I think, though I don't mean to speak for her, the thread started by Zenith that goes on about how folks having Lagertha as a favorite character are full of "hypocritical misandrist PC bullshit" or some such.

Harbard was after all the sons had been born, yeah?

I'd like to think Bjorn not being there was part of the impetus - as good as she sells it, I wish we would have gotten just a little more so it doesn't feel so out of left field.

So weird!

I did think he was going to sacrifice himself for his daughters at the torture family meeting session.

But it's such an amazing show!

I watched this on Xfinity, so I didn't have the long break between episodes - this was definitely a less frantic episode after its predecessor - and the contrast in the smoothness in which it operated vs the terror on screen made for an unsettling, riveting ride.

I'll repeat, but I hope it's Lagertha seizing an opportunity to take over Kattegat, with a flimsy justification. Most of Ragnar 's sons, especially Bjorn, will be away, and they mentioned that they were staying to protect their mother from jealous, covetous neighbors

I can see that. And I generally agree, but as an adaptational change, I could see the why and how.

I thought Lagertha's interest in Kattegat was lampshades by the Sons of Ragnar talking about who was going to stay to protect Aslaug, because the success of Kattegat was coveted by neighboring Jarls (aka Lagertha, in this instance)

I'm not terribly surprised, and it does give the previous season's finale kind of a sad irony, especially if they hew close to historical end of Mary.

Except in the book it was a mutual thing done after the death of Aemon because two people were seeking comfort in each other.

#friendtopia

Except we see in the aftermath the person that rallied the Northern houses were Davos and then Jon.

They say they can't insert a Jeyne Poole, but give us Myranda the Kennel master's daughter. Economy of storytelling my ass.

There's also completely missing the point of the character and turning her into murderer on parr with Cersei, Joffrey, and Ramsay being played as empowering being a load of contrived narrative BS.

I think that the show's version made it explicit in a way Martin made implicit, which worked better for a visual medium re: Danaerys and Drogo.

Yeah, that was grooming and abuse and rape - but hey, younger boy with older woman, lol!

I'd argue because it was solely invented and written to abuse a character for pure shock value (though be aware a ton of people were vocal about the gratuitousness about the invented and accidentally-shot-as-rape scenes), while the third had driven so many of the critics off by the time it happened that it didn't…

But that's ridiculous. They took all of Sansa's story away from her because Theon and Ramsay were more important. They made her interchangeable with tertiary character and completely missed the point of the tertiary character in question, robbing Theon of his story as well…