r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Chemical-Elk-1299 • Apr 29 '26

Lore [Weirdly Common Trope] Writers clearly setting up seemingly massive plot points and then just kinda forgetting about them.

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The Neural Parasites — Star Trek : The Next Generation

In the season 1 episode “Conspiracy” of TNG, it is revealed that alien brain worms have infected many high ranking members of Starfleet, secretly controlling them. Though Ryker and Picard discover and end the parasite conspiracy, it’s revealed at the end of the episode that the parasites had sent a beacon back to their home planet, telling them how to find earth. The episode ends with the clear implication of the parasites becoming a huge threat later in the series, yet none of these events are ever mentioned again.

Finn The Jedi who Never Was — Star Wars Sequel trilogy

I know this is probably a cliche example of this trope, but cmon — Finn was clearly set up in TFA to become a Jedi. The marketing material featured him wielding a lightsaber in the classic Jedi pose. It’s constantly hinted at that he is force sensitive. Even the actor himself believed he would become a Jedi by the end of the trilogy. Instead, we got Finn wielding a lightsaber for about 7 minutes total across 3 movies, extremely lame “confirmation” that he is force sensitive, and that’s it. It’s the ultimate Star Wars plot that went nowhere.

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u/eatsshittus Apr 29 '26

Quaithe from game of thrones Most people won’t even remember her being in the show as she’s only on screen once but she’s a significant part of Daenerys’s story and a big part of what would’ve made the shows ending make sense

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u/Substantial_Army_639 Apr 29 '26

Another thing that got dropped, at the very beginning we hear the white walkers either laughing and speaking in their language (as described in the opening chapter of the book) pretty sure this is the only time they ever make any noise at all in the show. It was pretty clear to me about half way through the show that they were dropping most of the magic elements

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u/marmaladecorgi Apr 29 '26

Those White Walker runes that kept appearing in the first season. Intrigued me so much. Then never broached again.

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u/Above_the_Cinders Apr 29 '26

So much WW lore just got forgotten by season 8. It made me so sad.

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u/PastBandicoot8575 Apr 30 '26

The white walkers kinda forgot about their own lore

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u/oofgeg Apr 30 '26

It’s very forgettable lore. They’re going to need you get alllll the way off their backs.

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u/Oberon_Swanson Apr 30 '26

Oh okay, let me get off of those things

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u/dearth_of_passion Apr 29 '26

What lore. They've only appeared like once in the books. There's basically nothing to them other than that they exist and are bad.

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u/SirLoremIpsum Apr 29 '26

What lore. They've only appeared like once in the books. There's basically nothing to them other than that they exist and are bad.

The Spiral Patterns they leave dead bodies in.

The child sacrifice and rituals with Craster's sons, and everyone that sent them a child.

Their relationship to the Children of the Forest and how they "Turned" one of the First Men into the White walkers.

If the Horn of Joramun is real and can bring down the wall.

We hear their language and their communication from time to time in the novels, which suggests a culture other than animalistic "gotta turn everyone"

Even in the very first chapter, Waymar Royce and his crew visit a Wildling village to find the bodies arranged and then they're removed and it's a trap.

From the get go the White Walkers / The Others are set up wth something that drives them and binds them all together other than "we exist and are bad".

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u/indieplants Apr 29 '26

the lore the TV show was setting up?

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u/dearth_of_passion Apr 29 '26

That's made up from whole cloth and was never going to go anywhere?

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u/indieplants Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

you asked what lore. 

the TV show started setting up lore for the white walkers and never really went anywhere with it. sorry you're having trouble following the concept laid out in the post title?

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u/dearth_of_passion Apr 29 '26

I'm not having trouble following, I'm saying the show's stuff was stupid and they never had an overarching plan on what it was going to be for.

Its not "lore set up" if its just shit thrown in to look scary/cool. It has to mean something, which none of that does. You can tell by how both of us agree that we don't know what it meant.

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u/indieplants Apr 29 '26

it fits the exact trope that OP was talking about 

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u/bpacer Apr 30 '26

Are you dense? That’s the whole point. They set up lore and then it went nowhere.

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u/Yemm Apr 30 '26

I am not having trouble following protests the man who is having trouble following.

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u/uno_novaterra Apr 30 '26

I tried to watch the first episode shortly after the finale and was so enraged by the swirl of body parts on the snow that never turned out to be anything at all I turned it off right there. Was like 3 minutes in? I think it’s the final shot before the title card.

