2016. A simpler time, the year when George RR Martin announced the release of Winds of Winter, which never attained fruition and the advent of the Game of Thrones scripts prolonging their one-year-old movement of straying away from the material to adapt due to lack thereof.
This lead to the inclusion of one of the many literary evils, that of plot armour.
Plot Armor, a seemingly simple phrase which affects the entirety of a story when manifested, the ability of a character to somehow survive all lethality thrown toward them in sheer class, to miraculously not succumb to all the danger that is thrown toward them.
It plays a part in many literary works of fiction, but one work that it has most recently cast itself in is the epic fantasy saga of Game of Thrones.
Ever since the fifth season of the popular HBO series, there has been evident plot armour, but there was one season which took the biscuit.
The critically blackened final season which seemingly brought about many controversies for a good reason that too seemed to have besmirched the build-up provided by the previous seasons in a fashion so peculiar that many couldn’t stand the new supposedly interesting storylines and even petitioned for a remake of the season, which most of us would have wished for.
Amongst the many inconsistencies of the final season stand the fact that Jon Snow was not executed by the Unsullied after Daenerys Targaryen’s murder at his hands, the coming of Brandon Stark to the Iron Throne after he stated he could not be a leader or in his exact words “I can’t be lord of anything” after Sansa Stark reminded him of his lineage as Ned Stark’s only surviving true son.
The prophecy by Maggie the Frog which stated that Cersei would be killed by the Vallonquar went to literal rubble when she and Jaime were killed by falling bricks whilst trying to escape King’s Landing after Daenerys’ plunders it, and last but not least the Azor Ahai or Prince that was promised build-up by Melisandre who first believed that it was Stannis and then after his death travelled north due to the fact that she now believed that Jon Snow would end the Long Night when it came.
Spoiler Alert: David Benioff and D.B Weiss apparently didn’t want to go with the obvious, so they just threw that arc out of the bag and gave the moment to Arya Stark who eventually kills the Night King but had no connection to the Azor Ahai affair for which Melisandre legitimately resurrected Jon Snow, a post that Ser Pounce, Tommen Baratheon’s cat had a stronger claim to.
Amongst the other inconsistencies lie Daenerys’ forgetting about the Iron Fleet and getting one of her dragons killed when she was reminded of it mere minutes ago in a scene prior, also on this list is her apparent transition to madness when King’s Landing’s bells ring as to surrender. She disregards it and instead murders everybody.
That’s an excellent way to ruin a fan favourite, talking about fan favourites, Arya Stark’s training with the faceless men and Jaqen H’Ghar’s literal existence in the house of black and white has gone to ash except her making a pie for Walder Frey and then using his face to avenge those who died in the Red Wedding.
Now comes the true crime of plot armour, if it weren’t present in this season it might have been slightly more fathomable, which it wasn’t. As previously mentioned Jon Snow should be dead, instead he joins the Night’s Watch which is essentially a home for him, Arya Stark’s end should have been at the hands of the Night King alongside Bran Stark if they were to omit the Azor Ahai prophecy and lastly why exactly is a drunk pirate called Euron and his pregnant blonde mistress Cersei the final battle rather than the man who raises dead people and has an army of thousands of dead people even when Cersei who was promised two thousand elephants by the Golden Company which the show didn’t really have the CGI budget for, so they never turned up.
Hopefully, we can expect a lot more from the spin-off shows, prequels and then two remaining books which are in the works.
Crimson Skies 