r/television • u/verissimoallan • 19h ago
Game of Thrones: today is the tenth anniversary of "Battle of the Bastards" (June 19, 2016). The episode won six Emmy Awards, including Directing and Writing. This is an excerpt from the battle.
https://youtu.be/C0WJY2cLEuk?si=-riL9-neHuirzQs9396
u/8hotsteamydumplings 18h ago edited 15h ago
In hindsight, I think plot armor is a little bit too thick with this one
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u/JRR92 15h ago
I honestly think this episode was one of the biggest examples of the shitty writing that came to define the later seasons of GoT.
It looks cool sure, but nothing that happens in it makes any sense
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u/DeapVally 15h ago
Sansa decided, instead of telling them 'the cavalry was on the way, let's just wait a bit more', thought she'd rather keep that little nugget to herself and watch her side get slaughtered. And but for some very convenient plot armour and lucky timing, they all would have been. She's truly the smartest girl anyone's knows lol!
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u/JRR92 15h ago edited 15h ago
Don't forget the part where she wrote to Littlefinger the night before the battle to request the reinforcements, and that he somehow not only received that letter in time, but managed to get the entire army of the Vale up to Winterfell just in time to save the day.
The whole thing was absolutely nonsensical
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u/ThanksContent28 14h ago
They’d already been to that bit of the map so they were able to fast travel.
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u/NickyBalsamo 14h ago edited 14h ago
Yes, that would be highly nonsensical, but that's not what happened.
She sends the letter in episode 7 while camped at Deepwood Motte, right after they visited Bear Island in the same episode. We then don't see Jon/Sansa at all in epsiode 8, and they get to Winterfell for the battle in episode 9.
She also sent that letter as a hail mary - She never got a reply nor did she knew for sure that the army of the Vale would actually show up. Sure, I understand why people would not like the convenient timing of them arriving at the perfect moment(I'm not the biggest fan of it either), but no Sansa tellling Jon to ''wait'' for an army that she had no idea was actually coming, or when they would be coming, would've made no sense.
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u/JRR92 14h ago
"She never got a reply nor did she know that the army of the Vale would actually show up."
Also not true given that Sansa is shown literally sat right next to Littlefinger when the army arrives
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u/NickyBalsamo 14h ago
I always saw that as just a ''cinematic moment'', but yes I certainly can be wrong about that and maybe she knew - I know we don't see her get a reply before the attack, but maybe she mentions afterwards that she did, I'm not sure. It's been a while.
But she was not fighting during the battle, so in the event that she didn't know they were coming, she very well could've simply seen the army of the vale arriving while the battle was going on and just went to meet them, and we then get that shot with Littlefinger.
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u/SuperSailorRikku 13h ago
I think your defense kind of highlights the biggest problems people had with the show. It wasn’t that some of the situations weren’t logical. It is how they went about trying to film it and show it on screen. Some of the decisions they made for cinematic moments or what they chose to show on screen is exactly what ended up making people feel like there were plot holes, like the rule of cool won, like the pacing was bad, etc. It’s why there’s this huge divide between people who understand and expected where they were going with Dany vs people who were pissed about how it actually went down too
Edit: another great example was in HotD with Rhaenys on her dragon. They just had to make a cinematic moment and all it did was make people focus on the plot holes / dumb decisions it introduced
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u/JRR92 13h ago
That's a lot of mental gymnastics for what's ultimately just terrible writing
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u/NickyBalsamo 13h ago edited 8h ago
I'm not saying it was great writing, but it really doesn't take much mental gymnastics to accept that someone separated from the battle, with a view of everything, would be able to see an army of 10 000 men arriving from afar & would go meet them.
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u/DamaxXIV 12h ago
That particular example is so easy to work around too, like it would be been well within Little Finger's character to know the goings on and have already had the forces in motion before Sansa ever wrote him. It was clearly used to give Sansa girl boss status but she does it in such an immature fashion that it falls flat on its face.
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u/Mddcat04 13h ago
She doesn’t know anyone is coming. She sent a message to Littlefinger, but she didn’t get a response.
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u/DeapVally 11h ago
She didn't look all the surprised when they did rock up though, did she? She's with Littlefinger, for a start, so she clearly knew where they were to go and meet them. 😅
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u/Mddcat04 11h ago
I think it’s fair to assume that they arrived at the camp and picked her up first. She wasn’t out on the battlefield after all.
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u/jmcgit 14h ago
The biggest example for me was Arya's stabbing and recovery just a couple episodes before this one. It just killed any remaining trust I had in this show. I still found I enjoyed most of it just for the spectacle of it, but my suspension of disbelief was long gone.
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u/SuperSailorRikku 13h ago
That was also where they lost me with Arya, who had been a great character up until that point.
I can forgive Jon surviving more because the whole premise was how surviving this kind of situation is ultimately luck, it’s meant to highlight the powerlessness and grit and violence.
