Hey youtubers it’s Charlie, yesterday in my episode 4 review I asked you to submit
all of your questions about all the big changes to the books and the big reveal at the end.
So I picked 10 of them to answer in this video with one bonus question.
Real quick though, congratulations to Noah Lieberman.
You’re the winner of the giveaway this week.
I’ll be dm’ing you on your channel for details.
The next round will start when I post my episode 5 review.
If you’re just now finding me every week for my bigger videos like Game of Thrones,
Arrow or Doctor Who I post Q&A bonus videos where I answer you guys directly in a video.
Be sure to subscribe to get everything.
It’s just a fun way to dig a little deeper on something when they do crazy stuff like
they did last night.
So let’s answer some questions.
Careful for spoilers if you haven’t seen the episode yet.
Here we go.
Question 1 - Blake Targaryen asks where are the dragons kept when we’re not seeing them
next to Daenerys?
They basically hunt for themselves at this point.
So instead of riding around in those crates like they did when they were little they fly
free all the time.
So if they’re not right there with her, just assume they’re killing large animals.
They’ll be back soon, there are a few shots in the trailers that haven’t happened yet.
They just save money for other CG shots by not using them in every episode.
I actually really like the designs of them this season.
George RR Martin even posted some artwork for a full size Balerion that’s going to
be in the new World of Ice and Fire book this winter.
Look at the scale.
That’s probably how big Drogon is going to get.
Question 2 - Chris Todd asks if Locke takes the Night’s Watch Oath and ends up completing
his mission to kill Bran and Jon Snow and then returns to Bolton, wouldn’t he be branded
a deserter and sentenced to death?
Yes totally, but that’s assuming that Roose Bolton upholds the law and he looks like he
doesn’t care about justice.
So if Locke were to be successful in his mission and head back to Bolton, the only way he’d
face the chopping block like the brother Ned Stark beheaded in season 1,is if one of the
more honorable houses caught him.
Right now I’m going to say that there aren’t a whole lot of those in power.
And the only way you’d know someone was a brother of the Night’s Watch is if he
told you or he was wearing the Black.
So all Locke has to do is change clothes.
I don’t think he’s going to be successful though.
I think either Bran or Jon Snow or hopefully a White Walker will kill him.
Question 3 - Raquel Braga asks what’s the difference between White Walkers and the blue
eyed people that come back from the dead?
The White Walkers are living beings and the undead people, called wights, are re-animated
corpses.
The White Walkers practice necromancy, so they find dead bodies or they kill people,
then turn them into zombies that obey their commands.
Even though we watched that baby get turned into a White Walker, we still haven’t seen
a White Walker raise someone from the dead.
I’m sure the show will do that in an episode eventually.
Question 4 - Soraya asks Are you happy about all the changes and how they are changing
character's arcs?﻿
I think it’s a little strange but I don’t mind.
They’re still good storytellers.
The interesting thing we should be talking about is how these changes are going to affect
what happens way way later ni the story.
George RR Martin was using the term Butterfly Effect to describe what was happening with
the show.
They kill or don’t kill a certain character in season 1 or bring a new character on and
it means they have to change the story later to accomodate things.
He was basically setting us up for a time when the show becomes unrecognizable from
the books.
But they still operate based on the original character arcs.
So even though the order of events might change or where characters physically travel, like
Bran being at Craster’s now.
Their character development will stay the same.
Like all of the mega major events will still be the same.
It’s just the way characters get there that’s changing.
In the case of that end moment with the White Walkers too.
That’s something that was probably going on during Book 2 and 3, but Martin just never
wrote in.
So chronologically they didn’t spoil Winds of Winter or anything.
They just chose to show us a part of Westeros that Martin didn’t focus on.
So they could always end up doing the same thing for other characters and places too.
Be prepared for that.
Question 5 - Trafalgar Law asks Do you think that one of the white walkers seen in this
episode was Coldhands?﻿
No, the White Walker with the horns on his head or crown was the Night’s King.
In the mythology of the books he was the 13th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.
That was like 8,000 years ago, close to the time when the Wall was first built.
After the last great battle with the White Walkers.
The story goes that he was out on patrol North of The Wall and met a woman who looked kind
of like the bride of Frankenstein and fell in love with her.
When he had sex with her he supposedly lost his soul and looked like we saw him on the
show.
It implies that by giving himself to her he lost his soul and she turned him into a white
walker.
Then he went on to enslave a giant portion of the Night’s Watch brothers and a war
started.
Eventually he was defeated and no one ever heard from him again.
But since that person we just saw was him, it looks like he just retreated and created
a new center of power for the Great Other in the frozen north.
Slowly creating more acolytes, White Walkers, from sacrifices to the Great Other by people
like Craster living in the North
If you look in the background too there’s some visual clues that give him away as the
Night’s King.
It seems like the writers put 12 other white walkers behind him to represent the other
12 Lord Commanders that came before him.
Obviously he only became Lord Commander after they died.
So it’s just an easter egg.
