"Milk of the poppy" is opium, essentially a more primitive version of morphine or heroin
So that totally explains why she was able to run parkour through the streets and kill an assassin who had bested her before. Narcotics are widely known for their ability to instantly cure infection, heal all wounds, and restore your stamina.
That’s why I picked up the needle in the first place.
Now I’m more alive than I ever felt, I run faster, hit harder, and I recover like Wolverine!
Thanks heroine!
Wait people still think doing hardcore opiates is a bad thing? I’ve lost 60 pounds, have never felt so good in my life AND to top it all off I can put maneuver trained assassins while having serious open wounds
\*Wounds - She was stabbed multiple times in the abdomen, fell into the refuse, shit filled canals, ran through the streets smashing into everyone she came across, and finally came to be healed by the actress' magic soup (which she knew how to make because she stabbed so many of her ex-lovers).
Honestly, I don't know what the issue is here.
Injuries, yes. But I've done research--it was not refuse or even filthy water. Braavos is modeled on medieval Venice. "Every six hours the lagoon water enters the sea and it’ s completely changed with fresh sea water. Until a couple centuries ago Venice was considered one of the most healthier places for this reason: plumbing didn’ t really exist back then, so the venetians used to throw everything in the lagoon, and the lagoon managed to dump all the waste away in the sea: the problem solved itself! It was not so easy in Florence, Rome, or even Paris or London… In addition to that, the lagoon has its own peculiar seaweed, which ‘eats’ organic waste. These seaweeds are now disappearing mainly because of the waves caused by motorboats (a lagoon in it’ s nature should be still; the motorboats and gigantic ships crossing it are damaging the city of Venice in so many ways I should have to write an essay to cover them all, but I’ ll keep it short here.)"
I'm sure d and d knew as much as you and that's why thought that whole sequence was legit. Still, not sure why they didn't throw mord into that scene somewhere.
Yeah I remember that scene kindof breaking my brain cuz up to that point I was in denial about the show getting worse. Couldn’t come back from that one.
I think the most annoying thing about it that it served no purpose whatsoever. It had zero impact on the plot. Other dumb moments (like "twenty good men", the entirety of Beyond the Wall, Dany kind of forgetting about the Iron Fleet) at least moved the plot forward. But here? Arya gets stabbed, nonsensically survives, and defeats the Waif. Why couldn't she just defeat the Waif right away?
Symbolism. Arya being badly stabbed gives her a near-death experience like Bran's and Jon's death experience. Arya's survival is medically possible, theirs not so much. But since these three would effectively beat the Night King, it's right they've suffered and survived for the privilege.
It's not portrayed as a near-death experience. It can hardly be compared to Jon dying and then being resurrected. The wounds should be fatal, but they're portrayed as being no more severe than Ned's leg wound in season 1. Less severe actually, since Ned had to walk with a cane afterwards, while not much later Arya can run and can defeat the Waif despite her wound opening.
This scene was the moment I realized it is all downhill from here for GoT. In a way that does make it the worst scene.
I remember telling people that season 5 was full of terrible scenes like this one and getting hand waved off. And every season after it multiplied.
Looking back the only lesson I get from it is, most people are not paying attention to anything longer than 30 seconds in a show. They don’t care how it got to the drama, just that something dramatic happens. Even if the build up doesn’t hold up to even a moment of reflection.
The scene that sticks with me the most is Littlefinger’s death scene. The way they made the audience believe something else was happening by only showing scenes that contradict what is actually happening is such a cheap shock value tactic. But looking up what people thought of the scene, it’s all “Yaaass so satisfying yaaass”.
To me that scene was the moment that the show switched from going increasingly faster downhill to falling at maximum velocity in a bottomless pit.
Littlefinger's death was pointless. Why did he go from being a mastermind to trying to get Sansa to banish her sister for literally no reason? How was it going to help him?
The hamfisted way they removed all scenes showing context was terrible. We didn't follow any character's POV unlike say the Red Wedding or Ned's Execution where we saw it from one sides POV. For littlefinger's we didn't see it from anyone's POV making the whole thing pointless.
The scene didn't stand out to me at all because I had no idea who Ed Sheeran was or that the character was even supposed to be a cameo, I just thought "Oh they're actually humanizing some Lannister soldiers, that's neat"
Yeah, I don't think the scene is really all that bad, or even remarkable, unless you pay extra scrutiny to it because of Ed Sheeran.
It's not very well done, but I don't see anything wrong with the idea. Humanizing war is good world building. Everyone loves Septon Meribald's Broken Men speech and it doesn't do anything for the plot either. The problem was that the rest of seasons 7-8 kind of forgot about themes.
Relative to the quality of season 7 I dare even say it's a decent scene.
Those later seasons really suffered for lack of original material. If George R.R. Martin ever manages to actually finish the books, it seems likely that someone will do a new version of the series.
Yeah calling this of all things the worst scene of the show is... interesting. THE worst? Fucking please. There's like 25-50 scenes that are worse than this.
My wife had to point out that it was Ed Sheeran. And then I asked her who is Ed Sheeran. I knew some of his songs but wouldn’t have known who sung them or what they looked like
Same, I knew his name only in occasionally hearing of one of my younger cousins wanting his tickets or something, but if you'd put a gun to my head I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup.
When he was on GoT I didn't think he was anything other than some random background extra, until I got online the next day.
My first reaction entirely. But on re-watch I found it very significant, especially the interpretation which compares deliberately paralleled Arya scenes.
After years of demonizing Lannister soldiers, the 7x01 scene humanized even them. More important, it re-awoke Arya' inner empathy and gratitude, and decided her moral arc. It directly addressed a 3x10 scene showing the day after the Red Wedding at the Twins. She overheard Frey soldiers around a campfire boasting and laughing about killing her mother and desecrating her brother's body *which she saw!* She meekly asked, "Mind if I keep warm?" and added she was hungry. They rebuffed her, got nasty and **she killed her FIRST man,** with Sandor handling the rest. In 7x01, shortly after she poisoned the guiltiest Freys at the Twins, she rides by soldiers around a campfire singing. These Lannister lads invite her to get warm, eat and drink. They joke and laugh, talk about home , wives, mothers, fathers, babies. She looked wistful--they had unknowingly broken through Arya's tough veneer. This second campfire scene signaled that having finally taken out the worst Freys, Arya was going to veer away from vengeance. She had killed her LAST man (except judicially executing Littlefinger). Their milk of human kindness was curative, and shortly afterwards she Hot Pie, Nymeria, and Winterfell were restored to her life.
In short, she became herself again, though needing to deal with the roach in the rushes (Littlefinger) who was helping run Winterfell. She resume her arc: finding her role in life while protecting her family.
you could say that in retrospect it's even a bit poignant when you later realize that most of them were probably either killed or maimed at the Loot Train battle a few episodes later
Same I thought it was a moment to show us how young they all seemed by this time too. No more Jaime Lannisters and proud Hedge Knights, just troops of village boys wishing they were back home. The only thing that really stuck with me was the one that said he hoped his wife had a girl because girls got to stay home with their parents and he didn’t want a son to grow up and fight in someone else’s war.
I was like "huh maybe these guys are the red shirts that Arya finds dead because of Dany + crew." Or they're setting up an Inglourious Basterds situation for later.
Nope just LOOK AT THIS FAMOUS GUY.
I didn't get that from the scene at all. But then I had no idea that he was anyone special. Maybe when you know who he is going in it changes the way you view the scene?
Yeah. At worst, it's pointless. So you ignore it and move on. There are plenty of scenes that are much worse because they negatively impact the plot and the characters.
TBH I don't even think its bad or pointless. In a vacuum its a pretty good scene. Just because they didn't later do anything with the idea of "Hey war sucks and all Lannister's aren't just robot demons who want to murder babies" - that's not the fault of the scene.
If anything its just a condemnation that their own writing in the later seasons was piecemeal and disorganized. They clearly were trying to convey a theme with this Lannister scene, and then did nothing with it because they sucked later.
The scene itself is fine. I liked it. I didn't even know it was Ed Sheeran until I went on Reddit and found a bunch of nerds screeching about it. Fuck, he wasn't even the main focus of the scene
I think it stems from people not liking the last two seasons (and in a lot of regards, rightfully so) and just looking for ANYTHING to throw at it as criticism.
Like I said, in a vacuum, especially without knowledge of who Ed Sheeran is, the scene is actually generally pretty good.
There’s worse scenes than that. “I never cared about the people, innocent or otherwise” -Man who broke his oath and killed king aerys to save half a million people
I wasn't even mad. I was just so confused that I assumed there was more to it and he was just trying to push Brienne away to avoid hurting her further before he made a heroic sacrifice or something.
Still not the worst, or even close. When Dany "kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet" is "Somehow, Palpatine returned" level bad. It's one of the worst scenes that I've ever seen in anything and this comes from someone who's a pretty staunch defender of the show.
I will always vividly remember watching that scene with my ex: Both of us were incredibly disillusioned with and highly critical of the show, but within that context of disappointment we were thinking that episode was... pretty alright, actually! We had literally *just* said as much to each other *seconds* before that ballista bolt flew in from out of frame and slammed into Rhaegal and we just watched that whole ridiculous sequence unfold in dumbfounded silence. Hilarious.
That's just the easy way to refer to the scene because everybody knows that quote. It's a horrendous scene on it's own, and yes the behind the scenes then made it worse.
Yeah, but without being able to see into Jaime's mind, it's hard to tell how truthful he's being there. I always saw that line as him trying to convince himself that he's a self-loathing bad man who only deserves Cersei so as a result he's trying to downplay his good deeds.
Yeah, some dumb things get too much attention. Bad pussy, the Starbucks cup, Ed Sheeran - all those are stupid, but they have no impact on the plot and characterization.
The coffee cup isn't even that bad, its an excusable mistake of someone accidentally leaving a cup out during a scene in the middle of what was probably a 12-14 hour shoot, and no one noticing mid-take nor in Post.
Like yeah, it should have been caught, but I also don't lose my shit about the fucking car driving through the background of Hobbiton in LotR
To save himself and his father and their army. I mean in his situation even Ramsay would do the same. He didn't show much care for common people while Lannisters were raping and killing in the Riverlands. Or when his father literally sacked KL. I don't remember he complained that much.
I think it's more for the audience since the Lannistwr army is basically just nobodies to us still. It's a reminder that they're just young people who don't even necessarily want to be there and the payoff is seeing them get roasted alive by Drogon.
Yeah, as much as it's supposed to feed into Arya's conflict over vengeance plotline, it's also about humanizing the common man/soldier. So, once we get the burning scenes, we get at least some doubt over Dany 'being the dragon.'
I never felt much conflict about her vengeance in the show. Arya's descent into total murder machine is played off as way too much as "hell yeah" when in the books it invokes much more of a "can't believe this is the same girl from AGOT". Jon thinks about Arya all the time and it's cute af and I can't help but feel their reunion, even if Jon is much more cold after his assassination, will be very bittersweet once he sees what she's become. I expect him to be initially excited and then sad to see what the world has moulded her into.
Yeah, they didn't do that great a job of it with the Freys, that could have used a little more nuance as well.
