Winterfell: The Worst (Dumbest) Battle in TV History
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2024
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Of all the tragic character deaths in Game of Thrones, none was so devastating as killing the plot
A lot of characters had plot armor. Sadly, the plot didn't.
might i add in the death of "light", the only time i could watch the night scenes was after I've shut the lights for hours and turn my screens brightness to max
And I thought some Batman movies were dark!
This is the dark darkness darkly moving about on a dark field in the dark... with my eyes closed.
@@TheRealKatsunov I've been hating this trend in movies and TV. I get that the scene is supposed to be at night, but this is a visual medium. If I can't see what the hell is going on, you may as well not bother shooting the scene.
Part of the suspension of disbelief when watching a movie or TV is not to ask where the light is coming from in a night scene.
@@MonkeyJedi99 Black cat with eyes closed on a cloudy moonless night against a black backdrop.
Ned Stark always said, "no way 500 men could hold Winterfell against 10 000. We should charge at them"
Jon said: "on a one on one, they cannot be beaten", so let's make a frontal cavalry assault in the dark against a gazillion to one, you never know, they might not know how to count
"We must Defend The Walls! No, not from the top of the Walls you fools, from Outside! We just finished painting them and I will not have undead climbing on them until it is dry"
Which is very funny to me, since, no matter whether you have an undead horde that feels no pain and can only die to obsidian weapons, magical steel and fire, a vast numerical advantage can STILL be mostly nullified by having to go over large stone walls, while defenders are just throwing large amounts of rocks, arrows, javelins and incendiaries at you.
The zumbais can only replicate by converting the dead. No enemy dead, no time to convert them into new recruits, means no reinforcements. The forces of the living SHOULD have made dragonglass arrowheads and spearpoints most of all, rather than just dinky daggers. You know, to slay the deathless brutes that feel no pain and can remain functional even after dismemberment and decapitation FROM A DISTANCE, prolonging the lives and utility of their soldiers for as much as possible.
Even my self at the age of 10 would have done a better job of writing this battle.
❤@@canemcave
You can´t defend the walls from the inside duuhh...
David Benioff to D. B. Weiss in a meeting@@justinlast2lastharder749
"We can't beat them in a direct fight, so let's directly attack them"
- Jon Snow
Thats not an actual quote from the show is it
@@redfoxtheposer8808 the first bit is.
@@redfoxtheposer8808the first bit, but that's what makes it so frustrating, why the hell did he allow the Dothraki to attack head-on when he knows they can't win a fight heads on.
@@redfoxtheposer8808 did you forgot the famous:
"I will be lord of nothing, that's why i will be lord of everything" - Bran
"I didn't come to slaughter innocent, until i decided to slaughter all innocent" - Daenerys
Right from the Scipio book of war wagin
As someone who grew up riding horses - the idea of charging at full gallop across an icy and uneven field IN THE DARK is utterly insane.
I agree my uncle owns a ranch and I’ve even lightly trotted in the dark Wyoming winter and I was terrified
Now this was probably pretty common in cavalry warfare, but they you was mostly changing worn out troops rushing to relive others.
A fantasy Charge of the Light Brigade. A hopeless charge against the wrong target.
I ALWAYS wondered about that, thanks for clearing that up. I always figured that was incredibly unrealistic, lol.
It can absolutely be done, but you need specially trained men and specially trained horses for it, and you certainly can't do it with the efficacy that you could in daylight
If the creators of the Battle of Winterfell did a battle set in World War 1, they would have Jeeps charging across no man's land into a known minefield. Behind the jeeps would be the ammunition cache, followed by long range artillery and mortars, with the infantry lined up in neat little rows behind them, and then all the way in the back would be the trenches with the machine guns (with no ammunition, of course, because that's all in big piles between the artillery and the jeeps out in front).
Perfect analogy!
And the infantry would line up in the recoil distance of the field guns so their numbers can be thinned... for morale... before they even see the enemy.
The best part of this comment, and probably most accurate considering the people in charge of this show, is that Jeeps didn't even exist during World War 1.
Jeeps didn't exist before WW2
I would watch this battle, though I probably wouldn’t be able to see any of it😂
>Assembles largest army in the world
>Builds *one* trench
It isnt even really built.
Like it doesn't surround the castle...
AND stand your army infront of the trench and wall
>Puts the army in front of the trench so that they cannot pull back and are brutally pinned down by the oncoming onslaught of mindless, ever-forward pushing monstrosities that badly outnumber them
Every single director, who is tasked to film large medieval army battles/sieges, should study Helms Deep battle before even thinking of making their own. Always ... always they think they are historical proteges who will make historically best scenes, when in reality 90% of time they are not ... worse, when they adept/remake an existing things and always end up with worse outcome.
@@AmbroRealityexcept I guess from their pov the scene is successful. It got awards and nominations which as a director is likely more important than bein tactically smart
I've never seen someone so thoroughly break down a black screen.
😂😂
😄
It's so you can use your imagination!
Imagine my pain for being completely colorblind. I had literally no idea what was going on
As Stak said you can't even see the battle. The dumbest thing is they went for spectacle but obscured the spectacle.
Everyone kept complaining about not being able to see anything and I kept thinking "I wish I couldn't see this battle"
The Battle of Helm's Deep was fought at night. In the rain. And we could see it all.
There will never be another Helm’s Deep…. Now is the Age of Men…
@@MonkeyJedi99I love when people bring up the visibility factor in BoHD as a point of criticism, because they'll be like "Well it's unrealistic, where is the light coming from?" as if it's some clever gotcha. It's coming from the same place the music is, jackass, who cares lol
Right? @TheForeignGamer like.. you're worried that the lighting won't be realistic in it's brightening of the ZOMBIES AND DRAGONS
Game of thrones is good. But the last season... Holy crap
The producers of Season 8 basically admitted that they just wanted to subvert expectation, which is why so many of the decisions made at the end of the show were just lazy turns.
They didn't really care about the actions making sense. They just wanted pure shock value, which is why it ended so badly.
They wanted to hop onto the Star Wars trilogy that they were promised as soon as possible.... karma strikes back tho, and after Disney saw this horrible execution, they got fired from the project, god the irony is sweet
Ah, yes, the JJ Abrams school of writing.
It's amazing how it all connects... GoT was ruined because of Star Wars... and Star Wars was also ruined and D&D never made their shitty SW trilogy. All turned to shit for nothing.
@@h8GW No, Rian Johnson was the subvert expectations guy
That expectation thing is the newspeech for bullsh!t
There's also the fact that all the dead dothraki and unsullied turn up perfectly alive and well in King's Landing a few episodes later. They are virtually wiped out in this battle, but miraculously, there are thousands of them left to take over and pillage when Daenerys gets to the capital. 😅
IIRC D&D call this "the end of dothraki" in the commentary of this episode, then they say in the commentary of another episode that "most were wiped out", then "about half of them survived", and in the last episode they're somehow "stronger than ever"
@@Mamenber dont you know that dothraki reproduce by mitosis in a matter of days? there is probably 40 new ones+horse in thos ranks every few minuts!. /jk
@@Mamenber I can't believe these clowns were ever given control of this series.
yea that shit didn't make sense at all, cause after the battle we saw she only have few unsullied left and all the dothraki was dead and she literally had thousand of them with no explain how
Danny built some barracks and stables offscreen and replenished them obviously 🤣
The most impressive thing about winterfell is that when the night king raised all the dead dothraki and unsullied, they all went on to live normal lives after the finale.
They all died when the night king died.
Seriously??? (Sarcasm implied)
When the Night King fell, for a moment the undead thought all was lost, but then the smartest zombie went like "Oh shit... quick, everyone play possum!"
@@Kai-tn4yx The joke is that despite massive casualties both Dothraki and Unsullied took in this fight, they are somehow completely replenished when they attack thhe Kings Landing.
(show writers kinda forgot...)
@@Kai-tn4yxnot by the next scene
Melisandre made the greatest contribution to the episode by setting fire to that trench, finally enabling the viewers to actually see wtf was going on for the first time.
One thing everyone seems to miss is that no one knew Melisandre was going to show up and light all the Dothraki Arakh's on fire. So not only were the light cavalry at the front of the formation, they were also welding weapons THAT COULDN'T KILL THEIR ENEMY. So what was their plan? Charge at the enemy you literally can't kill, who can absolutely kill you, and will raise you afterwards to amplify their numbers?
This is what happens with bad writing/directing, the writer or director had already envisioned this really cool scene of Melisandre lighting up the Dothraki weapons as well as the scene where we see all the lights get swallowed by the darkness.
Instead of naturally interweaving these scenes into the plot and story the writer/director just bends the plot and story to fit their visual idea that's come to mind and that's why you start seeing stupid shit begin to happen.
I believe in the book there might have been something about Dothraki pride and how they fight their enemy on the field and don't cower behind walls; so I at least get why they might have insisted on riding to battle directly or refused to fight at all. They're the sort of people who get more stupidly, stubbornly brave the more afraid they are.
Everything else is nonsense and makes no sense unless the defenders were trying to look weak to lure out the Night King; more Aragorn's last ride to the Black Gates to distract Sauron from Frodo. They aren't trying to win, they are trying to draw attention so the Macguffin can win. But they underestimated how fast the night hoards would kill everyone, I suppose.
So basically the only way this makes sense is if the defenders were deliberately trying to look stupid to lull their opponent into an act of overconfidence.
