The Queen Who Ever Was

It's become more apparent this season (and especially this finale) that the "writers" have no idea what to do with the source material if GRRM isn't holding their hand every step of the way. The filler is blatantly apparent now (those who've read Fire & Blood realize how much they try to add to fill in the gaps) as is the constant transporting and slow-paced dialogue "Like... mist... in... the... morning... sun." They also consistently ignore the logistics of the world to deliver us scenes between prominent characters, much like the latter seasons of GoT. Imagine if Ned Stark was just in King's Landing one episode, then ended up back in Winterfell next episode to have a quick chat with Caitlin, then magically ended up back in King's Landing and nobody seemed to notice or care he'd even left to begin with.

The reason Game of Thrones beginning seasons felt so phenomenal is because there was legitimately so much actual dialogue to reference from in the books to the point they had to cut much of it short, yet it still had GRRM's actual quality tied to it. Same with the characters and their movements, and the attention to detail Martin has in his writing. The moment D&D ran out of actual source material, they also forgot the logistics of the world and the characters immediately started having less intricate and meaningful conversations; instead stuffed with slower paced poetically metaphorical verbiage. The dialogue seemed more to serve the purpose of sounding fancy and cool but lacking actual substance.

Fire & Blood isn't meant to be stretched out in this manner. Season 1 was good, but Season 2 is them getting too cocky with Season 1's success and stretching beyond their means. Overall, this season was definitely a miss, filled with stretched filler material that really didn't need to go on as long as it did. The finale most certainly cemented that.

The finale did a good job of wrapping a plot points, but it was all extremely predictable. I don't think they needed eight episodes to tell the story that they did because looking back on season two every single character arc was very unambitious. The only way this season could've been interesting would be if the characters had the same depth as Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones also had a slow pace in many places, but it worked because the characters were so fleshed out. None of the characters in this show have the same depth. Combine that with glacial pacing and an eagerness to bore audiences with drawn out scenes with little payoff (Damon's arc) and you have a recipe to torpedo interest in the show. Let's see if anyone will even watch S3.

I actually didn't think this season was that bad, and enjoyed quite a few moments and character developments. Sadly, this episode turned out to be the weakest. It's placed as a finale, but is in fact a breather. The pause before an epic battle.

If there had been two more episodes or even one after this, I would have loved the build up here. Sadly it has been wasted by poor planning :(

It truly felt like this was the midpoint of the season, and I think that it shows the writers struggled here, and it fell short from the first season. The actors delivered and there were some absolutely stunning scenes.

Overall this season was a sophomore slump, that has left me feeling a little disappointed.

Quite possibly one of the most boring season finales I've seen. The characters are basically all over the place at this point. I debated skipping this episode entirely and truth be told, if I did, it would've been inconsequential.

Why the show runners felt the need to deviate from the source material so much is beyond me. What they failed to realize for this season, was that perhaps the most compelling story, was the actual story! The first season did an amazing job at wiping away the bad stain the ending of Game of Thrones left when it ended. The second season, on the other hand, with exception of maybe 2 or 3 episodes, unfortunately reminded us of what happens when you abandon the source material.

I'm not quite sure how they've achieved it but the showrunners have somehow made a story about a war between dragons, extremely tedious and boring.

The last few episodes have been slow and you could have condensed everything we learnt into a couple of scenes, but I let that go because I thought it was leading up to a satisfying finale, alas that was not the case, and rather than progressing the plot we get characters teleporting to have pointless conversations, multiple scenes in Essos with characters nobody cares about, and just when it finally looks like something interesting is about to happen, the episode ends.

This show desperately needs new showrunners who will stop trying to turn it into a soap opera, I feel they completely miss the point of A song of ice and fire, in that there are no real good guys.