Game of Thrones S3 Ep9 Expectations: (Careful, for the thread is dark and full of spoilers)

[Lex Darko]

*snip*

Spoiler

With your point you have more or less summed up my issue with the television adaptation as a whole. They constantly miss out on the smaller things that add serious depth to the characters. I wouldn't mind this if it was a time constraint but a lot of these things could take seconds to include, and all they'd need to do is remove the pointless sex scenes that were made up for the adaptation.

Or even about 90% of what has happened to Theon this season could have been removed in place of things that actually have some relevance to the overarching plot (How he is broken isn't important, only that he is). Or the crossbow scenes (We already know Joffrey is a sadist). Or the scenes with Gendry (They could have done it much more quickly).

It's not that the scenes were bad, but they have included a lot of made up things at the cost of things that have a lot more relevance to the plot as a whole. Hell, they more or less completely omitted everything to do with Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, which was the reason for almost all of this happening in the first place.

I like the series, but every time I see something they added for no reason, while removing a more important scene, it irks me.

I understand how you all feel completely. For reasons of being an adaptation they've cut so many characters from the story that help add context to the overall narrative; like Robert's bastard children Edric Storm, Bella and Mya Stone, so that later when we hear the story about how Lyanna was "kidnapped" we actually have reason to question whether it she actually kidnapped or just ran away from a forced marriage to man who was a known philander.

Then there's the failing to introduce secondary characters which are important later such as the bastard of Bolton and the Reek persona, Jeyne Poole, and strong Belwas. Along with the fact that Jorah Mormont and Selmy are supposed to undergo a loyalty test but there's no pretext for that now because Selmy was introduced as soon as they meet and he identity was never a secret.

 

[The Funslinger]

and I hope that we don't have to wait until next year to see Oberyn Martell show up.

This. I loved Oberyn.

Spoiler

So did I, but it annoyed me how dumb he was going in for that last berserk strike and getting himself killed when he knew full well the poison on his spear would do the Mountain in anyway.

 

[rwllay]

Spoiler

So did I, but it annoyed me how dumb he was going in for that last berserk strike and getting himself killed when he knew full well the poison on his spear would do the Mountain in anyway.

to be fair all Martell plans crumble to dust at the most hilarious possible moment

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Snip

A strong point about "too many Mormonts" cluttering up the cast, but I think you could work around that by just having a "Dacey" character (thanks for that spelling correction) and then filling in the Mormont later via Maege if you felt it necessary. They had to drop the Greatjon entirely due to the actor leaving the cast. I just feel like we've never really seen the loyalty Robb inspired in his troops, or how much they loved him, and with the impact of the event limited entirely to a "too stupid to live" Robb and a "hasn't done anything all season anyway" Catelyn it won't have a jot of the impact it did in the books. Also, the Greatjon lived? I've always remembered him dying. Didn't he flip a table over on Robb and then catch a dozen crossbow bolts?

I've always been pissed about the Jeyne Westerling/Talissa swap, as the former played a lot more heavily into both Tywin's machinations and Robb's sense of honor...the same rigid code that crippled his father. Show Robb is now simply enamored with a hot battlefield nurse and thinks "WTF, who needs that Frey alliance anyway". Such a strange, strange alteration. I'm somewhat interested to see what happens with her post RW to see if there was a point to it all, or if the showrunners just felt like fucking around with things for the hell of it.

On Roose...I spend some time reading forums for unspoiled show watchers, and they all see both Robb/Cat's death and Roose's betrayal coming a mile off, alas. I'm sure it'll catch some viewers off guard, but I think Roose sending Jaime back to his father came off as more of a red flag on the show. Robb seems in so much less a position of strength on the show...in part, I feel, because all we've had for a couple of seasons now is defectors and problems, all his victories were early and off screen, and we see none of his loyalists. Going back to the Twins in his current SHOW state seems like quite the herp a derp maneuver.

Do you think Roose will be doing the stabbing and the "Jaime Lannister sends his regards"? I think he will. I believe it was Lorch who did it in the books, and if I'm not mistaken Lorch is dead now. As is the Tickler, leaving me to wonder if Arya will still go feral and stab someone to death when the Hound fights his brother's men, and if so who it's gonna be.