@@danielled8665 Honestly they would have been better off not being in the battle at all, what point is there in fielding soldiers that literally couldn't kill their enemy? The only reason, as you say, is if they're trying to look completely incompetent, even then, you're still giving your enemy more soldiers as a result.
@@MasterIceyy Exactly, all they needed to do was think a little about the in universe logic or motivation to realise how dumb it was. If they did that they could have tweaked it a bit to make it make some sense, like maybe have Mil show up the episode before then she can be with the Dothraki at the start of the battle, at least then it shows the whole thing was planned instead of fielding an army that couldn't kill their enemies until something completely unexpected and unplanned for happened.
Also, aren't the Dothraki completely distrustful of magic? They all react positively instead of freaking out about the witchcraft they just witnessed. Guess they kinda forgot about Dothraki culture there.
style over substance - looks cool but makes absolutely no sense and proved it be absolutely worthless in the end as they got wiped out in a few minutes anyway.
I think it's a massive issue that media portrays 'medieval' battles as just both sides smash. Little to no tactics. When using tactics would add drama and show the skills, the characters have and that they have to overcome the challenges that battles have.
Because you have to make it consumable by the person that knows the least about military history in the audiance. Everyone understands that bonking someone on the head hurts, so they show a bunch of that. The real issue is that big army fights almost always fail to deliver beyond spectacle. If they wanted a more serious approach, they should have focused almost entirely on individuals and only had a couple of shots of armies fighting to set the mood. People understand the emotional stakes in individual combat, and its the proper way to shoot a story like this.
That's a reason why I rarely watch a lot of "epic" movies, the level of stupidity in the way battles are represented makes it impossible to enjoy.
They can have it both ways, skirmishes are a good one small number of characters being used to harass the enemy but if they get to into it they are out numbered and will be surrounded. Or raiding camps if your horse is killed you have to run and fight your way out.
Battle of the bastards did a pretty good job with tactics not so much on John's side but the boltons did a good job with surrounding a smaller force
Vikings did a pretty decent job I guess
I do agree with you, but most people (i know at least) found boring and too confusing the depiction of the Battle of Gaugamela in Alexander (which could be confusing but that was the point. They did a good enough job in portraying it fairly accurately)
My personal favorite is the zombie giant who randomly decided to play with Little Miss Mormont instead of just squashing her like everyone else, just so she could conveniently get within striking range.
Probably would've made more sense if she had a bow with an obsidian arrow, but that'd just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential fixes.
Let's also talk about how Jon hid behind a 2×4 and some loose debris when the white dragon blasted him. Yet in the battle of kings crossing dragons fire was hitting harder than a 2,000 lbs JDAM ripping entire stone fortifications .
Not to mention that same dragon took out a part of THE WALL
Plot armor has no limits.
@@derekrunyan5582 Haha yeah that dragon literally exploded "the Wall" How wide was that thing ?
Can't believe I'm actually going to defend this shit show but this was a dead dragon so maybe it lost some heat/power and the wall was ice easier to melt ice than rock.
Not sure I even believe this but had to try in memory of the first 4 seasons and parts of 5 & 6
@@chipsthedog1 RIP seasons 1-4, they'll be remembered fondly on my shelf. Glad I never bought past that.
The battle of helms deep would of gone very differently if Aragorn had deployed his troops outside the walls.
Yeah. He would've won! 😅😂😂
_Obviously joking._ Have to say that lol
“Ahhh my friend, take your elves and stand at the base of the wall on the outside. Yes that’s tactically the most sound positioning”
-Aragorn Snow
When last I looked Théoden, not Aragorn, was King of Rohan
It would have worked fine, because just when they're about to be overrun one of the hobbits would have appeared out of nowhere and stabbed Saruman.
@@tglake2894Aragorn was the primary military advisor for Theoden. Also far more experienced and older. Aragon was 87 or so. Theoden probably 60ish.
The actor who played the Night King is a pro stunt coordinator. A PRO STUNT COORDINATOR 😡 We could’ve had the most epic battle in television history with multiple characters taking him on.
That was one of the biggest wastes in the show. Why spend so much time building that character up?
@@JoshuaLivieBecause in the Books there's no Night king, They invented that charector so that Jon can have an enemy to fight against One on One but decided to Subvert those expectations which they themselves Created and had Arya kill the Night King so that her arc actually meant something as her whole bravos storyline was completely Anticlimatic lol.
@@rahilrameez8635 No night king? Man, the books sound even lamer than the show.
@@rahilrameez8635 Doesnt matter if NK is or is not in the books since the entire show was build up on him being the final boss they had to beat and this entire battle happening in episode 3 was the first major flaw with the battle in the first place. NK was a great built up villian and the fact they changed actors for him so that he could have some sick fight scenes (like the fight at the tower of joy which was pleasure to watch) support that but then somewhere after 6th season they were just like: nah, we dont want to play with you (entire show) anymore so lets end it quickly..
@@Vaquix000 well there's is a Night's king which was the 13th lord commander of the Night's watch who married a female White Walker but the interesting thing is we don't even know if the White Walkers will be evil in the books. They're described as beautiful in the books, the Story can go in an entire different direction.
Faramir's cavalry charge at Osgiliath hits me way harder now than it did as a kid. I was so confused as to why they would do it as a child. As an adult, understanding that a malevolent noble with no interest in fighting for his country just sent his troops to die to make a point, to LOOK like he was contesting the enemy's position, just made it so heartbreaking. And what's worse, when you study history, you realise that in the World Wars, this happened ALL the time.
Wasn't Tolkien like a soldier in ww1? I don't know if he experienced anything like that, but him having a personal and possibly historical knowledge of warfare helps a lot in his stories.
@SilverGhost0 That scene is not in the book, Peter Jackson made it up. In the book Faramir is wounded but it happens when he and his men are retreating from Osgiliath, not in a senseless suicide charge
As a side note, I absolutely hate how Denethor was depicted in the movie.
In the book Denethor is a strict father who nevertheless loves his remaining son. He has grown desperate and lost hope and makes errors as a result, but shows signs of intelligence and cunning military command as well
In the movie he is a comic book villain who hates his son, forces him to attempt suicide for no reason and otherwise acts like a complete madman
In ny opinion nobody sas done more dirty in the movies, despite fierce competition (Gimli, Theoden, Elrond etc)
Though knowledge of how ineptly the Generals (nicknamed the "Donkeys") handled troops in WW I (aka the Great War ) was common knowledge to the British in the 1930ies, everyone had lost friends, relatives or knew traumatized and maimed survivors...
But Tolkien did not write Denethor this way. Denethors is just a defeatist, his mind tarnished by looking into Minas Tirith's palantir, who sees the White City fall, whatever effort is taken. but he is definitely not the spiteful Jackson version. But Tolkien's antipathy to war and its consequences , as well as indiscriminating industrialization stemmed from his own experiences. Just look at King Theoden for this "no man should outlive his sons" etc
@@mynameiswritinwater The generals of WW1 were not inept. There were some absolutely terrible generals, don't get me wrong (Luigi Cadorna springs to mind). But for the most part the commanders of WW1 found themselves facing an utterly novel military conundrum, that was beyond anyone's means to overcome at the time. The technology didn't exist, the doctrine didn't exist.
So much of the awkwardness of early WW2 strategy and tactics was from people reacting to the mess of WW1, and trying to craft solutions to the trench stalemate ahead of time. Some of these solutions worked - many did not.
@@tbotalpha8133 they were utterly inept. Not learning from the lessons becoming more and more appearant since the Crimean War, the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War that increased range and volume of gunfire, both from an individual soldiers's rifle, or the automated weaponry available , and the increased capabilities of artillery vs the mobility that stayed at the level it had been for a thousand years. and not preparing adequately, developing tactics and strategies for that massive increase in defensive capability ... instead hurling waves of men into that withering fire to die or be maimed in the futile attempt to whittle down the enemy's resolve and numbers (, as the German's called it "Abnutzungskrieg" ) was criminal. Or inept
Those previous five decades of wars, that no one was willing to take lessons from and correct their armies' strategies for The French even took several months and more to even adapt their very visible uniforms which made their soldiers easy targets ?
It shows that most European armies (and commanders) were used to fighting colonial opposition with inferior armaments - and even that proved hard for that generation of leaders,... just look at the Boer War in South Africa, which Great Britain struggled quite hard to win
The few decisive battles of WW I that were won, were through clever positioning and change of position (say Tannenberg in East Prussia, which broke the Russian Advance in 1914 ) or clever application of new technology as say in the Mountain Wars in Tyrol. The Allies even squandered the advantage generated by tanks by dropping them piecemeal instead of deploying them in force as a surprise..
Even smart strategical plans tended to suffer badly by the lack of capability of the generals on site... Gallipoli might have worked, if it had been executed by competent men, swiftly and with less useless posturing
Who exactly are the military geniuses we remember from the "Great War ?
What's additionally frustrating is that doing it CORRECTLY would take less time and money. The burning trenches would illuminate the defenders, but the contrast could mean that the set planners could leave the rest of the battlefield completely dark, letting the enemy forces be IMPLIED. You can then show the defenders tearing apart the wights with successful tactics. A burning trench supported by unsullied, as the dead make the bridges, then the cavalry pincer attack annihilating the flanks of the army and the wights seemingly being whittled down to their last like it would be in a normal form of warfare, the unsullied throwing oil on the corpse bridges to reform the fire wall, but it's almost treated as overkill.
