So it’s been like a year or so. It’s not too late to weigh in on a series that I didn’t watch after the first episode, right?
Yeah. While all of you out there were like “Season 5 is just too much for us, we gotta abandon this” an others were like “Oh my God! The show runners ruined this with Season 8” I realized there were serious problems in Episode 1.
I’m like the hipster’s hipster or something.
That said, while I have not watched the show, I have absorbed media around the show. While there are a lot of criticisms throughout, I want to focus on one thing with the ending … so Spoilers ahead for a show no one really talks about anymore.
Planting and Pay-off do not matter if you don’t place proper reminders.
You see, it was planted that young Bran was going to become a king in the first episode (first book for the readers). If you paid attention, you might recall Ned having a conversation with Bran. When Ned has to punish a boy rather harshly, he doesn’t tell Bran, “I did it because I’m right, don’t question me.” He explains it to him the way that you explain your actions to someone you’re teaching to be in charge.
He talks to Bran like Bran is going to be a king.
But Bran isn’t even going to be in charge of the North. He’s Ned’s youngest child. He isn’t going to be the one likely to inherit Lordship. He’s certainly not in line to be king of Westeros.
This is foreshadowing something that is going to happen later. This lesson that Bran learns from his father is going to be important in some way.
Now it foreshadows a lot. It foreshadows that Ned is willing to do what he thinks is right, even if it makes him look bad. See: claiming John Snow was his bastard son instead of the legit son of his sister. It foreshadows that this sense of duty extends to his life. See: investigating John Arryn’s death at the cost of his own life. These are things we see through the eyes of someone learning, so that as the audience we can be told this in a way that works narratively.
It also foreshadows that yes, Bran is going to be king. When I learned what D&D did with the ending, I was like, “Okay, yeah, no I get that Bran was going to become King of Westeros. Martin kinda told us that in the first book, if we paid attention.” I obviously did.
But … but … from what I know of the show, from what people describe of the character of Bran … there is 0 reminder that this is going to take place. Martin plants it and D&D keep the plant in the show. But from what I gather from how people reacted and, again, how people have talked about the character of Bran previously, there is little by way of Reminder that Bran can, should, or might become a king.
The Rule of 3 doesn’t exist because it is a hard rule. It exists because when you have a long narrative, you need to remind your audience of what you planted. In a short story, you can get away with planting at an early point of the story and paying off at the end. Your reader will remember the planting that was done because they just read that passage. Same in a single 30-minute or 1-hour TV episode. You can plant early and just pay-off later. Once you leave the 1st hour of a movie or the planting episode of a series, though, you need more.
You have to do something to remind your audience that something was planted.
You remind them as often as you need to in order to build up to the reveal. It can be 1 reminder or half a dozen or more. I think at minimum the show needed to have 1 reminder a season that lessons of Kingship had been planted in Bran. It needed to build with his character in a way that would be revealing, rewarding, or satisfyingly unexpected.
But D&D didn’t have time for that. They had Star Wars to get to apparently.