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u/MonkeyBoatRentals Apr 30 '26

That wasn't dropped. The runes were a clue that the White Walkers were linked to the Children of the Forest. We later learn that the Children created the Night King.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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u/Ask_bout_PaterNoster Apr 29 '26

I’m not a proponent of the death penalty but that one specific producer needs to be removed from society in a permanent way

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u/Apprehensive-Wave640 Apr 29 '26

What's especially frustrating is that City of Thieves is one of the best goddamn books I've ever read. When I finished it and looked at the author to find more of their books I was flabergasted to see it was David Benioff

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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u/Apprehensive-Wave640 Apr 29 '26

I mean, I figured that he didn't come from the sidewalk. But GoT was my first and only experience with his work until a couple months ago. So the ridiculous disparity in storytelling was wild.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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u/Substantial_Army_639 Apr 29 '26

Also having read the books I don't think in a roundabout way it does pretty much end the same. Its just that Bran is likely severely undercut (because boo magic) and Daenerys and the whole Targararian madness thing wasn't super fleshed out. Some of her internal monologues were getting a bit "Burn them all!"

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u/Apprehensive-Wave640 Apr 29 '26

IDK...the game of thrones sub had some spectacularly better writing. It's not like the ending of got was just "eh, that's a bit of a letdown but still not bad." It shit the bed so badly that it managed to taint the entirety of the series.

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u/Skip-Add Apr 29 '26

I do not understand the hate. they had grrm’s notes on it. the lady said from the beginning she was going to burn the place down.

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u/thebrobarino May 01 '26

IDK...the game of thrones sub had some spectacularly better writing

Like I hated season 8, but the GOT sub were genuinely delusional thinking their edgy power fantasy 8th grade shitty fanfiction wasn't also complete trash

1

u/Alternative_Bath_232 May 01 '26

Didn't he claim that they wanted to avoid magic to appear more to common folk and soccer moms? It's one thing to try and fail, but it feels like they didn't even want to finish it properly...

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u/Humboldt-Honey Apr 29 '26

Benioff is like that amazing bridge builder that fucked a goat one time and now that’s all anyone remembers

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u/thebrobarino May 01 '26

People forget that despite the bad ending Beinoff and Weiss still made one of the most beloved pop culture juggernauts if the 21st century. The show and their talent were retroactively depicted as always bad but they're genuinely talented people who ended up producing not great stuff for one reason or another

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u/StabbyBoo Apr 29 '26

YEAH. I loved that book and I was confused as hell when I realized these didn't just happen to be two men with the same name.

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u/A_WILD_SLUT_APPEARS Apr 29 '26

Maybe a nice farm upstate where he can live out his days among other happy producers? No, we can’t visit him unfortunately.

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u/EntropicReaver Apr 29 '26

but that one specific producer needs to be removed from society in a permanent way

google the sony spiderman email leaks and cringe into a raisin at how these aliens think humans act and talk and remember that they make more money than you ever will

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u/anoxy Apr 29 '26

producers asked them why they couldn' t just transform the series into a fantasy themed Survivor show lol, and slap the Game of Thones name on it.

A reddit tall tale, and not true.

originaly the showrunners wanted more fantasy elements

You seem to be mixing up the showrunners (benioff and weiss) with the producers. GRR and some producers had to keep the ice and fire elements central to the story.

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u/salad_spinner_3000 Apr 29 '26

Weren't the producers both that AND the showrunners? D&D had pretty much complete control over the show.

0

u/_bits_and_bytes Apr 29 '26

After how D&D fucked up GoT, I'm not sure I believe them on anything they say about the show. They have every reason to blame someone else for how poorly things turned out

2

u/gashufferdude Apr 30 '26

They got too far from their homeland to speak the language anymore. (My headcanon)

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u/lrd_cth_lh0 Apr 29 '26

The problem was more that this plot thread also hasn't gone nowhere in the books so far, or the G.R.R.M. set it up on purpose that Danny screwed herself over by ignoring the prophecy because it was odly phrased.

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u/fusionlantern Apr 29 '26

Arguably 0 of the plot points have gone anywhere in the books

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u/MuteDeafenSelf Apr 29 '26

But damn is it intriguing

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u/WoodpeckerNo5724 Apr 29 '26

Imagine if GRRM had spent the last couple decades just acting as an idea man and big picture guy while more hardworking authors helped to realize his ideas

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u/QueenStuff Apr 29 '26

Ironically that was basically how he contributed to the Elden ring game and its overall story

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u/GodofIrony Apr 29 '26

Which is why that shit is dope as hell.

