Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
Isn’t this is a great example of not following fantasy tropes. The hero’s journey of the bastard becoming the chosen one, and coming back from the dead and fulfilling the prophcacy.
Instead the character with Agency kills the big bad. Arya chose not to be a princess when she was a child. Demanded to be trained. Was clever to name the faceless man to escape prison, choose to leave the Hound and Brienne and set her own path, chose not be no one and instead to be a Stark, choose to #### Gendry, chose her weapons and chose to kill the night king. Agency beat prophecy.
The evil in the world isn’t an unknown enemy that has been prophicized about. It’s people. I think the divide you see in this episode is those who the fantasy elements were paramount versus those who the political elements were paramount. The writers always shied away from fulling embracing and getting into the how the magic worked. I think in a TV show this is a good choice.
Going forward the next prophecy and opportunity for consequences to be real is Cersei. Dany chose to fight the Night King instead of go for Kings landing. Cersei acted in self interest. Will Cersei allow the prophecy to be self fulfilling like when she kill Margery leading to Tommen killing himself or will she chose to reject it.
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This isn't what I was complaining about at all though.
The White Walkers didn't even necessarily have to be the final villains of the series, but prior to this episode, the overarching story had been the threat of the White Walkers being ignored in favour of the minor quarrels of men. If I'm not mistaken, literally every season has ended featuring the White Walkers. The series began with them.
I'm not asking for the writers to follow a prophecy. I don't need Jon Snow to be the hero. But through the first 6 seasons, they created and developed a fantasy world with rules and laws and threats. I'm not talking about fan theories not coming to pass (as I said, I tried to ignore them all following season 7). It's just... disappointing.
You can say this is a way for the writers to avoid falling into standard fantasy tropes, but to me that's just lazy writing. I'm not even sure you're correct in saying it's avoiding fantasy tropes. The heroes won. Three supplementary characters died heroically and completed their character arcs. Now they face the evil woman to the south.
The White Walkers didn't need to be victorious for me to be satisfied, but how un-tropey would it have been to have seen the Night King win, kill almost everyone in Winterfell, march south, and eventually run into Cersei? Now the last three episodes are Cersei vs the threat she ignored. That's the most extreme example of what could have been, but it's certainly anything but a fantasy trope.
I don't know. I just expected more. The episode itself wasn't disappointing, but the overarching story has turned for me. I wanted to see a North devastated by White Walkers. I wanted to see people try to survive in this new climate. We heard about some of it prior to episode 3, it just wasn't built into the narrative.
This just feels lazy and incomplete.
I'm still going to watch the rest of the season and enjoy it. I will re-watch the series and enjoy it.