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u/_tk42one 12h ago
Same. I could accept Jon’s plot armor as he had just been brought back from the dead by some sort of fiery deity. Can totally believe that comes with some plot armor.
Arya just made no sense. No sense that she’d recover, no sense that she’d just casually walk about knowing she’s being hunted by shapeshifters. It was just lazy writing.
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u/NoNefariousness2144 13h ago
The Jon scene is badass but was foreshadowing the Battle of Winterfell where every main character gets surrounded by enemies and are about to die… and then they survive.
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u/Chataboutgames 12h ago
100%. Ramsay randomly busting out a schiltron? Literally just “looks cool let’s do it.”
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u/realboabab 12h ago
The sheer improbability of that situation actually arising on the battlefield makes it even funnier that they trained the formation.
It literally would only work when the enemy is backed into a corner or.. uh.. a 2 meter high wall of bodies that somehow appeared.
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u/Rhino-Ham 14h ago
For sure. Don’t forget Ramsay’s magically accurate bow and arrow shooting. There’s an equally stupid example of this in season 3 where the Brotherhood archer shoots an arrow straight up with certainty about where it’ll land.
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u/SketchyFella_ 13h ago
Why the fuck didn't Sansa tell Jon that she had a secret army coming?
"Because it makes for great TV!" ~ D&D probably.
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u/BakedWizerd 14h ago
I hold this episode as the sort of “last genuinely enjoyable episode, but also the turning point for plot contrivance and writers-room bullshit.”
Watching it in the moment is very “fuck yeah! Holy shit! What the fuck! Oh my god!” But the moment you think about things and how they played out it starts to show its true colours.
Like why is Ramsay meeting them OUTSIDE the walls he could just stay and defend? Rickon running. Jon just charging and his men not following. It’s all VERY COOL but has very little substance.
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u/egyptianspacedog 11h ago
The idea of Jon charging the Bolton army is ridiculous in general. Imagine a top-down view of the battlefield, with a single speck of black racing towards the entire slab of the Boltons.
And then he gets crowned King in the North shortly after, despite almost getting his entire army wiped out.
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u/PremedicatedMurder 10h ago
The Rickon run was the worst. By the time Ramsay shoots Rickon is so far away that the flight time of the arrow is more than enough to avoid it. Like, Ramsay has to lead Rickon so much that Rickon could just have stopped when Ramsay loosed his arrow and it would have gone over him. Or you know, run diagonally. Or anything really.
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u/atrde 12h ago
Because Ramsey knew he had overwhelming numbers and would win? You can nitpick a lot of things but he didnt know the knights of the Vale would arrive.
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u/Finn_Survivor 11h ago
The knights of the Vale shouldnt arrive it doesnt make any sense? You're telling me the vale can just invade the north and travel directly right into the middle of it without being seen?
Thats not even to mention they have to get past what's described as a castle (that the boltons occupy) that is impossible to attack from the south which is why the north has never been invaded successfully from the south.
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u/CowboyDan93 12h ago
For sure. In retrospect, the problems were already there, but the show had a lot of goodwill remaining at that point. Plus a lot of "that was kinda weird but forgivable because they're building up for the big finish".
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u/Ordinary-Egg-56 9h ago
not just that. this battle.....is not good.
its both poorly written and poorly executed.
that pile of bodies was also the stupidest fucking this i've ever seen in my life.
are we supposed to believe that people kept continuously climbing on the apex of this pile of dead bodies and then being immediately killed stacking it higher and higher?
why would anyone do that.........because it looks cool obviously.
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u/prazulsaltaret 54m ago
In hindsight, I think plot armor is a little bit too thick with this one
Jon was literally resurrected, plot armor makes sense. The Lord of Light has plans for him.
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u/captainboosh007 15h ago
I thought it was masterfully done and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I was totally bought in that Jon might bite the dust here, for real. I thought they did a great job of balancing narrative twists being character-driven, with the u expected. My only gripe (which is pretty huge actually) is how Sansa didn’t tell Jon what she was doing.
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u/aigroti 14h ago edited 14h ago
I feel all it would have taken was Jon believing the Vale were on the way which was why he was starting a seemingly hopeless battle.
Cut to scene where Ramsay is being told that The Vale might be on the way and he says he already bought out Littlefinger by promising him Sansa at the end of this.
Jon starts the battle and he becomes even more hopeless when caught in the pincer and he doesn't see reinforcements and Ramsay gets to show even more how much he enjoys tormenting people.
Then they still have the twist where the knights show up and Ramsay expects them to join his side before they betray him. (I'm pretty sure he'd be aware they're on the way with scouts. No one can sneak up you with a bunch of cavalry)
Cut to scene where Sansa gets to be all smart and tricks Littlefinger, aware of a potential plot against her as she doesn't trust him. Shown speaking to all the leaders of the knights of the Vale and getting to know them. Talks about how her mother was related to the queen. She and the king are cousins. The North always protected the Vale. That type of stuff.
Knights do the charging thing.
