No offense to Thoros, but come on – he's the only main member of the team to die during this fool's errand?.If the wights can't swim, how did they attach giant chains to the sunken Viserion?.How did Jon, who looked like he was drowning under the weight of two wights in the frozen water, make it back to the surface? And why even give us that fake-out moment in the first place? How many times do we need to see Kit Harington emerge gasping for breath? Freakin' Jaime and Bronn already did it a few episodes earlier!.Why did Dany barely react to the loss of one of her "children," and why did the show care so little that it didn't even make clear which one had died?. Why didn't Beric and Thoros use their fire swords to stay warm during their overnight stay, or to melt the ice as the wights approached so they could further bide their time?.Why didn't director Alan Taylor make it explicit that the team had dragonglass weapons?.How much time did it take her to fly all the way up beyond the Wall to save them? (Was it really only a day and a half? That seems nuts.).How quickly must that raven have flown (oh, NOW they're sending ravens!) to Dragonstone in order to alert Dany to their plight?.Why did Jon think that Gendry, a kid who has literally never seen snow before, would be the fastest one among him, and how fast did Gendry make that journey back to Eastwatch?.Why would we care about the faceless wildlings who seem to suddenly appear with our heroes only when it's time for someone to die?.I've felt Game of Thrones veering away from that mentality for a while now, but it crystallized in a huge way in "Beyond The Wall," an episode that, for the first time, made me wonder if the show has crossed a threshold which it can never uncross.īut that's about the extent of the nice things I have to say about "Beyond The Wall." Here's my list of grievances: These are all "spectacle" moments, but they're also all character-driven, with clear and sensible motivations in place for everyone involved. Before, Game of Thrones didn't need to choose one or the other: they regularly delivered both, and in ways that were immensely satisfying. In a conversation we had for the site about Game of Thrones season 7's increased pacing, he and I talked about how geek-friendly properties can provide satisfying moments, but those often come at the cost of sacrificing some of the established rules of the world. In our own Jacob Hall's review of "Beyond The Wall," Jacob talks about the excitement he gets from seeing disparate characters thrown together as the show rushes toward its endgame. KnowYourMeme defines the term "jumping the shark" as "an idiomatic expression describing a pivotal moment when a successful creative effort begins a significant decline in quality." We won't be able to look back and see if Game of Thrones has hit that "pivotal moment" until the series is finished, or at least until a few more episodes have aired, but from where I stand, this week's episode ("Beyond The Wall") feels pretty damn pivotal – and I'm not thrilled about the new direction that pivot implies.
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