Funnily enough, the one thing I'm not looking forward to is Cat's death. I never liked her in the books, and she's arguably even worse on the show. I'm not going to miss her, but her death is one of the more gruesome in the series, and I'm honestly expecting it to be quite uncomfortable viewing.

I feel like the weight of Cat's situation has been diluted with the "maybe" state of Bran and Rickon vs her certainty both were dead in the books. It's going to dim her anguish at having "all her sweet babes" slain, and her absolute madness and desperation when Robb is at death's door. I feel fairly certain we're going to transfer some of the emotional blowblack to Arya, who is going to get a lot closer to events than she did in the books.

As for liking or not liking Cat...she's a harsher, harder person in the books ("It should have been you"), but I found I liked her more there than in the show. More than perhaps any other actor, Michelle Fairley seems a bit overly "aged-up" for her character. That, combined with the severe hairstyles they keep sticking her with, make her look more kindly grandmother than the famed Tully beauty who birthed Sansa and drove Littlefinger to decades of ardour.

And speaking of Littlefinger, I REALLY wish someone would tell Aidan Gillen to stop chewing the scenery. Tommy Carcetti was a perfectly subtle character. We know he can do it. This is a direction problem, not an acting problem.

With your point you have more or less summed up my issue with the television adaptation as a whole. They constantly miss out on the smaller things that add serious depth to the characters. I wouldn't mind this if it was a time constraint but a lot of these things could take seconds to include, and all they'd need to do is remove the pointless sex scenes that were made up for the adaptation.

It's a problem I've had as well. A problem I was somewhat braced for, because I considered the books unfilmable due to the ridiculous cast of characters, and I knew they'd never get all that depth and complexity to the screen. But they certainly do make some odd choices from time to time in terms of what they show. The whole "Pod the sex God" routine in particular was jarringly stupid and ate a truly ridiculous amount of time that would've been better spent elsewhere. It had half the unspoiled people convinced Podrick was some kind of shape shifting wizard who used his powers to beguile the prostitutes. GG, show.

Or even about 90% of what has happened to Theon this season could have been removed in place of things that actually have some relevance to the overarching plot (How he is broken isn't important, only that he is). Or the crossbow scenes (We already know Joffrey is a sadist). Or the scenes with Gendry (They could have done it much more quickly).

Theon's stuff is technically fairly "on book", although I felt the scenes were repetitive and lacked impact. Theon's flashbacks to Ramsay's sadism in book were a lot more sinister and disturbing. Still, I'm guessing the show wanted to do a little bit of "show, not tell" and detail Theon's gradual transformation into Reek. And you can surmise by the amount of time they've spent on it that Theon still has some significant role to play in the books.

As for Joffrey...yeah, they're overdoing him a bit. I think they were blown away by how thoroughly Gleeson nailed the character and engaged the audience's hatred, so they've "bigged him up" a bit and made him even more of a monster. Unfortunately they've ended up with a little bit of run-over where he's stealing a bit of potency from the other monsters in the series, most notably Ramsay and the almost entirely absent Gregor Clegane.

I like the series, but every time I see something they added for no reason, while removing a more important scene, it irks me.

It's the character re-writes that are irking me, most particularly Kindly Shae and White-washed Can Do No Wrong Tyrion. They need to resolve that particular element pretty damn quickly, or things are going to get very weird when he throttles her.

 

[J Tyran]

The Red Wedding was something of a watershed moment for the series, many consider THE defining moment to date. Unlike the show, which has been beating the "Robb is doomed...doomed I tells ya!" drum all season, there was little in the way of overt foreshadowing in the books, especially on a first time read. Robb's cause is starting to spring leaks, but he still FEELS ascendant.

The war was going pretty well for him, his campaign in the Riverlands had bogged down into a stalemate with many of his allies fairly secure and the Lannister army still further south. The Tyrells where about to focus on Storms End and he had a great plan to sort out the Iron Born and secure the North.

Then bam, everything turned on its head like you say.

 

[UrinalDook]

A strong point about "too many Mormonts" cluttering up the cast, but I think you could work around that by just having a "Dacey" character (thanks for that spelling correction) and then filling in the Mormont later via Maege if you felt it necessary. They had to drop the Greatjon entirely due to the actor leaving the cast. I just feel like we've never really seen the loyalty Robb inspired in his troops, or how much they loved him, and with the impact of the event limited entirely to a "too stupid to live" Robb and a "hasn't done anything all season anyway" Catelyn it won't have a jot of the impact it did in the books. Also, the Greatjon lived? I've always remembered him dying. Didn't he flip a table over on Robb and then catch a dozen crossbow bolts?