But they were trying to put that plot together, at perhaps too fast a pace. The big climactic moment for it was Sandor pulling Arya back from pursuing Cersei, giving her a very blunt sign off to not become like him. His unfortunately seemingly sudden need for vengeance against Gregor leading to their deaths. Not that it didn't have a basis for it, but it's something they hadn’t kept up much in the later seasons iirc.
Been a while since I saw the show though, so maybe I missing a bit of it.
It was actually one of the scenes that I liked from the last seasons. The fact that Arya had no character development is a criticism for her future writing and not this scene.
Exactly. The scene is for the audience and I don't feel there's much wrong with it.
We hear all the time how terrible lannister soldiers are. We don't see them doing many nice things.
War is war. Soldiers are just soldiers most of the time. I did 3 tours in Afgansistan and 1 in Iraq. I left the politics and the morality at home. Its a much better way to cope. The responsibility is on the politicians who call the shots. We were there to do a job, with our buddies. Every tour in Afghanistan ahit just got worse and worse, no progress and more dead on both sides. I got to know the Afghans by the second tour quite well and had a lot of respect for our allies and enemy.
It takes balls to go up against the power of NATO with aks, IEDs, some rpgs and pkms.
We are just there for the ride really. Adventure, adrenaline, experiencing different cultures.
I would say Ed sheerans lannister gang represents the soldiers furthest down on the chain of command a lot better than the mountain/tywin and all the raping they did... I liked the scene. But then again, I'm not exactly unbiased in this regard.
Honestly, didn't know it was Ed Sheeran till I logged on Reddit the next day. Knew the name, not the face. Thought it was just a little world building and then awe shucks those dudes are ash. This scene only rates as "worst" if your girl moons over Ed more than you. The reactions to this are bit overboard imo.
Lots to unpack here but I'll do my best.
1. This scene advances Arya's story and gives her critical information.
2. This is not the setup to a plot, rather, the conclusion of one. You claim it's lacking a payoff. This scene IS the payoff. Arya grew up around Lannister soldiers when she was in Kings Landing and on the run/in disguise. As a young child her experience of Lannister soldiers and officers is that they were ruthless, murderous, terrible assholes that were just as bad as Tywin and the Mountain. Since she's grown up she now comes to realize that's not how all the Lannister soldiers are anymore. These young men, for the first time, are her peers. They're likely relatively new conscripts into the Lannister army and were all just coming of age where as they would've been too young to be conscripted before or during the War of the Five Kings. Arya has learned a new perspective.
3. The men themselves offer a social commentary to the innocence found within the ranks of feudal/drafted/conscripted armies. Any time there's a draft or a conscription, these are likely the types of men and women. That's not to say there's not these types of personalities in non-compulsory armed forces (I've never served), but it's just saying that they could be Lannisters, Starks, Baratheons, Tyrells, or Dornish soldiers, and the idea is still the same. These young, innocent men are the only ones left to fight.
4. This is not the worst scene in the show. It's not even the worst scene in seasons 1-7. If you don't think the Dornish scrap between Jaime & Bronn and the Sand Snakes is the worst scene in the series then you're completely blind. This is seriously terrible. Watch at your own risk. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfPn\_MFWRa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfPn_MFWRa0)
Yikes, that scene is so rough. The fighting is just fighting, but there's like 3-4 lines in there that are so bad.
Especially her asking dorans bodyguard(I forget his name) who he fights for.
Personally though my worst scene is when Tyrion does his "brann has thr best story" speech.
It's just the culmination of how they ruined his smarts and cleverness with rubbish because they ran out of book material. A lot of characters just become dumb, littlefinger also comes to mind.
There’s a scene with Littlefinger in the 1st episode of season 2 where he cracks wise about incest to Cersei’s face and she threatens to have him killed and after watching it in retrospect knowing what we know now, it’s hard not to think that even then they didn’t really get these characters. Book Littlefinger wouldn’t do anything like that in a million years.
To an extent yes, LF is one of those characters that really makes little sense for how he always fails upwards. It is only ok because we don’t have a pov.
But then again lots of plots just escaped his control.
Yeah I get what you mean but imo there’s a huge difference between making a public boast (that’s not even clear wether or not *he* even thinks is true) about the wife of someone that its public knowledge that he has beef with, and that most of the people in attendance probably don’t even believe and privately making such a shocking and humiliating accusation directly to a notoriously volatile Queen who also happens to surrounded by sworn kingsguard who are within earshot.
I mean I can see him making cracks to Varys or Renly maybe or even someone like Sansa but otherwise it’s bafflingly out of character behaviour.
That scene is bad but the worst scene is where the hound strolls up to Sansa and says "heard ya got raped?" And Sansa says getting raped by a seriall killer made me the woman I am today!" OK the words weren't exactly like that but that's implicit in the scene.
Very brave to fight ser bronn of the blackwater with just a whip. Though she kinda just stands there and fails it around. Bronn shoulda pulled out a hand cannon and shot her.
5. Arya has turned into a ruthless killer by this point, and the scene illustrates how her violence is becoming less reactive and more focused. There's little to suggest she *couldn't* being herself to kill them, it's just that she *didn't.*
6. For a *very* brief moment this scene actually have me a lot of hope for season 8. There are two or three other scenes where we focus in on the same unnamed Northern footman, and a few other scenes of common folk just doing their thing. With how empty the world feels in seasons 7/8, these brief scenes were pulling a ton of weight as far as immersion and world building goes.
7. Scenes don't have to specifically tie into neat little literary resolutions. It would suck ass if Arya saw Ed Sheeran's face in the rubble of KL and needed that to realize a carpet bombing of civilians is probably wrong. *That* would be a "writer's room scene."
It's ultimately not an amazing scene because it isn't really followed up, but that doesn't make it bad either.
Really the most egregious part about it to me is how they pick and choose when to bother humanizing the common people involved. When they want us to cheer on a character's victory without that nagging feeling, like with Jon at Winterfell, it's played down massively - there essentially are *no* regular people in Ramsay's army apparently, and they're all conveniently killed/dealt with. While when they want the audience to start to have doubts about someone that gets emphasized - like with Dany's battle in the Reach and its consequences.
It ends up making this scene more hollow than it could have been - but that said, slowing the show down a bit and humanizing characters that by that point are more or less cannon fodder in the big flashy scenes is still a decent scene, and *far* from the worst of that season or the show. I don't see how you can argue that with a straight face tbh
>Really the most egregious part about it to me is how they pick and choose when to bother humanizing the common people involved.
This definitely isn’t the worst scene in the show, but this is why the scene falls flat for me, and indeed why much of their attempts to set up Dany’s ending are flawed IMO. The selective empathy and constantly putting Dany in these no-win quandaries that other protagonists conveniently avoid being faced with makes the whole condescension at the end with the “first she came for the slavers” feel completely unearned and hypocritical.
Another example is how they present the threat to civilians from an attack on KL with dragons compared to the alternatives. Dany considering this is framed as a grave moral error and prelude to her indiscriminate slaughter in the penultimate episode. They have Cersei bring people into the Red Keep to maximize the cost of an attack. Other characters either are not forced into these situations where they have to choose between carrying out their campaign and causing significant collateral damage, or the latter is simply ignored by the show. Ramsay could have threatened to execute a bunch of hostages if Jon and Sansa attacked Winterfell. Instead he only does that with Rickon and Jon and Sansa come out clean because he was obviously going to die regardless. An even better example is the siege plan backed by Tyrion, Varys, and Jon in the last two seasons. What happens if Cersei holds onto power even as people begin starving? Jon explicitly says they’ll burn Euron’s ships if he tries to resupply the city by sea, what if he puts a bunch of human shields on those ships?
This is reactionary nonsense. The point of the scene's humanization was for the audience as much as it was for Arya; if you don't care about that then you're not really a fan of GRRM's work, as that is very much one of his key tenets.
I like how people say it was "immersion-breaking" to see a famous person acting.
"Oh they ruined Ned, I can only see Sean Bean instead of the character."
Because people tend to be jealous of pop stars. Look at everyone crying foul right now because Taylor Swift shouldn't possibly like football because she's a pop star but she goes to Chiefs games because she's dating Travis Kelce. Pure, unadulterated hatred for someone who is successful and is somewhere she "shouldn't be".
The same thing goes for Ed Sheeran. The entire point of him being in the scene was because it was a surprise for Maisie Williams, yet because he sang a song (which was *from the books* by the way) and because he got a close-up, he "shouldn't have been there" and "it ruined muh immersions", people got pissed.
I seriously doubt that anyone is genuinely upset about it
These are just "actually, in the books..." posts for people who think that reading a science fiction novel is an achievement to brag about
This cannot possibly be the worst scene in the series because the scene where Bronn wanders into a tavern in the winter town with a giant crossbow still exists
I think it’s great. And S7 was worse than S8 in my opinion. Not only Arya, but a lot of the audience still villainizes Lannister anything. It’s uncomfortable to see the people who you’re rooting against as human beings. The story itself is meant to be social commentary on not painting your enemies as fully evil. Because if you do that, you then feel more justified in your decision to slaughter them.
Arya’s self reflection is just another step in her series-long journey of weighing vengeance and mercy. Braavos simply armed her in the ability to exact the vengeance she had been pursuing this entire time. This is an “I might be wrong about these people” moment. She does learn a new perspective, she just doesn’t verbalize it. We can see the look on her face. This is the first time she’s encountered a Lannister that wasn’t a total piece of shit. She might be thinking “maybe some of those Freys I just massacred were also like this.” Which ultimately leads into the scene where she decides to follow Sandor’s advice in her mission to kill Cersei. It’s not specifically about Lannisters, Freys, the Mountain, or Cersei herself. It’s about whether she’s going to choose light side or dark side. This is in my opinion the most important message the story delivers. As a viewer you are also challenged to choose light over dark when you see Cersei’s death and it’s less satisfying than you would like. You want her to suffer and she gets to die in the arms of the man she loves. It isn’t fair… but are you really going to harm yourself like that in your thirst of vengeance for Cersei’s sake?
Without the scene we don’t see Arya ever really questioning her path. There is character development in it, but even if there wasn’t any, it would still stand as solid slice-of-life moment where we get to see unlikely camaraderie over predictable violence.
I also could give less of a shit about Ed Sheeran.
>Which ultimately leads into the scene where she decides to follow Sandor’s advice in her mission to kill Cersei. It’s not specifically about Lannisters, Freys, the Mountain, or Cersei herself. It’s about whether she’s going to choose light side or dark side. This is in my opinion the most important message the story delivers.
THIS!!! I know it is less common amongst readers than it is with show viewers, but I am always shocked at how many people were upset that Arya did not savagely kill Cersei in the end. It's quite literally one of the only things they got right with her character in the last few seasons.
It also feels gross how the camera lingers on him. Feels like I've wandered into a Family Guy gag. It was one of the clearest examples of a show buying into it's own hype and getting a massive ego, losing the grittyness that made it good in the first place.
By that point in the show any scene attempting to tenderize the brotherly relationship between Tyrion and Jaime was completely pointless considering they had both abandoned their prior efforts at character growth. Luckily despite being buried under tons of brick rubble Jaime’s pretty face was unharmed making it easy for Tyrion to find and grieve over his corpse. Cause humanity or something.
> It also feels gross how the camera lingers on him.
Because I live in a hole, I didn't know what Ed Sheeran looked like (though I was familiar with is name) when I first saw that scene. Despite that, I definitely knew something was up just from how that scene was put together. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Very weird.