Then you can show the weight of the undead as the cavalry swing back, only to find that the encirclement has in turn been encircled, and then we see from the wall as the cavalry fires go out. THEN it's revealed that they've only been facing a forward army. THEN the real army steps in front of the fire, only the first few rows visible, not focusing on any of the bridges. Then in a "sacrifice" play, the night king orders the wights to throw themselves into the trenches en-masse, completely filling the trench with dothraki and horses and snuffing out the whole trench. The whole battlefield is dark until the undead dothraki cavalry surge out of the dark against the shocked and awed humans before disappearing behind the lines of wights.
The defenders on the wall start the second phase of the battle as they lay down siege engine and fire arrows into the horde, as the unsullied try to retreat into the castle. Then the winter storm hits and we get what we THINK is going to be a siege. But again, WINTER UNDEAD. In all the glory and fire of the fight on the northern gates, the southern front is completely dark, having already been lightly defended since that was where the dothraki cavalry had been lying in wait. Unseen in the dark and snow, the undead giant just charges in and smashes through the wall. A whole contingent of undead swarm in, causing the defenders to need to regroup. THEN you can degrade into the mindless melee.
Not only does it require fewer on-screen people AND give more darkness for CG and reusable extras, it then shows the complete failure of tactics against an enemy that simply doesn't follow the rules and is perfectly content with a pyrrhic victory.
Could even set up the fire pits to keep the extras warm
The problem with all of this is... it would make sense.
Season 8 seems to have had a brief that started with "It can't make any kind of sense"
Seriously though, what you describe already sounds way, WAY more tense and suspenseful than what we actually got.
Dude, you described it so well I saw it in my head, as if the clips from the show were suddenly rearranged, and this battle became amazing.
That's a talent you have right there bro
A yt comment has better battle writing than D&Ds. Makes me even more angry at season 8.
100% facts here!!
Dumb & Dumber managed to crush the best Fantasy show ever in just one season and going from "everybody is talking about the show" to "no one is talking about the show anymore". Well done...
To be honest, though, they did a lot of good for all the spin-off shows. By being so incredibly bad in last season, the average viewer is perfectly fine with the quality of a show as House of the Dragon for example, which is barely better than 8th season. So kudos for them, now there will be a ton of boring spin-offs and neither has to worry about it being as good as early seasons for GoT.
It wasn't quite that dramatic: it actually took them 4 seasons to crush it
Their skill showed in being able to copy what was in the books. There is a skill to that and they did it well. I saw the demise a mile away from season 5 onwards, the writing clearly dipped massively. GRRM himself said they weren't under any time pressure when it came to including a bunch of other themes and scenes that were in the books, they wanted to chase their star wars contract and other shit. What greed does to a man.
The ending is probably what GRRM will have (at least in some form), and it's not a bad ending when you explain it, but Daenerys can't just go from 'free slaves' to 'kill children' in the span of like 2 episodes lol. I could've forgiven all of season 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 had that transition been smoother.
Alas, lesson learned, don't watch something until it's finished.
Even the dialogue which eroded to Cock jokes and 'i dun want et' and reusing iconic quotes from seasons past in the most awkward and wrong contexts
@M.L.official yea Arya to Jon about Dany. " I know a killer when i see one, and that ones a killer." No fucking shit. Everybody just saw her kill hundreds of thousands of people in Kongs Landing. Dont act like you have specisl recognition skills of someones true hidden self. God that was so stupid!
It took them 3-4 to do it actually. As soon as they began to realize the material they cut, would cause problems. They just either cut more or cannibalized it into other characters. Dorne however they just badly flubbed.
In the Battle of Helm's Deep, I believe one of the actors asked Peter Jackson "Isn't it night? Where is all this light coming from?"
The response was "Same place as the music."
If you don't learn from the greats, you will never join them.
Ah I love that. Get goosebumps just from behind-the-scene LotR quotes.
The comparison made me wonder if they purposefully tried to avoid being too similar to LotR. And then made it stupid instead.
It could be a full moon night.
@@tFighterPilot But then you would also have to fight werewolves 🤔
Besides, early 2000’s blue illumination in the dark had such a charm that is not replicated nowadays, it just lit nicely enough
The point of GoT was to be LotR grounded in reality. Then they tried to be LotR and failed at both
In defense of the Crypt scene, the dead absolutely should not have been physically strong enough to break through the crypt walls.
I think they should have mentioned that. Them acknowledging that the dead could be raised, but anticipating that they couldn’t break out of their tombs only then to be shocked by them doing so would have made more sense.
@@Zarastro54 I mean, lamp-shading a contrived plotpoint doesn’t make it less contrived. I think just showing them all gathered in the crypt having to listen to the sounds of skeletons banging and scratching at their tombs, would have been haunting enough. It’s not like there are any consequences to these random civilians, not dying.
@@theguileraven7014now what have been such a cool and creepy scene to see hearing them growling and banging on their tombs while everyone is afraid would've been badass!
@@theguileraven7014 I agree. I’m just saying if they just HAD to kill those civilians, at least _try_ to make it sound less stupid than it was.
@@Zarastro54in the last season jon and some others captured one of the undead and transported it to kings landing to show the lanisters that the undead were real, they transported it in a wooden crate so i can see why they wouldn't think that they were able to break through stone when a wood box was enough to hold one for about a thousand mile journey
The Night King after seeing the enemy catapults OUTSIDE of the castle:
“Are these MFers for real?”
no wonder the night king guy has such a smug yet expressionless gaze. he literally knows he is playing the game against an easy mode AI bot opponent designed to perform tactically poorly as a matter of intent.
Literally. Man pulled up to the castle and was like
"... Cute."
They tried to subvert his expectations.
@@ZugzugZugzugsonexcept for that one glitchy teleporting girl that one hits him. Killing the story and causing many plot holes. God I knew as soon as they killed off the white walkers half way through season 8.. it was gonna get real bad. Same thing happened with Snoke in Last jedi.. they killed off the highly built up threat.. now they just have to make up random bullshit to finish it off. Same thing happened here. We got Urine greyjoy and his teleporting ships, and pumpkin queen staring out a window the whole time.. with Daenerys randomly going mad... great.
@@SuperVoidBoyz yeah true :/
You mentioned Melisandre lighting the Dothraki swords, but didn't mention that she came out of nowhere and wasn't a part of the initial plans, so Jon Snow and Daenerys were going to send their soldiers out to fight without a way to even kill the White Walkers.
This made me realize the Dothraki were never given dragon glass swords and their curly swords (idk what they're called lol) were definitely not Valyrian steel - omg I want to weep the writing was so bad
@@alhaithamsfourthabmuscle Well technically the arakhs would work fine on the wights (the zombies) since we've seen that before. Fire and Dragonglass is more effective, but iron does work. But they'd be helpless against the bigger wights like the giants, and utterly useless against the White Walkers. So it was still idiotic in every way possible. The writing is so bad that even half a decade afterwards, I still find myself frustrated seeing it.
@@TheStraightestWhitest "even half a decade afterwards, I still find myself frustrated seeing it" oh I relate too hard; I go on an annual binge, watching people critique every inch of the writing & I rage as if it were the 1st time I came across the information lol - never felt so betrayed and robbed in my life
And against an enemy who because of the lack of visibility they had no idea of their numbers. Quite literally just sending them to their deaths.
@@TheStraightestWhitest The reason it's still frustrating is that it's so disrespectful on the part of D&D. They weren't emotionally invested in Game of Thrones anymore and wanted to move on to other projects, I get it, but the lack of empathy for the fact that they had a fandom of tens of millions of people who were VERY MUCH still emotionally invested in Game of Thrones is honestly disgusting. It's so far beyond a lack of professionalism that it feels sociopathic.
This battle was so stupid, it was honestly laughable that they even won
They had no buisness winning.
By the end, I was rooting for the Night King just to end the nonsense.
Yeah, the deus ex machina was strong in this battle. Not only the defenders but the night king himself was brain dead stupid. He knows if he dies his army dies. He should have not been anywhere close to the front of that battle.
I don't know because I couldn't see anything
Plot armor is a hell of an advantage.
plot armor at its purest form
Arya Stark, a silent assassin charging her enemy, screaming at him
Yet it worked anyways lol. Because Night King just kinda forgot how to kill people.. just holding her neck and staring.
Even though you literally hear her bones cracking.. god I'm still mad to this day.
@@SuperVoidBoyzwhat bones? You’re hearing ice and snow my guy lol. If you haven’t noticed by now, the Night King likes toying with people. Holding her up was just that.
@@SassyGhost13they made him dumb💀 he just grabs her and stares at her does nothing 😭 whole episode was buns
I'm convinced they filmed it so dark because they knew it was absolutely terrible and hoped that if no one could see it, they wouldn't know how bad it was.
I can see it just fine.
@@fireandblood2919you're one hell of a meat rider
@@fireandblood2919 I'm sorry for you then.
No it's the director. Miguel Sapochnik.
The co creator of House of Dragon.
He's great at directing spectacle. But he tries to potray night scenes in a realistic way that makes them way too dark.
He did something similar with episode 5 or 6 I think of House of Dragon. The episode where Aemond gets his dragon.
And you can barely see anything.
@@kingkiller5325 Nah, I like my theory more.