Yeah, I remembered it that way too. It was only a discussion with the friend I watch the series with, who has a much better memory for the tiniest details of books than I do, where he pointed out he is held to ransom. That was actually what prompted me to re-read book three along with the series, so I could remember the little details about to come up and, sure enough, the Greatjon survives. The Umber who protects Robb with a table before getting pincushioned is his son, the Smalljon. Reading it for a second time with the horror of the act long subsided, I've been able to appreciate just how fantastically written the RW is - it's brutally visceral, incredibly exciting thanks to the words of Rains of Castamere punctuating each act. The way the deaths of Wendel Manderly, Dacey Mormont and Robb are described are horrific; for all the niggling details, watching that is going to make for shocking, but brilliant TV.

You are right, though. Robb's lost a lot of those qualities that made his death such a shocking swerve. He's grown more serious, less competent and swapping his need for the Twins from getting back to the North to needing more men to storm the Westerlands (which is what he had been doing for the entirety of the second book) makes his decision making look more questionable.

I've always been pissed about the Jeyne Westerling/Talissa swap, as the former played a lot more heavily into both Tywin's machinations and Robb's sense of honor...the same rigid code that crippled his father. Show Robb is now simply enamored with a hot battlefield nurse and thinks "WTF, who needs that Frey alliance anyway". Such a strange, strange alteration. I'm somewhat interested to see what happens with her post RW to see if there was a point to it all, or if the showrunners just felt like fucking around with things for the hell of it.

Yeah, still firmly on the 'wait and see' bench myself. There were a bunch of things I questioned about season 2's directions that ended up probably making more sense for TV's visual sensibilities. But still, you would have thought they could have at least kept the point that Robb falls for her while he himself is wounded. By all means, introduce her the way they did (arguably, the relationship actually develops in the show - it's very sudden in the books), but at least have the excuse of why Robb may have been relieved of some of his sensibilities.

On Roose...I spend some time reading forums for unspoiled show watchers, and they all see both Robb/Cat's death and Roose's betrayal coming a mile off, alas. I'm sure it'll catch some viewers off guard, but I think Roose sending Jaime back to his father came off as more of a red flag on the show. Robb seems in so much less a position of strength on the show...in part, I feel, because all we've had for a couple of seasons now is defectors and problems, all his victories were early and off screen, and we see none of his loyalists. Going back to the Twins in his current SHOW state seems like quite the herp a derp maneuver.

That's really interesting. Evidently, the people that frequent such forums are more insightful than my sister and friends who enjoy the show but don't know the book. They're suspicious of Roose after dealing with Jaime, for sure, but most of them think he's just manouevring himself as part of a power play within the North. None of them have predicted the level of his... ambition.

Do you think Roose will be doing the stabbing and the "Jaime Lannister sends his regards"? I think he will. I believe it was Lorch who did it in the books, and if I'm not mistaken Lorch is dead now. As is the Tickler, leaving me to wonder if Arya will still go feral and stab someone to death when the Hound fights his brother's men, and if so who it's gonna be.

Absolutely. I don't see how it could be anyone else. The show needs to announce plainly that Roose Bolton actively betrayed Robb, and the 'Jaime Lannister sends his regards' line would only carry weight coming from the man we saw Jaime talk with. Lorch is dead by this point in the books as well, Tywin tries to put the blame for the deaths of Rhaegar's kids on him, in an attempt to shut Oberyn's demands for justice down. In the books, it's some unnamed guy in a pink cloak (so a Bolton man) who kills Robb. Why use a nameless Bolton man, when you can use the man himself?

I feel like the weight of Cat's situation has been diluted with the "maybe" state of Bran and Rickon vs her certainty both were dead in the books. It's going to dim her anguish at having "all her sweet babes" slain, and her absolute madness and desperation when Robb is at death's door. I feel fairly certain we're going to transfer some of the emotional blowblack to Arya, who is going to get a lot closer to events than she did in the books.

