Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice & Fire, one of the greatest shows of all time… has come to an end. On this episode of “The World’s Best Podcast” we give you our first reactions to the historic series finale, “The Iron Throne”! A fitting title for the final installment of the series.
We recorded this episode almost immediately after watching “The Iron Throne”. I’m sure, after watching the episode again, we’ll pick up on things we may have missed on our first viewing. Over time, our opinions of the series finale, the final season, or even the series as a whole, may change and evolve. However, on this episode of The World’s Best Podcast, you’re getting our gut reactions, right after watching the end of one of our favorite television series of all time.
Was the show able to deliver a satisfying final episode? What the fate of all our favorite characters? Who LIVED?! Who DIED?! Get our take on this CAN’T MISS episode! Listen here or subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher, and iTunes:
If you’re not caught up on Game of Thrones, I’m going to be spoiling some stuff for you, so please leave now if you don’t want that.
This season has had some received some major flack from audiences for all sorts of issues, and obviously I don’t agree with everyone, but I wanted to talk about a couple that I don’t like. I guess, I’ll start with the big one, the title of this article kind of hints at. Daenerys turning crazy/bad/however else we want to categorize her. I didn’t dislike this until the moment in this week’s episode when the bells are ringing, and she looks over at the Red Keep, and decides to lay waste on the people of King’s Landing.
You see, while Daenerys has never shied away from being violent to achieve her goals, there was always some sense of morality to it, and she was never casual with innocents. Up until this point, the fact that she’s burned the Iron Fleet, and the guard towers, and as much as she has destroyed, makes sense, and largely is the right thing to do, to avoid unnecessary death of innocents.
Then she stops, sitting atop the final remaining dragon, and looks down, the bells are ringing, and it is clear that she has won, and she snaps and proceeds to go further. Now, if she’d done everything and never stopped, never paused, and was just caught up in it, and therefore didn’t notice the bells, or the peace, or anything else and got carried away, this would be a more satisfying example of her going too far, and perhaps being the threat Varys died to stop (which I thought was played excellently). Also if she had that moment of pause, and then flew over and destroyed the Red Keep, I could get that too. But she pauses, looks around, sees she has won and unleashes fury on the innocent, which is out of character. It’s not getting carried away, or going too far as many of her past behavior has shown, it was her snapping, and it is out of character for her.
I also think that if it had been more along the lines of her getting carried away and going too far, even way too far, this would allow the necessary characters to say “oh we need Jon Snow to sit on the Iron Throne” without the writers betraying the character of Daenerys to justify that final play that it seems is coming.
I mentioned Varys, and I think Varys is a prime example of how the characters should be thinking about Daenerys, his last words are “I hope I’m wrong about her,” (or something similar) but he honestly believes he is not. That’s because she’s riding the edge of righteous and power-hungry, and he is forced to make a decision unsure if he’s correct, it makes his decisions more bold. Now if Jon realizes she’s a mad-Queen, and rebels against her, it will not be a bold act, but rather the obvious one for someone who will always risk his life for what’s right. It takes away the ‘risk of being wrong.’
Now, there were plenty of moments in addition to Varys’s death which I thought were well executed, I liked the final battle with the Hound and the Mountain, and I thought that Arya leaving because Cersai is dead regardless of what happens, worked really well.
But there were also moments in which it seemed like they tried to eat their cake and have it too. Jaime could have gone with Brienne (I didn’t really want to see that, but once it happened I liked it) or he could go back to Cersai, but I think having him do both really cut through both. That’s ultimately what I think the problem with this season is (it’s the worst of GoT, but it’s still pretty damn good otherwise): they want to both shit and get off the pot at the same time, and they spent years elaborately creating characters and beats, and now they’re trying to tie them all up far to quickly.
Sunday night HBO aired the penultimate episode of their critically acclaimed, ground breaking, hit series Game of Thrones. The final episode of the epic television saga airs 5/19/2019 on HBO. On this week’s episode of The World’s Best Podcast, we first briefly recap last week’s Game of Thrones episode 4, “The Last of The Starks” and then we go on a SPOILER FILLED deep dive into episode 5, “The Bell”, with a special appearance by frequent podcast quest co-hits Paul Sr!
Without going into the spoiler territory, “The Bell” was… eventful to say the least. After watching the episode, you will definitely want to walk through all of the big moments with us. There’s just one. more. episode. left here, folks! It’s been nearly 10 years in the making, but HBO’s adaptation of A Song of Ice & Fire is coming to an end. Let’s hope things end on a high note. Listen here or subscribe on Stitcher, Spotify, and iTunes:
With Avengers: Endgame opening over the past weekend and Game of Thrones airing the long awaited and epic battle between our heroes and The Night King’s army, this has been one of the biggest weekends in pop culture history. The Infinity Saga and A Song of Ice and Fire are both reaching their epic conclusions. The already mega popular film franchise and hit television series are both coming to a close, so interest is at an all time high.
We hadn’t planned on recording a podcast for this episode of Game of Thrones. Even though it’s likely this is the biggest episode in terms of scale and battle sequences that we will ever see in the series. I can’t see them doing anything in the last three episodes that will top what we saw in episode 3 “The Long Night“. We covered the first two episodes last week and we had just posted our Avengers: Endgame review. However, as Paul Sr. and I began watching the episode, just for fun, we turned on the microphone and started recording a very, very rough and off the cuff audio commentary. It’s not nearly as smooth or polished as our other episodes because we really did this on a whim, so just consider this a bonus podcast from World’s Best Media this week.