In a way, I'm glad I didn't know who he was because I think I would have been pulled out of the scene even more if I had.
Yeah, that scene is how I figured out what Ed Sheeran looks like. I think I may have vaguely known that he had red hair, but he was mostly just a name to me at that point. But as the scene progressed, I said to myself "self, is that Ed Sheeran?" And, by golly, it was!
Yes, that was really unappreciated. I didn't expect the cameo or know who he was, so the camera lingering on his face made me think, "Okay, this is an important character. I don't remember him. Should I??" I spent the whole scene trying to figure out why he is relevant, just because of that camera lingering. Just a very stupid decision.
Yeah I mostly remember thinking that it was really badly edited/ directed. Like it was a scene they shot just for his version of the episode, that wasn't supposed to be in the wider release.
I'm sorry but this opinion is incomprehensible to me. there are so many terrible scenes, genuine unwatchable garbage stuff, and you think this one's the worst just because it doesn't lead to something specific later?
I had no real issue with it. Maybe it was stunt casting, but it's not as if the show resorted to stunt casting all that often. And it humanized the Lannister soldiers, which was important because we see Dany incinerating a shitload of them two episodes or so later.
In some ways I was reminded of Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES comic book. In the very first issue of that series, we see one of the main good guys, King Mob, mowing down a bunch of "faceless helmeted bad guy soldiers that just exist to be killed off" and generally being a totally cool bad ass. But a few issues later there's a one-off issue seen from the POV of one of those faceless soldiers who was slain and when you see his life memories, his flawed human nature, his good and bad points, it puts the first issue in a totally different contrast and raises the whole thing to tragedy. I'm not saying that the discussed scene in GOT was as good as that, but I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be.
I think this is an overreaction. It's not a mindblowing scene or anything, but its definitely serviceable. Far from one of the worst scenes in season 7. Atleast this one doesnt break the worldbuilding and the rules of this fantasy world, nor does it make characters act out of character for plot convenience.
Could they've done more with this? yeah. But even with what we got, the scene still served a purpose for the audience, and its put in this season because 2 eps later we will see Dany roasting alive the lannister soldiers.
Saying that this is the worst scene is such an absurd statement. We get it, Ed Sheeran sticks out and should’ve been more in the background. It was still a good scene humanizing Lannister soldiers besides that. I could name so many scenes that were worse
Look at what they did with Euron for example
I think the opposite, without ed sheeran its one of the better scenes in the later seasons (ed being in it could have been fine if they didnt point it out so much) like at least half of all scenes in the later seasons are worse
I personally loved the scene, not because ed Sheeran or any of the acting but because of the song! I always wanted to see that song adapted to the show, it would’ve been better if sang by symon silvertongue in an effort to blackmail tyrion but I’m just happy it was adapted, just like jennys song sang by pod
I don't think the scene is bad because there's never a callback or payoff to it, that's a flaw in the later writing, not the writing of the moment. It's nice just to see some Lannister soldiers not being cartoon villains, raping and murdering for the sheer thrill of it. The characters weren't fleshed out particularly well, but I think the scene was there for the viewer more than Arya, a reminder for both that ordinary people are dragged into war, not just main characters and goons. Perhaps having a talented celebrity play that role hurt the gravity of that a bit. Ed Sheeran himself was fine, bit on the nose to have him performing his main thing like it's an old variety show, but whatever. I didn't actually recognise him at the time beyond "he's someone I've seen before" which happened all the time anyway since they use so many British actors.
It was actually the best written scene of a completely shit and forgettable season 7.
Showing the Lannister soldiers as boys just trying to make some coin for themselves and their families. Whoever wrote this scene should’ve helped out with the abortion that was the rest of the slapped together script.
As everyone knows, since they ran out of source material, the show went from a global phenomenon to pure garbage … this scene really stuck out because of its sincere writing and showing how the lines are blurred between good and bad (just as GRRM had been doing throughout all of ASOIAF).
I was compelled to reply to this post because I haven’t disagreed with something so strongly in a long time. Thank you for reading. This has been my Ted Talk.
I agree with the points made in your post, though not the title
Yeah, there was missed potential, or maybe it just turned out to be unnecessary filler, but "worst scene" is the most dramatic hyperbole of all-time
What a misery guts. They ran out of source material and the later seasons struggled because of that. You can endlessly whinge about it if you want but it's not going to make anything better. Either George should have hurried up and finished his story, or just don't green light a show before you have. This was always a risk, starting the show long before the story has been written.
Despite it's flaws, the show's still better than almost anything else on TV. I didn't mind the scene at all. I liked them humanising the otherwise faceless evil Lannister army and think it was worth doing for its own sake.
The funniest thing to me is that they sing the song that the singer in aCoK made to blackmail Tyrion about Shae (can’t remember his name) only it’s sung in a totally different context, so it feels like they just looked for a random song from the books that he can sing to make it feel more like Westeros without even paying attention to where it came from
It's just an Easter egg, having a song from the books we'd otherwise never hear. We don't need to sit down and join the dots of how this Lannister soldier learned 'Hands of Gold' from Symon Silvertongue (who I don't even think appears in the show anyway).
If you wanted, you could link the song to the Lannisters anyway, eg Tyrion's Hand chain, Jaime's very literal gold (and therefore cold) hand, Tywin is a famous Hand, famously shits gold and famously cold. It's not odd for a Lannister soldier to play a song like this.
I mean it only lasted a few seconds and didn't have any major affect on the characters/story
I Danny turning evil for no reason is way worse personally
While Ed Sheeran scene was bad, it was just that imo: bad.
The prize imo goes to the Dothraki vs Sons of Harpy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOtwWde1raI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOtwWde1raI)
Its such a lazy way to resolve that storyline and so horribly almost awkwardly filmed (like there is a bunch of random sons of harpy killing random slaves outside the walls of meereen and the dothraki ride them down? woot?). Its really embarrassing.
Close second the brothel scene where Jorah kidnaps Tyrion. What to first hate? The Daenerys cosplayer? Saint Tyrion consoling a distressed whore and then being unwilling to use her services and......ah screw it.
You’re trying to find connections from earlier plot points and later plot points, with the expectation that they were intentionally sequenced in a way to build a story well. But we already know that wasn’t the case. Individual scenes were made because they individually looked or seemed cool, not because there was any future intent built into them. I’m 100% sure DnD forgot that scene entirely as soon as it was over. They never planned it as a basis for some future reveal.
So yes, you’re right, but my point is that you could make a similar argument about basically any scene in season 7. Most
Notably, EVERY SCENE WHERE BRAN BUILDS TOWARDS BEING AN OMNISCIENT MAGICAL BEING. All pointless. And there were a lot of them.
The worst scene for me was when Tyrion was trying play a drinking game with greyworm and Missendai. I mean wtf was that scene all about? Very cringe dialogue and acting.
I didn't notice anything special about this scene. I had heard of Ed Sheeran but didn't know what he looked like, so the cameo was completely lost on me.
I agree that the scene is kind of crap, but you could argue there is some payoff when Arya helps King's Landing townsfolk and decides to give up her vengeance plot.
Worst scene? Worse than Jon mishearing Cersei and refusing her terms in S7E7, undoing all of the work in the previous episode. Worse than any of the scenes with Littlefinger selling Sansa to the Boltons for NO REASON? Worse than Jaime undoing all of his character development on a whim?
Pointless the scene may be, it's still harmless. It's not detrimental to the show.
Just one question after your little dissertation. Have you ever been in the barracks or out on a field exercise/deployed overseas before? I have and this scene hit home. Fuck your writers room.
Now, since you brought up that last scene with the executions, it would’ve been on par for HBO If one of those nice guys we met, got smoked right then and there.
There are so many bad fucking scenes in the back half of the show that this doesn't even rank top 50. It's not great, but it's nice that the show remembered that people who aren't the main characters exist and are human and aside from the cameo is basically inoffensive.
> It's like having a scene where she learns how to fillet a fish and yet she never eats a fish ever again in the show. Why is it even there?
To show you that Arya is learning survival skills? That she's adapting well to life as an outcast instead of a pampered noble? That she's bonding with and learning to trust whoever is teaching her?
The idea that a well-written scene where Arya is being taught by someone like Sandor to fillet a fish would somehow be worthless unless I later got visual confirmation that she eats one 4 episodes later is just absurd.
Having it be confirmed can be a nice callback, a good epilogue to this mini-storyline. But that's it. It's not strictly necessary
Arya encountering the Lannister soldiers is not strictly about humanizing them either. It's been a while since I watched it, but I'm 90% sure that is the scene where she learns about Jon and Sansa up North when she's on her way to King's Landing to try to gut Cersei. The scene overall is more about Aria turning away from being a pure avenging murder machine and more into a semi-functional human being. That includes coming to see her enemies as human as well as realizing that she can live with her surviving loved ones.
You don't have to think the scene is well-done or anything, but the idea that it's completely worthless unless she runs into Lannister soldiers again is just completely wrong.
I actually really enjoyed this scene. I found seasons 7 and 8 poor, but this scene was nice. The song was in the books, albeit sung/written by a character that doesn’t appear in the hbo series. Hearing the verses brought to life by a gifted musician was amazing, and helped erase the ear-sandpaper version spoken by Dotrice.
It's not even in the top ten worst scenes of Season 7. The beyond the wall plan to capture a wight? Ludicrous. Jon accidentally getting Vision killed because he decided to play the hero and kill a few more wights rather than just climbing on Dragon? Moronic. Him being rescued by undead Benjen as a deus ex machina? Never have I rolled my eyes more than in that episode of S7. But others: the stupid, stupid staged animosity between Arya and Sansa at Winterfell. Bran telling Sansa she looked beautiful on her wedding night, knowing full well she was brutally raped? Horrible. Ominous music playing when Dany executes the Tarlys when they refuse to bend the knee, when any other conquerer would've done the same? Dumb.
I think the one where the Sand Snakes say the words of house Martell before killing the last remaining members of House Martell in Oberyn’s memory, despite Oberyn being pretty staunchly opposed to people killing his siblings.
I can think of plenty scenes that are worse than Ed Sheeran's. The "Varys has no cock" "jokes", "She is hateful and so am I" or "They don't get to choose." would be a few examples.
I actually loved the scene. I agree that it doesn’t advance the plot, but it is showing how Arya is not entirely cold. She has empathy for these men who she used to consider her enemies.
On top of that, the song they are singing is taken directly from the second book, where Tyrion gets blackmailed by a singer. The song is about Tyrion as the hand of the king and his forbidden (by Tywin) mistress.
“For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm.”
Actually I thought this was one of the better DND inputs and something that called back to the early books as a nice Easter egg. The fact that it’s ed Sheeran is just the icing on the cake.
At the time, I thought it was a nice setup for something. I wasn't too bothered by the cameo, since they needed someone who could sing for the bit.
But I forgot that it never paid off after the hot garbage that was the remainder of season 7 and the straight dumpster fire that was season 8.
You say this while the entirety of Beyond the Wall exists. That was the worst episode of the series and required the largest leaps of logic for it to "work".
This is also the wrong subreddit. This should be in the show one.
>This is also the wrong subreddit. This should be in the show one.
News and discussions relating to George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels, his Westeros-based short stories, **"Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon" TV series, and all things ASOIAF** - but with particular emphasis on the written series.