As for liking or not liking Cat...she's a harsher, harder person in the books ("It should have been you"), but I found I liked her more there than in the show. More than perhaps any other actor, Michelle Fairley seems a bit overly "aged-up" for her character. That, combined with the severe hairstyles they keep sticking her with, make her look more kindly grandmother than the famed Tully beauty who birthed Sansa and drove Littlefinger to decades of ardour.

Another interesting perspective, and honestly I hope you're right. Arya is much stronger emotionally in the series than the books, personally I feel it's a development for the better as it allows her to externalise a lot of her issues. In the books, most of her character development is limited to her thoughts. She's very private, which wouldn't have worked right in the show. With her being so much more resolved and open in the show, putting her a little more front and centre at the RW will be a key moment for her character.

Agreed on Michelle Fairley.

And speaking of Littlefinger, I REALLY wish someone would tell Aidan Gillen to stop chewing the scenery. Tommy Carcetti was a perfectly subtle character. We know he can do it. This is a direction problem, not an acting problem.

Absolutely agreed. What's worse is that he seems to have got more pronounced in his evil. His scenes with Varys in the first season were some of the absolute finest in the series. His scene with Varys this season, his speech about 'the climb' was hamtastic, and far too intense for the casual rogue that Littlefinger should appear to be.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I've been able to appreciate just how fantastically written the RW is - it's brutally visceral, incredibly exciting thanks to the words of Rains of Castamere punctuating each act. The way the deaths of Wendel Manderly, Dacey Mormont and Robb are described are horrific; for all the niggling details, watching that is going to make for shocking, but brilliant TV.

I'm just "re-reading" the books again now (for the 6th or 7th time, although this is the first time I've listened to GoT via audiobook...I'd really love to know why Martin is so loyal to Roy Dotrice as a reader, he makes all the characters sound like crazed leprechauns or querulous old men). I'm going to pay extra attention to the Red Wedding this time. It's amazing to me I can still be fucking up details after all this time.

Dacey's death was particularly jarring, if I remember correct, a spear through the belly. I'd quite liked her character, as minor as she was, and remember her death adding significantly to my sense of outrage.

I'm really, really hoping they pull it off. It's a tough scene to get right, tonally, because there's so much happening in so little time, and that sense of abruptly spiraling tension leading up to the explosion of hostilities will be hard to nail. I'm worried we'll have Frey mustache twirling like crazy leading up to it, making the imminent betrayal painfully obvious.

Yeah, still firmly on the 'wait and see' bench myself. There were a bunch of things I questioned about season 2's directions that ended up probably making more sense for TV's visual sensibilities. But still, you would have thought they could have at least kept the point that Robb falls for her while he himself is wounded. By all means, introduce her the way they did (arguably, the relationship actually develops in the show - it's very sudden in the books), but at least have the excuse of why Robb may have been relieved of some of his sensibilities.

I could see the swap if they'd done something interesting with her character, but even after many scenes with Robb she still seems very much a blank slate. They could've just as easily kept her as Jeyne Westerling, and not had book purists like me screaming at them from the sidelines. They'd already taken shit for details as minor as Renly's peach, you'd think they'd learned their lesson, damn it! =P

That's really interesting. Evidently, the people that frequent such forums are more insightful than my sister and friends who enjoy the show but don't know the book. They're suspicious of Roose after dealing with Jaime, for sure, but most of them think he's just manouevring himself as part of a power play within the North. None of them have predicted the level of his... ambition.

I'm actually really happy to think there will be people shocked by it, as the unspoiled forums I visit seem almost prescient sometimes. I do like to use them as barometer of how well the show is doing portraying the characters. Going by them, the show is doing fantastically with Cersei, Tywin, Jaime, Brienne, Arya, and reasonably well with Dany and co. And pretty damn poor with Tyrion and his entourage, and Bran and the Reeds. Half of them are convinced the Reeds are evil.

Absolutely. I don't see how it could be anyone else. The show needs to announce plainly that Roose Bolton actively betrayed Robb, and the 'Jaime Lannister sends his regards' line would only carry weight coming from the man we saw Jaime talk with. Lorch is dead by this point in the books as well, Tywin tries to put the blame for the deaths of Rhaegar's kids on him, in an attempt to shut Oberyn's demands for justice down. In the books, it's some unnamed guy in a pink cloak (so a Bolton man) who kills Robb. Why use a nameless Bolton man, when you can use the man himself?

Oh then it WASN'T Lorch. Damn it. You know nothing, BloatedGuppy.