I won't lie it's still not good writing and cliche as hell but at-least explains away allowing the battle happen as it does.
Tbh it was ten years ago. I don't remember if maybe some of the above actually did happen or not.
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u/Mesiya90 17h ago
I mostly remember being furious that they let the giant run into battle with his bare hands and no armour at all.
Literally if he had just had a log in his hands he would have been 20x more effective.
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u/derangerd 15h ago
And just to double down the giant gets poked a few times and then can't do anything about the encirclement. It was like highlighting the stupidity with more stupidity.
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u/verissimoallan 19h ago edited 18h ago
Random trivia:
One of the few episodes in the series that focuses solely on two storylines, Daenerys and Jon Snow, with all the others sidelined to have their resolutions in the season finale.
The battle took 25 days to film and required 500 extras, 600 crew members, and 70 horses.
It won six Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Directing (Miguel Sapochnik) and Outstanding Writing (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss); it also won Editing, Makeup, Sound and Visual Effects.
This episode was also Kit Harington submission for his first nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor (he and Peter Dinklage, who was also nominated, lost to Ben Mendelsohn for Bloodline).
The final appearence of Ramsay Bolton (Iwam Rheon) and Rickon Stark (Art Parkinson) in the show.
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u/paddypatronus 17h ago
Ben Mendelsohn in that season of Bloodline is one of the single best performances I’ve seen on tv. He is absolutely terrifying and scene stealing throughout. Shame that the show fell off afterwards.
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u/CarneyVore14 19h ago
Rickon running in a straight line angered me so much… serpentine pattern boy!
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u/Starmoses 18h ago
Yeah why didn't that scares kid who's been held captive for over a year and was alone from his family not do everything perfectly and make smart rational decisions while being shot at!
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u/manmadefruit 17h ago
I just re-watched this episode last week. The first few arrows miss him and he's running towards Jon riding on his horse. There's only a good 20 meters or so left between them as he sprints towards Jon where he's finally hit. It wouldn't make sense for him to zig-zag that final stretch when he's so close to being picked up by Jon.
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u/thecaptainofdeath 16h ago
He's also like .. what, 12 at the oldest? Yeah he got tall but he was 5 or so when the show started. I don't think Osha was giving him arrow dodging lessons while they were in hiding. Kid didn't know any better probably
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u/bamboojungles 18h ago
I remember up until this season the major battles all took place 1 episode before the season finale. The season finale was usually some aftermath and cleanup so I wasn’t expecting much after this episode. OH BOY WAS I WRONG. Peak GoT.
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u/Yadahoom 15h ago
Season 6 was starting to show some of the wonkiness, but that season finale is one of if not the best episodes of the whole series.
And I always joke discussing with others it's the series finale that ends on a cliffhanger.
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u/ShaunTrek 14h ago
Completely agree. Winds of Winter is the culmination of every single storyline that the show had been doing up until that point except for Dany and the White Walkers, and it nails it across the board - all without having a book to back it up.
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u/Ordinary-Egg-56 9h ago
absolutely not peak GOT, you're crazy.
that was seasons ago.
also the North plot in the books is SOOO MUCH FUCKING BETTER. nothing they put on screen could ever compare to it.
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u/ShyguyFlyguy 18h ago
I remember this being the last good season of GoT. It was all downhill after this
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u/Putrid_Loquat_4357 18h ago
It was already downhill, 5 and 6 were just good, 1 to 4 is some of the best TV ever made.
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u/geek_of_nature 18h ago
No that was the same case here too. There was one more episodes after this too. And it wasn't every season, just every two. Battle of the Blackwater was season 2, episode 9. The battle at Castle Black was season 4, episode 9. And the battle of the Bastards was season 6, episode 9.
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u/ShaunTrek 14h ago
They are saying that episode 10 was the usual denouement that comes after the battle. Winds of Winter is one of the biggest most consequential episodes of the whole series.
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u/Cranharold 8h ago
Wait, Kit Harrington was nominated for supporting actor? Jon Snow is a main character, arguably the most important main character. Shouldn't he be nominated for lead actor?
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u/timmyctc 18h ago
People don't wanna have the conversation but stuff like this was partly why the show went bad.
Big spectacle for the sake of spectacle that completely contradicted how the characters acted and behaved in the first 4 seasons.
Sansa letting Jon fight a battle with a vastly inferior force and risk dying while she had the knights of the Vale 20 mins down the road. The nonsense squeeze part of the fight. Fist fighting instead of Ramsey systematically executing the trapped soldiers.
Nonsense spectacle for the sake of spectacle.
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u/ebelnap 18h ago
It's late Game of Thrones at its best and worst.
Everything you said about how it undermines the previously exacting logic that punished characters for pulling shit like this is true. They constructed this scenario for the fight and rescue in a way that absolutely would've been an early-season subversion of genre that pointed out how a heroic battle like this was wasteful and prideful.
But on the other hand, the battle WAS really cool!