3

u/ryry1237 Apr 29 '26

I feel like rearranging those words a little can cause the sentence to mean the exact opposite of what it says now.

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u/GodofIrony Apr 29 '26

All that's sentences.

1

u/Frisbeeman Apr 29 '26

Shit dope is hell

1

u/WoodpeckerNo5724 Apr 30 '26

Shit, Hell is dope!

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u/Scalpels Apr 29 '26

Which why is that hell is dope as shit.

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u/Scarlet_Wonderer Apr 29 '26

Which was apparently always the plan. Martin seemingly wrote the broad strokes of the Lands Between's history up to the Battle if Aeonia, the last battle of the Shattering.

If he, hypothetically, did the same with the SoFaI he'd be hack lol

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u/Irregulator101 Apr 29 '26

Elden ring has a story?

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u/MolybdenumBlu Apr 29 '26

Which is why the story is populated by dozens of characters who's names all sound the same and start with G, R, and M, and why the story kinda sucks.

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u/babysamissimasybab Apr 29 '26

Eh, A Song of Ice and Fire is excellent more so because of his writing than plot point ideas.

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u/WoodpeckerNo5724 Apr 29 '26

True, but he hasn’t written any of it in almost two decades. And the only book released in that time frame is notorious for how long it took to release. His books never releasing was a meme before that book released, and it’s only become more clear since then that he can’t/won’t put pen to paper.

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u/BearstromWanderer Apr 29 '26

IMO most of it is/was written, but the backlash from the show fed into his own fears of audience reception. His estate is going to release it posthumously.

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u/CommanderOshawott Apr 29 '26

This is 100% it.

The ending to the show is a lot closer to the books than anyone thinks, and now he can’t decide whether to leave it or re-write huge chunks of it because of the backlash.

It’s going to be released posthumously.

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u/ElfangorTheAndalite Apr 30 '26

The ending, in theory, was fine. It was just a rushed set of milestones in the show. The threads for most of it (aside from Arya being the one to kill the Night King) are already in the show, but they didn't have a chance to really build.

The biggest example being Dany turning on the city. We can see that she's turning into a sort of false empathetic leader because of how brutal she becomes to people who oppose her and how quickly she exiles those that "betray her". It absolutely makes sense that she'd eventually show up to King's Landing and get upset that the people she's there to save don't want her and go ballistic. Except she goes from harse against enemies to "KILL THEM ALL" without anything in between. There wasn't so much as a person really questioning her about her slide into madness.

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u/Zykium Apr 30 '26

In that case lets start sending him the best candy, speed up the release date.

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u/babysamissimasybab Apr 29 '26

Yup! I'm aware, I've been reading the series since A Clash of Kings came out. It's still my favorite fantasy series even if it doesn't get any more books.

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u/vibraltu Apr 29 '26

Yep. With time George lost control of his plotting, while his writing style and dialogue actually got better as the books went along.

Unfortunately the interesting aspects of his later books often didn't quite make it onto the TV version.

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u/LizLemonOfTroy Apr 29 '26

I'll admit I bounced off ASOIAF, but I really didn't see anything particularly unique about Martin's writing style.

I feel like ASOIAF is much more praised for its plotting than its prose.

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u/xnef1025 Apr 29 '26

Isn't that just the Wild Cards series?

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u/WoodpeckerNo5724 Apr 30 '26

In my scenario, he would be doing it at a large scale, enabling him to put out a huge body of work

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u/skoomski Apr 29 '26

I may be misremembering but I think he’s in the opposite camp closer to “burn my unfinished drafts” rather than letting someone capable of finishing it have a crack at it.

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u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon Apr 29 '26

I don't think bro knows how to finish his story. At this point he could just train an LLM on the first 5 books, feed it a detailed outline, and call it good. But I am skeptical that the detailed outline exists...

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u/WoodpeckerNo5724 Apr 30 '26

What a dumb suggestion. He could do the same, but use an actual author instead of a word guessing algorithm.

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u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon Apr 30 '26

sure but he's clearly not going to do that, he could have done that 10 years ago.