Another interesting perspective, and honestly I hope you're right. Arya is much stronger emotionally in the series than the books, personally I feel it's a development for the better as it allows her to externalise a lot of her issues. In the books, most of her character development is limited to her thoughts. She's very private, which wouldn't have worked right in the show. With her being so much more resolved and open in the show, putting her a little more front and centre at the RW will be a key moment for her character.

Arya's storyline has been cut to shreds by time constraints, but I think Maisie Williams has done fantastically with her. Her farewell scene with Hot Pie and her M'Lady-Zoned scene with Gendry were two of the more emotional scenes of the year, and she had precious little to work with in both. She's one of the cases (along with Liam Cunningham and Peter Dinklage) where the actor has brought the character to life so winningly that it's hard to picture them as anyone else. If Coster-Waldau can keep it up I may add him to that list as well.

Absolutely agreed. What's worse is that he seems to have got more pronounced in his evil. His scenes with Varys in the first season were some of the absolute finest in the series. His scene with Varys this season, his speech about 'the climb' was hamtastic, and far too intense for the casual rogue that Littlefinger should appear to be.

It's driving me crazy, most particularly because when he winkled Sansa away in the books no one has any concept of where she might have gone, and in the show he's all but left a whiteboard with thorough details of his plan up in his quarters. "BEWARE, FOR I AM SCHEMING!" he seems to declare with every new monologue. This is the sort of thing I'm referring to when I say the show has no subtlety. And it's a shame, too. Other high end shows such as The Wire or Mad Men or Breaking Bad don't really feel the need to spell everything out for the audience...they trust their intelligence and let them make some connections in their head. The books, too, give great credit to the reader's intelligence and ability to make associations without being lead by the nose. But the show...yeesh.

Here's a question for you...how do you see the show proceeding with Fake Arya? Presumably we will have a Fake Arya...she seemed fairly significant to Theon's arc in ADWD (and significantly upped both the emotional stakes and the horror of the Theon/Ramsay chapters IMO)...but we have no Jeyne Poole. At least none I remember. Part of me thought they might try parlaying Talissa into that role, but that really doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly if she's preggers with a young Stark.

 

[UrinalDook]

I'm really, really hoping they pull it off. It's a tough scene to get right, tonally, because there's so much happening in so little time, and that sense of abruptly spiraling tension leading up to the explosion of hostilities will be hard to nail. I'm worried we'll have Frey mustache twirling like crazy leading up to it, making the imminent betrayal painfully obvious.

Funnily enough, that might depend how much they choose to quote the book word for word. There's a few things Walder Frey says that really do verge on mustache twirling. It only comes off when you know what's coming, but as you said the setup in the show already makes the whole arrangement more suspicious, and people might read between the lines of a few of Walder's little barbs.

It's driving me crazy, most particularly because when he winkled Sansa away in the books no one has any concept of where she might have gone, and in the show he's all but left a whiteboard with thorough details of his plan up in his quarters. "BEWARE, FOR I AM SCHEMING!" he seems to declare with every new monologue. This is the sort of thing I'm referring to when I say the show has no subtlety. And it's a shame, too. Other high end shows such as The Wire or Mad Men or Breaking Bad don't really feel the need to spell everything out for the audience...they trust their intelligence and let them make some connections in their head. The books, too, give great credit to the reader's intelligence and ability to make associations without being lead by the nose. But the show...yeesh.

More than anything I suspect that's probably just down to the limitations imposed by the format and the available time. In the books, you get to hear varied opinion's on Littlefinger, you get to see him present different faces to different people and gain an insight into how effective he's being. The show doesn't have the luxury of inner monologues, and so has to demonstrate personality in that characters own words. Don't get me wrong, they've gone off kilter with Littlefinger and made him far too obvious, I do agree, but it's a flaw I'm willing to overlook when the changes made to Arya, Stannis and his daughter, Tywin and most of all Theon have been so good.

The other area I really think they've dropped the ball is Jon Snow, oddly enough. And it wasn't until re-reading the second book, and after a second watching of the second series at that, that I noticed. For me, Jon Snow highlights that keeping all the events from the books pretty much intact doesn't necessarily set the character up right in the show's format. Jon Snow is far more intelligent in the books than he is in the show. He's more determined, and key moments of character development from the end of book 2 and mid book 3 have been dropped.