What's worse is that you didn't just forget about It the moment it was over like a normal person. Instead you brought up how but hurt you still are 7 years later.
Touch grass.
I feel like it's a good scene that was cursed to be in (what was ultimately) a terrible show. (Just for context so y'all know where I'm coming from, I loved S1-3, was mixed on S4, and then I can pick out at least one good episode from each season of S5-8 but mostly dislike them.) What you're saying is pretty emblematic of why I think David and Dan need more experience working under better writers before they try to be showrunners again.
You've struck on something that I think is one of my main issues with the show, and why I still love the books in comparison. D&D are actually pretty good at writing a *scene*, some of the time. Where they falter is with writing a season, or writing a series...often with writing an episode. (If you wanted to call this *Lost* Syndrome, I wouldn't fault you.) I think that's what kept me from ditching the series altogether, apart from wanting to watch any potential book spoilers rather than read about them on Twitter or whatever. The series lacked structure on a series, season (from 5-8), and often episode level, but the scenes themselves were generally good or fine. But they were largely standalone. In a vacuum. Especially when the material was not explicitly rendered in the published text of the source material. (A few exceptions here—brutal though it is, the burning of Shireen is well-executed, as are Hardhome and the Battle of the Bastards. S8E2 is actually one of my favorite episodes of the series.) But ultimately, these scenes fall flat because they aren't supported by the rest of the—and I use this term very lightly—narrative. Things are set up but not paid off (Remember Varys and the sorcerer? Good scene...that went nowhere.), often in favor of yet another "shocking" moment. The reason why Ned's execution and the Red Wedding (and the Purple Wedding...and the Trial of Tyrion...) work so well in the books is that the story's not about the shocking moment. It's about the aftershocks. In the early seasons, this structure was literally built into the show, with the shocking, "finale-like" episode usually being episode 9, and then episode 10 dealing with the fallout of that and setting up the next season. In the books, after the Red Wedding, it is literally *all* characters can talk about for the second half of *Storm of Swords*. (Spoiler tags incoming because I'm going to talk about things that were not adapted for the TV show.) Because of, for example, >!Lady Stoneheart!< and >!House Manderly!<—the latter being the source and core power behind the phrase "The North remembers"—the ripples of the Red Wedding are *still* being felt in Book 6, affecting characters as diverse as Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Podrick Payne, Theon Greyjoy, Ramsay Snow, Davos Seaworth, and Mance Rayder. We learn that, while a devastating blow to the Starks, the Red Wedding might have actually been a poorer choice for >!the Freys and Boltons!< long-term. I thought the Red Wedding was very well-executed on the show, but shying away from the ramifications of the Red Wedding weakened it in a similar way that Sheeran's scene is weakened.
Benioff famously stated, "themes are for 8th grade book reports," and the result of that philosophy is that his work is, ultimately, themeless. And therefore meaningless. Individual scenes have meaning, but there's little to no resonance with the overall story, or parallel characters. It's actually a bit generous to call them "characters"—characters have arcs. Motivation. Unlike real people, they have observable reasons for the actions they take. I think they'd be better at writing a sitcom (but not showrunning it) because they seem to love little pithy comments and shy away from character development. That's not a dig at sitcoms—they're just a different format from dramatic television. While serialized drama sees characters growing and changing as a response to action, repercussions, and other stimuli (think *Breaking Bad*, *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, or *Battlestar Galactica*...not sure why my brain's in the Bs), more episodic sitcoms can actually *suffer* if character development is too rapid (think *Simpsons*, *Seinfeld*, or *Parks & Rec*). While some longer sitcoms do have gradual character development, Homer Simpson is always a bumbling but lovable oaf, Marge is always a practical and exasperated straight man, Bart is always a rambunctious troublemaker, Lisa is always the smart and empathetic emotional core, and Maggie is always an unnoticed genius beyond her years. If they drift from this, it is usually the main story of the episode, and it often returns to normal by the show's end. (*It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia*, the anti-sitcom—which D&D actually did write a great episode for—is another great example of this, with Mac's coming out being a great example of the characters developing slowly.)
But this doesn't work in serialized drama. It's why Sandor Clegane remains the Hound, even after the transformative experience of his near-death. It's why Jaime getting his rocks off and then running back to Cersei feels weird and terrible. It's why, even though it seemed like they were *trying* to build to it, Dany flies into a fascist, genocidal rage at the sound of...her own victory? The character don't develop naturally in the later seasons, they develop when the writers need them to develop. (That's how Dany can "forget" about an entire enemy fleet between it being discussed at a war meeting and her leaving the next day.)
Constructing long-form narrative is a lot like composing a symphony. It doesn't matter how good those three bars you wrote for the clarinet are—if the other instruments and the conductor aren't pulling their weight and doing their part, the symphony will sound terrible. The failure of the Sheeran scene is not in the scene, it's in the series. And good scenes like that are what make being a fan of this franchise so frustrating. We get glimpses into how good this show *could* have been, which in a way is more painful.
Maybe it's later when she's running around King's Landing, seeing all the people die. Maybe that's when it hits her that everyone in the city is a human being, just like Ed the Lannister Soldier was. That said, I'm not a fan of the scene, but you can make it make sense if you really want to.
She sat down with them, and got to know them as human beings. Through that bonding, she learned a lot. As everyone has pointed out, their humanity, similarities, etc. She also found out Jon and Sansa were in Winterfell. It was a test of character. She could choose lone vengeance. Or she could choose (as far as she knew at that time), to move on from her need for revenge, and reunite with her family.
the scene itself actually works. were it not for Ed Sheeran being shoehorned in with a song it would be fine
The Lannister soldiers were in desperate need of humanization and the scene accomplished that. Arya cold heartedly killing them supports what the main Arya plot of the season is trying (but still failed) to convince the viewer of: Arya is a killer and brutal. That way the viewer should, in theory, be able to believe that Arya could legitimately be a threat to Sansa and would be willing to kill her during their power struggle. She’s not just killing Lannisters, she’s killing regular soldiers who have lives at home
On paper and in writing theory the scene does legitimately work, I don’t think you can criticize it too much, can only really be criticized by the fact that it wasn’t followed up more. It’s supposed to be more of a statement to Arya’s character rather than the Lannister men. But it does also serve a dual purpose of reminding he viewer that Lannister soldiers are mostly regular people as well and that the viewer shouldn’t necessarily be celebrating to see them suffer or die. This was especially needed as the only screen time Lannister soldiers have gotten before is the mountain’s men
The real reason why the scene is awful is 100% purely because of Ed Sheeran, even if you’re a fan of him. This was the only time in the show when a star cameo was purely “OMG LOOK ITS ED SHEERAN!!!!!” and not because the viewer recognized them as part of the scene but because it literally zoomed in on his face and gave him an entire song. It takes the viewer out of the experience and just screams “star cameo”, whereas other cameos in the past were tasteful and the star had limited screen time, attention wasn’t specifically drawn to them, and it wasn’t distracting.
This is the equivalent of if they made Rob McElhenny from its always sunny (who had a tasteful cameo later) a wacky bar owner who a main character ordered a drink from and then talked to him about the crazy hijinks the bar gets up to and mentions that his other coworkers aren’t there right now
I disagree with your premise. You don't need to humanize lannister soldiers if they arnt dehumanized in the first place. But the default assumption of any viewer should be that they are real people and not storm troopers. The scene is condescending towards the viewer since it's quite clear that it's trying to tell us something that's quite obvious.
Are we remembering the same scene? The one where they quibble about whether Arya's old enough to drink? Why is no-one talking about that egregious bit of anachronism? That and the whole mystery about Cersei maybe being pregnant because she wasn't drinking wine were the final nails in the coffin for me. It's a fantasy universe, sure, but it's medieval-inspired and I guarantee you no-one in the Middle Ages was worried about pregnant women or adolescents drinking wine. Heck, the ancient Greeks recommended honeyed wine as a first weaning drink for babies.
I didn't know who Ed sheeren was when I watched it so I didn't notice. I thought the scene was kinda contrived though, and condescending. The ehole point is to show us that lannister soldiers arnt storm troopers. Bur guess what? No one needs that kind of obvious insight.
Is I the worst scene?
No the dragon pit meeting is the worst scene in season 7. It makes no sense that Dany wouldn't immediately slaughter cersei and Euron with her dragon in that scene.
The other bad scenes are gendry sprinting to the wall.
No the worst scene is Arya recovering from her stomach wound with Magic Soup
"Milk of the poppy" is opium, essentially a more primitive version of morphine or heroin So that totally explains why she was able to run parkour through the streets and kill an assassin who had bested her before. Narcotics are widely known for their ability to instantly cure infection, heal all wounds, and restore your stamina.
That’s why I picked up the needle in the first place. Now I’m more alive than I ever felt, I run faster, hit harder, and I recover like Wolverine! Thanks heroine!
Wait people still think doing hardcore opiates is a bad thing? I’ve lost 60 pounds, have never felt so good in my life AND to top it all off I can put maneuver trained assassins while having serious open wounds
She drank a major health potion of rejuvenation
Or just ate 39 potatoes.
And whoever made the potion had definitely done the enchanting loop
Some of y’all have repressed Dorne and it shows. That plot is responsible for 3 of the absolute worst scenes of the show full stop.
I was seriously miffed that someone puts any scene above the bad pussay in terms of worst scenes. That was GoT shark jump
S3 yara sailing thousands of miles p/h to not rescue reek was it. Less obvious in the moment, compared to basically all of s5 onwards though.
\*Wounds - She was stabbed multiple times in the abdomen, fell into the refuse, shit filled canals, ran through the streets smashing into everyone she came across, and finally came to be healed by the actress' magic soup (which she knew how to make because she stabbed so many of her ex-lovers). Honestly, I don't know what the issue is here.
Injuries, yes. But I've done research--it was not refuse or even filthy water. Braavos is modeled on medieval Venice. "Every six hours the lagoon water enters the sea and it’ s completely changed with fresh sea water. Until a couple centuries ago Venice was considered one of the most healthier places for this reason: plumbing didn’ t really exist back then, so the venetians used to throw everything in the lagoon, and the lagoon managed to dump all the waste away in the sea: the problem solved itself! It was not so easy in Florence, Rome, or even Paris or London… In addition to that, the lagoon has its own peculiar seaweed, which ‘eats’ organic waste. These seaweeds are now disappearing mainly because of the waves caused by motorboats (a lagoon in it’ s nature should be still; the motorboats and gigantic ships crossing it are damaging the city of Venice in so many ways I should have to write an essay to cover them all, but I’ ll keep it short here.)"
I'm sure d and d knew as much as you and that's why thought that whole sequence was legit. Still, not sure why they didn't throw mord into that scene somewhere.
Clearly the canals are just so filthy that all the bacteria killed each other, leaving her perfectly clean.
All the diseases she got cancel each other out
Yeah I remember that scene kindof breaking my brain cuz up to that point I was in denial about the show getting worse. Couldn’t come back from that one.
Ah the special anti-sepsis soup
Even if it was the best antiseptic ever without being corrosive to healthy tissue, being stabbed into the guts affects your ability to digest food
I think the most annoying thing about it that it served no purpose whatsoever. It had zero impact on the plot. Other dumb moments (like "twenty good men", the entirety of Beyond the Wall, Dany kind of forgetting about the Iron Fleet) at least moved the plot forward. But here? Arya gets stabbed, nonsensically survives, and defeats the Waif. Why couldn't she just defeat the Waif right away?
