Game of thrones beyond the wall plot armor

#Game of thrones beyond the wall plot armor full#

You can't kill Jon or Dany or Tyrion or others because they're the center of the War to Come sure, they were always the clear leads, but now there are no other disposable mains to distract from that.

Of course, this is also the product of Season 7 being the penultimate year we're in the final act and so whereas in the Battle of the Five Kings the plot was a sprawling uncertainty, we know what the true end goal and who its key participants are. Like fellow kill-fest shows Lost and The Walking Dead that loved to proclaim 'nobody is safe', Game of Thrones appears to be too enamored with its characters to truly test them. Seven named characters went beyond the wall on a suicide mission and only the least recognizable or important one bit the ice everyone else got thrown into feigned threat but came out alive. Before him it was Stannis, meaning the last truly essential character to be killed and stay dead was over two years ago. The last major character to be killed was Jon Snow all the way back at the end of Season 5, and that felt like a cheap trick when he was resurrected two episodes later (an early sign of these problems). Read More: Who Died in This WeekвЂ™s Episode of Game of Thrones? Main characters have a plot armor, even when their real armor threatens to drown them. Plenty of people do still die, but they're supporting characters at best (and in 'Beyond the Wall' hitherto unseen red shirts) removed to cut the fat. The skill was in making us think this carefully crafted narrative was random. After all, from a Season 7 perspective, that Ned or Robb were killed is by-the-by we now know they clearly weren't the main characters but pieces of a much bigger whole centered on Jon, Dany and co. But this was still storytelling with a clear purpose.

Characters could be offed in horrific, unjust ways seemingly at random, defying convention and formula. Perhaps the best example - both in what made Thrones great and what it's since lost - is death.В Out of all the ways the showВ told its story, this was the most celebrated.

#Game of thrones beyond the wall plot armor full#

Game of Thrones is a mammoth story full of interconnecting threads of immense subtextual meaning. Imagine if Memento was told in chronological order or Up missed out its tear-jerking opening - you have the same basic plot but the core themes and story arcs are totally different. We often talk about how good narratives are but it's the story - the way a movie/TV show/game is told and the meaning inferred to the plot - that makes it great. You cannot underestimate the power of the telling. Death Is Now Meaningless in Game of Thrones