This is it folks, this is peak television. What we have here is one of the most gut wrenching and masterfully crafted episodes ever brought to screen. Absolutely fucking phenomenal with career best performances from Murray Bartlett and Nick Oferman. Holy shit this will stick with me.
The ending was later game of thrones stupid.
Daemon running out there like an idiot, and the dozens of archers firing at him miss, again, again, and again, and again, and again, and then oh now finally they hit.
All the while he's fighting against opponent, after opponent, after opponent, against multiple opponents, as the crab feeder sends out dozens of his men.
It's just stupid. And his dragon stayed back because? No reason. Could have been attacking the archers.
And it turns out Daemon didn't do this solely to try and kill the crab feeder, but to try and bait him out so he/his allies can kill him and his army?
But wait. Allies said they had around 700 men. They're in a war. So crab feeder must have hundreds or around that number. Crab feeder wouldn't be stupid enough to send out a big force just for daemon, especially because he was wounded by arrows and on the ground, and still being attacked by them. Plus, we saw him send out what two dozen of his warriors? Against Daemon. For some reason.
Then when allies show and dragon attack, Crab Feeder and his allies don't go back in the caves? Which was their usual tactic each time for literally years during the war.
Even though they're in a losing war, Daemon and his allies win at the end.
None of this makes sense.
Writing quality across the whole episode is lower than the previous two, and we have now reached later game of thrones level of stupidity.
Would Daemon have really done that stupid run? Oh and we also see more of his dishonorable nature by nearly beating a messenger to death, and then betraying the white flag of truth. Even though he at least seemed to have some honorable aspects to him in previous episodes, even though he was brutal. Was this all in the book? The stupid suicide run, the dishonorable actions. And was it in the book when Daemon charged right in the middle of battle on his dragon and got pounded by arrows and almost died? He got lucky because one went into his shoulder. This is stupid. Even on the run he could have been killed by the first volley of arrows. I'd be very surprised if any of this was in the book.
Edit: And we don't get enough info about things regarding the status of armies, and the numbers we do get don't make sense. So Valeryon's forces have 700 men left? Eh? That low? And you're waging a war? Been in a war for years? How many forces does Daemon have? Does he have any left? He had goldcloaks right? For some reason. I guess he had so much of their loyalty is what it said in previous episodes. Yeah i guess they just followed him to Dragonstone and then into war. Where are they? Are they still a part of his army? If not, then it's just him? Why did the Valeryon guy say Daemon is helping them lose the war, he has a dragon. He's consistently helping, especially so if he's contributing his goldcloak forces, and i assume that's all Daemon would have, since we don't know if he's the lord of anywhere and able to conscript people.
So many questions like that. All through the episode about things. When an episode is a mixed bag like this, you start to see and question many other things. I still enjoyed the episode overall though.
Edit 2: Since a lot of people seem to agree with me, i thought i'd go into more detail. The show hasn't completely broken down yet like later Game of Thrones, nor has the logic been twisted too much like middle Game of Thrones. The previous 2 episodes i thought were really good, but this episode you could tell had a different writer, and that's not good, because it makes you less immersed, like sometimes you feel these characters shouldn't be saying what they're saying. Contrast that to Game of Thrones season 1, and i couldn't tell who was writing what episode, as it was good across the board. So early into this season and i'm seeing a mismatch in writing is not a good sign.
I think we have a lot of interesting characters in this show and i'm looking forward to continuing. I'd rate this episode a 6.5/10, but 6 or 7 is valid to me. Most of this episode i thought was pretty good, but there were too many things for me to choose 6. The mismatch in writing, the timeskip, the brattiness of Rhaenyra, the white deer heavy handed symbolism, the end of the episode and the anticlimactic nature of the crabfeeder. The king feeling a bit too lost in his soul, when he's supposed to be king and has been king for a long time, and has a queen and children. I understand the reasoning, i just don't buy it much. But i still like the many conversations, politics and intrigue in the show, and the characters and story.
I usually do not watch TV episodes till after the credits roll but there is actually an after credits scene here that noone should miss!
Oh God no, not Wade! Not the character we don't even know, and couldn't give less of a care about. Why did you have to take such a nobody from us!?
Yawn, this show is just plain boring.
THEY PROMISED ME ZOMBIES AND ALL I HAVE NOW IS DEPRESSION
What a beautiful episode, I don't remember an episode like this for years, very well done, just perfect.
Which version do you prefer? The Game or the Show? I will have to go with the show, its more happy, kinda.
why the cgi is so fucking lame???? Great episode but I couldn't help wonder about the bad cgi
The way they picked an episode title that would make absolutely no one suspect anything…
This episode felt awfully rushed. Episode 3 was amazing, albeit long for what it was; They could've cut some scenes and gave more screen time to other characters, all whilst keeping the exact same impact. Episode 4 and 5 was the opposite, they gave us a baddie that had an immense amount of screen time but packed little to no punch and was gone in a matter of seconds. Another small nitpick with her, although a leader, Kathleen looked immensely well-fed and soft-spoken for someone who just crawled out of a torturous regime wherein they traded apples for people's lives. Bad casting? I think so.