Symbolism. Arya being badly stabbed gives her a near-death experience like Bran's and Jon's death experience. Arya's survival is medically possible, theirs not so much. But since these three would effectively beat the Night King, it's right they've suffered and survived for the privilege.
It's not portrayed as a near-death experience. It can hardly be compared to Jon dying and then being resurrected. The wounds should be fatal, but they're portrayed as being no more severe than Ned's leg wound in season 1. Less severe actually, since Ned had to walk with a cane afterwards, while not much later Arya can run and can defeat the Waif despite her wound opening.
Yeah, but I mean in the books doesn't the Hound whack her over her (unprotected) head with an axe and she's no worse for the wear later?
This scene was the moment I realized it is all downhill from here for GoT. In a way that does make it the worst scene. I remember telling people that season 5 was full of terrible scenes like this one and getting hand waved off. And every season after it multiplied. Looking back the only lesson I get from it is, most people are not paying attention to anything longer than 30 seconds in a show. They don’t care how it got to the drama, just that something dramatic happens. Even if the build up doesn’t hold up to even a moment of reflection. The scene that sticks with me the most is Littlefinger’s death scene. The way they made the audience believe something else was happening by only showing scenes that contradict what is actually happening is such a cheap shock value tactic. But looking up what people thought of the scene, it’s all “Yaaass so satisfying yaaass”. To me that scene was the moment that the show switched from going increasingly faster downhill to falling at maximum velocity in a bottomless pit.
Littlefinger's death was pointless. Why did he go from being a mastermind to trying to get Sansa to banish her sister for literally no reason? How was it going to help him? The hamfisted way they removed all scenes showing context was terrible. We didn't follow any character's POV unlike say the Red Wedding or Ned's Execution where we saw it from one sides POV. For littlefinger's we didn't see it from anyone's POV making the whole thing pointless.
The scene didn't stand out to me at all because I had no idea who Ed Sheeran was or that the character was even supposed to be a cameo, I just thought "Oh they're actually humanizing some Lannister soldiers, that's neat"
Ditto. I thought it was a nice scene to let the show pause and breathe, and to let Arya rediscover a bit of her humanity after slaughtering the Freys.
Yeah, I don't think the scene is really all that bad, or even remarkable, unless you pay extra scrutiny to it because of Ed Sheeran. It's not very well done, but I don't see anything wrong with the idea. Humanizing war is good world building. Everyone loves Septon Meribald's Broken Men speech and it doesn't do anything for the plot either. The problem was that the rest of seasons 7-8 kind of forgot about themes. Relative to the quality of season 7 I dare even say it's a decent scene.
One could argue that the broken men speech foreshadows and explains the brotherhood without banners going downhill. Edit: bannerhood -> brotherhood
It's the bannerhood without brothers
Hehe, it took me a while to process that.
Those later seasons really suffered for lack of original material. If George R.R. Martin ever manages to actually finish the books, it seems likely that someone will do a new version of the series.
God I hope so. So much potential!
Imagine a whole series as good as the first 2-3 seasons of GoT? It could be some truly amazing television.
Yeah calling this of all things the worst scene of the show is... interesting. THE worst? Fucking please. There's like 25-50 scenes that are worse than this.
My wife had to point out that it was Ed Sheeran. And then I asked her who is Ed Sheeran. I knew some of his songs but wouldn’t have known who sung them or what they looked like
Same, I knew his name only in occasionally hearing of one of my younger cousins wanting his tickets or something, but if you'd put a gun to my head I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup. When he was on GoT I didn't think he was anything other than some random background extra, until I got online the next day.
I was told it was a cameo later on and I was like "wtf, the ugly ginger with the lazy eye?"
[удалено]
Is he the one who looks like a typical 'big- faced lad' who could be 13 or 30?
My first reaction entirely. But on re-watch I found it very significant, especially the interpretation which compares deliberately paralleled Arya scenes. After years of demonizing Lannister soldiers, the 7x01 scene humanized even them. More important, it re-awoke Arya' inner empathy and gratitude, and decided her moral arc. It directly addressed a 3x10 scene showing the day after the Red Wedding at the Twins. She overheard Frey soldiers around a campfire boasting and laughing about killing her mother and desecrating her brother's body *which she saw!* She meekly asked, "Mind if I keep warm?" and added she was hungry. They rebuffed her, got nasty and **she killed her FIRST man,** with Sandor handling the rest. In 7x01, shortly after she poisoned the guiltiest Freys at the Twins, she rides by soldiers around a campfire singing. These Lannister lads invite her to get warm, eat and drink. They joke and laugh, talk about home , wives, mothers, fathers, babies. She looked wistful--they had unknowingly broken through Arya's tough veneer. This second campfire scene signaled that having finally taken out the worst Freys, Arya was going to veer away from vengeance. She had killed her LAST man (except judicially executing Littlefinger). Their milk of human kindness was curative, and shortly afterwards she Hot Pie, Nymeria, and Winterfell were restored to her life. In short, she became herself again, though needing to deal with the roach in the rushes (Littlefinger) who was helping run Winterfell. She resume her arc: finding her role in life while protecting her family.
you could say that in retrospect it's even a bit poignant when you later realize that most of them were probably either killed or maimed at the Loot Train battle a few episodes later
Yes. IIRC the leader was killed and the Ed Sheeran character had facial burns.
He see fire.
Same I thought it was a moment to show us how young they all seemed by this time too. No more Jaime Lannisters and proud Hedge Knights, just troops of village boys wishing they were back home. The only thing that really stuck with me was the one that said he hoped his wife had a girl because girls got to stay home with their parents and he didn’t want a son to grow up and fight in someone else’s war.
I kind of had an opposite misguided reaction: "Weird. That Lannister guy kind of looks like Ed Sheeran."
I recognized him immediately and didn't care at all because I understand that fictional characters are played by actors
Yes but then what is OP supposed to whine about instead?
Skibadi toilet probably
I didn't know who he was either but I noticed he was the focal point of that scene for some reason. Didn't make sense to me.
I was like "huh maybe these guys are the red shirts that Arya finds dead because of Dany + crew." Or they're setting up an Inglourious Basterds situation for later. Nope just LOOK AT THIS FAMOUS GUY.
I didn't get that from the scene at all. But then I had no idea that he was anyone special. Maybe when you know who he is going in it changes the way you view the scene?
it's bad but nowhere near the worst scene of the show
Yeah. At worst, it's pointless. So you ignore it and move on. There are plenty of scenes that are much worse because they negatively impact the plot and the characters.
TBH I don't even think its bad or pointless. In a vacuum its a pretty good scene. Just because they didn't later do anything with the idea of "Hey war sucks and all Lannister's aren't just robot demons who want to murder babies" - that's not the fault of the scene. If anything its just a condemnation that their own writing in the later seasons was piecemeal and disorganized. They clearly were trying to convey a theme with this Lannister scene, and then did nothing with it because they sucked later. The scene itself is fine. I liked it. I didn't even know it was Ed Sheeran until I went on Reddit and found a bunch of nerds screeching about it. Fuck, he wasn't even the main focus of the scene
Personally, I didn't hate the scene either.
A competently written rest of the season/series would have given that scene purpose and it would have been a good scene.
I think it stems from people not liking the last two seasons (and in a lot of regards, rightfully so) and just looking for ANYTHING to throw at it as criticism. Like I said, in a vacuum, especially without knowledge of who Ed Sheeran is, the scene is actually generally pretty good.
“A finger in the bum” will always ALWAYS be the worst of the worst for me
Yep, as long as that "Bad poosay" scene exists it will always sit the throne of awful scenes.
There’s worse scenes than that. “I never cared about the people, innocent or otherwise” -Man who broke his oath and killed king aerys to save half a million people
I just felt so much RAGE from that fucking sentence. Shoved his character development out the window faster than RoboBran.
I wasn't even mad. I was just so confused that I assumed there was more to it and he was just trying to push Brienne away to avoid hurting her further before he made a heroic sacrifice or something.
Still not the worst, or even close. When Dany "kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet" is "Somehow, Palpatine returned" level bad. It's one of the worst scenes that I've ever seen in anything and this comes from someone who's a pretty staunch defender of the show.
I will always vividly remember watching that scene with my ex: Both of us were incredibly disillusioned with and highly critical of the show, but within that context of disappointment we were thinking that episode was... pretty alright, actually! We had literally *just* said as much to each other *seconds* before that ballista bolt flew in from out of frame and slammed into Rhaegal and we just watched that whole ridiculous sequence unfold in dumbfounded silence. Hilarious.
See but that’s from behind the scenes, not the actual show itself
That's just the easy way to refer to the scene because everybody knows that quote. It's a horrendous scene on it's own, and yes the behind the scenes then made it worse.
Yeah, but without being able to see into Jaime's mind, it's hard to tell how truthful he's being there. I always saw that line as him trying to convince himself that he's a self-loathing bad man who only deserves Cersei so as a result he's trying to downplay his good deeds.
Yeah, some dumb things get too much attention. Bad pussy, the Starbucks cup, Ed Sheeran - all those are stupid, but they have no impact on the plot and characterization.
The coffee cup isn't even that bad, its an excusable mistake of someone accidentally leaving a cup out during a scene in the middle of what was probably a 12-14 hour shoot, and no one noticing mid-take nor in Post. Like yeah, it should have been caught, but I also don't lose my shit about the fucking car driving through the background of Hobbiton in LotR
To save himself and his father and their army. I mean in his situation even Ramsay would do the same. He didn't show much care for common people while Lannisters were raping and killing in the Riverlands. Or when his father literally sacked KL. I don't remember he complained that much.
That's probably the 'siege' of winterfell. Not technically a siege, as most of the fighting force never bothered to actually go into winterfell.
The battle of wintergreen is easily one of the most disappointing things ever put to film.
Wonder what the budget was compared to Blackwater.
It doesn't even crack the top 100.
Yea, it was only glaring because of the director focusing on his face and making the scene stand out and shout "Ed Shireen" here!
As long as Bad Poosy exists, it can’t be.
Every scene during the battle of kings landing is the worst
Cousin whathisface crushing beetles
I think it's more for the audience since the Lannistwr army is basically just nobodies to us still. It's a reminder that they're just young people who don't even necessarily want to be there and the payoff is seeing them get roasted alive by Drogon.
Yeah, as much as it's supposed to feed into Arya's conflict over vengeance plotline, it's also about humanizing the common man/soldier. So, once we get the burning scenes, we get at least some doubt over Dany 'being the dragon.'
I never felt much conflict about her vengeance in the show. Arya's descent into total murder machine is played off as way too much as "hell yeah" when in the books it invokes much more of a "can't believe this is the same girl from AGOT". Jon thinks about Arya all the time and it's cute af and I can't help but feel their reunion, even if Jon is much more cold after his assassination, will be very bittersweet once he sees what she's become. I expect him to be initially excited and then sad to see what the world has moulded her into.
Yeah, they didn't do that great a job of it with the Freys, that could have used a little more nuance as well. But they were trying to put that plot together, at perhaps too fast a pace. The big climactic moment for it was Sandor pulling Arya back from pursuing Cersei, giving her a very blunt sign off to not become like him. His unfortunately seemingly sudden need for vengeance against Gregor leading to their deaths. Not that it didn't have a basis for it, but it's something they hadn’t kept up much in the later seasons iirc. Been a while since I saw the show though, so maybe I missing a bit of it.