Those people behind him aren’t his predecessors.
Question 6 - Effective Kill asks If white walkers are made from babies, where did the
first white walkers come from?
So we don’t really know anything about the Long Night, that was the first war with the
Great Other.
After that ended Brandon Stark built the wall.
That’s why he’s called Bran the builder.
Like I said, that was about 8,000 years ago.
But it seems like the Night’s King became the first new White Walker after that.
If he really is a White Walker and not something different.
He’s a servant of the Great Other, like the King of their people now.
It’s also possible that the Night’s Queen was the first new one, and she turned him.
Because he was human until she took his soul.
We don’t know a lot about her yet either.
Hopefully the new books will fill in the gaps.
As for all the new White Walkers we see on the show, it looks like the reason it’s
taking them so long to build their army back up is because they’re dependent on sacrificial
babies.
It seems like anyone who worships the Great Other sacrifices their male sons.
But not everyone in the North worships him.
The wildlings mostly worship the gods of the forest.
Right now we don’t know how many white walkers actually exist, but that baby we saw was supposedly
his 99th son.
So there’s at least 100 white walkers if you include the Night’s King.
They all practice magic, so it would be like 100 Melisandre’s.
But some of them obviously are more warriors and some magic users.
Question 7 - Lizzie asks What was the point of Carl drinking wine from Jeor Mormont's
skull?
I think they’re just trying to make Burn Gorman’s character seem every bit as evil
as the White Walkers and Ramsay Snow.
Like just as evil as the other evil characters on the show.
Remember Daenerys’ speech answering Injustice with Justice.
Karl is injustice.
I think they let him go a little bit crazy over the top just because they liked his performance.
Burn Gorman is great and there was a real shakespearean flair he had when he was talking
to the skull.
I feel like that’s a scene all the theater geeks would really enjoy.
You could perform that as a one-person scene at school.
In fact, I will totally give a shout out to anyone who wants to try and recreate that
scene either at home or in front of people.
Starting from his first line up to the point he starts kicking people and puts the skull
down.
Question 8 - Illyas (no avatar) asks Do you think Tommen will stay good or will he also
become as evil as Joffrey?﻿
I think it’s implied that he has a good heart and if he survives to adulthood, he
won’t have the same madness that Joffrey had and that King Aerys developed.
Remember Cersei said that when Joffrey was little he was totally normal, he only started
to go mad as he got older.
And Barristan Selmy said the same thing about King Aerys, Daenerys’ father.
He was normal too until he slowly turned into the Mad King.
I always thought that madness was a result of all the inbreeding, like George RR Martin
was implying that by doing something so taboo, the Targaryens and Cersei and Jaime were being
punished by the gods.
In reality, it’s probably some genetic anomaly having to do with inbreeding, in fact, I was
always amazed that the Targaryens didn’t have more birth defects or quote unquote crazy
Kings.
Supposedly sisterwiving was a totally acceptable thing to do in ancient Valyria.
But they mostly did it to keep the dragon-rider blood magic as strong as possible.
Being a dragon rider was something that was transmitted genetically.
Question 9 - nicnacz asks how are the story changes going to influence Bran's storyline?
I still think he’s going to travel to meet the three-eyed raven eventually.
He’s just on something of a temporary detour.
The finale is titled The Children, so I think the Children of the Forest will get involved
somehow and help him.
They also have the greensight like Bran.
So anytime they pop up it will probably be as part of Bran’s storyline.
No confirmation on when we’ll see them for the first time though.
Question 10 - Avi asks, what’s the difference between the Great Other, the person we saw
at the end and the white walkers?
So the Great Other is the diametric opposite to the Red God.
They’re like a yin and yang supernatural force and they always exist in relationship
to each other.
So when one is in power, the other is not.
Like the way people mythologize the Sun and the Moon.
I suppose the show is making it seem like the Red God is a force for good or light as
Melisandre says, and the Great Other is evil.
But I like to think of them as being relatively neutral.
Like the Red God isn’t a warm fuzzy god, and we don’t really know what the Great
Other wants yet.
So The Great Other is the unseen supernatural force, the person we saw is the Night’s
King, think of him as like the leader of the White Walkers, the other White Walkers are
just normal soldiers.
They all possess a certain level of magical abilities though.
The one we saw just seems more powerful.
and one last Bonus Question - Arman (no avatar) asks When are we going to learn more about
the land of forever winter?
We’re not going to see that place until Winds of Winter.
The Ice Fortress we saw at the end of the episode is at some indeterminate location
in the North.
It could be anywhere.
They don’t specifically say where.
So thank you so much for submitting questions, these are always fun to do.
Especially when crazy stuff happens in the episode.
Because we got a mega white walker scene at the end I think my next bonus video will be
about the Long Night, that last war with the white walkers and the building of the Wall.
Be sure to subscribe to get it.
And feel free to leave me suggestions for future bonus videos.
Right now click here for my review of the episode and click here to learn all about
the Bloodraven.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tomorrow.
High Fives!