Make sure you put your flame-throwing catapults OUTSIDE the castle walls, where they will be immediately overrun and not INSIDE the walls, where they would go on being useful until the walls are breached. You could almost hear the "Rome: Total Warfare" defeat music playing while that happened.
Every time D&D make a writing decision, the Gods flip a coin.
"Aua troops are rising foa the enemy! SHAMEFUR DISPRAY!"
That coin has tails in both sides.
Imagine if they were fighting regular humans instead of mindless wights. "Sir! The enemy appears to have left all of their siege outside of their walls!" "Oh, well, that's convenient, turn 'em around and let loose"
The gods didn’t flip coins, they sat back with margaritas and said ‘heh let’s see what these idiots do next.’
Outside? Nah, not only that! You put it IN FRONT OF YOUR FRONT LINE INFANTRY. Because that's where you put your artillery, at the front so it's the first thing to fall.
The Dothraki making that badass entrance just to get annihalated in 3 seconds is honestly hilarious in hindsight. These dudes were so feared and hated, crossed the sea to Westeros, all to get pwned by a bunch of snow zombies they never would have seen back home
Let's not forget how castles work when they get over run. Especially winterfell that seems to have many keeps. Fall back positions and areas that can be compartmentalised. Murder holes, even higher walls, choke points kill zones.
I know that is what I find laughable about battles like this. You have the perfect spot to fight someone where you have the advantage and give it up.
well castles were literally designed for military use originally. They were military bases.
@@TheAkwariumTo be more accurate, they were hybrid buildings where local rulers and their knights could live and work safe from enemy attacks. Since armies were expensive and capturing the local ruler could be an "easy" way to either force him to make concessions or kill and replace him, they were designed to allow a significantly smaller force to successfully repel attacks from from enemy armies.
"It's about to get way dumber" could be said before literally every point when trying to explain this episode.
it coul be said when trying to explain this entire season until the "who has a better story than Bran the broken" part. It doesn't get dumber than that.
That scene is the dumbness singularity.@@guillaumebozelec6800
Reminds me of BlueJay telling the story of the worst naval battle in history.
If you haven't seen it, check it out.
You absolutely nailed this, well done.
The fact that this episode was nominated for emmys, including cinematography, pretty much completely delegitimizes the emmys
Imagine having horse archers, facing the perfect enemy imaginable when you have horse archers (melee infantry in tight order without shields) and... kinda forgetting about using horse archers as horse archers.
I guess Dany kinda forgot...
Especially since they could have been doing it for a few days, before the battle even started.
@@henningratjen4364 maybe not for that long but definitely for the first few hours of the battle. And with horsemen that do not know how to shoot on horseback, instead carry baskets full of arrows to resupply the horse archers (the Parthians did that at Carrhae against the Romans) to extend how long it would last.
That would have destroyed a good portion of the WW army before they even come within range of the walls. Then have most carry a bow or xbow, use the unsullied phalanx behind the gates, build scorpions (and not trebuchets) to counter the dragon and other high value targets like giants and WWs...
the stupidest aspect of the entire battle is that while throwing the lives of your soldiers recklessly can theoretically win you a battle, doing so against an enemy who can raise your own dead soldiers against you would make this plan the stupidest imaginable.
The battle of Winterfell literally can be considered the stupidest battle in the history of cinema or real war
the only logical way to fight an undead enemy is to fight in such a way that means you lose as few casualties as possible and even if you do you can prevent them from being raised (such as having your infantry fight on top of fire pits that could be set on fire if they are over run, denying the enemy the ability to raise them since they are burned.
Persian horse archers destroyed Roman Shield walls, because they could just continuously shoot arrows and were being refilled by horse, while the on foot heavy infantry couldn't retaliate.
I genuinely almost cried when I saw that Tyrion and Sansa were in the crypts… Supposedly two of the smartest people left in the show, surrounded by centuries worth of different generals and battle experience, with Jon who has seen what the Night King is capable of leading the charge… AND THEY PUT EVERY DEFENSELESS PERSON IN A CRYPT AGAINST AN ARMY LED BY A MAN WHO CAN RAISE THE DEAD AND THEY KNEW IT
Omg I was thinking the same damn thing!! Dropping the ball on this one is an understatement
This is the only part of the series worse than Danny "forgetting" about the iron fleet. Danny "forgetting" about the iron fleet technically had a worse outcome, but I still think tyrion going into that crypt was dumber.
funnily, if physics were to be respected in this shit show of an episode, it wouldn´t actually be of any concern, because most of the dead in the crypt would be dust anyway and even if not, stone is usually harder than bone, so ... but hey shock value is more important than realism, right?!
@Tyarrk I 100% agree with you about the bodies being dust. However, as far as the skeletons of the more recent dead busting out of the sarcophagus. I can suspend my disbelief if it is shown that the night kings power gives the dead strength and durability. I don't think they do that, so it still isn't internally consistent.
@@ragingmoderate6791They definitely do give the dead superhuman strength, otherwise there is no way for it to be even remotely possible a corpse/skeleton/zombie could kill a soldier. That's literally the least of the show's issues though.
I deleted this series from my memory and reliving the tactical flaws from this battle has given me PTSD.
*subscribed*
This happens when the writers of the show think they will go to do the next Starwar
That makes a lot of sense. You can't have any logic or battles that follow the rules.
And then because they fucked up so bad they were promptly shitcanned from that Star Wars project before it even started lmao
That's karma baby
@@SH4GN457Y
That's our one consolation out of this, but I'll go a step further. D&D should never be allowed anywhere near a TV show or movie ever again.
And ironically, if they were writing for star wars, the sequel films and Disney series would probably be about the same quality as they turned out without them.
Yup. They were too busy counting that sweet sweet Star Wars money.
Imagine if Tyrion had S8 brain back in S2 and decided to defend King's Landing with this kind of strat - like, wildfire trap in the middle of his own men, archers up front OUTSIDE of the castle walls and infantry initiating mermen mode and swimming up to meet the attacking fleet in nothing but their undies.
Actually, that would have been the good ending, because the one true King Stannis would have been on the throne and it would have never come to this nonsense.
My theory is that Tyrion had to use up all his chromosomes to win the battle, which is why he was never quite the same since.
The very idea of fighting a siege battle against the dead is ridiculous. What if instead of assaulting the walls, the Wight King just laid siege to the castle and wait out the defenders? He is in no hurry since the defenders have no reinforcement incoming, his troops dont need food and the long night isn't ending anytime soon.
A more sensible plan would have been to use Bran as bait to lure the army of the dead into an trap (like say, a valley with the ground soaked in oil) and ambush the King. It's also way less risky, since the forces of the living arent surrounded in this scenario, if the plan goes south they can still retreat.
From memory, it isn't really properly explained exactly WHY the Night King is so obsessed with Bran.
So with that in mind, or even if he DID have an established reason, the idea that the Night King would lead his force to such a confrontation is kind of stupid.
So the living set up this massive defense? Okay cool. I'm just going to not engage. I'll go around destroying all of the other places until you come out and try and fight. Then when you have no advantage of defensive positions and I have EVEN MORE troops from all the killing I did, I'll just win.
I'm not hugely invested in the books coming out, but if they ever do, I think what happens with the army of the dead is going to be really interesting, as I am CERTAIN, GM will not have built in the convenient kill switch that was lazily and disappointingly inserted as the weakness of the dead.
I remember the week after this awful mess when dozens of history and warfare channels decided "this was so bad we have to rewrite this". Loved those
The NightKing really managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here
Blew a 3-1 lead
I don’t blame him he was killed by a deus ex machina.
I really wish we had gotten a scene of the surviving Stark kids debating over removing their ancestors from the Crypt, gathered around talking about the risk of them coming back inside the walls, the disrespect/pain of disturbing the dead and a solemn moment of them moving the bodies of their Father and Brother outside, I really think it would have been a great gut punch of a scene which reminded the viewer of the suffering they had gone through to even get a chance at this final fight.
I think it would've been cooler if Bran had learned to use the dead like the night king. You see the dead Starks from the past protecting em and throw in some dead animals like crows, wolves and shit.
Would've it have made sense, nope but it would've been 10x better than what we got. It also would've made Bran actually useful instead of a emotionless brick
34:02 Also keep in mind that the commanders know that these forces, like
the Dothraki and Unsullied can't be replaced and what they have is all they get.
So sacrificing them is even more stupid. There are no Dothraki or Unsullied
reinforcements. They are completely destroyed. Until the next episode that is
where somehow they are all magically reinforced and Dani forgets there is
a fleet of dragon killers between her and Dragonstone >.
Maybe that's why they sacrificed them so carelessly. Dany knew that she's in a Total War game, and that her units would be completely replenished after a single turn.
I was going to say that the tactics of the Battle of Winterfel were because of the treasonous incompetence of the advisors and commanders available. So that Dany's forces were specifically weakened against Cersei for their own benefit. Because treason and the correct level of stupidity is the only thing that is rewarded within the story.
@@Dragonshade64 except that everyone died, including the Wildlings, the Northmen and the Valemen, and if they failed, the entire human race would be completely wiped out.
@@Aredel True, but the entire story of both a Game of thrones and a Song of Ice and fire have been about how everyone in power doesn't care if the world burns (or freezes) so long as they can (or think they can) rule over the remains. Considering that they immediately betray Dany for no reason after this it makes more sense if they were actually betraying her all along and she just tanked through is somehow.