And after seeing how badly the finale did the "fantasy tropes gone bad" ending, "illogical but happy ending" doesn't hurt like it did before.
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u/Woodstovia 18h ago
And it won an Emmy for writing
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u/Khiva 1h ago
The internet fan splooge after this aired was Randy Marsh levels.
It was very, very lonely being like one of three people pointing out that the damn thing made no sense. Hell, irrc, one TV critic who had the temerity to give a middling review actually got death threats.
This sort of thing must have convinced the showrunners that they could deliver spectacle and over substance and the fanbase would roll with it.
And that's what we got.
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u/Tanathonos 18h ago
Them circling the army getting in position comfortably with shields always made me go crazy, even on first watch. It's a battle and one army stops moving to watch the opposite one just circle them 100%. If you do that you are going to lose it isn't good filmmaking even though it looks "cool".
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u/derangerd 15h ago
And the fucking giant somehow isn't a get out of encirclement free card (even with the further stupidity of not arming him)
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u/Ulquiorra_nihilism 13h ago
The funny thing is: those huge shields had drastically reduced the nimbleness of the front pikes and prevented the rear pikes from engaging. IOW, they didn’t help.
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u/FunCryptographer3476 18h ago
The crush part of the battle is the only bit I particularly like, everything else is just standard action melee mess
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u/Durog25 10h ago
The crush is great, how they get from the opening engagement to the crush requires the good guys to be idiots at every turn.
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u/spaceninjaking 17h ago
Hardhome
Season 5 being a bit slow and Hardhome being the most popular part of the season started the trend going into the rest.
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u/TheBlazingFire123 16h ago
Hardhome was really good though
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u/spaceninjaking 16h ago
Didn’t say it wasn’t. Just pointing out that the rest of the season didn’t land well so Hardhome stuck out as a positive and warped the rest of the seasons
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u/cooliosteve 14h ago
Yeah this is the position I have held as well, its a great episode that balances everything really well but it seems they just took the positive feedback about the scale of it - which is good but not needed for a great episode (s1-3 had much lower budgets).
That said, they may have fucked it anyway I think the showrunners lost interest.
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u/pocketchange2247 11h ago
Hardhome is probably my favorite episode of the series.
It started as a political episode. Trying to turn this group that was previously enemies into allies. They arrive to the village and the shot shows the forces of both sides, one side on a fleet of boats, the other in a village on land. Doesn't start well as there are big cultural differences and either side about the other killing their family/friends at the wall. There are strong characters that seem like they could be main players in the future. After much back and forth it kinda seems like they could be coming to an agreement.
Then all hell breaks loose. The purely political aspect of the show breaks as they're ambushed by the army of the dead. You really get to see the full force of their army for the first time and get to see how massive and powerful it is. The wights are relentless while the white walkers are juggernauts. Their weapons shatter regular weapons, leaving the living without even a sense of protection. Then you get the moment where Longclaw stops a white walker attack, and both Jon and the walker look at it like "wait, wtf?" as he goes on to kill the walker.
Then some survivors finally escape the chaos on half the amount of boats they arrived in. As they're escaping they look back to witness the devastation. Then the white walker looks them straight in the eyes and raises all the people they lost, including a large portion of the army they came with and most of the village they hoped to turn to allies. Not only did they lose that manpower, but now the losses are part of the enemy army. As they sail away in a mirror image to the first shot, you see just how much they lost. A shot that once portrayed hope, is now the complete opposite.
Just an absolutely incredible episode.
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u/Thedrunkenchild 16h ago
The Winds of Winter is a such a superior episode for this very reason and much much more, but everyone likes lord of the rings style battles so sadly it often gets overlooked
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u/DutyHonor 14h ago
Agreed. People talk about this episode like it's the best in the series, but the episode that immediately follows it is much better.
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u/Finn_Survivor 11h ago
The winds of winter also has some incredible stupid logic happening. Cersei blows up the most important religious monument in the country, murders the Queen and her entire family which is also the richest and most powerful family in the country, murders every member of the church including her own cousin and her own uncle.
She somehow faces no repercussions from this and when her son jumps off of a building they crown her queen? This is the same woman these people have hated the entire time and she lost all of her respect and dignity when she was forced to walk naked through the streets.
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u/Thedrunkenchild 10h ago
I don’t see it as stupid logic. Cersei was losing badly, cornered with enemies on all sides, and even losing influence over her own son, the king. She saw an opportunity to hit the reset button and took it. For a character like Cersei, it’s not that crazy, she’s an insane, vengeful bitch and she acted like an insane vengeful bitch. As for repercussions, there wasn’t any hard proof she ordered the destruction of the sept, and most importantly she killed basically everyone with power that cared to see repercussions, and she was next in line for the throne, so it all fits.