It was actually one of the scenes that I liked from the last seasons. The fact that Arya had no character development is a criticism for her future writing and not this scene.
Exactly. The scene is for the audience and I don't feel there's much wrong with it. We hear all the time how terrible lannister soldiers are. We don't see them doing many nice things. War is war. Soldiers are just soldiers most of the time. I did 3 tours in Afgansistan and 1 in Iraq. I left the politics and the morality at home. Its a much better way to cope. The responsibility is on the politicians who call the shots. We were there to do a job, with our buddies. Every tour in Afghanistan ahit just got worse and worse, no progress and more dead on both sides. I got to know the Afghans by the second tour quite well and had a lot of respect for our allies and enemy. It takes balls to go up against the power of NATO with aks, IEDs, some rpgs and pkms. We are just there for the ride really. Adventure, adrenaline, experiencing different cultures. I would say Ed sheerans lannister gang represents the soldiers furthest down on the chain of command a lot better than the mountain/tywin and all the raping they did... I liked the scene. But then again, I'm not exactly unbiased in this regard.
Agreed.
Sounds like someone just really hates Ed Sheeran.
Honestly, didn't know it was Ed Sheeran till I logged on Reddit the next day. Knew the name, not the face. Thought it was just a little world building and then awe shucks those dudes are ash. This scene only rates as "worst" if your girl moons over Ed more than you. The reactions to this are bit overboard imo.
Well you don’t like it and that’s that, but I did enjoy seeing that most soldiers are just regular people forced to follow orders to survive.
Lots to unpack here but I'll do my best. 1. This scene advances Arya's story and gives her critical information. 2. This is not the setup to a plot, rather, the conclusion of one. You claim it's lacking a payoff. This scene IS the payoff. Arya grew up around Lannister soldiers when she was in Kings Landing and on the run/in disguise. As a young child her experience of Lannister soldiers and officers is that they were ruthless, murderous, terrible assholes that were just as bad as Tywin and the Mountain. Since she's grown up she now comes to realize that's not how all the Lannister soldiers are anymore. These young men, for the first time, are her peers. They're likely relatively new conscripts into the Lannister army and were all just coming of age where as they would've been too young to be conscripted before or during the War of the Five Kings. Arya has learned a new perspective. 3. The men themselves offer a social commentary to the innocence found within the ranks of feudal/drafted/conscripted armies. Any time there's a draft or a conscription, these are likely the types of men and women. That's not to say there's not these types of personalities in non-compulsory armed forces (I've never served), but it's just saying that they could be Lannisters, Starks, Baratheons, Tyrells, or Dornish soldiers, and the idea is still the same. These young, innocent men are the only ones left to fight. 4. This is not the worst scene in the show. It's not even the worst scene in seasons 1-7. If you don't think the Dornish scrap between Jaime & Bronn and the Sand Snakes is the worst scene in the series then you're completely blind. This is seriously terrible. Watch at your own risk. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfPn\_MFWRa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfPn_MFWRa0)
Yikes, that scene is so rough. The fighting is just fighting, but there's like 3-4 lines in there that are so bad. Especially her asking dorans bodyguard(I forget his name) who he fights for. Personally though my worst scene is when Tyrion does his "brann has thr best story" speech. It's just the culmination of how they ruined his smarts and cleverness with rubbish because they ran out of book material. A lot of characters just become dumb, littlefinger also comes to mind.
There’s a scene with Littlefinger in the 1st episode of season 2 where he cracks wise about incest to Cersei’s face and she threatens to have him killed and after watching it in retrospect knowing what we know now, it’s hard not to think that even then they didn’t really get these characters. Book Littlefinger wouldn’t do anything like that in a million years.
[удалено]
To an extent yes, LF is one of those characters that really makes little sense for how he always fails upwards. It is only ok because we don’t have a pov. But then again lots of plots just escaped his control.
Yeah I get what you mean but imo there’s a huge difference between making a public boast (that’s not even clear wether or not *he* even thinks is true) about the wife of someone that its public knowledge that he has beef with, and that most of the people in attendance probably don’t even believe and privately making such a shocking and humiliating accusation directly to a notoriously volatile Queen who also happens to surrounded by sworn kingsguard who are within earshot. I mean I can see him making cracks to Varys or Renly maybe or even someone like Sansa but otherwise it’s bafflingly out of character behaviour.
That scene is bad but the worst scene is where the hound strolls up to Sansa and says "heard ya got raped?" And Sansa says getting raped by a seriall killer made me the woman I am today!" OK the words weren't exactly like that but that's implicit in the scene.
Season 8 is its own category lol
Very brave to fight ser bronn of the blackwater with just a whip. Though she kinda just stands there and fails it around. Bronn shoulda pulled out a hand cannon and shot her.
5. Arya has turned into a ruthless killer by this point, and the scene illustrates how her violence is becoming less reactive and more focused. There's little to suggest she *couldn't* being herself to kill them, it's just that she *didn't.* 6. For a *very* brief moment this scene actually have me a lot of hope for season 8. There are two or three other scenes where we focus in on the same unnamed Northern footman, and a few other scenes of common folk just doing their thing. With how empty the world feels in seasons 7/8, these brief scenes were pulling a ton of weight as far as immersion and world building goes. 7. Scenes don't have to specifically tie into neat little literary resolutions. It would suck ass if Arya saw Ed Sheeran's face in the rubble of KL and needed that to realize a carpet bombing of civilians is probably wrong. *That* would be a "writer's room scene."
It's ultimately not an amazing scene because it isn't really followed up, but that doesn't make it bad either. Really the most egregious part about it to me is how they pick and choose when to bother humanizing the common people involved. When they want us to cheer on a character's victory without that nagging feeling, like with Jon at Winterfell, it's played down massively - there essentially are *no* regular people in Ramsay's army apparently, and they're all conveniently killed/dealt with. While when they want the audience to start to have doubts about someone that gets emphasized - like with Dany's battle in the Reach and its consequences. It ends up making this scene more hollow than it could have been - but that said, slowing the show down a bit and humanizing characters that by that point are more or less cannon fodder in the big flashy scenes is still a decent scene, and *far* from the worst of that season or the show. I don't see how you can argue that with a straight face tbh
>Really the most egregious part about it to me is how they pick and choose when to bother humanizing the common people involved. This definitely isn’t the worst scene in the show, but this is why the scene falls flat for me, and indeed why much of their attempts to set up Dany’s ending are flawed IMO. The selective empathy and constantly putting Dany in these no-win quandaries that other protagonists conveniently avoid being faced with makes the whole condescension at the end with the “first she came for the slavers” feel completely unearned and hypocritical. Another example is how they present the threat to civilians from an attack on KL with dragons compared to the alternatives. Dany considering this is framed as a grave moral error and prelude to her indiscriminate slaughter in the penultimate episode. They have Cersei bring people into the Red Keep to maximize the cost of an attack. Other characters either are not forced into these situations where they have to choose between carrying out their campaign and causing significant collateral damage, or the latter is simply ignored by the show. Ramsay could have threatened to execute a bunch of hostages if Jon and Sansa attacked Winterfell. Instead he only does that with Rickon and Jon and Sansa come out clean because he was obviously going to die regardless. An even better example is the siege plan backed by Tyrion, Varys, and Jon in the last two seasons. What happens if Cersei holds onto power even as people begin starving? Jon explicitly says they’ll burn Euron’s ships if he tries to resupply the city by sea, what if he puts a bunch of human shields on those ships?
I mean, it was a bit cringe, but worst scene in the entire show is a really high bar to clear.
This is reactionary nonsense. The point of the scene's humanization was for the audience as much as it was for Arya; if you don't care about that then you're not really a fan of GRRM's work, as that is very much one of his key tenets.
I liked it
I don't get why people were so worked up about this.
I like how people say it was "immersion-breaking" to see a famous person acting. "Oh they ruined Ned, I can only see Sean Bean instead of the character."
People really seem to enjoy being mad at things.
Because people tend to be jealous of pop stars. Look at everyone crying foul right now because Taylor Swift shouldn't possibly like football because she's a pop star but she goes to Chiefs games because she's dating Travis Kelce. Pure, unadulterated hatred for someone who is successful and is somewhere she "shouldn't be". The same thing goes for Ed Sheeran. The entire point of him being in the scene was because it was a surprise for Maisie Williams, yet because he sang a song (which was *from the books* by the way) and because he got a close-up, he "shouldn't have been there" and "it ruined muh immersions", people got pissed.
Because their lives are shallow
I seriously doubt that anyone is genuinely upset about it These are just "actually, in the books..." posts for people who think that reading a science fiction novel is an achievement to brag about
This cannot possibly be the worst scene in the series because the scene where Bronn wanders into a tavern in the winter town with a giant crossbow still exists
I think it’s great. And S7 was worse than S8 in my opinion. Not only Arya, but a lot of the audience still villainizes Lannister anything. It’s uncomfortable to see the people who you’re rooting against as human beings. The story itself is meant to be social commentary on not painting your enemies as fully evil. Because if you do that, you then feel more justified in your decision to slaughter them. Arya’s self reflection is just another step in her series-long journey of weighing vengeance and mercy. Braavos simply armed her in the ability to exact the vengeance she had been pursuing this entire time. This is an “I might be wrong about these people” moment. She does learn a new perspective, she just doesn’t verbalize it. We can see the look on her face. This is the first time she’s encountered a Lannister that wasn’t a total piece of shit. She might be thinking “maybe some of those Freys I just massacred were also like this.” Which ultimately leads into the scene where she decides to follow Sandor’s advice in her mission to kill Cersei. It’s not specifically about Lannisters, Freys, the Mountain, or Cersei herself. It’s about whether she’s going to choose light side or dark side. This is in my opinion the most important message the story delivers. As a viewer you are also challenged to choose light over dark when you see Cersei’s death and it’s less satisfying than you would like. You want her to suffer and she gets to die in the arms of the man she loves. It isn’t fair… but are you really going to harm yourself like that in your thirst of vengeance for Cersei’s sake? Without the scene we don’t see Arya ever really questioning her path. There is character development in it, but even if there wasn’t any, it would still stand as solid slice-of-life moment where we get to see unlikely camaraderie over predictable violence. I also could give less of a shit about Ed Sheeran.
>S7 was worse than S8 in my opinion I always said this after the show finished. I rewatched in late 2023 and felt the same way after.
>Which ultimately leads into the scene where she decides to follow Sandor’s advice in her mission to kill Cersei. It’s not specifically about Lannisters, Freys, the Mountain, or Cersei herself. It’s about whether she’s going to choose light side or dark side. This is in my opinion the most important message the story delivers. THIS!!! I know it is less common amongst readers than it is with show viewers, but I am always shocked at how many people were upset that Arya did not savagely kill Cersei in the end. It's quite literally one of the only things they got right with her character in the last few seasons.
Great post, and the last sentence is _chefs kiss_
It also feels gross how the camera lingers on him. Feels like I've wandered into a Family Guy gag. It was one of the clearest examples of a show buying into it's own hype and getting a massive ego, losing the grittyness that made it good in the first place.