The best example of that is, naturally, Ygritte. Namely that in the books, he simply lets her go. And Qhorin Halfhand doesn't care. It's a massive character establishing moment not only for the reader, but for Qhorin. He says as much. Worse, the scouts are victims of circumstance in the book. They, including Jon Snow, do all they can to evade capture but the sheer numbers of Wildlings pursuing them make that impossible. In the show, it seems entirely Jon's fault.

None of that has any real bearing on Ep 9, of course, but it is one of the few things about the show that genuinely bugs me.

Here's a question for you...how do you see the show proceeding with Fake Arya? Presumably we will have a Fake Arya...she seemed fairly significant to Theon's arc in ADWD (and significantly upped both the emotional stakes and the horror of the Theon/Ramsay chapters IMO)...but we have no Jeyne Poole. At least none I remember. Part of me thought they might try parlaying Talissa into that role, but that really doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly if she's preggers with a young Stark.

Honestly, I don't think it matters. This is, again, the advantage of the visual show format. Fake Arya could be absolutely anyone. The mere fact that she is not Maisie Williams will tell the audience all they need to know. No one for a second will buy that it really is Arya, and as such it doesn't matter all that much who she is. They could quite easily make her anyone from Winterfell, all they have to do is explain how she knows enough about the Starks to be vaguely convincing. I suspect they will cast someone a few years older than Maisie, and have Ramsay admit privately that she is some girl taken from Winterfell - potentially recycling a name from the books, she might become Beth Cassel for example. But honestly, she'll probably just stay Jeyne Poole. All it would take is Theon to say "I know you, you're Jeyne Poole" and the audience knows here real name.

That said, me and a friend would bandy about all sorts of theories in a our post episode discussions about this. The big one for me was that they were going to play a sort of tile shuffle game. With Shae's recharacterisation, I suspected Ros would become the whore Tyrion finds with Tywin and strangles, while Shae - as one of Sansa's maids, and therefore in a position of some knowledge about her - would be used in the Jeyne Poole role. Hardly the soundest of theories, I know, and completely disproven with Ros' death but at the time it made for interesting speculation.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Funnily enough, that might depend how much they choose to quote the book word for word. There's a few things Walder Frey says that really do verge on mustache twirling. It only comes off when you know what's coming, but as you said the setup in the show already makes the whole arrangement more suspicious, and people might read between the lines of a few of Walder's little barbs.

I was thinking that too. The bit about "the red will run" would be a particular giveaway.

The other area I really think they've dropped the ball is Jon Snow, oddly enough. And it wasn't until re-reading the second book, and after a second watching of the second series at that, that I noticed. For me, Jon Snow highlights that keeping all the events from the books pretty much intact doesn't necessarily set the character up right in the show's format. Jon Snow is far more intelligent in the books than he is in the show. He's more determined, and key moments of character development from the end of book 2 and mid book 3 have been dropped.

Jon is something of an inner monologue guy in the books, and...if you'll forgive me...a bit of a dull character. Jon and pre ADWD Dany are the closest things the series has to a Mary Sue, and both can get a little tiresome with their seemingly bottomless nobility and competence.

I do remember reading an amusing take on the Wildlings allowing Qhorin and Jon to fight after making a show of how significant it was to take Qhorin alive. As the guy put it "It would be like the Allied Forces capturing Rommel, and then inexplicably standing by and allowing him to get killed in a knife fight with another prisoner".

None of that has any real bearing on Ep 9, of course, but it is one of the few things about the show that genuinely bugs me.

Talissa and Shae's re-write tend to grate on me the most. I remember also being deeply annoyed when they gave Sandor's reveal of how he got burned to Littlefinger for some stupid reason, and Gillen went full ham with it.

Honestly, I don't think it matters. This is, again, the advantage of the visual show format. Fake Arya could be absolutely anyone. The mere fact that she is not Maisie Williams will tell the audience all they need to know. No one for a second will buy that it really is Arya, and as such it doesn't matter all that much who she is. They could quite easily make her anyone from Winterfell, all they have to do is explain how she knows enough about the Starks to be vaguely convincing. I suspect they will cast someone a few years older than Maisie, and have Ramsay admit privately that she is some girl taken from Winterfell - potentially recycling a name from the books, she might become Beth Cassel for example. But honestly, she'll probably just stay Jeyne Poole. All it would take is Theon to say "I know you, you're Jeyne Poole" and the audience knows here real name.

