons survived, Jon's was just severely wounded and had to land. They're both in the preview for next week, too.

Even with the "HD" direct HBO stream (no additional compression from DirecTV, DISH, or local cable company), the compression was still pretty hard. Turning up the brightness just showed off the artifacts of compression and limited color pallete but didn't reveal much more visual information.

The theory that Bran/3 Eyed Raven is the physical manifestation of the Lord of Light is interesting because that makes Jon a Fire Wight due to the resurrection, which means, Bran dies, Jon Dies.

I miss the show it was before they ran out of source material a few seasons ago. The writing, pacing, character development...all of it is noticibly off since they had to start writing it themselves. So I'm not too broken up about the accelerated wrapup of the TV show. At least there are two more books. The Winds of Winter one is supposedly done (finally) and like 1200 pages! Then we just have to cross our fingers that Martin lives long enough to fart out the last one and wrap this all up the way he intended. I believe it will be substantially different than the TV show. We'll see.

Plus they're WAY rushing. They could easily put more intrigue into it and do 2 more seasons. Problem is, they don't have the writing chops to do it well, so they're trying to get it over with.

Yeah, posted elsewhere that S8E4 is a poorly paced and terribly written episode, probably the worst so far this season. It's clear they don't have the skill to land this plane without JRRM's writing.

That, PLUS is Yara the worst leader ever that she didn't have a watch to see enemy ships approaching? They should have never gotten that close to begin with. SO many logic holes. Just bad writing, again. It's like, "this will be cool and unexpected" and they just do it with no logical setup or progression. Just like the random fighting in Dorne that came out of nowhere.

S08E04 is a strong case of deja vu all over again. The writers are lost without the books to guide them.

Yeah, it's in the shot when Tormund is drunkenly talking about Jon getting murdered.

Next week Grey Worm will wake up in a sweat and realize that part was all a dream. No way Dany got to Cersei before Jon WHO LEFT BEFORE HER. I mean, the Iron Islands are on the opposite side of the continent from Kings Landing, but somehow Dany beat him there with TROOPS?

Interactive map to show the distances between episode locations:
http://quartermaester.info/

Okay, at least she's on the right side of the continent then, but I still don't see how she got to Kings Landing before Jon, then. It's quite a hike from Winterfell to the coast, then they lost their ships and had to hoof it to Kings Landing, while Jon had a straight shot.

Only if Maggy's prophecy is wrong.

"Aye. Queen you shall be... until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear."

"And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you."

I think it's another misdirection. GRRM doesn't say it's another woman that casts Cersei down, just someone younger and more beautiful. Could be a dude.

It's suspending disbelief most people are having trouble with on GoT now. That usually happens when the writing of any show or movie goes in the toilet. If the writing is good, people will give the benefit of the doubt.

It's not just that, but pretty much every scene in Episode 4 was problematic. The Brienne/Jaime kiss was AWKward and out of the blue. Brienne ugly crying when he left was out of character. The Tyrion virgin thing was just a poor bridge to the Brienne/Jaime tryst later. The Dany fast-travel with troops to Kings Landing while Jon who left BEFORE her isn't at Kings Landing yet was dumb, and that whole faceoff at the King's Landing wall was riddled with problems. It also looked more like Dorne than King's Landing. Just one problem after another. Any ONE of those might be excused if everything else was excellent, but it was all badly written, badly paced, badly presented, so it leaves a bad taste in the mouth because fans of the show have experienced much, MUCH better in prior seasons when they were working off actual GRRM source. This season is almost like fanfic they decided to shoot. There's NO SUBTLETY at ALL. Every scene is just a clumsy punch in the face.

They left out enough material in the books to cover 2-3 more seasons, but that's water under the bridge. They don't have the skills to write 2-3 more solid seasons, so they're just trying to wrap it up the best they can (which is poorly) and get out. The producers are bored and can't wait to mess up Star Wars with their production deal already set with Disney.

Sopranos did NOT leave the ending open. Tony was killed. The only bone I have to pick with the way they did it is it would have been more obvious if you were seeing from Tony's perspective when it went dark instead of looking AT Tony. But I was fine with that ending. I thought they *almost* nailed it.

Breaking Bad did an amazing job finishing the show in a satisfying way, but yeah, there aren't many series that end well.

Boo. The writers suck so bad. GRRM they are not.

And Varys death? Total waste.

I basically am thinking of HBO GoT like Donald Sutherland in invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's doing all the right things for a long time, then there's a little break and you see him and aren't quite sure if everything's okay (S08 Ep 1-3), then he turns and does the alien shriek to show he's been snatched. These last two episodes have been the shriek. Pretty sure there's no good ending or even good bad ending for any of this in the HBO version. It's just stupid fanfic-level writing.

Targaryens are not impervious to fire just by nature of them being Targaryens. Dany's thing seems to be kind of a special case.

Then, at one point the camera pulls out to a hill overlooking the city where Hot Pie has set up a food cart for the spectators and is serving them a selection of find handheld pies and ale as they watch King's Landing burn.

It's substantially different because Sopranos didn't have 3 seasons of increasingly sloppy and massively accelerated storytelling and character development at the end. It seems to me that it kept a pretty consistent level of quality right to the end. GoT had a pretty substantial drop in season 6 and has kept dropping in writing, pacing, and character development. It's especially obvious if you rewatch from the beginning after the later seasons.

Bronn actually GETTING Highgarden (the former heart of chivalry) is ridiculous.

Breaking Bad is one of the best, very few lags in the whole series, even. Supposedly Six Feet Under is great, but I haven't seen that series. M*A*S*H was very good, too. Newhart was great, too.

That and the shortest winter ever with grass or whatever that was sprouting north of the wall at the end. Dumb.

Yes, that's why it was super dumb to have the "hope" of a green blade of grass in the far north at the end when winter JUST started. It took like 7 seasons to come and one season to be over. And no one aged enough for there to be a 10 year time jump before the character wrapup. Bad, lazy writing and storytelling that can't hold a candle to seasons 1-5.

But it got worse well after he was killed, bad enough to hit King's Landing in the south hard.

Yeah I was back and forth on it, but when Dani grabs the Iron Throne there's a closeup and they look much more like ice crystals on it than ash. Also, if that's ash, it's the whitest ash ever. We literally had the same thing here in California where it rained ash for days and it was much dirtier and much less accumulation from a much larger and longer-lasting fire.

No. Way. Unless he really did finish both books like that rumor he denied. He's definitely done with the next one because his schedule magically cleared up for appearances and other stuff after being on lockdown. Probably just waiting for publisher timing on the release.

THEY CHOSE TO RUSH IT. HBO would have been fine giving them another 2-3 seasons to properly develop the show in the usual way. It was a self-inflicted wound. The rush was the core problem. It ruined the finish of the show because so much didn't make sense or lacked apparent motivation due to poor or non-existent character development in the last couple seasons.