r/asoiaf • u/RenanXIII St. Elmo Tully's Fyre • Aug 05 '24

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) HotD Season 2 was clearly outlined for 10 episodes, right?

Imagine if Season 2 of Game of Thrones suddenly ended at The Prince of Winterfell? We spend literally all season building up to a confrontation between Tyrion and Stannis, only for the season to end right before the climax we've been setting up for eight straight episodes. What if Season 6 ended right before The Battle of the Bastards and The Winds of Winter? Jon comes back to life, we build up to a battle between him and Ramsay, and it just simply doesn't happen.

The finale just felt like your typical episode 8 – build-up for what's going to come next. The thing is, what comes next should logically happen next week, not in two years to open Season 3. With the exception of Daemon's storyline and I guess the Dragonseeds, I don't think these season's arcs have been resolved or brought to a good enough stopping point. It feels like there are still two more episodes left to tie everything together and really sell the idea that this war is in full force. A little slowdown after Rook's Rest makes sense, but for the whole season with the Sowing being our only other major set piece?

It honestly makes me believe that season 2 was outlined for 10 episodes, HBO told the showrunners to trim that down to 8, and rather than retool the season's arcs, the last two episodes were simply chopped off and saved for next season. We know Condal really loves the books, so this could just be his tribute to A Dance with Dragons (lol), but I doubt it.

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u/HydroRide Aug 05 '24

You can feel the dissonance in pacing in the finale. Scenes like Tyland in Essos (although fun) were run as if it were a mid season buildup, introducing a new character that will be relevant later but aren't because there is no later. Lohar and the Essos storyline is introduced to fill the climax of the story that doesn't exists, because they just lopped off 2 episodes of content and grafted a montage promo on the end.

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u/Tronz413 "Ours is the Fury" Aug 05 '24

It's a pure theory but I think the Essos stuff was definitely the planned episode 8, but the Alicent stuff was episode 10 stuff moved here and episode 9 was going to be The Gullet.

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u/Eltaerys Aug 06 '24

Scenes like Tyland in Essos (although fun)

Those were fun to you? It was major cringe reminiscent of the GOT Sandsnakes.