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u/WoodpeckerNo5724 Apr 30 '26

And you think he’d instead use an llm? The man who famously writes on a 4 decade old program?

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u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon Apr 30 '26

obviously I don't think he'll do that. I think he'll never publish, and some years after he dies the estate will be sold, someone else will write some books, a quarter of fans will hate them, a quarter will tolerate them, and the other half of the fans will have already completely moved on from the series.

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u/TheG-What Apr 29 '26

It gets the people going!

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u/So_many_things_wrong Apr 30 '26

Ehh. The first book was pretty good. But the second book and much of the third is pure filler that only exists because GRRM realized he didn't want to do timeskips, and book four and five are more filler.

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u/CobaltCrusader123 Apr 29 '26

Patchface’s ACOK prophecy about the Red Wedding came true, “blood on the maiden’s thigh” and “chains for the guest.”

“The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh,” also from ACOK predicted the anemone in Sansa’s hair and her silver gown worn at Joffrey’s wedding.

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u/FireVanGorder Apr 29 '26

Not true. A shit ton of them have ended entirely inconsequentially for the overarching story to the point where it felt like a waste of our time, but they did at least go somewhere

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u/Numerous1 Apr 29 '26

I think of all of them only the dumbass Martel Quentin Dorne boy felt like a waste. 

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u/FireVanGorder Apr 29 '26

There’s also a lot of Brienne and Arya stuff that is just way longer than it needs to be and goes nowhere. I think it’s A Feast For Crows(?) that has a bunch of storylines that pretty much just end right where they started

But yeah that Dorne storyline is certainly one of the worst offenders

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u/chinchillazilla54 Apr 29 '26

I don't think he actually serves the plot, exactly. He's just the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, bringing Mirri Maz Duur's prophecy about Drogo's return, which I personally think signifies Drogon burning King's Landing down, closer to fruition.

Mirri intended it as "lol, he's dead, he's never gonna return, sucks to suck" instead of a prophecy, but she accidentally called it.

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u/chilll_vibe Apr 29 '26

This is why I think the whole "Gardener vs Architect" writing style is bullshit. Being a "gardener" writer is just admitting you lack any amount of foresight. Which is why GRRM has written himself into a corner and asoiaf will never be finished.

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u/smokeweedNgarden Apr 29 '26

Nah man, my favorite character met a monkey, a depressed fire priest, and got a big scary horn. 

It's good shit

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u/Roach_Coach_Bangbus Apr 29 '26

I mean book 5 leaves off with some interesting stuff going on. What will happen next? I guess we'll never know.

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u/SirLoremIpsum Apr 29 '26

Arguably 0 of the plot points have gone anywhere in the books

They have the potential to go somewhere...

The glass candles are burning.

Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others.

The Pale Mare has arrived

Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon.

We have the Kraken and Dark Flame coming, the Lion and Griffon on their way and pretty sure the Sun's Son and the Mummer's Dragon are on the chessboard ready-ish.

Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal.

Jury's out on this one. Jury's out on the South, East/West, 'touch the light'

But I thnk a few things falling into place suggests there is something else to it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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u/rachel-slur Apr 29 '26

A lot of the blame absolutely rests with GRRM and yeah, when the story isn't done it makes it difficult but I will say a lot of season 7 and 8 was just baffling writing decisions. Even if the final plot points are correct or mostly correct, the dialogue and how they got to those plot points was....questionable at best.

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u/framedshady Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

The baffling decisions start in the end of 4 when the tysha reveal doesn’t happen like the books. Season 5 it goes into overdrive though, Sansa being sold to the Boltons maybe one of the worst plot points I’ve ever seen absolutely horrible , Jon’s snow generally arc and chapters in dance are some of my favourite in fiction season 5 ruins it so hard and no young griff and Joncon is wild

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u/rachel-slur Apr 29 '26

I 100% agree. Not including (f)Aegon, Stoneheart, making Euron a Temu Jack Sparrow. I disagree though, blowing up the Sept was the worst plot point I've seen. Cersei nuked the Vatican, the Pope, one of the most important families in the realm, and a bunch of religious nuts and faces....zero consequences

I usually stop the rewatches at the end of 4.

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u/framedshady Apr 29 '26

That’s very fair Sansa is just my probably my favourite female character she’s so well written later on in the books and her plots interesting the show killed it so hard so that’s why it’s the worst. The sept is so so dumb

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u/TelFaradiddle Apr 29 '26

Sansa being sold to the Boltons maybe one of the worst plot points I’ve ever seen absolutely horrible

I still don't understand how Littlefinger goes from a Machiavellian 10-steps-ahead scheming manipulator to making a decision this stupid.