So, if you want to listen to two idiots on the edge of their seats as they watch the biggest battle ever filmed (which is actually true and that includes feature films), give a listen to this sloppy, podcast commentary of the 3rd episode of Game of Thrones: The Final Season, “The Long Night”. I think you’ll find it pretty damn entertaining! Listen here or subscribe on Stitcher, Spotify and iTunes: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17777002
It’s finally here! The epic ending to “A Song Of Ice And Fire”! On this week’s episode of The World’s Best Podcast, Paul Sr. and I do a SPOILER filled, deep dive, breakdown of Episodes 1 & 2, “Winterfell” and “A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms”! From Game of Thrones: The Final Season! Listen here or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17715325
On this week’s episode of The World’s Best Podcast, I review the new DC superhero movie SHAZAM! starring Zachary Levi.Shazam may not be well known, but at one time his comic book series was outselling Superman. DC may not be knocking it out of the park with their movies like Marvel, but they’re on the right track. With missteps like Suicide Squad and Justice League out of the way, DC has built up a solid roster of stand alone movies with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and now Shazam. SPOILERS are discussed in this episode, but I cover the characters history and some other interesting topics before breaking down the movie.
Listen to the episode here or subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes:
First of all I feel I have to apologize yet again for being a little late in putting out our latest podcast. It’s been a busy month, but we try to get episodes of The World’s Best Podcast on a more or less weekly schedule at a minimum, if not more. So I really appreciate your patience with our unorthodox podcast release schedule over the last few weeks and I want to reassure you that the release schedule will be getting back to normal. As a small consolation, this week will see the release of not one, but TWO pretty great episodes of the Podcast (today’s episode and our Captain Marvel SPOILER-Filled Deep Dive Review)! I am particularly excited about our upcoming Captain Marvel episode! Not only because I am very psyched to see the movie, but some of the concepts and elements that we will see in this film, have the potential to open up so many different interesting possibilities for the MCU! Much in the same way Guardians of The Galaxy and Doctor Strange did.
Anyway back to today’s episode! Most excitingly, HBO FINALLY dropped a full trailer for the EPIC final season of Game of Thrones premiering on April 14. I’ve posted the trailer below if you want to check it out (As if you haven’t already watched it a dozen times 😉). Needless to say, we were super excited to talk about it and we needed to do a breakdown of the trailer right away. I really dug it, the trailer was exciting and just substantive enough, without giving too much away.
We also discuss the trailers for Dark Phoenix and Hellboy released earlier this week, we touch upon some predictions for Captain Marvel, and sadly we wrap things up on a somber note. With a tribute to the untimely passing this week of beloved actor, Luke Perry. Who was taken from us too soon, passing away at the age of 52. Despite the sad ending, as usual we had a lot of laughs recording this episode and we think you will too! So please enjoy! Listen here or subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes:
HBO released some very cool character posters today that feature about 20 different Game of Thrones characters sitting on The Iron Throne. With all this promotional material coming out, hopefully we’ll get a real trailer soon. I first found out about these over at EW.com. I put my favorite posters below, but if you want to see all 20 you can follow the Twitter link here: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1100531893244739585
A new Rorschach? Or the same old Rorschach in a retelling of the same tale?
It can be maddening waiting for all of our most anticipated shows and movies to premiere, and 2019 has a lot of content coming out that’s worth waiting for. HBO dropped a new teaser today promoting it’s upcoming 2019 slate. They have a stacked fucking deck for the coming year! It’s not much in terms of new content, but there are some juicy tidbits and we’ll take what we can get. This teaser gives us oh so brief glances at Game of Thrones: The Final Season, Watchmen (The Live Action Quasi-Sequel Series), His Dark Materials based on Phillip Pullman’s beloved series of novels, the long awaited Deadwood film, the documentary series The Case Against Adnan Syed, Big, Little, Lies Season 2, & more! Watch it here:
Like I said, far too brief, but certainly enough to get you excited! Plus, I found some cool promo images as well. This is just from HBO! We have awesome TV and films coming out in 2019 from Netflix, Amazon Prime, DC UNIVERSE Streaming, Marvel, Disney, Star Wars, & more! Completely contrary to what that dipshit Bill Maher has to say, Goddammit it’s a great time to be a fan!
I haven’t been a big fan of the Academy Awards for years now, but I must admit I was very excited when Black Panther received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. This is the first time a comic book film, a superhero film has been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Even though I don’t consider the Oscars to be the standard by which excellence in film should necessarily be judged, it’s still a great feeling of validation to a lifelong comic book fan. Not to mention that it’s all too rare to see a big budget superhero film with a predominantly black cast that, as put so well by Marc Bernardin in his Entertainment Weekly cover story, Black Panther is a movie about celebrating “Excellence”. Which is all too rare. This movie’s cultural impact cannot be understated. Even putting all of that aside, Black Panther is just a great fucking movie that absolutely deserves this recognition.
The cast of Black Panther after their win for Best Ensemble Cast at The Screen Actors Guild Awards.
So, With Black Panther nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, on this episode we wanted to acknowledge that historic accomplishment as well as talk about other comic book films that deserved Oscar noms. We also discuss some of the upcoming DC films, like Birds of Prey. To top it all off, we try to figure out (if you could pick ANY character from ANY comic book universe) who would have the best chance in a face off against Thanos with The Infinity Gauntlet! All this and so much more on this episode of “The World’s Best Podcast”! Enjoy! Listen here or subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes:
World’s Best Media 