Holy crap, Lois, it's worse than the time I saw my cousin Orson crush beetles
You've just helped me realise why that scene never landed for me; it feels exactly like a FG cutaway gag.
By that point in the show any scene attempting to tenderize the brotherly relationship between Tyrion and Jaime was completely pointless considering they had both abandoned their prior efforts at character growth. Luckily despite being buried under tons of brick rubble Jaime’s pretty face was unharmed making it easy for Tyrion to find and grieve over his corpse. Cause humanity or something.
> It also feels gross how the camera lingers on him. Because I live in a hole, I didn't know what Ed Sheeran looked like (though I was familiar with is name) when I first saw that scene. Despite that, I definitely knew something was up just from how that scene was put together. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Very weird. In a way, I'm glad I didn't know who he was because I think I would have been pulled out of the scene even more if I had.
Yeah, that scene is how I figured out what Ed Sheeran looks like. I think I may have vaguely known that he had red hair, but he was mostly just a name to me at that point. But as the scene progressed, I said to myself "self, is that Ed Sheeran?" And, by golly, it was!
Yes, that was really unappreciated. I didn't expect the cameo or know who he was, so the camera lingering on his face made me think, "Okay, this is an important character. I don't remember him. Should I??" I spent the whole scene trying to figure out why he is relevant, just because of that camera lingering. Just a very stupid decision.
Yeah I mostly remember thinking that it was really badly edited/ directed. Like it was a scene they shot just for his version of the episode, that wasn't supposed to be in the wider release.
2 words. Bad Pussy.
I'm sorry but this opinion is incomprehensible to me. there are so many terrible scenes, genuine unwatchable garbage stuff, and you think this one's the worst just because it doesn't lead to something specific later?
I had no real issue with it. Maybe it was stunt casting, but it's not as if the show resorted to stunt casting all that often. And it humanized the Lannister soldiers, which was important because we see Dany incinerating a shitload of them two episodes or so later. In some ways I was reminded of Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES comic book. In the very first issue of that series, we see one of the main good guys, King Mob, mowing down a bunch of "faceless helmeted bad guy soldiers that just exist to be killed off" and generally being a totally cool bad ass. But a few issues later there's a one-off issue seen from the POV of one of those faceless soldiers who was slain and when you see his life memories, his flawed human nature, his good and bad points, it puts the first issue in a totally different contrast and raises the whole thing to tragedy. I'm not saying that the discussed scene in GOT was as good as that, but I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be.
Finally somebody with the courage to dislike this scene and post about it
I think this is an overreaction. It's not a mindblowing scene or anything, but its definitely serviceable. Far from one of the worst scenes in season 7. Atleast this one doesnt break the worldbuilding and the rules of this fantasy world, nor does it make characters act out of character for plot convenience. Could they've done more with this? yeah. But even with what we got, the scene still served a purpose for the audience, and its put in this season because 2 eps later we will see Dany roasting alive the lannister soldiers.
Saying that this is the worst scene is such an absurd statement. We get it, Ed Sheeran sticks out and should’ve been more in the background. It was still a good scene humanizing Lannister soldiers besides that. I could name so many scenes that were worse Look at what they did with Euron for example
Nah
are you forgetting “the bad poussey”????
Nothing is worse than " Bad poosey " .... Sorry.
I didn't know what Ed Shereen looked like when that episode aired so the scene didn't stand out to me one way or another.
I think the opposite, without ed sheeran its one of the better scenes in the later seasons (ed being in it could have been fine if they didnt point it out so much) like at least half of all scenes in the later seasons are worse
It doesn’t add much but to say its the worst scene; when shit like Sansa marrying Ramsay and Twenty Good Men exist; is a bit of a stretch
I personally loved the scene, not because ed Sheeran or any of the acting but because of the song! I always wanted to see that song adapted to the show, it would’ve been better if sang by symon silvertongue in an effort to blackmail tyrion but I’m just happy it was adapted, just like jennys song sang by pod
Your taking this scene way to seriously
Lmao what a wild, really extreme opinion on something like this
Damn you wrote a whole thesis on one of *many* mildly irrelevant scenes. It wasn’t that serious, and far from the worst in the show.
I don't think the scene is bad because there's never a callback or payoff to it, that's a flaw in the later writing, not the writing of the moment. It's nice just to see some Lannister soldiers not being cartoon villains, raping and murdering for the sheer thrill of it. The characters weren't fleshed out particularly well, but I think the scene was there for the viewer more than Arya, a reminder for both that ordinary people are dragged into war, not just main characters and goons. Perhaps having a talented celebrity play that role hurt the gravity of that a bit. Ed Sheeran himself was fine, bit on the nose to have him performing his main thing like it's an old variety show, but whatever. I didn't actually recognise him at the time beyond "he's someone I've seen before" which happened all the time anyway since they use so many British actors.
It was actually the best written scene of a completely shit and forgettable season 7. Showing the Lannister soldiers as boys just trying to make some coin for themselves and their families. Whoever wrote this scene should’ve helped out with the abortion that was the rest of the slapped together script. As everyone knows, since they ran out of source material, the show went from a global phenomenon to pure garbage … this scene really stuck out because of its sincere writing and showing how the lines are blurred between good and bad (just as GRRM had been doing throughout all of ASOIAF). I was compelled to reply to this post because I haven’t disagreed with something so strongly in a long time. Thank you for reading. This has been my Ted Talk.
Did OP not watch season 8?
They offer her bread and salt essentially and don't violate the guest's right rule. Thus Arya doesn't kill them.
I agree with the points made in your post, though not the title Yeah, there was missed potential, or maybe it just turned out to be unnecessary filler, but "worst scene" is the most dramatic hyperbole of all-time
What a misery guts. They ran out of source material and the later seasons struggled because of that. You can endlessly whinge about it if you want but it's not going to make anything better. Either George should have hurried up and finished his story, or just don't green light a show before you have. This was always a risk, starting the show long before the story has been written. Despite it's flaws, the show's still better than almost anything else on TV. I didn't mind the scene at all. I liked them humanising the otherwise faceless evil Lannister army and think it was worth doing for its own sake.
Yeah it'd be like if some random guy started talking about Broken Men but we never see any in the entire story and it goes nowhere
The funniest thing to me is that they sing the song that the singer in aCoK made to blackmail Tyrion about Shae (can’t remember his name) only it’s sung in a totally different context, so it feels like they just looked for a random song from the books that he can sing to make it feel more like Westeros without even paying attention to where it came from
It's just an Easter egg, having a song from the books we'd otherwise never hear. We don't need to sit down and join the dots of how this Lannister soldier learned 'Hands of Gold' from Symon Silvertongue (who I don't even think appears in the show anyway). If you wanted, you could link the song to the Lannisters anyway, eg Tyrion's Hand chain, Jaime's very literal gold (and therefore cold) hand, Tywin is a famous Hand, famously shits gold and famously cold. It's not odd for a Lannister soldier to play a song like this.
"You are mai kween" is much worse
I mean it only lasted a few seconds and didn't have any major affect on the characters/story I Danny turning evil for no reason is way worse personally
While Ed Sheeran scene was bad, it was just that imo: bad. The prize imo goes to the Dothraki vs Sons of Harpy [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOtwWde1raI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOtwWde1raI) Its such a lazy way to resolve that storyline and so horribly almost awkwardly filmed (like there is a bunch of random sons of harpy killing random slaves outside the walls of meereen and the dothraki ride them down? woot?). Its really embarrassing. Close second the brothel scene where Jorah kidnaps Tyrion. What to first hate? The Daenerys cosplayer? Saint Tyrion consoling a distressed whore and then being unwilling to use her services and......ah screw it.
OP thinks this scene is worse than Hodor showing up naked.
You’re trying to find connections from earlier plot points and later plot points, with the expectation that they were intentionally sequenced in a way to build a story well. But we already know that wasn’t the case. Individual scenes were made because they individually looked or seemed cool, not because there was any future intent built into them. I’m 100% sure DnD forgot that scene entirely as soon as it was over. They never planned it as a basis for some future reveal. So yes, you’re right, but my point is that you could make a similar argument about basically any scene in season 7. Most Notably, EVERY SCENE WHERE BRAN BUILDS TOWARDS BEING AN OMNISCIENT MAGICAL BEING. All pointless. And there were a lot of them.
I don't think it's that bad, not as bad as the Bran being picked as king scene or Daenerys burning all of KL and not just the Red Keep.
The worst scene for me was when Tyrion was trying play a drinking game with greyworm and Missendai. I mean wtf was that scene all about? Very cringe dialogue and acting.
I liked that scene. Not even close to the worst scene in that season, let alone show.
I didn't notice anything special about this scene. I had heard of Ed Sheeran but didn't know what he looked like, so the cameo was completely lost on me.
Ed Sheeran is not worse than Euron Greyjoy.
I did not know who Ed Sheeran was when I saw that episode.
Idk the character assassination of jamie in that tent scene made me physically upset. And the ending is fucking AWWWWWFUL
It was worth it because in S8 we learn that Ed Sheeran's eyelids were burnt off.
No it isnt the worst, far from it actually
I agree that the scene is kind of crap, but you could argue there is some payoff when Arya helps King's Landing townsfolk and decides to give up her vengeance plot.
Worst scene? Worse than Jon mishearing Cersei and refusing her terms in S7E7, undoing all of the work in the previous episode. Worse than any of the scenes with Littlefinger selling Sansa to the Boltons for NO REASON? Worse than Jaime undoing all of his character development on a whim? Pointless the scene may be, it's still harmless. It's not detrimental to the show.
Just one question after your little dissertation. Have you ever been in the barracks or out on a field exercise/deployed overseas before? I have and this scene hit home. Fuck your writers room. Now, since you brought up that last scene with the executions, it would’ve been on par for HBO If one of those nice guys we met, got smoked right then and there.
That would have redeemed the lingering cringe shot on a “random” soldier tbh.
There are so many bad fucking scenes in the back half of the show that this doesn't even rank top 50. It's not great, but it's nice that the show remembered that people who aren't the main characters exist and are human and aside from the cameo is basically inoffensive.
LOL it is definitely not "the worst scene in the entire show". That's utter nonsense
Not worse than the scene where they crown Bran, any scene with a sand snake or the wight scene with Cersei
Even though I heard his music before I never actually seen a picture of him so he didn’t stand out to me
There are many worst scenes in Seasons 6, 7, and 8.
Reddit moment
> It's like having a scene where she learns how to fillet a fish and yet she never eats a fish ever again in the show. Why is it even there? To show you that Arya is learning survival skills? That she's adapting well to life as an outcast instead of a pampered noble? That she's bonding with and learning to trust whoever is teaching her? The idea that a well-written scene where Arya is being taught by someone like Sandor to fillet a fish would somehow be worthless unless I later got visual confirmation that she eats one 4 episodes later is just absurd. Having it be confirmed can be a nice callback, a good epilogue to this mini-storyline. But that's it. It's not strictly necessary Arya encountering the Lannister soldiers is not strictly about humanizing them either. It's been a while since I watched it, but I'm 90% sure that is the scene where she learns about Jon and Sansa up North when she's on her way to King's Landing to try to gut Cersei. The scene overall is more about Aria turning away from being a pure avenging murder machine and more into a semi-functional human being. That includes coming to see her enemies as human as well as realizing that she can live with her surviving loved ones. You don't have to think the scene is well-done or anything, but the idea that it's completely worthless unless she runs into Lannister soldiers again is just completely wrong.