Honestly these are just Watsonian justifications for Doylsian issues we already know. The show and books are too dependent on shock value to move their plots and nobody cared about writing them anymore because of money so just end it with some giant action scenes and hope people will come back if you put lots of tits in the prequel.
The show gives zero evidence that the horrid tactics were done deliberately though. Even if it lines up with previous episodes about corruption and thirst for power, it still doesn't line up with what we see in the first few episodes of season 8. Everyone at winterfell was shown to be convinced that the night king was the absolute biggest threat in the world, and convinced they needed to work together to defeat him.
If I might explain.
They just didn't care.
It was just a paycheck, and oh boy, you can bet a lot of the production budget was outsourced into "personal studios" (owned by executives) where simple tasks were vastly overpaid for.
This is the reality of modern corporate productions. It's all about the skim. Skimming the budget. Who cares if it's any good?
Whilst you're normally pretty right about things this was cause the show runners wanted to end things early not the studios after all, this was a proven success for the network They wanted to extend the show with more seasons not give it an early ending.
@@Dracon7601Yup, they wanted to move from the series into films (much better money for less work compared, plus leads to more recognition and rewards), specifically new Star Wars trilogy that they were supposed to work on. And they would have gotten it if the last season of the GoT was at least serviceable. But it was abysmal, which is why D&D, who rushed the entire project in order to be on time for the new planed SW trilogy (there were at least to extra trilogies planned at that time) didn't get the job in the end. Remember, it was at the time when Disney was brutally murdering everything and anything related to Star Wars - and even they looked at D&D and went "Nah bro, I ain't letting these two touch anything, it would be too much".
And I don't think they got any jobs after either.
Season 8 unveiled D&D as hacks, they actually don't know how to run and produce the show. It was good when there was original material for them to go from plus Martin was there advising - there was a lot that could pick up the slack. Once all of that was gone, D&D ran the show into the ground to the point where the "biggest thing on television ever" was destroyed so thoroughly that the guys running it could not get any job since.
That should tell you all about the scopes of disaster that the final season(s) of the Game of Thrones were.
And it is a damn miracle that the House of the Dragon managed to bring back people to the franchise. People were so done with Game of Thrones that the moment season ended, the fans were out. They were so outraged. And to give the new show from the same setting a chance required the level of confidence similar to accepting back a partner that has cheated you in front of your very own eyes. The fact they managed to pull it off is simply amazing.
Even years after, I was really surprised when he talked about the budget for this battle. It definitely felt like the least exciting battle in the series. Makes more sense that the budget was wasted imo.
There was high production value, but there was a major lack of care in storytelling at that point in the show
"If Helms Deep was to proceed the way it did at Winterfell, King Theodin would have charged out and got slaughtered"
Amazon with Wheel of Time "Write that down"
"Do you see the problem here?"
I see nothing, because everything is so f***ing dark.
I find it hard to believe that none of the Dothraki went "So let me get this straight, you want us to charge an undead army of unknown numbers in the dark?" and heard an answer good enough for them to do it instead of laughing in their face.
It's actually worse. Its: so let me get this str8, you want us to charge into an undead army with unknown numbers in the dark, in a foreign and unfamiliar land, on frozen Rocky tundra.
I'd say atleast 70% of those horses would have suffered broken legs before getting half way to the undead, and with that a lot of bruised possibly broken necked dothraki getting trampled on.
F**king disgrace.
This was honestly the only vaguely believable part of this fight-the Dothraki being so damn stubborn that no one could have stopped them from the initial charge without a fight to the death. Only vaguely believable though.
I'm shocked to hear this episode received any awards. It was widely panned for most of the pointed out reasons immediately after it aired
yeah but you gotta remember hollywood lives in one of the thicket bubbles you can find on planet earth.
the entire planet earth could be screaming "BOOO!" in unison boosted by loudspeakers and these cretins' reaction would be "is this some kind of reverse psychology?"
The whole season was extremely lazy and inept.
Remember the Starbucks coffee cup?
I totally understand it (admittedly not knowing WHICH awards they got). Just because the actual battle is bullshit, doesn't mean there there are not numerous things on the production that are extremely well done.
I have probably watched about half a dozen different versions of this video. But I am always ready for more. This is my therapy.
The worst part for me was how long I waited to see that battle -years- then the week leading up to that episode I was a nervous wreck. That feeling of “what was that??” afterwards still hurts.
I released a lot of "wait, what?" during the episodes. When the Dothraki rode into obvious death, I remember trying to convince myself that they couldn't be dead, because that'd be dumb. The expectation they'd pop up somehow after circling around somewhere was in the back of my head during the episode 😢
@@sianaisI mean they did technically pop back up like two episodes later 😭
Can't agree more
Don't forget that the Eyrie also had cavalry when they joined in the Battle of the Bastards. They had medium-heavy cavalry which they decided not to use or forgot about during this episode.
Like Ryan George would say-
Producer guy: "Why would they do that?"
Writer guy: "So the movie can happen!"
That works!
If that's not good enough then I'm going to need you to get aaaaaaalllllll the way off my back about some of the greatest strategic minds in Westeros not being able to produce even a half decent plan with arguably the best cavalry, infantry and archers in the World at their disposal, to defend one of the strongest castles in the Country. Not to mention the 2 fire breathing dragons.
Actual Ryan George on the subject (seeing as he did make the video):
Writer guy: So then the Dothraki charge the dead army and they pretty much all get wiped out.
Producer guy: Oh, my God!
Writer guy: Until a couple of episodes later when they kinda just multiply because I need more of them.
Producer guy: Oh.
Producer Guy: That Night King sounds like a really tough enemy. It will be really difficult to be at him.
Writer guy: Actually, it'll be super easy. Barely an inconvenience.
wow wow wow wow wow
@@null6634 Subverting expectations and somehow turing arguably the best, if not unarguably in the top 5 TV shows of all time, into a chore to rewatch IS TIGHT!
Don't forget that they didn't know melisandra would light their swords on fire. So their plan was to charge the dead, in pitch black darkness, without the flaming swords that could kill the enemy.
the flaming swords would end up blinding them anyway screwing up their depth perception. Flaming swords or not, a cavarly charge at night against an undead army was just a dumb idea every which way.
Don’t forget she walked in FROM THE NORTH of Winterfell to do so
God the last season was so fucking stupid i was mad for 2 weeks after and now im mad again....
That charge was hilarious. Luckily, the Dothraki were back later so they must have survived it somehow.
I have completely forgotten about how this fight was pretty much pitch black and I am mad you reminded me of it. Thank you for the wonderful video.
The cavalry in the Lord of the Rings is also used exactly as you said it should have been in GoT. The cavalry reinforcements in both Two Towers as well as Return of the King arrive while the siege is already happening. They strike the flank as the enemy is already engaged, they strike fast and hard. They utilise the terrain advantage as they gallop down the hills to amplify their momentum and they arrive with the sun so that the enemies are blinded while looking at them.
Although the sun had to come up in the wrong direction for this to work.
@@JoshuaLiviethats... Kinda hilarious actually
I believe in Two Towers at Helms Deep that Gandalf is using magic to illuminate the sky behind them, but yes they use every advantage they have and abuse it to it's fullest
@@JoshuaLivie ahh.. But in the LOTR lore, the sun is actually a Maia driving her chariot. So, maybe she decided to change her course for that day just to help out the men of the West? At least we can have that explanation. There is no excuse for the sheer stupidity of the last season of GOT
Also, their strategy was a lot more likely to work against an enemy that is, you know, actually affected by morale. Pretty much in both Helm's Deep and the Pelenor Fields the defender could still have come out on top (due to sheer numbers), but their lack of discipline and morale did them in.
The same thing happened in The Witcher season 1. The battle of Cintra.Ciri's grandma, who was the queen and the main commander of the army, chose to defend her castle OUTSIDE in the FIELD, just like shown here. She led her infantry outside of the safe castle walls and met the enemy in the open field. Predictably, she was utterly defeated (no deus ex machina save this time). Oh should I also mention how she did not wear a helmet? Even when her subordinate (also not wearing a helmet) right next to her got shot through the head with an arrow? She even stopped and kneeled to mourn him. With arrows flying everythwere. Still no helmet.
So yeah, that was a fun watch.
To be fair, if you look at the geography of Cintra, their capital is in completely the wrong place to defend against an invasion from the south. If they had stayed at their capital, the enemy could have captured everything except the capital, and then starved them out in a siege.
What they should have done is built a defensive fort on their southern border way before the invasion even happened (because it's an obvious place for a castle), and then they would have had it ready for when the invasion happened and they could then use it to fight.
@@randomstrategy7679 Also to be fair, Calanthe was one bloodthirsty and overconfident queen who needed to die for the plot to happen. The Battle of Winterfell is the result of all of the most heroic and cunning warriors from two continents coming together to shit on a map and call it tactics.
Also, the no helmet thing has to be forgiven because these shows are for the casual plebs and seeing human faces is important for them. Same reason why Spiderman's mask always came off/tore away in the final scene in the original masterpiece movies
Also if their navy arrived they would've won that battle, but a storm created by magic sunk them all. You can't really strategize for a magical storm besides having a mage with the navy.
@@EnsignGenericThere is no being fair. Bad writing is bad writing
I really had no idea that battle was nominated for anything. Goes to show critics don’t listen to those that actually watched it and said “WTH!?!?”