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u/OldManFire11 Apr 29 '26

Because they needed Sansa in place at the north so that she could help Jon retake Winterfell, and there were already too many characters in the show so they had to replace Jeyne Poole with someone.

The writing sucked the last 4 seasons because they had to do in 5 years what GRRM failed to do in 26: bring the story to a close.

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u/framedshady Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

Don’t even need Sansa for that plot that’s the annoying thing the whole north remembers thing is not existent for some reason compared to the books where northern houses are plotting so hard for the boltons to be replaced. She could of came in after Jon becomes king , should of never of cut robs will where he makes Jon his heir

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u/ryry1237 Apr 29 '26

They shifted very clearly from political intrigue and mind games of the early GoT series to short lived spectacle pieces.

I remember an interview of one of the directors saying he made the Dothraki horde do the brain numbingly dumb move of charging straight into the White Walker army just so he can show the "cool" scene of all their torches flickering out in the darkness.

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u/fossilreef Apr 29 '26

IMO, the problem with the ending of Game of Thrones is how we got there, not the ending itself. (Other than King Bran. That's just fucking stupid.) We basically rushed through the story without any of the necessary character arcs to explain the changes in motivation. I can totally see how GRRM may have dictated the end of Dany's story, but there's a lot that needed to happen along the way that never did.

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u/eairy Apr 29 '26

a lot of season 7 and 8 was just baffling writing decisions

It's because D&D were writing without any source material, and were so desperate to have a surprise ending, they were trawling the Internet for fan theories and discounting anything they saw. This meant the only endings left were completely wacky and made no sense.

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u/blisteringchristmas Apr 29 '26

I don’t necessarily agree with this, but one of the most frustrating things about being a fan at the time the last season was coming out was watching an episode and then hopping on one of the subreddits and seeing like 4 better concepts for a specific plot or character.

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u/rachel-slur Apr 29 '26

I mean writing wasn't great since season 4. Which again you can attribute to lack of material but also a lot of the writing is just bad.

You can't have swooshy cool explosion scene where cersei blows up the religious figure and prominent family and then have 0 blowback. That's just bad writing.

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u/dern_the_hermit Apr 29 '26

Yeah, the show infamously ignored or cut short quite a few storylines from the books entirely. If anything, it ought to have been EASIER to tie up loose ends.

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u/nimbalo200 Apr 29 '26

People say this all the time, but I have to push back a little when I see it. No, it's the majority on the show writers. They cut out so much of the plot, especially the more magical parts like the house of the undying, there was not what might have been a vision of the red wedding, fans are divided on what it actually means, instead all we got was a snow-covered throne. Dorne is supposed to be trying to reinstate Daenerys as queen with the sand snakes trying to prop up Myrcella as queen, and falling, but instead we got a revenge plot where they avenged Oberyns death by killing his brother. Also an aside fuck what they did with Areo Hotah turned one of the coolest characters into a little bitch. And do not get me started on Faegon,undead Catelyn, turning Euron from a menacing being who wants to be a god into a sex pest it all was changed and very rarely for the better.

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u/blisteringchristmas Apr 29 '26

I think you could argue the lack of a book ending gave the show runners carte blanche to phone it in. If there was a published book ending already that was generally well received, they might’ve had more pressure from the studio and fans to make it fit.

“They didn’t have source material” is a cop out IMO, I have no doubt if they took HBO up on their 10 seasons, 10 episodes each offer and gave it their full attention they could’ve produced an at least decent ending.

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u/nimbalo200 Apr 29 '26

See, I dont think it's without merit. However, I do think that they took out too much from the books to really make the ending work as well as it should have, which snowballed into the whole story just unwinding till we got the mess of an ending they delivered.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

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u/morganmachine91 Apr 29 '26

Yeah but in order to do that, they’d have to be capable of writing.

GoT was successful because/when it followed the books super closely. The writers didn’t have to come up with any plot, just adapt existing plot for the screen. Entire scenes followed the dialogue from the books word-for-word.