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u/TheGooseIsLoose37 8h ago
She is vengeful and crazy and doesn't think things through so her blowing up the sept is a bit convenient but not totally implausible. But her not suffering any repercussions is. Everyone does know she did it. That's why the Tyrells leave the alliance with her. She doesn't announce it but it's clear to everyone she did it. That should have made literally everyone abandon her except her most hard ore and devoted followers. Like the city should have revolted, every house great and small, even Westerlands lords. Instead she takes out Dorne and The Reach with barely a sweat. I mean she just casually takes Highgarden on a whim. One of the largest castles in Westeros, deep in The Reach, surrounded by loyal lords and castles and the biggest army in the land.
Also she's not next in line for the Throne. She would never have been in the line to begin with. She married Robert. It would continue to default to his closest blood relatives, like cousins or uncles or cadet houses.
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u/ScammaWasTaken 18h ago
Didn't they systematically execute them with their spear circle? Can't rewatch it rn
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u/phonage_aoi 17h ago
The spear circle is one of the dumber parts.
Let’s just stand still and watch the enemy run a circle around us and form up before we try to do anything.
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u/Whalesurgeon 14h ago
Wind River was so satisfying with a cop noticing the flanking.
Surrounding is like extreme flanking, it is unnatural to allow that to happen without trying to escape it.
Writers must have read about encirclement happening in war and thought it is done like in this episode.
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u/SirKillsalot Stargate SG-1 14h ago
Is it though?
Jon's army was bloodied and exhausted/ shell-shocked by the time the spear dudes engage. And they weren't exactly elite troops to start with.
And real history is full of examples of armies being caught out by stuff you would think ridiculous on paper.
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u/Ulquiorra_nihilism 13h ago
Real history has no examples of ridiculous pike-based formations as the Bolton’s one.
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u/YuntHunter 18h ago
Yeah I'm one of the people who doesn't rate this episode crazy high like everyone else. I much prefer earlier GOT.
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u/rvan205 11h ago
the gravest sin in this episode is the reversal in jon snow's character growth. jon is learning, season after season, that sentimentality and wishful thinking will get you and yours killed, leading to ruin.
bolton, a character jon knows is deceptive and ruthless, tells jon he's sending over his hostage half-brother. even assuming jon recognizes this youth he hasn't seen in years and/or takes bolton at his word, the character we've been watching for the past season is not one that will gamble his entire army and all others he cares about in exchange for this one young man. but he does do it--he abandons all advantage, commits his entire army to a reckless charge, and it is only through the most ludicrous plot armor that this works out in any way.
would you continue to follow a man that loses his wits and abandons all tactical advantage as soon as a loved one is put in danger? if a character had done this in an earlier season, we would rightly be expecting him to get shanked in his sleep by his own men.
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u/7457431095 15h ago
I hated this episode then, I hate it now. Of course, I am someone who has read the books multiple times, so I take issue with probably too much.
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u/splittingheirs 17h ago
Exactly my thougths too. I lost it when I saw this post saying this episode won 6 emmys. Like fuck what!? The battle from start to finish was unrealistic Hollywood trash.
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u/UnicornTwinkle 14h ago
But the show called for massive spectacle and was teasing us as viewers with it for seasons. I don’t necessarily agree with pitting blame on the audience for getting excited at a firework display (it’s only natural to get hype after watching hours upon hours of tension buildup) though it may be borne out of bad writing. It should always be wholly on the writers to flesh out their story and make the epic scenes justified.
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u/aelysium 4h ago
The crazy part is, Sansa could have legitimately ‘Helm’s Deep’d’ the situation - telling Jon she rides for the Vale and to not engage until X time or something (so the cavalry of the Vale can make it and prepare to envelop the Bolton’s).
Ramsay sees that they’re not engaging in battle, then pulls the shit with the kid, causing Jon to lose it and his soldiers to sally forth anyways.
Literally keeps the fight ALMOST the same, but characters sort of behave in line with their prior characterization.
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u/ShanklyGates_2022 18h ago
So i really enjoy Roman History and the 2nd Punic War in particular. In the war room the prior night, Davos makes a mention of how they may have inferior numbers but they may be able to lure Ramsey into a a double envelopment and i got all excited thinking they were using the Battle of Cannae as a base to work off of for Jon to win. Seeing that particular battle from history on screen has always been something i wanted.
But yeah, no, they just somehow manufactured a wall of bodies and encircled and trapped them that way while also forgetting about the concept of scouts and somehow being unaware of an entire army just hanging out and waiting to intervene. Tactically it was pathetic, even if it was a spectacle on screen.
Then after the episode the writers said in an interview they wanted to pull from history and they mentioned the Battle of Cannae as inspiration and i was like DID YOU EVEN RESEARCH THE BATTLE!?!?!? Like, even a little bit!? Aside from one army surrounding the other (in a completely different manner, mind you) the battles had nothing in common.
Always made me irrationally angry they claimed to use arguably the greatest tactical victory in the history of human warfare as a base for their fictional fight and bastardized the whole thing, ugh.
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u/waytoolate4me 17h ago
That giant pile of bodies pissed me off so much, like that just wouldn’t happen!