Henry and Sam... where was their screen time? Did Kathleen eat it up? We didn't see enough interactions between the two duos at all. I cried watching episode 3 having had more than enough time to grow attached to the characters, but I didn't have the time to grow attached to Henry or Sam.
I thought the idea of making Sam deaf was fantastic, it wasn't weird or shoe horned in.
TL;DR: They gave too much screen-time to a miss-cast baddie, a slight too much to the couple in episode 3 but very little to Henry and Sam, making their impact significantly less. It's just a good, rushed episode that missed the marks for being a great one.
A worthy season finale. Season finales are difficult to master (GoT failed miserably in its show finale). There's not much more to say. Except maybe the fact that Daemon is a strange guy. Don't really know what to make of him.
it's honestly so wild that they actually made a good star wars show
Unnecessary waste of time drama. She had a chance to burn them all but flies away on the dragon.
How can they release a crap like Obi Wan and then Andor which is damn amazing. This episode was a masterclass.
Welcome to the two new actors... probably not the best episode to form a proper opinion of their skills as actors, but the episode itself had a lot going on and it was hard enough who was who and why just two actors needed to be changed and yet Ser Christon was his young looking self. And all those kids... are we suppose to keep track of them all? Such a shame Daemon's new wife (for this episode) had a problem, such a beauty.
We have a Dragon population explosion and there are a number of very interesting gaming pieces ahead methinks, for the throne. I'm not really sure why they chose to fast track the prestory into 5 episodes rather than extend the story over the first season. They must have their reasons I guess and we will know soon enough, but it better be a good reason.
We shall see how next week goes...I did enjoy this episode. Gave it a 7/10.
That Security Force is probably good Stormtrooper material. :laughing:
Anyway, still slow burning. The whole first three episodes released today are rather on long pilot movie I guess. Let's see how that movie ends.
I'm not sure what's missing, but these episodes just feel off. I know it's not good to compare, but I'll do it anyway, The Mandalorian felt exciting and like the Star Wars Universe was filled with characters... This show feels like everything is stale and if it didn't have the nostalgia of Obi and Vader I don't think anyone would be interested.
This episode had some nice bits. The scenes with the bodies Obi found was very intriguing. That was the only thing I liked. They really did skip Obi getting better and it was glossed over like months had past but I believe it was days. I can't imagine that The Mandalorian would have done it this way.
I'm really losing interest and hoping that something happens soon to make this worth the wait.
Honestly the action on this show is really bad and clumsy. Does Deborah Chow direct all of these episodes? Because if so then things do not bode well for this series. Also people just knowing Vader is Anakin Skywalker seems pretty dumb
It felt like something was missing, I would've loved if they could've added at least two more episodes to explore all these events, the season was full of time skips which I despise in any show and the whole show felt rushed, somewhat sad for a show this great to end this way imo
What a brilliant little series, and episode this was.
I have been destroyed emotionally and I don't know if I'll ever recover
This singular episode, which I initially didn’t think I would like in the beginning, became more incredible than entire movies. It was beautiful, poetic and entirely self encapsulated in a tiny little world where people can still pick out their little slice of happiness.
To all those who hated the episode, replace bill with a female in your head if you have to, but open your eyes to why this story was so fulfilling and poetic in a world filled with meaningless death and endless suffering.
Awesome finale. I can only hope season 2 is as good as season 1.
I'm gonna comment here before season 1 ends. This is the best SW content on Disney+ streaming service better than Mandalorian, especially the horrible Kenobi series and the bad/mediocore BOBF.
I really hope they'll keep this quality of storytelling and atmosphere.
Great series so far. Obi Wan season 1 was clearly a missed opportunity and shite next to this.
I don't get what happened! one second Rhaenyra stood with Daemon ... the next, Daemon disappears and we see Criston beating the hell out of that other guy ( what's his name ?) ....
Where the hell did Daemon go? I demand an explanation. :smile:
3 episodes in and the show has already jumped the shark. Kinda sad, because up until that point, it was pretty good.
Not great once again. Considine and Smith, along with the costumes and production design, are just about holding it up but very slim pickings elsewhere (though I do love that Ifans watched a video of Tywin and thought, that'll do for my acting).
The writing isn't great (how many times did we need to be told that the irritating princess is headstrong and uncontrollable?) and that awful "action" sequence at the end was the utter drivel the episode spun its wheels to get to.
Another time skip and at this rate it will probably have one every episode given there's gonna be a change of the main cast to the adult versions.
It slowed down quite jarringly from the pilot (it was fun) to focus more on the king's dealing with his grief and rewedding plan. To be honest I have to say it was quite a drag especially if you already knew he was clearly gonna pick Alicent. Daemon barely having any scenes didn't help make it much of an entertaining watch either.
Overall it's a decent characters episode building seeds for later but not much else going for it. 6/10
We sat glued to this.
My partner is part Indian, and although we never talked about it, when we started dating, I had to meet the relatives, worse than job interviews. Seeing the inside working, especially of the super rich (and often spoiled) singles in India and in America was so funny.
Sadly, we didn't see what happened to many of the relationships , but so funny to watch :-)