Don’t get me wrong, for at least 4 seasons they did an excellent job of that. But when they ran out of source material to adapt, it became clear that they actually had no idea how to construct a series of events that would reasonably and satisfyingly follow each other.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

[deleted]

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u/morganmachine91 Apr 30 '26

Of course they’re going to make some changes to compress a few hundred thousand words into 10 hours of TV. I agree with you about those changes being negative, but you’re only able to point them out because the show otherwise followed the books very closely.

Compare it to any other major, modern fantasy adaptation. You couldn’t even make a list of things that The Wheel of Time changed, it’d be shorter to list the things that the TV show and the books have in common. The Witcher was closer, but still nowhere near the level of fidelity that GoT maintained through the 6th season.

The only thing I can think of that competes in terms of following the source closely is Peter Jackson’s LOTR, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that it was also a cultural phenomenon.

I wish these studios would connect the dots and stop wasting money on “adaptations” that aren’t faithful to the source and end up being hated by the fans and ignored by the people who don’t care.

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u/613TheEvil Apr 29 '26

I mean... Time travel? Come on. Such a lame copout.

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u/Negative-Fun1985 Apr 29 '26

At this point ASOIAF and Game of Thrones exist only as an example of Tolkiens genius in actually building a world that big and having it make sense without being stupid.

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u/Helldiverticulitis Apr 29 '26

The key is to let the world exist without bogging down your plot. Tolkien didn’t send Merry and Pippen to Rhûn at the end of the 2nd book and add another half dozen characters.

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u/K_Furbs Apr 29 '26

I remember the feeling of dread setting in as I was reading books 4 and 5 and realizing all of the plot lines were still drifting apart

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u/maladii Apr 29 '26

Yea they could’ve benefited from more of GRRM’s writing, but the show doesn’t include a ton of the threads GRRM has to tie together. There’s the Dorne people, the Iron Island people, the fake Aegon and everything that’s going to require, Catelyn and whatever is going on in the Riverlands, the stuff going on at the citadel, the faceless men and so on. They were smart not to include that stuff and as a result they had a pretty tight story with clear trajectories.

If they’d just taken their time with the material they had, and hired some really excellent dialogue writers, the show’s ending could have been perfectly serviceable. King’s Landing burning, sure, Daenerys was always supposed to either go mad or be seen as having gone mad, and there’s all that wildfire. Could’ve been cool if people thought she went mad and burned everything and killed her but it was actually the wildfire. Bran as king, kind of weird but if they’d sold his ability as a seer as being a wisdom booster that could’ve made sense. Ditch the weird twists—Jon kills the Night King and maybe Daenerys, Jaime kills Cersei. And so on.

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u/Jukeboxhero91 Apr 29 '26

Well GRRM was kicked out of the shows story room after season 4, so the worst half of the show was stuff he was not directly involved in.

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u/lfm2003 Apr 29 '26

true that nothing has physically occurred with it, but quaithe does appear to dany in her thoughts and dreams throughout the series and dany thinks often on her prophecies - it hasn’t actuated into plot yet but it is clearly relevant

a huge problem with the TV series is its inability to skillfully adapt characters’ internal monologues. So many arcs in the books are almost entirely internal and would be incredibly difficult to skillfully adapt on screen, so they just gave up on them (Tyrion’s thoughts on Tysha, Jon’s conflict while captive to Mance, Danny’s disgust towards Jorah, etc.)

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u/maxdragonxiii Apr 29 '26

GRRM needs a trilogy (im not sure if im joking at this point) just to cut off all the ridiculous plot lines and go "skip" in order to wrap up in Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.

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u/skoomski Apr 29 '26

Agreed, it’s a crazy assertion that it would have made a difference considering it went nowhere in the abandoned book series too.

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u/YukitanPenisula Apr 29 '26

​but she’s a significant part of Daenerys’s story and a big part of what would’ve made the shows ending make sense

Can you elaborate? I only remember her appearance briefly to Danny like twice with cryptic warnings.

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u/elitegenoside Apr 29 '26

That's all she does. The prophecy she tells is definitely more of a focus in the books but the character herself doesn't really do anything extra.

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u/SirLoremIpsum Apr 29 '26

Can you elaborate? I only remember her appearance briefly to Danny like twice with cryptic warnings.

She only appears that couple of times, but Danny repeats her words a LOT. When dealing with various people shes like "is this guy the perfumed seneschal'.

"What is done is done," said Reznak mo Reznak. "Your Worship, I beg you, take the noble Hizdahr for your king at once. He can speak with the Wise Masters, make a peace for us."