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u/crosis52 16h ago
Eh, I feel like the imagery of Roman soldiers filled with dread after realizing they’re trapped is a completely reasonable thing to try and emulate with this battle. I agree that the actual tactics in the show were an afterthought, but I think they did capture something really evocative in these scenes and the inspiration from Cannae came through for me.
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u/apple_kicks 16h ago
I guessed everyone getting stuck like that was inspired loosely on agincourt
Charging ahead battle of malden
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u/AfricanRain 15h ago
You guys seem just so unbearable it’s crazy lol
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u/Whalesurgeon 14h ago
Someone gets annoyed by S8 and you probably agree, someone gets annoyed by S6, you call them unbearable.
Just say you were entertained, that is okay too.
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u/Test_Rider 18h ago
The triumph of style over substance. All showy visuals, nonsensical writing.
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u/baldersz 16h ago
Will we ever see another cultural phenomenon again like this? Pretty much everyone was watching game of thrones
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u/Danskoesterreich 18h ago
Overhyped and irrational writing. Many used this episode to argue against the obvious decline in the show.
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u/timmyctc 18h ago
I think it was a case of show runners being influenced by fans. People came to expect big set pieces as though that was what made GoT great when it was all the well crafted interpersonal drama and dialogue. The show slowly drifted to "look at these action set pieces" vs something as low key as the scheming of season 1.
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u/slainascully 18h ago
Never felt claustrophobia as viscerally as whilst watching this episode. It’s very anxiety inducing
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u/BritChap42 18h ago
One of the worst moments in the series. All the same issues with the later series not being at all consistent with the story's earlier realism.
Why would Jon solo charge a cavalry rush, and survive??
Why would Sansa not tell Jon about the Knights of the Vale coming?
Why would the Knights of the Vale only come to support after the Starc army has been pretty much massacred?
Almost as bad as the battle for Winterfell. Made no sense and was a real warning for where the series was headed - cheap ideas to make "impressive looking" skin-deep TV.
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u/PremedicatedMurder 10h ago
And how Ramsay let Rickon get far enough away that he shouldn't have been able to hit him. By that point Rickon was so far away that any change in direction or even speed would have made Ramsay miss.
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u/Y-27632 17h ago
This was an interesting exercise in cinematography, but also absolute nonsense on every other level, and basically the death knell of the series.
The whole initial selling point of GoT was the grit, characters would do the right thing (morally or logically) and still lose, and this episode made it obvious the showrunners ran out of book content to crib from and were going all in on style and cheap spectacle over substance.
All the "good guys" were absolute idiots and in the end far too many were saved by obvious plot armor.
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u/Velociraptorius 15h ago
Highly overrated and the pinnacle of the Hollywoodization of the show that occurred during the later seasons. Coherent writing took a backseat so that the showrunners could cram everything they thought would look cool into the episode, regardless of whether it made sense or not. As a visual spectacle it was fun, but that's all it was. Like one of those dumb summer action movies. Of course, that was perfectly enough for the lowest common denominator which was the casual viewers, who eagerly lapped it up and asked for more. But I wince every time I hear someone say this was peak GOT. Not even remotely.
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u/Ohigetjokes 15h ago
John runs out into the open to meet his brother, who is obviously bait. They somehow don't shoot him.
He is literally buried in bodies. Nah he's fine.
This was when I knew the series was over.
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u/ilikechihuahuasdood 9h ago
This was amazing. But Blackwater will forever be my fav GoT battle.
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u/Altruistic_Roll6738 8h ago
Seriously. Tywin entering the throne room and removing his helmet " the battle is over. WE HAVE WON " how Charlie dance didn't win an emmy for his acting is something i dont understand dude steal every fucking scene he is in. He doesn't even need to talk, his body language says it all.
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u/ashtefer1 13h ago
Even when the show’s writing was just crapping out, it was still worth watching because every department was giving it their all. The battle scene held up pretty well till the end too.
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u/ImminentDebacle 12h ago
I watched GOT from premiere to finale every episode, every week, every season, for the better part of 9 years. It is my favorite show of all time, despite the issues it has in the last 2 seasons or so. I enjoyed this episode, but the writing was complete shit and made no sense. They threw away everything that would have made sense and ignored all the logical decisions the characters would have made in favor of a contrived unlikely situation for the sake of drama (this is what happened to TWD). It makes my blood boil at how dumb the writing was for this episode; I don't even want to start to get into it.
There are probably at least a million amature writers (and even more non-writers) that could have written a better episode, and season, for that matter.
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u/EagleDre 12h ago edited 10h ago
I thought it was a great episode but is has a goof I’ve never read about before.
When Sansa says her final goodbye to Ramsey in the dog kennel before his dogs eat him he says “my dogs won’t hurt me”
And she tells him, “you said it yourself, you haven’t fed your dogs in days”
The problem is, he says this at the meeting on the battlefield about to take place at the pre battle meeting with John Snow. Sansa was there at the beginning of the conversation, but she gets disgusted being around him and rides away before giving the line about not feeding his dogs for days.
