Prez wrote:The finale is still pissing me off so I'm gonna dump some of my thoughts into this comment lolSpoiler:On S2 more broadly:
- Daemon was almost completely wasted this season. I’m sorry, but I don’t need 7 episodes of him tripping balls just to come to the realization that he DOES want to support Rhaenyra. These artsy dream sequences look pretty but they’re IMO kinda lazy story telling in that they don’t require anything to make narrative/logical sense and you have free rein to just throw wild **** out there to fill time without actually meaningfully moving the plot forward. I think 1 or 2 episodes of it would’ve been cool, but having that for the majority of the season is just brutal for one of the most interesting characters in the show
- Rhaenyra’s constant whining about “meh nobody takes me seriously but I also can’t do anything” also made sense, but when it is beaten to death damn near every episode, it gets tiresome. Like we get it lol
- So many pointless or filler-y scenes but we couldn’t get more development of Jace in the North and interacting with the Starks (his friendship with Cregan Stark in particular)? But nah, we need another scene of Daemon on his acid trip hallucinating that he’s banging his mom, sorry guys
- In an attempt to lead the show with powerful women, ironically they’ve depicted some of the most prominent women in the show as whiny, emotional people that can’t make good or confident decisions. Again, Rhaenyra whining for much of the season. Or them turning Alicent (who is cold blooded in the books but loves her children, reminiscent of Cersei in a way) into a meek simp for a childhood friend?
- Getting tired as hell of Rhaenyra/Alicent sneaking around to have their little get togethers to talk about how they don’t want the war to occur…like seriously, it’s over. It’s going to happen. The Greens intentionally went against Vizzy T’s wishes to steal the throne from Rhaenyra, they'd been plotting it well before he died and jumped on it immediately when he did. If that wasn’t bad enough, Rhaenyra’s son is murdered by Aemond at the end of S1 (funny how we ended S1 with war about to happen, and we’re now an entire season later and…war is still only ABOUT to happen). In retaliation, Aegon’s baby son was beheaded at Daemon’s command. Rhaenys and Meleys were killed in battle. Aegon is critically injured/crippled with his dragon killed. Rhaenyra goes full reckless and gift wraps two of the biggest, most dangerous dragons on the planet to two complete randos, and in response Aemond torches an entire town of innocents. But Rhaenyra/Alicent are still teleporting to each others’ castle to chit chat about how to prevent war? It’s so idiotic and unrealistic and is entirely due to the writers thinking the fanbase gives a **** about their childhood friendship at the expense of logical character motivations
On the finale more specifically:
- Why are we getting like 4 nothing burger scenes of Rhaena (and a few more in earlier episodes) just stumbling around in the finale? Only for the payoff to be 10 seconds of Rhaena and Sheepstealer looking at each other? The fact that all of that just built up to show Sheepstealer for 10 seconds is wack imo.
- Helaena, after being criminally underused for the entirety of the show up to this point, is now turned into a walking spoiler machine. Awesome
- We really needed multiple scenes of Tyland interacting with and mud wrestling some random new character from Essos? Like Lohar seems interesting enough for future seasons as one of the typical badass but quirky comic relief characters I guess, but why the hell is that killing time in the season finale? Instead of replacing some of the redundant Daemon dream sequences or the scenes of Alicent dicking around in the forest/lake or something. Not to mention I lowkey didn’t think the actress did a great job, I wasn’t really buying her character personally, but maybe future seasons she’ll be better
- Alicent teleporting to Dragonstone and after one conversation with Rhaenyra pulling a 180 and now being willing to kill her own son? What the ****? Also are we just supposed to pretend that killing Aegon would be enough? They would need to kill Aemond and Daeron as well to eliminate all claims against Rhaenyra. It's so stupid man
- Character assassinating Alicent because she supposedly "didn't have to sacrifice anything"? As if she wasn't pimped out as a child (by her own dad) to marry/make babies for an old dude who gradually turned into a mummy as he got older. Or her grandson wasn't beheaded. Or her son crippled. And why is Rhaenyra of all people making that accusation? Rhaenyra, who grew up filthy rich in a castle, grew up with a dragon, was allowed to run off and sleep with whoever and even have bastard sons, was made heir to the throne by her dad, despite him having sons and it going against all tradition/historical precedent, and her doing nothing to earn her inheritance?
- I’m usually super cool with slower paces character dramas and am not demanding of action in prestige fantasy/drama TV, but the fact that we got literally nothing at all in the finale, no action (outside of Tyland **** mud wrestling some rando in Essos), no fun dragon scenes, nothing is so lame. The episode starts with Aemond committing war crimes burning an entire city down with Vhagar, you couldn’t even give us a 1-2 minute clip of Vhagar going berserk? Not even a cool interaction between Rhaena and Sheepstealer?
- The CGI/effects looked weirdly bad in several instances? Like the scene between Corlys & Alyn, where Alyn’s body is straight up out of focus lol. I also thought the Night King looked atrocious, what the hell?
Spot on , what a huge let down! Too much time in between seasons to have this dud of a season ! Like you said to many filler scenes that I just didn't give too craps about. The whole Daemon thing was just to long and drawn out.
