Game of Thrones Season 4 (SPOILERS WITHIN)

One who wanted to ingratiate himself with the queen regent.

As for the episode last night, I'm not sure what to make of it. Pretty good, much better than the previous episode, but confusing. Some bits, like Tyrion killing Shae and his father as noted above, make little sense compared to how they played out in the books. I also think that the whole Jon Snow storyline has been poorly handled on the show, which seemed to borrow pieces from the book without ever having used the set up for those pieces. Some radical departures from the books with respect to secondary characters, which is fine, but serves to really highlight how secondary those characters are when all the main characters and storylines are on pace with the books. Weirdly, I really liked how Arya was handled in this episode even though I was disappointed by all the characters who interacted with her.

Just how the hell DID Stannis get his whole army north of the wall? And how did he know exactly when the wildlings would be there and when to attack them?

Good riddance to Tywin.

Two down, Cersei left to go.

Well, we knew Stannis wanted to get to the wall since the last episode of last season. He was just flat broke and had no men. Remember when Aemon sent a raven to all the Lords of Westeros about the Wildings and White Walkers and Mellisandre told him that the battle was to be at the wall? Once he got the money, I knew he was headed there and was mildly surprised when he didn't make it there by last episode.

If you've ever seen a map of Westeros, you can see the wall extends from the Frostfang Mountains in the west across the continent to Eastwatch by The Sea. Braavos, where we last saw Stannis, is directly east across the Narrow Sea of there. If he had a shitload of boats, he could just sail and dock just North of the wall and make his way there.

PS...

Ok, a quick google shows that Braavos is directly east of The Vale and somewhat southeast of Eastwatch by the Sea. But the point is that he's much closer to the wall at Braavos than he would be at Dragonstone.

No epilogue! No Jon Snow plot! What a waste.

Frankly, it was a good call not to have an epilogue. There was no set-up for Lady Stoneheart, and leaving her out was the right decision anyway.

He rode through a gate.

I thought the only open gate was Castle Black.

There should be three manner gates.

Anybody mention that in the show, or is that a "Ooooh, I read the boooooks" thing.

I dunno if they mentioned it in the show. It would have been an aside if it were. The other two manned castles are on both coasts. They are not very manned.

Sam also re-enters the south side of the wall via a tunnel in an abandoned castle.

Edit: They were mentioned in the show:
http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Eastwatch-by-the-Sea
http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/The_Shadow_Tower

So is Cersei going to let The Mountain be turned into Bane or something?

Nope.

So since Stannis' army came from two directions, then each half of the army would have had to come thru one of the coastal castles, 700 miles apart, and meet at exactly the same moment at just the right time, in perfect battle formation, for that dramatic, timely entrance.

I don't think anything else in the show strains credibility as much as that idea!

How many manned gates are there?

They all came from the same direction. It's just they split up so they could hit them from both sides.

I'm confused about the sizes of these armies. It seemed that Stannis beat the Northlings with vastly superior numbers. If so, why are we speculating he'll need them for his army, and where did he get that superior force in the first place? The money comes from Braavos, but who are these well-trained and equipped soldiers?

Cersi is a lot of things but she loves her children.

I think Tywin knew at some level but didn't want to think about his grand-kids being a product of incest. For all his talk of family he's failed his family. If the Lannister name survives it won't be through his family but another Lannister.

I don't think Tyrion would have killed Tywin if it wasn't for the fact that he found Shae in Tywin's bed. I think that's what finally pushed him over the edge.

Vary's.... smart move to turn around and get on the ship Bet he's pissed though.... he wasn't able to pack.

Brienne and Hound. Great fight.

Danery's story was boring. I guess they are setting things up for season five.

Jon Snow. Didn't kneel. Saved Mance though because knowing Stannis he would have cut off Mance's legs to make him kneel.

It's more like Mance Rayder said enough and threw down his arms. Mance could have put up a bigger fight but like he told Jon his main goal is to hide south of the wall to protect his people. Also Stannis needs Mance Rayder's army because Stannis is no longer fighting to be King at this point. He's put that on the back burner. Stannis is at the wall because Melisandre told him that's where the real fight will be. All the fighting on the throne will mean nothing if the Other's come South and attack like they did thousands of years ago (which lead to the wall being built in the first place).

I dunno, I saw an overhead view of two forces coming from opposite directions. I may have missed something of course. Where did the split force go around? Behind the Wlidling's camp through the dense forest?

You dunno?

The overhead shots show it clearly.

Stannis and his army group A are riding along the wall in a westerly direction. They turn north towards Mance Rayder. Stannis other army, group B is riding west as well but further north from the wall. They turn south towards Mance Rayder. Army group A and B meet in the middle. Where the split up I don't know but the forest isn't as dense as you make it out to be. They are close to the wall and over the thousands of years the NightWatch used to cut the trees down for a long way in order to see anyone approaching. It's only in the last few decades that they stopped cutting trees down because of a lack of men. And yes that was mentioned in the show.

We also know Stannis was riding west because on the map his forces, castles and access to Bravvos are all on the eastern side of Westeros. Which means he and his forces had to land in Eastwatch-by-the-Sea (the other castle manned by the crows) and head west towards Castle Black.

To echo and build upon what others said, part of it was that Mance was surprised, part of it was that (as I believe was said on the show) the Wildlings were not trained and disciplined soldiers and thus are not much of a match for some (and obviously, if anything is true about Stannis, it's that he would generally have battle-hardened soldiers on his side), part of it was Mance had lost his desire to fight and just wanted to get his people to safety. It's not necessarily true that Stannis had superior numbers.

When Stannis and Davos went to the Iron Bank, I forget how many men he said he had, but I want to estimate it was something like 4k who were still loyal to him. We obviously for budget reasons didn't see the sum total of those men, but the men we saw could just have been Stannis's loyal folks from Dragonstone. Alternatively, Stannis could have employed mercenaries with the money he got from the Iron Bank.

Vaguely remember that when Show!Jon had been captured by the wildlings, they asked him about the castles on the wall, and Jon answered that there were three manned castles (although he lied about how well each was manned).

That's why I didn't like the Iron Bank scene with Stannis.

Especially this. The free tribes are small compared to any of the Seven Kingdoms. It took the combined might of all of them just to think of challenging the Wall and even then the small Nights Watch was able to hold them off until Stannis came to the rescue.

They are fierce fighters as individuals but they are not trained like the armies in the Seven Kingdoms. It would be easy to rout them with the right tactics.

They also don't have access to horses like the Seven Kingdoms do. Horses are important in warfare.

Okee doke, thanks. Must've not been watching too closely.

The one thing I hope though is that HBO deals with the next season better then Martin dealt with the books.

The stories of several characters just crawl to a slow dead mans pace...... like zombies.....

Three manned castles/fortesses (Castle Black, Eastwatch, and the Shadowtower). One (main) gateway through the Icewall at Castle Black. One (so far) hidden tunnel (the one Sam went through).

IIRC, the gate where Sam met Bran was called the Nightfort. That's the tunnel where Bran went North.

Night fort was not manned though.