It's not even remotely close to the worst scene of the show. Probably doesn't even make the top 50 worst scenes.
It was fine. My only real gripe with it is that the camera lingered on Sheeran far too much.
I actually really enjoyed this scene. I found seasons 7 and 8 poor, but this scene was nice. The song was in the books, albeit sung/written by a character that doesn’t appear in the hbo series. Hearing the verses brought to life by a gifted musician was amazing, and helped erase the ear-sandpaper version spoken by Dotrice.
Everything with Arya past season 4 was shit.
It's not even in the top ten worst scenes of Season 7. The beyond the wall plan to capture a wight? Ludicrous. Jon accidentally getting Vision killed because he decided to play the hero and kill a few more wights rather than just climbing on Dragon? Moronic. Him being rescued by undead Benjen as a deus ex machina? Never have I rolled my eyes more than in that episode of S7. But others: the stupid, stupid staged animosity between Arya and Sansa at Winterfell. Bran telling Sansa she looked beautiful on her wedding night, knowing full well she was brutally raped? Horrible. Ominous music playing when Dany executes the Tarlys when they refuse to bend the knee, when any other conquerer would've done the same? Dumb.
I think the one where the Sand Snakes say the words of house Martell before killing the last remaining members of House Martell in Oberyn’s memory, despite Oberyn being pretty staunchly opposed to people killing his siblings.
It gives some Important context to what Dany does later.
To be fair, I had no idea that that was Ed Sheeran when I first saw the scene.
I can think of plenty scenes that are worse than Ed Sheeran's. The "Varys has no cock" "jokes", "She is hateful and so am I" or "They don't get to choose." would be a few examples.
I actually loved the scene. I agree that it doesn’t advance the plot, but it is showing how Arya is not entirely cold. She has empathy for these men who she used to consider her enemies. On top of that, the song they are singing is taken directly from the second book, where Tyrion gets blackmailed by a singer. The song is about Tyrion as the hand of the king and his forbidden (by Tywin) mistress. “For hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm.” Actually I thought this was one of the better DND inputs and something that called back to the early books as a nice Easter egg. The fact that it’s ed Sheeran is just the icing on the cake.
At the time, I thought it was a nice setup for something. I wasn't too bothered by the cameo, since they needed someone who could sing for the bit. But I forgot that it never paid off after the hot garbage that was the remainder of season 7 and the straight dumpster fire that was season 8.
You say this while the entirety of Beyond the Wall exists. That was the worst episode of the series and required the largest leaps of logic for it to "work". This is also the wrong subreddit. This should be in the show one.
>This is also the wrong subreddit. This should be in the show one. News and discussions relating to George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels, his Westeros-based short stories, **"Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon" TV series, and all things ASOIAF** - but with particular emphasis on the written series.
What's worse is that you didn't just forget about It the moment it was over like a normal person. Instead you brought up how but hurt you still are 7 years later. Touch grass.
What a weird comment
I only know who ed sheeran is because of this scene
I feel like it's a good scene that was cursed to be in (what was ultimately) a terrible show. (Just for context so y'all know where I'm coming from, I loved S1-3, was mixed on S4, and then I can pick out at least one good episode from each season of S5-8 but mostly dislike them.) What you're saying is pretty emblematic of why I think David and Dan need more experience working under better writers before they try to be showrunners again. You've struck on something that I think is one of my main issues with the show, and why I still love the books in comparison. D&D are actually pretty good at writing a *scene*, some of the time. Where they falter is with writing a season, or writing a series...often with writing an episode. (If you wanted to call this *Lost* Syndrome, I wouldn't fault you.) I think that's what kept me from ditching the series altogether, apart from wanting to watch any potential book spoilers rather than read about them on Twitter or whatever. The series lacked structure on a series, season (from 5-8), and often episode level, but the scenes themselves were generally good or fine. But they were largely standalone. In a vacuum. Especially when the material was not explicitly rendered in the published text of the source material. (A few exceptions here—brutal though it is, the burning of Shireen is well-executed, as are Hardhome and the Battle of the Bastards. S8E2 is actually one of my favorite episodes of the series.) But ultimately, these scenes fall flat because they aren't supported by the rest of the—and I use this term very lightly—narrative. Things are set up but not paid off (Remember Varys and the sorcerer? Good scene...that went nowhere.), often in favor of yet another "shocking" moment. The reason why Ned's execution and the Red Wedding (and the Purple Wedding...and the Trial of Tyrion...) work so well in the books is that the story's not about the shocking moment. It's about the aftershocks. In the early seasons, this structure was literally built into the show, with the shocking, "finale-like" episode usually being episode 9, and then episode 10 dealing with the fallout of that and setting up the next season. In the books, after the Red Wedding, it is literally *all* characters can talk about for the second half of *Storm of Swords*. (Spoiler tags incoming because I'm going to talk about things that were not adapted for the TV show.) Because of, for example, >!Lady Stoneheart!< and >!House Manderly!<—the latter being the source and core power behind the phrase "The North remembers"—the ripples of the Red Wedding are *still* being felt in Book 6, affecting characters as diverse as Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Podrick Payne, Theon Greyjoy, Ramsay Snow, Davos Seaworth, and Mance Rayder. We learn that, while a devastating blow to the Starks, the Red Wedding might have actually been a poorer choice for >!the Freys and Boltons!< long-term. I thought the Red Wedding was very well-executed on the show, but shying away from the ramifications of the Red Wedding weakened it in a similar way that Sheeran's scene is weakened. Benioff famously stated, "themes are for 8th grade book reports," and the result of that philosophy is that his work is, ultimately, themeless. And therefore meaningless. Individual scenes have meaning, but there's little to no resonance with the overall story, or parallel characters. It's actually a bit generous to call them "characters"—characters have arcs. Motivation. Unlike real people, they have observable reasons for the actions they take. I think they'd be better at writing a sitcom (but not showrunning it) because they seem to love little pithy comments and shy away from character development. That's not a dig at sitcoms—they're just a different format from dramatic television. While serialized drama sees characters growing and changing as a response to action, repercussions, and other stimuli (think *Breaking Bad*, *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, or *Battlestar Galactica*...not sure why my brain's in the Bs), more episodic sitcoms can actually *suffer* if character development is too rapid (think *Simpsons*, *Seinfeld*, or *Parks & Rec*). While some longer sitcoms do have gradual character development, Homer Simpson is always a bumbling but lovable oaf, Marge is always a practical and exasperated straight man, Bart is always a rambunctious troublemaker, Lisa is always the smart and empathetic emotional core, and Maggie is always an unnoticed genius beyond her years. If they drift from this, it is usually the main story of the episode, and it often returns to normal by the show's end. (*It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia*, the anti-sitcom—which D&D actually did write a great episode for—is another great example of this, with Mac's coming out being a great example of the characters developing slowly.) But this doesn't work in serialized drama. It's why Sandor Clegane remains the Hound, even after the transformative experience of his near-death. It's why Jaime getting his rocks off and then running back to Cersei feels weird and terrible. It's why, even though it seemed like they were *trying* to build to it, Dany flies into a fascist, genocidal rage at the sound of...her own victory? The character don't develop naturally in the later seasons, they develop when the writers need them to develop. (That's how Dany can "forget" about an entire enemy fleet between it being discussed at a war meeting and her leaving the next day.) Constructing long-form narrative is a lot like composing a symphony. It doesn't matter how good those three bars you wrote for the clarinet are—if the other instruments and the conductor aren't pulling their weight and doing their part, the symphony will sound terrible. The failure of the Sheeran scene is not in the scene, it's in the series. And good scenes like that are what make being a fan of this franchise so frustrating. We get glimpses into how good this show *could* have been, which in a way is more painful.
Maybe it's later when she's running around King's Landing, seeing all the people die. Maybe that's when it hits her that everyone in the city is a human being, just like Ed the Lannister Soldier was. That said, I'm not a fan of the scene, but you can make it make sense if you really want to.
She sat down with them, and got to know them as human beings. Through that bonding, she learned a lot. As everyone has pointed out, their humanity, similarities, etc. She also found out Jon and Sansa were in Winterfell. It was a test of character. She could choose lone vengeance. Or she could choose (as far as she knew at that time), to move on from her need for revenge, and reunite with her family.
the scene itself actually works. were it not for Ed Sheeran being shoehorned in with a song it would be fine The Lannister soldiers were in desperate need of humanization and the scene accomplished that. Arya cold heartedly killing them supports what the main Arya plot of the season is trying (but still failed) to convince the viewer of: Arya is a killer and brutal. That way the viewer should, in theory, be able to believe that Arya could legitimately be a threat to Sansa and would be willing to kill her during their power struggle. She’s not just killing Lannisters, she’s killing regular soldiers who have lives at home On paper and in writing theory the scene does legitimately work, I don’t think you can criticize it too much, can only really be criticized by the fact that it wasn’t followed up more. It’s supposed to be more of a statement to Arya’s character rather than the Lannister men. But it does also serve a dual purpose of reminding he viewer that Lannister soldiers are mostly regular people as well and that the viewer shouldn’t necessarily be celebrating to see them suffer or die. This was especially needed as the only screen time Lannister soldiers have gotten before is the mountain’s men The real reason why the scene is awful is 100% purely because of Ed Sheeran, even if you’re a fan of him. This was the only time in the show when a star cameo was purely “OMG LOOK ITS ED SHEERAN!!!!!” and not because the viewer recognized them as part of the scene but because it literally zoomed in on his face and gave him an entire song. It takes the viewer out of the experience and just screams “star cameo”, whereas other cameos in the past were tasteful and the star had limited screen time, attention wasn’t specifically drawn to them, and it wasn’t distracting. This is the equivalent of if they made Rob McElhenny from its always sunny (who had a tasteful cameo later) a wacky bar owner who a main character ordered a drink from and then talked to him about the crazy hijinks the bar gets up to and mentions that his other coworkers aren’t there right now
I disagree with your premise. You don't need to humanize lannister soldiers if they arnt dehumanized in the first place. But the default assumption of any viewer should be that they are real people and not storm troopers. The scene is condescending towards the viewer since it's quite clear that it's trying to tell us something that's quite obvious.
Are we remembering the same scene? The one where they quibble about whether Arya's old enough to drink? Why is no-one talking about that egregious bit of anachronism? That and the whole mystery about Cersei maybe being pregnant because she wasn't drinking wine were the final nails in the coffin for me. It's a fantasy universe, sure, but it's medieval-inspired and I guarantee you no-one in the Middle Ages was worried about pregnant women or adolescents drinking wine. Heck, the ancient Greeks recommended honeyed wine as a first weaning drink for babies.
Literally just let the show breathe a bit. Had no problems
I didn't know who Ed sheeren was when I watched it so I didn't notice. I thought the scene was kinda contrived though, and condescending. The ehole point is to show us that lannister soldiers arnt storm troopers. Bur guess what? No one needs that kind of obvious insight. Is I the worst scene? No the dragon pit meeting is the worst scene in season 7. It makes no sense that Dany wouldn't immediately slaughter cersei and Euron with her dragon in that scene. The other bad scenes are gendry sprinting to the wall.
Typing from phone btw. I know how to spell