Yeah, just as Daenerys can’t be burned, it turns out Jon Snow can’t be frozen. It’s A Song of Ice and Fire, baby.
As for the travel time, I wasn’t all that bothered by it this time. I figured our guys’ expedition north of the Wall didn’t get all that far. We didn’t see them camp before they found the first wights, so I assumed they were less than a day’s march north of Eastwatch. With that weather and terrain, maybe not even ten or fifteen miles. Gendry might conceivably run it in a couple hours. Fairly detailed directions could be included in the raven’s note, plus the dragons might have a pretty good vantage point from on high to see a battle between many black-clad belligerents on a white background.
I also figure the dragons might fly as fast as 70 mph without risking blowing Daenerys off Drogon’s back. At that speed, she could go 1400 miles in a long 20-hour haul. Honestly, it’s the raven who strikes me as the choke point.
I still find it harder to believe that Jorah’s up there. In episode three of this season he was freshly healed in Oldtown, about as far from the lands north of the Wall as this show has ever traveled. Two episodes later, he’s on Dragonstone for a quick hi/bye to Daenerys, then moments later he’s through the wall. And in the pilot it took a full month for Robert and Cersei to get from King’s Landing to Winterfell.
Also in the pilot (first scene of the series, in fact) White Walkers murder a party of Wildlings, then attack three members of the Night Watch, again less than a day’s travel north of the Wall. We keep seeing these blue-eyed bastards coming, but we have yet to see them actually reach the Wall, even though they should have covered several thousand miles by now, even at a leisurely mosey. It’s been years.
that White Walker had quite the throwing arm, haha. i guess when magic is involved…
we were making jokes about how calm they were. i guess you don’t see the walkers getting emotional about anything, but it seemed clear that this wasn’t their first encounter with dragons. the Night King was all, shrug “…i’ll show you how we deal with dragons…”
OK, this rumour has the potential to be a serious spoiler so I’m going to blank it out because I think I may have spoiled a huge reveal for myself by stumbling upon it in the comments on the avclub. It was a throwaway comment there but the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s true.
Seriously, I think this might be the big reveal for this season’s finale or the twist halfway through next season, so don’t click if you don’t want to potentially ruin a plot twist. Please also blur out any replies, just in case this turns out to be correct.
[Spoiler] Bran, as the three-eyed raven, is also the Night King. The reason he is so apathetic about everything is that he has seen the inevitable outcome of the war between the humans (basically, some form of apocalypse) and he realises that the only way to save the world is for everyone he has ever known to be murdered by the white walkers. The dryads (I forget the GoT term) created the white walkers in order to destroy humanity because they knew that was the only way to save the planet. Hence, the three eyed raven sees all and knows all and is defended by them, despite the fact that a reasonable human would inevitably stop the white walkers. Bran is controlling the wight army despite the fact that doing so will mean the death of everyone he knows, because he is essentially omniscient and can see that the ultimate destruction of humanity is the only way to prevent some much-greater disaster.
Martin has heavily hinted at the idea that the walkers are more complex than a Tolkienesque Ultimate Force of Evil and I can’t see any other resolution. Fingers crossed I’m wrong but… [/Spoiler]
…I bet you wish you hadn’t clicked now, right?
In other news, I just lost The Game when I typed that last sentence. Dammit.
i’m going to be gone to Burning Man for the season finale (I know, i know! such bad timing!) so i won’t see it until at least sept. 6th or so… with that in mind, i’m skipping reading your potential spoiler, just in case…
I could actually give that stuff a pass, the issue of why do the White Walkers never get to the Wall and what are they doing up there all this time. They were created by the ancient elf people, so they’re part of the fae magical world, and there is a long tradition in folklore and fantasy of time passing differently in Arcadia or Narnia or wherever. Maybe time doesn’t pass at all for the WW’s unless human beings are up there observing them.
This could imply a whole new strategy for how to deal with the undead army if the heroes ever figure it out, but at this point it doesn’t seem like that kind of show. It’s going to be thud and blunder until the end.
so, i keep hoping that Arya and Sansa are wise to Littlefinger’s manipulations, and are in turn manipulating HIM by letting him think they are falling for his ploy, but the final scene between them seems to scuttle that idea. how can they STILL have so much animosity between each other after all they’ve been through? don’t they realize by now that the few family members they have left are the most important thing, and they need to overcome differences and stick together? ugh.
I think it’s partly habit, and partly a lack of imagination that the other sister could have suffered just as much as they have. They both admitted they’d have died years ago if their places were swapped, so I think there is some grudging respect there. But I think the reunion also brought back all their old feelings. And the grief over all those they’ve lost since they’d seen each other last. And remember, they were still in a fight when Ned was killed, so there’s still that brewing beneath it all.
on the plus side, i read a theory that i rather like:
Arya is totally wise to Littlefinger’s scheme, and was throwing the Game of Faces thing at Sansa to test where her loyalties lay. it went even further to predict that Arya will kill Littlefinger and use his face to further test Sansa, but i don’t think she’d need to go that far to test her sister – besides, i think Sansa should be the one to kill Littlefinger, anyway.
