A game-changing Thrones spectacle buckles under the pressures of a shortened season

 

” I struggled to figure out what precisely the plan had actually been in this case. Why didn’t they send scouts ahead to better understand the size of the White Walkers’ army and plan their raid accordingly? Why didn’t they bring a raven with them to send a message back to Eastwatch should they run into any kind of resistance? Why wouldn’t they have had Daenerys bring at least one of her dragons to Eastwatch on standby in case something went wrong?

Now, I’m not suggesting that these are “plot holes,” in the sense that these decisions could never make sense: I’m not nitpicking the “accuracy” of a fantasy television series, and fully acknowledge that this is a work of fiction that can push the bounds of logic however it pleases. However, as with the Battle of the Bastards (where Sansa’s decision-making remains completely unclear to me), we have a situation here where a series of events engineered for action and suspense effectively sells out the characters involved. How can we take Jon seriously as a military leader when he devises a plan that falls apart so easily, and contains zero contingencies? Did he never even ask Daenerys about the possibility of using the dragons? It would be one thing if we had seen a sequence of Daenerys offering the dragons as support in “Eastwatch” and Jon stubbornly refusing, or Jon asking for the dragons but Daenerys refusing to offer them, but neither happened. Instead, the show gives the impression that Jon Snow barreled into the north without much in the way of a plan, bailed out by a sprinting Gendry and Daenerys being compelled to rush to his aid by her love for him. And while there is a certain thrill to those moments of peril and split-second decision-making, they come at the expense of the characters, who are temporarily rendered idiots because the action demands it."
read review by Miles McNutt

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