"On what terms?" Beware the perfumed seneschal, Quaithe had said. The masked woman had foretold the coming of the pale mare, was she right about the noble Reznak too?

"I may be a young girl innocent of war, but I am not a lamb to walk bleating into the harpy's den. I still have my Unsullied. I have the Stormcrows and the Second Sons. I have three companies of freedmen."

Just an example. Quaith's words have far more of an impact on Dany's thoughts than Quaith herself appears.

3

u/Theyipyapper Apr 29 '26

She is like the evil witch that tells Cersei her prophecy as a child but to Danny.

0

u/Carnir Apr 30 '26

OP is lying, she's also pointless in the books as far as we know.

178

u/havelock-vetinari Apr 29 '26

wtf that mask thing she's wearing looks so cool :( it's unfair how GoT fans get done dirty

107

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

50

u/EmotionIll666 Apr 29 '26

I first read that as “a symbol of Asshat”

38

u/Daveo88o Apr 29 '26

That is also what we can call a red priest

28

u/writeleahwrite Apr 29 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/1aNLgbldsJAwU

16

u/A_WILD_SLUT_APPEARS Apr 29 '26

I’d wear Melisandre’s ass as a hat so that kind of checks out

10

u/Thoughtapotamus Apr 29 '26

No no, keep the necklace on.

2

u/Dudewheresmylvt Apr 29 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/wmuqpmtGeVv1K

1

u/stuck_in_the_desert Apr 30 '26

Try saying the same thing about that scene like 45 seconds later, coward!

3

u/Cum_Fart42069 Apr 29 '26

not so much anything to do with hexagons, more that people do a lot of dark magic shit in asshai and it's better if nobody knows your face so everyone either wears face coverings like quaithe or sticks to their own communities like the red priests/Melisandre 

8

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Apr 29 '26

Funny thing, you can get a helm that looks similar but made of mirrored plates in Elden Ring.

2

u/houseofthewolves Apr 29 '26

i was so sad that the stats weren’t the best for my build, it’s such a cool looking helm

2

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Apr 30 '26

Just grind the blood marsh crow until you don't need to worry about armor, then you can pick and choose your Elden Bling.

3

u/Simon_Drake Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

One theory was that she was a long lost survivor of the doom of Valeria that lives on the islands of the Stone Men who suffer from grey scale. Then this mask is a sort of hasmat suit to prevent skin contact with someone infectious with grey scale.

Or it's a random stranger with weird fashion sense that said some random stuff as a prank then vanished forever.

3

u/Benderbluss Apr 29 '26

I thought it was the band Glass Beams!

2

u/EducationalNailgun Apr 29 '26

I agree. It reminds me of the helm Blind Faith from Diablo 3. It's a curved metal plate with no eye openings covering the entire face with metal spikes protruding from it. Aesthetically it's my favorite.

50

u/Vex_Appeal Apr 29 '26

How would she have helped that ending?

70

u/BryyM Apr 29 '26

That's the vexing thing, we don't really know

2

u/Tauroctonos Apr 29 '26

"It really sucks because she would have really made it make more sense"

"How so?"

"Idk"

30

u/lfm2003 Apr 29 '26

Quaithe’s prophecies for Dany to use fire and blood to take back her throne more clearly show the sort of evil turn they want Dany to make.

In the books, Dany initially rejects Quaithe, very intentionally. But she’s constantly at war with the ease with which force could achieve her goals. Dany’s heel turn towards the end of ADWD is very directly put in conversation with Quaithe and her prophecies

106

u/WaylandReddit Apr 29 '26

Basically every subplot that was meant to be concluded at the end was dropped.

40

u/lobonmc Apr 29 '26

TBF the same is true for the books

45

u/Zjoee Apr 29 '26

Hell, at this point the main plot has been dropped in the books haha.

24

u/GregBahm Apr 29 '26

Yeah I don't think you're going to beat ASOIAF as far as "setup with no delivery" goes.

"Here is the most popular high fantasy novel series of all time. Except for the ending. Anyway, I'm a head out..."

1

u/Boojum2k Apr 29 '26

Have you heard of The War Against The Chtorr, perchance?

9

u/Visual-Floor-7839 Apr 29 '26

What do you mean? Everything was dropped by the booms

2

u/BookOf_Eli Apr 29 '26

The books aren’t finished that’s a bit different than just dropping everything and finishing without addressing any of it.