You forgot that they didn't know Melisandre would be there to enchant their swords, so not only did they position the cavalry in the worst position, they didn't even give them weapons capable of hurting their enemy.
This would only makes sense if for some reason they were trying to get rid of them.
This is the comment I was looking for. Jorah was the only one who had an effective weapon pre-Melisandre, _and that also includes Ghost!_ Unless they outfitted him with some dragonglass dentures, the wights should have torn him apart because I sure didn't see any magical flames in his mouth.
Given what we know of the Dothraki culture I would also accept that they threatened to leave/mutiny unless they were given this chance at glory by being the first to face the enemy, however insane you may need to be to see it as such.
True, but like, you'd think they would've at least stuck to their past tactics and strengths by primarily focusing on range and precise flanking attacks, rather than just all charge entirely into center mass.
But then again, I suppose they were a nomadic tribe with no proven generals. Only way they could've had a sense of tactics is from the other commanders, but they probably didn't listen to them. That's the only part of the battle that, while stupid, actually kinda makes a tiny bit of sense when one puts thought into it.@@grantharriman284
As soon as the battle was over and I realized that like all of the unsullied were just alive again I almost lost it laughing. Every one of those soldiers has died at least twice but they come back every single time. There's literally as many in the scene where Dany buys them as there is in the final episode. 😆😆😂😂💀💀
Dany uses an Replenishment Rate cheese build.
It's almost like the battle for helms deep where they get beaten down but nobody important dies... and then in the third movie they still have a massive army
@@seanover7352 very different scenario. in TT they didn't have time to gather all of their forces. in RofK they did.
@@seanover7352 The army in the third was also comprised of Gondor. Which was a lot larger
you forgot Jon Snow yelling at the ice dragon like it's a bird pecking on his farm 🤣
As the Orc commander in RotK said:
"Pikes in front, archers behind!"
even the mongoloid orc is a better tactician than the combined entirety of westeros's top warlords.... kinda goes to show that he might have been on to something when he said "the age of man is at an end, the time of the orc has come".
Speaking of no thought being put into the battle of Winterfell was that attack by Aria from out of nowhere. They already established the character had the power to make herself look like others that have died. And the previous scene showed her killing an undead. Yet they couldn't be bothered to have her look like that same undead as a way of getting close to the Night King. (and that is excluding the argument that it was Jon Snow's story line and he should have been the one to finish it).
Omg yes!
Also the other important white walkers aren't really used in the battle either, there could of been Arya appearing out of nowhere to kill some of them instead, buying time for other characters to have a whole fight scene which ends up putting John against the night king in a really natural and exciting way.
Basically every moment of that episode had a massive issue with it
what made even less sence is the attack she does as the night king is clearly in the middle of the garden area which is relitively flat, yet aria comes in at such a high angle as to stab his head almost, where the hell did she jump from to get that hight unless she brought a box or a step ladder i dont see it. it would have been nice if they pulled a witch king and have her try to stab the night king but fail and then jon gets the stab in behind to finsh the job
She could not look like the undead - her magic requires the person she mimics to be dead already. The Faceless Men have that whole magical ritual where they remove the face and wear it using magic basically. She could not simply pick and choose to be anyone. When she was Frey, she had to kill him first, then wear his face. That's how it works. And you can't take a face of the undead, because when you kill them to take their face, they shatter. So there is no face for her to wear.
Also, the whole thing involves magic. Night King is pretty magical himself and I don't think he'd fall for any kid of magic. He even survives dragon fire. I am pretty sure he can sense other undead, who's his and who's not. Which is how he sensed Aria approaching before anyone else.
@@Wustenfuchs109She could not mimic the undead because they have to be dead first... they were dead to start with.
The one she killed before did not shatter. Pretty sure that is only the ones that were turned while living (such as the male babies that were taken North of the wall).
I would doubt Arya had time to perform an elaborate ritual for Frey. Which leads me to believe the ritual is more spiritual than part of the magic. And Arya is all about breaking rules.
In any event this was an idea to make her appearance, suddenly out of know where, MORE plausible. I don't think it is even a good scene. It is pretty clear the writers no longer cared at that point.
Underutilising Bran's powers in the battle was such a missed opportunity and is baffling considering what happened in the final episode. Like if Bran had actually played a pivotal role in taking down the Night King, Tyrion's story speech would actually make some sense.
Personally, Battle of the Blackwater is still my favourite battle in the show since we actually get some insight into the strategy through Tyrion. It's a shame they couldn't include the massive chain across the bay but it's still amazing what they did with the budget they had at the time.
It's like the writers had no idea what to do with Bran. They basically forgot him until he showed up to become king. That's actually why I'm convinced him becoming king is the canon book ending GRRM planned - because otherwise it makes no goddamn sense why the show would even write that, when they clearly don't like Bran as a character. They made him king because they knew that's what GRRM is doing - and they did absolutely nothing else with him.
Also, if you’re just going for spectacle, having women, elderly, and children (other than Lyanna) participating in the battle would’ve made it feel that much more intense. Like you said, this is a battle for annihilation, it’s a battle of life vs death, *nothing* matters but survival and I definitely feel like having people usually left out of battles participating (by throwing stones or something like you said) would’ve really hammered that idea home and made the battle feel just that much more impactful overall. Entire generations of families wiped out in one night trying to prevent the end of the world rather than… literally every main character coming out fine. Like not even any sort of serious injuries.
There is also plenty of frames of reference in history for this very thing happening whereby women and children man murder holes or rooftops during a breach of a siege. In fact, during the jacobite wars, this very thing did happen in the siege of Limerick in Ireland in 1690
" The breach was stormed by Danish grenadiers, but the Boisseleau had built an earthwork, or coupure, inside the walls and had erected barricades in the streets, impeding the attackers. The Danish grenadiers and the eight regiments who followed them into the breach suffered terribly from musketry and cannon fire at point blank range. Jacobite soldiers without arms and the civilian population (including, famously, the women) lined the walls and threw stones and bottles at the attackers"
@@WhimsicalShark that’s actually super interesting I didn’t know that! One thing I really like about GRRM’s writing is that he takes a lot of influence from historical battles/conflicts, so it’s entirely possible that could’ve been something he would’ve drawn from if the books were finished by the time season 8 was being made
Lord of the rings did it in the Battle of Helms Deep.
Theoden ordering all men no matter of age to have weapons. Then you got the scene of Aragorn giving the young lad a "A fine weapon" Speech trying to inspire him despite knowing its a hopeless battle; showing he is a true leader, a true king. Jon Snow could have done that instead.
they coild at least transport materials to where its needed like arrows, stone, water, light fires, care for woulded etc. there is a lot to do during a siege
I remember reading historical accounts of women and children being stationed up on buildings and ripping off roof tiles to drop on enemy forces entering the city. In a battle of annihilation EVERYONE becomes a combatant.
Great breakdown. I don't think I'll ever tire of watching good critiques of this "battle". The sheer amount of incompetence from the characters in a medieval fantasy that has taken itself, for the most part, seriously in the past is astounding. One additional thing that many people before have pointed out but you didn't mention is that no one was expecting Mellisandre to come and light the Dothraki swords. The cavalry were actually going to charge out to meet the army of undead in the middle of the field at night with regular steel blades which would have done absolutely nothing since only dragonglass, fire, and Valarian steel was shown to be able to kill a wight.
Even stupider is that dothraki hate and fear witches / magi so most likely they wouldnt be ok with this.
"How would you feel if Melisandre hadn't come to light the Dothraki swords?"
"But she did come to light the Dothraki swords."
"Yes, but imagine she hadn't."
"I don't understand."
The only reason I can think of to send out light cavalry early in a battle is probably to skirmish and harass the enemy. In this case with fire arrows. Which would be cool because it would light up the position of troop concentrations for the artillery or an airstrike. Also I did not notice the undead army have any archers except probably the white walkers themselves, actually so they could've probably harassed them all the way to winterfell. But you know they did the worse thing.
Though one might wonder how good harassing works when the enemy straight up doesn't care (because they have plenty of reserves and no morale to worry about), and how long you can keep harassing when the weather is stacked against you.
Still worth a shot, though.
@@EvilDoresh In this case, I feel like the Dothraki would have best been used as a flanking force, to smash the undead from behind once they were engaged and assaulting the walls. Stick and move with their flaming blades and split the attention of the attacking force.
Somewhere in the multiverse there is a universe, quite like our own, in which the long night was a thrilling and suspensefull battle, consisting of strategic genius, tactical retreats, a thoughtfull, layered defense that makes optimal use of the strengths of the troops and the weakness of the enemy.
In this version, the brave and stallward defenders fight tooth and nail against the onslaught of the undead horde, dispatching hundreds of thousands of wights as they fall, beleaguered, back further and further into the heart of Winterfell castle. Heroics are performed, sacrifices are made, and each death made all the more poignant because of the necessity for the battle. A truly glorious piece of cinematic history, this version is. In my mind, the battle is eventually won, at a staggering cost. The army of night is destroyed, its commanders killed. And in the aftermath of the carnage, after personally slaying the last of the horrifyingly powerfull Others, Jon looks around, sword shining brightly in his hand. Dany lands next to him and they exchange a desperate, asking look. “Where is he?”
Next shot: the Night King, descending from the clouds upon King’s Landing.
*stalwart
I'm in awe imagining the hype that would have produced. And actual payoff for all the times the Southerners doubted the existence of WWs. It's genuinely hilarious that there was an apocalypse level battle that changed the seasons and nobody South of Winterfell has any reason to believe it.