I think you misunderstand me. I don't think they'll try and fool the audience into thinking it's Arya...certainly we knew from the get-go in the books it was Jeyne Poole. I'm just wondering who, if anyone, the show will put into that position. Jeyne upped the stakes for Theon. Theon was a traitor, and already largely broken/ruined, but Jeyne was not. IMO, it SIGNIFICANTLY increased the need for escape, and the tension/stakes involved in that escape.

They were some of the best chapters in ADWD for me, partly because Things Were Happening and people weren't just moving quietly from point A to point B, and partly because Martin did such an effective job in crafting a boogeyman in the form of Ramsay Bolton. Since the show is going whole hog on detailing Theon's gradual transformation into Reek, I can only assume they mean to keep this arc relatively intact. So I wonder who they might give us in place of Jeyne Poole to keep that tension/audience investment up. Theon alone, I think, might be an error...he's relatively despised. You're correct...they might just write a Jeyne Poole into the show. I just thought they might angle for someone for whom we already had an established sympathy.

That said, me and a friend would bandy about all sorts of theories in a our post episode discussions about this. The big one for me was that they were going to play a sort of tile shuffle game. With Shae's recharacterisation, I suspected Ros would become the whore Tyrion finds with Tywin and strangles, while Shae - as one of Sansa's maids, and therefore in a position of some knowledge about her - would be used in the Jeyne Poole role. Hardly the soundest of theories, I know, and completely disproven with Ros' death but at the time it made for interesting speculation.

A friend and I had petulantly started calling the show A Game of Ros at one point due to all the screen time she was eating. I can't say I'm sad to see her go, although I think they're going a bit hard on Joffrey's psychosis. I'd also wondered if they'd do a Ros/Shae switcheroo. Frankly I'm wondering WTF is going on with Shae. The show has stubbornly avoided 90% of Tyrion's less flattering moments, presumably in an attempt to shape Tyrion into the audience's primary hero character/rooting interest. Yet, we had Tyrion very conspicuously give Shae some thick gold chains (good for throttlin'!). For her part, Kekilli has played Shae as a warm, friendly, supportive prostitute who genuinely cares for Tyrion...far from the bratty schemer and social climber she was portrayed as in the books. Having Tyrion choke THIS Shae to death is going to horrify the audience unless the show does a dramatic about-face on her.

 

[Vladimir Stamenov]

Joffrey's wedding is sure to be next season, since there was news that casting for Oberyn Martell, Mace Tyrell and Elaria Sand are open.

A friend and I had petulantly started calling the show A Game of Ros at one point due to all the screen time she was eating. I can't say I'm sad to see her go, although I think they're going a bit hard on Joffrey's psychosis. I'd also wondered if they'd do a Ros/Shae switcheroo. Frankly I'm wondering WTF is going on with Shae. The show has stubbornly avoided 90% of Tyrion's less flattering moments, presumably in an attempt to shape Tyrion into the audience's primary hero character/rooting interest. Yet, we had Tyrion very conspicuously give Shae some thick gold chains (good for throttlin'!). For her part, Kekilli has played Shae as a warm, friendly, supportive prostitute who genuinely cares for Tyrion...far from the bratty schemer and social climber she was portrayed as in the books. Having Tyrion choke THIS Shae to death is going to horrify the audience unless the show does a dramatic about-face on her.

Yep, I can't see how they will deal with this Shae business in the series. I want to ask, since I haven't watched series one, did Tyrion tell Bronn about his first wife?

 

[Jandau]

Wow, reading this thread, I am amazed by how much more people are analyzing this show than I am. I don't mean that in any insulting way, mind you, just surprised.

For my 2 cents, Joffrey's wedding isn't going to be this season. If it were they'd have to cram it in and gut the entire Martell/Mountain storyline, which would suck massive balls. This episode will go up to the Red Wedding and the last one will deal with some of the aftermath.

Next season is what concerns me - The Red Wedding came in at roughly 2/3 of the 3rd book. There's not that much left to work with. There are two ways to deal with this: 1. Expand on some of the plotlines, like the Martell one which I'm sure many readers wished was longer. ; 2. Put in early stuff from Feast of Crows / Dance with Dragons. Well, or both, I suppose...

