In which the foreshadowing piles up.

Posted on June 20, 2016 by alysonmiers

Last night I watched Game of Thrones—the latest Episode 9!!!!—while sober and sick with a cold. I found the experience is basically the same as watching while drunk. Our peeps across the pond should be watching it, just about…now.

I think you’ll find it’s not a great episode, but it is an excellent Episode 9. I did an analysis of the Episode 9 events and their consequences for FanSided earlier this year, and there’s a definite formula that goes with the Nines. It’s not just “big scary stuff happens,” it’s about power shifts and victories with complications. This one fits into that tradition. We can criticize the storytelling choices, but as far as Nines go, this one gets the job done.

But I want to talk about what I think will happen next week.

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Someone is fucking with us.

Posted on April 22, 2016 by alysonmiers

News around Twitter today is the first episode of GoT S6 aired accidentally last night, for some viewers at least, and now there are spoilers posted on Reddit. I’ve seen the supposed spoilers. There’s a brief, poorly written synopsis (like, it refers to Theon as Rick) that’s mostly composed of stuff we know from preview clips, interviews, and entirely inevitable follow-ups to the Season 5 cliffhangers. No mention of the Boltons. No mention of anything happening in Meereen. The new information is logistically questionable at best.

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“I can’t believe they…!”

Posted on April 20, 2016 by alysonmiers

Watchers steered us to this Hollywood Reporter article today, in which several Game of Thrones cast members predict how we the audience will react to the end of “the Red Woman” this Sunday night. We are told to expect the unexpected:

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I doubt this will derail the Hype Train

Posted on April 19, 2016 by alysonmiers

While I’m stuck on hold with Verizon tech support, I might as well do a little thinking aloud, so here’s another bit of last-minute casting news for GoT S6: remember that “sly hapless son of a cruel father” we heard about last year? Last night, we found out what we’re pretty sure is that hapless sly son.

Spoiler alert:

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We’re still not finished getting filming leaks.

Posted on April 17, 2016 by alysonmiers

Sue at Watchers tells us she can now confirm someone else we last saw in Season 3 is coming back for Season 6. I am not surprised. News under the jump:

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“Show them what Lannisters are.”

Posted on April 16, 2016 by alysonmiers

I keep talking about how if I don’t turn out to be seriously wrong about anything in Season 6, I may behave like such a gaping asshole no one will want to deal with me, and I’ll be so pleased with myself I won’t even care.

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I may have embarrassed myself a tiny bit.

Posted on April 13, 2016 by alysonmiers

You may have heard the expression: when you ASSume, you make an ASS of U and ME.

Remember when we got that raft of gorgeous production stills from HBO, and I assumed they were all from the first two episodes? I made that assumption based on certain characters being omitted; somehow I figured that if they were showing us that big a set of photos taken throughout the season, they’d give us at least one instance of each of the major character sets. Since there was no Littlefinger, for example, I figured they were only showing us shots from the first two episodes, and he wasn’t there. No sign of Jorah or Daario? I guess they don’t show up until maybe Ep3.

However. My editor Dan Selcke reported at Winter is Coming that he’d heard from an attentive reader who pointed out something more relevant, which is that many of the photos gave away episode numbers in their file names. The good people at HBO have since altered most of the photos’ file names to take out the episode numbers, but a few are still intact and some sites have posted most of the photos with their previous file names still giving us the relevant information.

With that in mind, it seems that while the production stills are heavy on the first episode, they’re actually spread throughout the first half of the season.

The ones they showed us of Dany camped out with the new khalasar, for example? Those are all labeled EP601.

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Let’s have some clarification on Jaime & Cersei

Posted on April 11, 2016 by alysonmiers

I may be a teensy bit embarrassed that I’m still up and working on this, but, as long as we’re up, I think I’ll put some of the Twincest hype into context.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau answered some questions for a reporter from Access Hollywood last night at the premiere, in a video which is linked here but which I don’t think they’ll let us embed:

'Game Of Thrones' Season 6: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau On Jaime & Cersei's Reunion https://t.co/CbT4O5CznW

— Riverlands Lannister (@alysonmiers) April 11, 2016

I’ll focus on the part about Jaime telling Cersei they’ll take back everything that’s been taken from them. Transcript:

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You know, I consider this a spoiler?

Posted on April 11, 2016 by alysonmiers

It’s a great day to be a Brienne fan. I got two Likes on Twitter from Gwendoline Christie since last night, and we hear some very promising news from the Telegraph regarding the LA Premiere of Season 6. Critic Jane Mulkerrins tell us…and I am putting this under a cut because I think this is substantial enough to count as a SPOILER:

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