But in that Universe, the Sopranos sucked.
It had a satisfying ending, but really sucked for several seasons before that.
In that universe, Cary Fukunaga came back and did Season 4 of True Detective, and the season was amazing.@@joeroscoe3708
This mirrors the siege of Troy in Benioff's 2004 screenplay depicting the Trojan War. Man seems to have a thing for placing armies infront of well fortified defensive positions instead of behind them.
Some credit to troy, archers were on the walls and they were thinning the Greek lines
@@sebsignat8286 not to mention, the trojan defenders put up the shield wall to hold units in place while the archers on the wall thinned them out. There WAS an actual strategy there.
To be fair, they had all of their archers on the walls and they kinda misinterpreted the source Material with the infantry beeing driven back to the walls. Then again, that movie doesnt give a shit about its source, so I dont get it either
Well in Iliad, Trojans do come out to fight in the field many times and there is a similar battle with that of the movie described there as well. In Troy they were thematically ok in the depiction of that battle, the blunder there was the depiction of the beach battle because they wanted to make D-Day in the Bronze Age and that didn't look very realistic. For some reason though it is believable.
@@thewarlockgr6076 you can some what replicate the beach scene in total war games. It doesn't have the same flair
The most infuriating part to me was the siege weapons and army being outside of the spiked fortifications, and then being slaughtered going through their own chokes constructed with those defenses. They designed the defenses against themselves.
The thing is that they could have done a strategy like you suggested AND still hit every single story beat that they wanted. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
What makes Helm’s Deep so good is that they have their cake and eat it too. A solid and strategically sound defence against overwhelming odds that gradually breaks down as individual elements get overwhelmed or outmaneuvered (tactically more than geographically in this case).
While I was watching this video I took the strategy you described and, in my head, was able to craft a timeline of the battle of Winterfell that would still hit every story beat in the original episode:
- lighting the trench
- undead rush/cross the trench
- cavalry charge eliminated by reserve force of undead or the undead dragon
- infantry overwhelmed and forced to retreat (while dragons fight in sky)
- walls overwhelmed
- night king raises the dead
- defenders’ last stand
- death of night king stops army
Like it’s not that difficult if the show runners put even a modicum of thought and care into it.
Add proper lighting to it and you'd probably have avoided the worst battle we've all ever seen (or tried to see in vain).
Helm's Deep, while nowhere near as bad as this, has its own issues. For example, the door to the keep is OUTSIDE the main walls for some inexplicable reason. Aragorn and the elves charging into pikes. Having no gate or door on the inner wall. Legolas shield surfing. Aragorn, Theoden and like 6 other guys charging into thousands of orcs and not immediately getting swarmed and killed. Gandalf and the Rohirim charging down a steep slope made of loose gravel on horseback.
@@GeraltofRivia22 most of those issues are result of set and prop design choices and location scouting and most are explainable through that lens.
While technically the door that the uruk-hai break through is the door to the bailey and not the keep (the keep is the door that the orcs are trying to break down in the morning); and while Helm's Deep is supposed to be an ancient fortress (and most early medieval castles only had one wall and one bailey before the keep) and you could argue the big curtain wall was built after the original fortress: you are correct that it makes little sense to put it off to the side instead of in front of the causeway; and the lack of back up gate or gate house is bad but again (ancient fortress, maybe missing some thousand years of siege design and experience). That's all set design issue that can mostly get explained away.
The only thing wrong with Aragorn and the elves rushing the pikes is that the props master only gave the elves swords instead of spears. Tactically when a breach is opened in the wall, the defenders usually want to rush into the breach and make it a bottle neck so that the enemy can't pour through en masse. This is again a props and art issue where Hollywood thinks swords are better than spears in warfare but the base idea it's still tactically sound.
The horse charges are poorly depicted but I think the idea was to demonstrate the shock and awe of cavalry as most of the uruks are too surprised to even attack and most of the army breaks and runs after Gandalf and the reinforcements arrive. As for the gravel slope, they made the set in an active quarry so the locations manager kinda goofed there as there really was no "east" from which Gandalf could come. This is also why they couldn't just dig a bunch of ditches in front of the walls because this was an active quarry that needed to function as soon as shooting was wrapped and the set was torn down.
The Legolas shield slide is just dumb fun, not some display of tactical brilliance or ineptitude.
TLDR: while there are some valid issues with Helm's Deep, they are almost all meta problems resulting from choices in set and costume design. Very few, if not none, of them are tactical as the characters make some of the best use of the equipment and defenses they are given and the rest is standard Hollywood spectacle. The same cannot be said for the Battle of Winterfell as the show runners had 8 seasons to nail the set and costume design and we just watched a 45min video on all the tactical failures that we're supposed to believe the character's made in that show. Two VERY different things.
Yeah, let's put all of our forces outside of the high reinforced castle walls. No chance they'll get demolished by a horde of ice zombies. Brilliant.
Walls built thicker than most, taller than most, reinforced and structured for long-term siege...
@@damenwhelan3236 you'd think they'd have a proper keep for civilians or somethings.....
@tarektechmarine8209
Or some.sort of temporary seasonal town for the winter... a winter town, could out it in the inner court yard, next the inner keep...
This reminds me of why I could never watch a war-film with my dad. A former soldier and gun-fitter he would watch gunfights and battles with an equally rapid-fire of 'No way did he get back up' or 'That's put him in bed for a week' or 'That door he shot at should be gone'.
His favorite was: 'He emptied that clip three times without changing it'.
He called magazines clips?
Did he serve in WWII with an M1 Garand?
Because they were the last issued service weapon that used clips.
@@stevepalpatine2828 based on the pfp. Yes.
I think the biggest problem was that the white walker threat was defeated in a singular battle. They felt like they should’ve taken a significantly longer time to defeat ya know? Whenever characters in the books or even the show reference the long night, they don’t mean a single night… they’re talking about an event that lasted years or months at the very least.
That entire season should've been them battling the undead and falling back, making epic stands along the way (Winterfell, The Twins, Kings Landing).
Exactly this. A running battle all the way to King's Landing.
The final battle there was already foreshadowed - first by the Mad King ("Burn them all!"), then at the Battle of Blackwater by Tyrion.
Tyrion knew there was wildfire hidden in caches all over the city. Evacuate the citizens through the mud gate and onto waiting ships, while luring the undead inside the city walls. Then another well-placed arrow by Bronn, and "boom!" - no more undead army. No more King's Landing, either, but humanity lives another day.
@@SamHell-wr8biThat would make much more sense. Maybe using the Dothraki and the dragons to do hit and run tactics along the retreat south. Put some Qyburn ballistas in castles to fight the zombie dragon... loaded with dragonglass arrowheads
It wasn't just the people of Winterfell that the writers screwed over in terms of tactics. They really did a number on the Night King too. The Night King is THOUSANDS of years old, an experienced warrior, and is shown to be able to raise ANY creature from the dead. We've seen him raise common animals, normal ass people, dragons, and skeletons hundreds of years old. Add that to the fact that any of the commanders the Night King personally raised can also raise the dead and control wights by the hundreds AND the fact that their entire race's survival is linked to his and the Night King's tactics make no sense. With his knowledge and experience the Night King could have easily sent undead animals ahead of his army to spoil the supplies of the people of Winterfell, dropped corpses into their water sources to foul it, used undead vermin and birds as spies. Then when it came time for the actual fighting, the Knight King could have just surrounded the castle with wights and sent them at it every day and night in waves to slowly wear the people of Winterfell down. If they tried to run during the day he could have easily drowned anyone trying to escape in bodies while he sent half of his troops to gather more wights. Then, when the castle's defenders had been softened up enough by thirst, starvation, sleep deprivation, sickness, and non stop fighting the Night King could have sent his troops in for the final push will he sent a portion of his commanders after Bran and another portion with the dragon the keep the riders busy. As long as the Night King kept himself out of direct danger and actually turned the fight into a siege the chances of him losing are abysmally low.
Imagine watching this fantasy epic where the downfall of man came from dead squirrels in the water supply. C'mon man what would you actually rather watch in a fantasy epic
STOP! IT IS ALREADY DEAD
Death by rotting squirrels would definitely be preferable to what we got in the end
Imagine having to film this episode in the cold dark for as long as they did, and not even be able to see the work they put into it
You missed out on the most important aspect of this episode, and that’s the episodes after. Because, this battle was essentially, the end times, there is no tomorrow if we fail. So why and how, do they have reserves, to be able to attack kings landing? Thousands of troops at the ready. I also don’t buy that cercie wouldn’t have sent help. Because she’s a devious devil. The way I would have played out her story… Cercie sends out her forces in this very loose alliance, she would argue and win the argument of, I’ll send my forces, but they will be the last to engage. To make sure, if they survive this, she’s the biggest player. So when Denarys and her forces are licking their wounds in a very weakened state, Cercie would make her move. The golden company would be sent into the night battle as they are mercenaries, they are paid to die instead of the nation’s troops, then use the bulk of her forces to not only claim victory, “The Savior of the Realm”, and now is the only military strength to keep order. Cercie was wasted. The alliance was wasted. The Lanisters were wasted. And the money to produce this catastrophe was wasted.