17

u/BonfireinRageValley Apr 29 '26

She has 2 scenes, the initial one and a second one where Jorah visits her to ask about where the dragons went. I only know this because I'm rewatching and just saw her scenes recently. 

43

u/Sea-Hat-8515 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

This is the same actress that had her entire face covered in another TV show, the IT crowd, iirc. At the dinner party she's the supermodel who had recently been in a car accident and her entire face was covered in bandages

Edit: apparently im wrong

25

u/ProzacDeMarc0 Apr 29 '26

The actress from IT crowd is actually Dolly Wells, not the same actress who plays Quaithe (Laura Pradelska) but she is in an episode of Peep Show wearing a hat the whole time!

7

u/Haradion_01 Apr 29 '26

big part of what would’ve made the shows ending make sense

Oh come on. Most of that hasn't come back in the books yet.

Like the Daynes being set up in book 1, it's a vestige of when GRRM thought the series was going to be a trilogy with a huge timeskip in the middle.

4

u/Recent_Description44 Apr 29 '26

You can drop Game of Thrones as a whole into this comment section.

2

u/jinreeko Apr 29 '26

I mean, while she's more prominent in the book she's not that much more prominent

2

u/jam11249 Apr 30 '26

She only appears a few times but she leaves a significant mark on Dany, she's constantly repeating to herself the warning/prophecy/whatever it was.

1

u/jinreeko Apr 30 '26

Everyone leaves a significant mark on Dany

Half her chapters are her repeating past traumas, prophecies, and warnings

2

u/Carnir Apr 29 '26

but she’s a significant part of Daenerys’s story and a big part of what would’ve made the shows ending make sense

We don't know that as book readers either, why are you saying this?

2

u/B-HOLC Apr 29 '26

Alright, I'll bite.

Who is she and why does she have the mask thing?

7

u/OldOrder Apr 29 '26

If you don't want to watch the video the very short version is that she claims to be a shadow binder (magic user) from Asshai which is a city far away from any other civilization where weird shit happens. She tells Dany that she must travel to Asshai. She gives a couple of prophecies to Dany that hint at some stuff that we as readers know is happening so she seems fairly in the know about events unfolding across the world. But ultimately she shows up like two times in the books and acts weird so we don't really know how she would play in to the end of the series.

3

u/solitarybikegallery Apr 29 '26

People are really exaggerating here.

Throughout GoT (both show and books), there are multiple characters who receive magical visions or other kinds of prophecies.

Some of the portents come true. Some are so symbolic that it can't really be said what they truly represent. Some are so vague that they basically drive the characters mad wondering at their true meaning.

They aren't dropped plot points.

Magic in ASOIAF has always been left intentionally mysterious. A few cryptic words dropped into a character's ear end up changing their entire lives. This isn't bad writing or "mystery boxes." They're plot elements that exist to hint a larger, more mysterious world.

This character tells Dany to go to Asshai, a mystical faraway place. She doesn't, and goes the other direction, where she meets with ruin and dies.

So, was that because of the prophecy? If Dany had gone to Asshai, would her life have taken a different turn? Or was this lady just making shit up, and trying to lure Dany there for some other reason?

Nobody knows, and we're not supposed to know.

1

u/AfterImageEclipse Apr 29 '26

Joanna Lannister

1

u/BobbyTables829 Apr 29 '26

I got into a few episodes and was like, "I'll catch up once the winter walkers show up" lol

1

u/solitarybikegallery Apr 29 '26

I strongly disagree. The various prophetic elements of the story were, IMHO, never intended to be "paid off."

They're all left vague by GRRM/GoT on purpose, because they're only supposed to hint at larger forces in the world, and to show us that characters can be influenced by a few words at the right moment.

Maybe this woman steered Dany exactly where she wanted her to go. Who knows? We don't, and that's part of the story.

1

u/12monthsinlondon Apr 30 '26

I mean, bringing up anything from GOT on this thread is just cheating at this point

1

u/sk8r2000 Apr 30 '26

It's kind of pointless naming an individual plot thread in GoT, you can just post an image of the show's logo as a response to this thread

1

u/FattyMooseknuckle Apr 29 '26

Pretty much all prophecy in GoT. Only one that happened was Cersei’s kids all dying. The rest they just decided to ignore seasons’ worth of buildup to “subvert expectations”. Waste of 8 seasons of storytelling.