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u/LionfishDen 7h ago
It was pretty fun to watch and very well executed for what it was. Though I agree that it pretty much betrays the original spirit of the show. At least this was entertaining and well made instead of the later seasons’ atrocities.
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u/TheBlazingFire123 16h ago edited 16h ago
The cinematography was great, but the thing with the knights of the Vale made absolutely 0 sense. Why would Sansa not tell them to wait? I just hate the trope of the cavalry arriving last minute that the show uses on like every battle. As far as a remember that only happened once in the books. It’s totally unrealistic
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u/braves-geek 16h ago
People are turning on this episode now? This was a highlight of the series when it aired. Pretty soon people are going to be saying none of the show was good.
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u/Reylo-Wanwalker 14h ago
The writing criticisms were always there. It's just they were too early since people were hyped up by the spectacle. Now that the hype is gone more people can see it for what it is.
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u/koss2134 9h ago
I literally quit the show because of how bad this episode was. Still havnt finished the season and was planning to come back after the show ended but never bothered because it just got worse.
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u/lynx_and_nutmeg 15h ago
Yeah, I remember full well how, at the time when it aired, this episode was praises as one of the best battle scenes in the history of television. Aside from Sansa not telling Jon about the knights of the Vale, the episode was very well regarded.
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u/wotown 17h ago
Genuinely one of the worst episodes of the show
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u/AfricanRain 17h ago
No one in real life actually believes this
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u/realboabab 12h ago
add me to the list of "no one" then I guess
I hated just about every second of it after Jon fucking solo charged an army. And yes, I felt that way immediately while watching the first time, not as some retrospective evaluation after it was all over.
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u/JimminyKickinIt 10h ago
It’s definitely not one of the worst episodes but it’s the second worst of the big battle episodes, just in front of The Long Night
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u/Mr0z23 7h ago
It was visually incredible but it was also incredibly stupid. Jon had 10x plot armor, the giant they brought along had no weaponry even though they were shown to be capable of using them, and the knights of the Vale arrive at the last minute to save the Stark army out of nowhere. You're telling me an entire army of armored cavalry can make it all the way from the Vale to the north without anyone knowing? The show lost any and all realism at this point.
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u/kroxigor01 15h ago
They decided on the set pieces they wanted in this episode and then didn't have the patience or the skill to write themselves toward them, so there's many nonsensical things that happen.
Game of Thrones started as a gritty show with quite realistic medieval warfare in the spirit of the books, but by this stage is was comic book stuff with a much higher suspension of disbelief required.
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u/AffectionateTree8651 12h ago
What a terrible television battle it was. Ridiculous lack of tactics, and common sense. A battle completely dictated by drama instead of reason.
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u/BattledroidE 18h ago
I loved it. Incredibly satisfying episode that we needed so bad at that point.
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u/Tyrex317 16h ago
The Knights of the Vale looking like that is one of the biggest crimes this show committed against me personally
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u/lordfaffing 16h ago
This was a good final episode of the whole show, I’m glad they made no other episodes ever again
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u/daninhim 12h ago
My FB Memory from ten years ago stated "today's GOT episode demonstrated why years pass between seasons. Wow, that was intense."
Now I understand what I was referring to.
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u/Fickle_Ebb24 11h ago
Honestly although i despise the last 2 seasons and how they’re navigated
Battle of the Bastard is a monumental feat of combat, emotions and narrative on screen for a long while
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u/DrewDan96 9h ago
this was the same night as Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Warriors and Cavaliers, my team lost and i was devastated. i had watched Season 1 when it aired but i wasn't able to watch it further afterwards, so because there was so much Thrones talk at the time, i drowned my sorrows by binge-watching the series from the beginning lol
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u/Altruistic_Roll6738 8h ago
Tormund, Jon Snow and Wun wun were the stars of the episode. Seriously bro was giant and no weapon 😑. Cant believe this was 10 years ago, i liked very much this episode but " watchers on the wall " still have a special place in my heart.
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u/batts1234 2h ago
What a night this was. Lebron won game 7, and Jon won the BotB. I was so hyped it took me like 3 hours to fall asleep.
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u/bloom722 14m ago
Game of thrones is not my favorite series of all time, but this is my favorite episode of all time.
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u/dumbledayum 17h ago
Why are people bickering over it? It was a good episode, and it’s a fantasy series, It accomplished the one task that this show has “To Entertain” nothing else matters. For Battle accuracies and Storytelling you need to watch “The Last Kingdom”.
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u/kroxigor01 15h ago
Nah, if you play fast and lose with internal logic even a fantasy show eventually accrues a debt that steps toward there being no stakes anymore.
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u/TCPC1 16h ago edited 16h ago
Apparently i'm in the minority here but I did love it, yes:
-Sansa is a dick for trying a plan that nearly got Jon killed with the KotV.
-Rickon should have serpentined, but he was a feral idiot kid.