Considering how insane/stupid-whilst-thinking-she’s-smart Cersei is; not sure I agree she would have actually sent help (because she thought they were tricking her - I mean Cyburn made an undead guard for Cersei, so maybe she thinks that the lone sight she is shown is similar. Personal opinion, you are allowed to have yours as well.)
But I do agree that the whole thing (money spent and the sudden reserves afterwards) was wasted and many, many characters were butchered by rushed and poor writing - Lannisters among these, Cersei’s choice makes sense to me -just- but her character doesn’t rly sell the thought process.
Obviously they just respawned. like the pirate dudes teleporting navy,
*Cersei
When it was time to ante up on 7 years of "Winter is Coming" build up, the show runners reneged on the task... and instead opted to attempt the cop out gaslight hussle of making the fight against THE LITERAL ARMY OF DARKNESS, the undercard.
The battle of winterfell.
It was this that made clear to me the writers had completely ignored the world about them for the purposes of an hours display.
I remember putting on Return of the King after watching this episode and thinking 'now THIS is a battle!' when I got to Pelennor Fields
What I find funny is that GRRM in the books makes a point to highlight the tactics of battles, to show the reader the intelligence of the generals or errors of their character as people.
Where do the books leave off, approximately? o:
@@ctdaniels7049 A Dance With Dragons end with the ongoing siege of Mereen, Jon Snow sort of dead(if not warging in Snow), Sansa is still with Littlefinger, and the Spider has just murdered Pycelle and Kevan Lannister.
@@ctdaniels7049 Around S5-6 I believe, though the quality of his writing and characterization is leaps and bounds above the adaptation that we got in the HBO show.
The Lord of Light brought Jon Snow back to life just so this way he could Pat his cousin on the back after she kills the Night King.
His cousin*
@@Seelenfisch You're right fixed it
I just now thought about how the night king apparently was patient for like 5,000 years and then consistently risked everything in the end
I saw this episode, and just thought "they have a castle....?"
You could see it?
@@jorenvanderark3567 I think he meant "heard" it.
It's like when you leave your car at home and go for a walk.
Then.. Why is the cavalry in front.. Then: Why is the artillery in from of the infantry? Why is the light horse archers charging? Why are the women and children in a graveyard? why, why, why?
It was basically, they have a fully functional tank full of ammo and fuel and they just got off the tank to charge at the enemies with bayonets...
Back in season 4/season 5, I thought people would go back to this show and rewatch because of how intricate the setting is and with a sprinkle of good combat, may it be a small scale or a full-on siege.
It really makes you think how low this show has become.
I've never rewatched. I listened to the audiobooks three or four times through, but the show.... Nope.
Back before season five I bought a box set with the first four seasons, but at the time worried about how I would get the rest after. Turns out that was an unwarranted concern.
I started to rewatch and maybe got to the start of season two and then I was like "oh, right...they ruined everyone's character arc....nevermind"
Yup, I'm the kind of person who rewatches whole series back to back (not just favourite episodes or seasons). I loved the first seasons of GoT so much, but now when I think of rewatching them, the thought of how it ends just makes me go "meh". I feel very sorry for all the cast and crew whose talents and hard work were wasted just because the management couldn't be bothered to finish the series with the same level of commitment they started out with (and thought the audiences would be too stupid to notice).
they managed to make a massive cultural icon of a show into something people actively ignored.
Something I've always personally loved about light cavalry in strategy games is how they don't need to directly engage with the enemy to be impactful. Having a few teams of light calv that can just threaten the opponent on its flanks, and force a response, or be punished has always felt like such an amazing tactical benefit.
This battle has always killed me with how useless it made the Dothraki seem, when I feel like they could've controlled the battlefield so well. Winterfell is in such an open, empty area, and the enemy they're fighting has literally nothing but basic infantry units. The Dothraki could've been deployed on the battlefield with the only objective being to cause pure chaos, pulling the enemies attention away in as many directions as possible with small teams working together. The enemy can't respond in any productive way. They either ignore them, and the Dothraki can just constantly engage and chip at their units, or the much more likely outcome since they're mindless undead, is they're not going to consider the greater impact of their choices, and pursuit the horses, a target they have no way of catching, forcing the commander to constantly refocus his units on what matters, drawing them back to the actual siege.
The logistics of how undead personal agency works in this world is obviously up for debate, but given they've seen more puppet then individual, it feels like facing countless small harassment units would be mentally overwhelming to try and micro manage ontop of the actual siege, and just ignoring them leaves your troops defenseless from just engaged on by the cavalry.
The worst part is they show the army being over run and destroyed.
The undead overran the castle to be able to form up at the gods wood.
But then the entire army magically resurrected to fight kings landing
The best thing about this episode was that it was a radio drama. Screen was completely black for most of the episode. That's its one mercy.
The thing that got me about that battle was that they did not build Winterfell correctly in the show. In the books Winterfell is a mostly double walled castle with a keep, except for the god's wood which is only single walled but has a wall between it and the castle proper. It was an add on after the initial construction. It had atleast one moat, and a small town around the front gates that limited the ways you could approach the walls and gates. The moat between the walls was a dry spike moat that was fairly deep. They should have kept all the important people and children in the keep. They also should have built a complex trench system beyond the castle town with openings for the Dothraki to hit from the flanks. I have been playing Total War games for 20ish years, I could have won that battle with minimal casualties and no lost units.
Just compare this with the siege of King´s Landing from Season 2.
Not only the tactics used by Stannis & Tyrion, while attacking/defending the city respectively, but also how it was filmed. You could actually see what the hell was going on!
The cavalry did provide shock and awe. There was shock that they charged forward into the dark and then awww.... they've all gone....
The only thing I was in awe of was the Dothraki's inability to turn around and go 'fuck this shit I'm out'
That's real dedication to mass suicide right there.
In it's simplest:
They placed the army formations, according to how they wrote the battle scene. First we went the cavalry charge, so put them in front, then we want the artillery firing, so put them next, then we want the infantry clash, then the activated trenches, then the storming of the walls, then the hand to hand in the castle.
The writers couldn't tell the difference between army tactics and TV show writing, so they're the same thing.
I'm convinced that the reason why they killed off the Dothraki and the Unsullied so quickly was two fold, first, they didn't know what to do with them beyond using them for a cheap, quick dramatic tension setting scene, "ohh no, the cavalry and the invincible army are dead!" kind of scene, and two, it was to get rid of them for the future episodes, though somehow there are still tons of them at the end of the show, but I'm certain they where trying to get rid of most of them so that they could have their stupid finale with Daeneris burning down the city.
Makes it even more stupid that all the dead unsullied and Dothraki are back again unexpectedly in Kings Landing.
The first reason sure. They needed to get rid of them so the plot could revolve around the main characters running around. But seeing as following episodes just act like the Dothraki and Unsullied hordes are still around I seriously doubt there was any real reasoning behind these decisions except "I'm tired of making this show, just end it who cares."
It's a good way to get rid of future enemies by needlessly sacrificing those allied by necessity. I do it in RTSes and board games all the time with astounding success.
Not really good when those soldiers are your own, who've sworn themselves to you and will fall on their swords for you, and when the stakes are the fate of the entire human race.
And...why did the night King want to kill Bran? They never explained why Bran's weird power to see the past would be something that the night king would care about at all.
Something something memory something
It's fucking stupid and I still cannot wrap my mind around it
Hold on, this was shot *at night!?*
Usually you give kudos when the writers don't use effects and use natural lighting, like in The Norseman, but the night scenes during that episode looked edited to appear as though they were at night!
It looks darker than actual night. You ever go out at night with snow everywhere and no light pollution? The moon reflects off the snow. It’s actually rather bright out.
Winterfell as described in the books is insanely huge. The castle is built arount the godswood which is by itself 3 acres. there is 2 walls of 80 feet and 100 feet and another wall around the wood. So the plan was luring the ennemy commander to breach the castle wall and advance in the middle of the castle without its troop killing everything living in the castle first.
That battle was so bad that I never finished the serie after that
It's almost like the books and the show are two different things. If this is the difference that changed your mind I have questions.
If you can watch it for free, you can watch it for the laughs. Also: The EFAP breakdown of the last few episodes is peak entertainment.
As soon as I saw the video i was excited to see him tell us how much better Helms Deep was.
Using footage from Total War is brilliant. While it's a video game you can use your cavalry in realistic ways such as harassing, finding flanks or braking a line of troops.
yes there are a lot of great history channels which do this as their main footage
Whelp.. time to load up Total Warhammer 3 again.
@@Deridus Hell yes. Got it during the winter sale, I'm really loving the Kislev campaign.
@@markcampbell4080 Niiiiiice! Kislev is my number 3, but they are still fantastic.
@1:48 That war doodle is so great. The amount of story that can be told from it, the tactics, the techs, the explosions and emotions emanating from it is beyond words. WOW
GOT armies never fight in castles. Bolton met Jon snow's army in the field, the golden army stood outside the gates of king's landing, this army outside winterfell . . .
I remember the exact moment that this episode broke me. It was when Davos called "Archers to the walls".. AFTER the wights had already started swarming through the fire trench. I remember vividly how I got so triggered that I ended up pausing and saying "why weren't the archers on the walls to begin with?" over and over, clicked off the episode at that point..
I only heard about the Aria thing from friends afterwards when we discussed the episode xD
I'm so glad someone brought that up.
it was infuriating
Don’t be heartless, they were on a break 😂
@@Maderr4 that Winterfell Starbucks has crazy wait times 😂