Game of Thrones Season 7, Episode 2 discussion thread

[OlennasWimple]

SPOILERS ALERT

THIS THREAD IS FOR DISCUSSION OF SEASON 7, EPISODE 2 "STORMBORN"

Come and discuss the second episode in the penultimate series, airing July 24th at 2am UK time! Don't read the thread if you want to avoid finding out what happens in Season 7 but also Seasons 1-6

HBO description of the episode: "Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) receives an unexpected visitor. Jon (Kit Harington) faces a revolt. Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) plans the conquest of Westeros."

Please avoid discussing leaks and production details for Seasons 7 and 8 but speculate away on what we have learnt from the new episode and what it might mean for the rest of the Season and the ultimate winner(s) of the Game of Thrones

A lot of the very best dialogue from the early seasons was taken directly from the books. Some is show-only but a lot of the 'great' conversations and monologues were taken directly from books.

Now they are writing all the dialogue and it really shows. It's just not up to scratch. It's no wonder the actors are struggling to work with the material. Deadpan-Dany is becoming utterly boring to watch and Nikolaj's acting seems very wooden. Compare his performance these last two seasons to his scenes at Harrenhal....

I hope it gets better.

Seriously though, why not just add just 1 extra series? It's not like they could have worries about it not being commissioned?...
Could have avoided all this, what appears to be, time travel...
It feels like the pace of the show has gone from pigeon stepping into full on Usian Bolt

Arya I think GRRM helped them in the first few series with dialogue, and it really shows he doesn't anymore...

WeDoNotSow, yes, and he used to write one episode per season. Blackwater is still my favourite episode of all time. I don't think he's written any episodes since season 4.

GRRM has a lot of experience writing for television - not all of it great. That version of Beauty and the Beast in the 1990s was very sickly-sweet! It's interesting that he originally wanted Ron Perlman to play the Hound...

Thanks everyone, it's tricky as it looks as though it could all be ruined by a rush job. If there is a spinoff hopefully GRRM will be involved otherwise it will just be a soap opera like someone mentioned earlier. I am almost tempted to wait for the last book but what if it never happens? I guess some of the dropped storylines could be the spinoff - sorry for being lazy and not Googling this myself!

He's already said that spin-offs will not be based within the lifespan of current characters. I think I sad this upthread, but I think it will probably be Nymeria's conquest of Dorne or the fall of Valyria.

To be honest, I wish he'd stop writing spin-offs and concentrate on finishing ASOIAF. However, I have a horrible feeling that we'll probably never see the series finished by him.

I think it's ironic that GRRM always said he didn't like fan fiction because the story belonged to him. Now that's what we're going to have - visual fan fiction. At a recent dinner he was asked by a fan if he had changed his mind about fan fiction now that he had sold the story to HBO. His answer was that HBO gave him 'a truckload of money' so I guess that's the answer. Oh well, it's his story and 'he's not our bitch'.

Honestly I don't care if he never finishes. I keep forgetting how much I struggled with A Dance With Dragons and the other day I came across my Amazon.co.uk review (same username as this btw if anyone comes across it, it's one of the top ones) and I remembered all over again what a slog it was. I've never reread a word of it.

And I'd forgotten the ridiculous amount of red herring characters he puts in, and how you get all emotionally invested in a new character believing them to be hugely significant just for them to be killed off, meanwhile the main characters are sitting around having endless chats and doing sweet fuck all.

So he can keep his books I think, I'll stick with the show, even with the leaden dialogue.

Ah well creative process wondering round creating his new world. Still bit of a crap attitude though - seeing as he has earned a truckload of cash why not give us the book, why settle for other people telling his story. He might lose the moment.

How did Euron know where Ellaria and the Sand Snakes were?

I can sort of stretch to seeing it may have been 'common' knowledge that they were siding with Dany. But how did he know they would be on that boat travelling with Yara and where they would be going?

Is there a spy? And is it in Yara's camp or Dany's? Whose intelligence was it - Euron's or Cersei's?

New thread ready for tonight's episode here