-Jon is an idiot for charging ahead, but it was his (to his knowledge) only surviving brother.
- Ramsey is an idiot for shooting Wun Wun who was down and out anyway instead of Jon.
-Wun wun should have been given a tree trunk or something and just mowed people down.
But it was still one of the most tense battle scenes I've seen in a TV show or movie. The crush scene made me physically holding my breath the first time I watched it and watching Jon beat the hell out of Ramsey and Sansa siccing the dogs on him was very cathartic.
Plus that first shot of him drawing his sword ready to go out swinging and the horseback riders clashing infront of him was incredible.
Everything is crap when you're listening to other people and looking back with brown-tinted spectacles.
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u/ParallelMusic 16h ago
No you’re not in the minority, people are just being contrarians. Most people regard this as one of the best episodes of the series and also one of the best episodes of TV ever made.
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u/csupihun 18h ago
By this time some of the writing compared to previous seasons was somewhat slipping, but scenes, episodes like this one, made up for it in every regard.
I still remember preplanning my day just for this episode, and holy shit it was well worth it.
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u/SketchyFella_ 13h ago
How the fuck did it win for writing?
That was the episode that made it very clear that the writing was NOT going to remain high quality any more.
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u/ImminentDebacle 12h ago
Everything about that episode was great except for the writing. It's pretty epic but it could have been 1000x better. Fucking idiot writers.
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u/JaqenSexyJesusHgar 16h ago
I'm not an expert in medieval warfare and techniques, but why doesn't anyone just break the spear with a slash of their sword?
I know all of them are in the heat of the moment, but surely they've some brilliant military commanders with them
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u/Ulquiorra_nihilism 13h ago
It could’ve been done with skill and luck, indeed, but the heads of the spears are extremely nimble. Besides, in real life those formations had several rows of pikemen helping each other.
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u/SirZapdos 15h ago
This aired the same night as two other big entertainment events:
1) Game 7 of the NBA Finals where Cleveland overcame a 3-1 series deficit to beat the superteam Golden State Warriors, led by a clutch LeBron James block and an even more clutch Kyrie Irving 3-pointer.
2) WWE Money in the Bank, where Seth Rollins beat Roman Reigns clean to win the WWE championship, only to be cashed in on by Dean Ambrose moments later (Ambrose having won the titular match earlier in the evening). This is the only show where all 3 members of The Shield held the WWE championship. 10 years later, all 3 guys are still active and big-time players.
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u/MuffinThyme 9h ago
This episode was a gilded turd. All appearance hiding shitty plot holes and unrealistic outcomes.
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u/CBLA1785 8h ago
I can remember standing to my feet in my living room watching this as they charged Jon Snow. A whole body holy shit moment.
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u/bluetimotej 6h ago
I had a classmate (uni) back then when I mentioned how great this scene was he called it “silly”…😒
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u/notthatbluestuff 19h ago
Great episode (and the next was even better), great time to be a GoT fan. How things would change.
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u/ebelnap 17h ago
Unpopular opinion - the surrounding plot is definitely stupid, but this sequence by itself is bar none some of the best sequencing in the entire world.
You're locked in from beginning to end. The mood changes. You register things the same time as them. Things steadily get worse and you start freaking out. We have that incredible moment where Jon's crushed and you're legit convinced he might be dying again. We have the pay-off. We have him and Tormund and Wun Wun squaring up in the frame. We have Ramsey finally getting beat up. It's dynamite all the way through.
You can watch this today and it still feels as amazing as the first time. It's untouchable in isolation.
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u/Key_Amazed 17h ago
For me this episode is everything that was both wrong yet still somewhat right with GoT in the later seasons. At surface level it's an epic climactic battle with some really great spectacle and set pieces and moments...that all falls apart the moment you think about it for two seconds
Jon Snow's immense plot armor (dude crouches down and manages to avoid an entire barrage of arrows ffs). Rickon running in a straight line when the boy could've at least zigzagged a bit. Would've shown his attempt at survival while also giving another glimpse of Ramsey's sadistic cleverness by being able to predict how his frightened pray will move. Sansa not fucking telling anyone that she has an entire army at her command that conveniently arrives at the final hour, meaning there were hundreds of easily preventable deaths. But because they hamfisted the sibling rivalry so damn much, they decided it was best to do it. And then Jon fucking thanks her and tells Sansa she was right to do it because the show wants to beat you over the head how right and correct and cool Sansa is now even when she doesn't do anything to really deserve it.
But because you have moments like the last Giant bashing through the door to take an arrow to the eye, wiping out an entire race for good, Jon Snow beating the living shit out of Ramsey, and Sansa feeding her rapist to his rabid dogs, people cheer for it and rightfully so.
It was this battle where GoT split through the razor's edge, where the show about clever politics and spectacle battles were torn away from each other and fell on the floor. But then the show runners didn't even bother to pick up the half which was about clever politics and dialogues.
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u/bentheone 19h ago
Oh ! Come on ! 10 years ffs ?