 

[Karma168]

Or even about 90% of what has happened to Theon this season could have been removed in place of things that actually have some relevance to the overarching plot (How he is broken isn't important, only that he is). Or the crossbow scenes (We already know Joffrey is a sadist). Or the scenes with Gendry (They could have done it much more quickly).

It's not that the scenes were bad, but they have included a lot of made up things at the cost of things that have a lot more relevance to the plot as a whole. Hell, they more or less completely omitted everything to do with Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, which was the reason for almost all of this happening in the first place..

The issue with Reek is that if we go from cocky arse-wipe at the end of S2 to the Reek we meet in the books it wont work. It'll obviously be Theon so people would want to know wtf happened to him and you'll have to have characters tell us what happened to him since we last saw him. Given the golden rule of television - show don't tell - it makes more sense to put in a scene now showing him being tortured; put a in a scene with genital mutilation and everybody will understand that he was broken.

The Lyanna storyline is (at the moment) pointless. It happened ~15 years ago and while it did cause the war that deposed the Targaryens it doesn't play a major part in the events of the fighting now. Putting it in would be good for world building but it isn't essential to the plot.

As for the crossbow scenes, the short ones are mostly to keep everyone thinking about how much of an arse Joffrey is so that when he does bite it, people have a stronger reaction to it. It's just building the character to get a bigger pay-off, same way Robb is still talked about as being on the rise right up until the RW in the books.

The longer one (with Margery(?)) is more character building for her. She's Cersei's rival so the show can't use the version we see in the books (her being underestimated by Cersei as we only ever see her from that perspective) it has to show that she's just as manipulative as Cersei and that it's the women behind the throne that often control it and not the man sitting on it.

After Joffrey dies her marrying Tommen is just seen as an expected move, or worse gold-digging, she's nothing but a favour being passed to the Lannisters. In the show however it'll be more of a cunning move on her part as she's determined to become queen; it gives her more character than 'arm candy to the crown'.

Along with the fact that Jorah Mormont and Selmy are supposed to undergo a loyalty test but there's no pretext for that now because Selmy was introduced as soon as they meet and he identity was never a secret.

It wouldn't have worked on TV. In a book you can write 'old guy with beard' and it could be anyone because you have no definitive idea what he looks like, can't do that when you actually see what the character looks like. Some people would instantly recognise his face/voice and remember him from S1, you'd be building a surprise that half the (non book reading) audience would see coming for weeks. It's easier to just cut that out and go straight to the Jorah/Selmy pissing contest over who gets the queens ear - more interesting than a Jorah/random dude argument as you have no reason to believe Dany would listen to this random, a Kingsguard with decades of experience though? Much more likely to listen to him, even over Jorah's opinion.

 

[laraghboy]

Can't wait for it personally, but 1 thing that's bothering me...

This season was apparently supposed to be the 1st half of Storm of Swords, but Tyrion and Sansa's wedding (in episode 8) was pretty close to the end of the book, I'm just thinking that if this season had maybe 12 episodes that would be the whole book covered. I'm just curious as to see what the next season is going to be about.

 

[Vladimir Stamenov]

The Lyanna storyline is (at the moment) pointless. It happened ~15 years ago and while it did cause the war that deposed the Targaryens it doesn't play a major part in the events of the fighting now. Putting it in would be good for world building but it isn't essential to the plot.

How is the realtionship between two characters that's the most probable explanation for the prophecy of the union of the north and south, ice and fire NOT pertinent to the plot? If I don't see it in season 4, when it's elaborated upon in the fourth book, I'll kill somebody.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Spoiler: Spoilers if you haven't read the books

It was most certainly a Red Wedding. Looooooootsa blood, one thing I disliked though was how they portrayed it. In the Books the Starks are shown fighting back, if while drunk. In the TV-Series they just stand and take it

So yea.. Partially disappointed, but they fit a whole lot other stuff in there aswell like

Spoiler: Spoiler

Jon's return to the Watch

and the end of the Siege in the East. So I can understand that they didn't have time...

 

[UrinalDook]

Still haven't seen it yet, as we Brits unfortunately have to wait till the Monday. But I thought I'd leave this here for the entertainment of my worthy brothers in speculation.

@RedWeddingTears [https://twitter.com/RedWeddingTears]