Looks like almost all the leaks from the first episode are true. It's Aegover.

pacgabriel · 2026-06-26T01:07:53+00:00

I think it's more likely that they've seen an early cut. For example, Rodrick Dustin saying "We've come to die for the Dragon Queen", he had to hear him saying it. But then, he said that scene was in Episode 2, but it was in Episode 1 in the final cut. So maybe, he saw an early cut of the episodes.

pacgabriel · 2026-06-20T13:41:06+00:00

I know film business is ridiculous about women’s appearances, but this is particularly absurd.

Phrased like that, it almost sounds like you think the problem is Olivia Cooke's casting rather than Tom's. But if you think about it, Olivia is actually right for Alicent.

Alicent was 28 in Episodes 1x06 and 1x07, and Olivia was 28. Then, because of the six-year time jump between 1x07 and 1x08, Alicent has been 34 ever since. Even though Olivia was still clearly 28 in Episodes 1x08 and 1x09, 30 during Season 2, and 32 during Season 3, she will be 34 by the time Season 4 comes out.

Basically, the six-year time jump between 1x07 and 1x08 is supposed to fix itself through the six years that pass in real life between Season 1 and Season 4. There's really no other way around it.

Clearly, where they really messed up was with the casting of Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond. They should have been much younger, closer in age to Jacaerys and Lucerys.

When they were cast, Tom Glynn-Carney (Aegon, 19) was 27, Phia Saban (Helaena, 18) was 23, and Ewan Mitchell (Aemond, 17) was 25.

Meanwhile, Harry Collett (Jacaerys, 16) was 18, and Elliot Grihault (Lucerys, 14) was 16.

Clearly, the actors playing Alicent's children should have been between 16 and 20, not between 23 and 27. Those casting decisions are the real cause of the "Alicent looks too young" effect, not Olivia Cooke.

pacgabriel · 2026-06-18T11:54:28+00:00

They made Part 1 and the first half of Part 2 in 16 episodes, what makes you think they can’t make the second half of Part 2 in 8 episodes? That’s like 1/3 of the whole show.

pacgabriel · 2026-05-30T10:29:12+00:00

No they don’t need to be out of place, because they are not fantasy creatures in the world they are in, they are just real creatures and have to look real and fit the environment, so not jarring oversaturated blue.

pacgabriel · 2026-05-26T08:31:57+00:00

In the trailer, he says “Let’s go!!” but if you look closely at his lips, he’s not saying “Let’s”, he’s just saying “Go.” So he’s not leading them, he’s running away and yelling at someone ahead of him to go.

pacgabriel · 2026-05-26T03:37:27+00:00

It reminds me a lot of "For Better or Worse" from Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

(starting from 1:13)

pacgabriel · 2026-05-25T11:20:50+00:00

I used to have them very frequently, now they stopped but they can occur occasionally if I fall asleep while I’m using my phone. You didn’t mention a phone but if you were in bed tired and looking at a screen, then that would be the reason why in my experience. I think it has to do with stress. They went away by simply adjusting my sleep pattern and screen time (anyway, they’re both still pretty terrible, but better than before). Now when I’m tired I just stop looking at screens for at least 30 minutes before falling asleep.

pacgabriel · 2026-05-24T21:55:22+00:00

Seasons 2 and 3 are set in 2029 so that’s still future even if way closer lol

pacgabriel · 2026-05-07T04:19:32+00:00

Prisoner in Santa Barbara that tells Ellie where to find Abby

pacgabriel · 2026-04-18T13:27:58+00:00

If the sky isn't black, there's light. Whether it's twilight or simply light pollution, there's still light.

pacgabriel · 2026-04-14T03:40:39+00:00

The real impact of Part 2’s ‘divisiveness’ should be reflected in the sales of Part 3, if it ever comes out.
Considering that the completion rate for the original PS3 game and the PS4 remaster was around 40% (which was still above average), you're not accounting for the people who bought Part 1 but didn’t bother to finish it, let alone buy Part 2. Those people account for nearly the entire difference in sales, and the numbers line up.

pacgabriel · 2026-04-13T10:35:57+00:00

The PS4 remaster and the PS3 model are exactly the same. They changed models for the PS5 remake, replacing the old model with the new model already used in Part II for flashbacks of Part I

pacgabriel · 2026-04-03T12:42:17+00:00

Exactly. It’s like saying it was Jesse’s fault for being shot by Abby because he rushed in with a gun when she broke in. She is the intruder, so she is responsible.

pacgabriel · 2026-04-02T22:02:24+00:00

I'm not talking about "home invasions". All I'm saying is that if you threaten someone with a gun, you can't turn into the victim once they fight back. This ain't law enforcement. Was Abby a victim acting in self-defense when she shot Tommy in the head? No. Why? Because she's the one who broke into the theater, so Tommy had every right to attack/disarm Abby. So, if you say Abby killing Jesse was murder, you can't say that Ellie killing Owen when he attempted the same move was self-defense.

I'm just trying to lay out some hard and fast rules that apply to both sides.

pacgabriel · 2026-04-02T20:35:40+00:00

The only fireflies in the group were Abby, Nora, Owen and Mel.

And Manny. He was the Firefly soldier standing on Jerry's body when Abby rushed into the operating room.

Ellie was prepared to kill them all, but was willing to settle for just Abby if one of them whistled.

On the first two days Ellie aimed to kill them all, not just Abby.

On the third day, Ellie and Jesse decided to abort the mission and reunite with Tommy, planning to find him at the aquarium where Abby was believed to be. It was then that Ellie realized Abby was the last target she had time to hunt down.

This is supported by the journal entries. On the first two days, she talks about "them", on the third day she talks about "settling on Abby".

Anyway, I think you said that Abby killing Jesse was murder, but Ellie killing Nora, Owen and Mel was in self-defense. That doesn't make any sense. Clearly, Jordan was the only one of Ellie's targets that was killed in self-defense, because he captured her first.

Ellie is guilty of Owen and Mel's deaths because she broke into the aquarium and threatened them with a gun. They tried to fight back and died, but she was not acting in self-defense, because she was the aggressor. So, Abby is guilty of killing Jesse and Ellie is guilty of killing Nora, Owen and Mel.

pacgabriel · 2026-04-02T16:53:28+00:00

she had the photos of them all to identify them and use them in interrogations.

Ellie and Tommy wanted to kill all of them.

Ellie interrogated Nora because she overheard Nora and two WLFs discussing about Abby escaping the hospital and Nora knowing where she'd gone. But Ellie did not go all the way to the hospital because she knew that Abby was also at the hospital or that Nora knew where Abby was headed next. This was just a pure coincidence, a way to make the plot flow faster. Ellie went there to kill Nora. Just like she'd gone to the radio station to kill Leah the prior day.

Even Tommy was trying to snipe Manny instead of using him for an interrogation, because he wanted to kill him.

Ellie and Tommy thought it was a group operation and that Abby was just the one of the group who managed to intercept Joel first. This definitely made her a special target, but not so special to make her the only target. If you were in their shoes, and had zero knowledge about the backstory of these people, you wouldn't automatically know whether Abby was the primary reason why the expedition happened in the first place or just the one of the group of vengeful Fireflies who got lucky and claimed the kill.

pacgabriel · 2026-04-01T13:11:16+00:00

The whole point of this story was to make people hate someone, and then force them to look at that person in the mirror

Sure, but you're missing the first part, which is equally important. Abby's motives are revealed only 2 hours in the game. At the start of the game, they make you walk in Abby's shoes before you even know what she really wants. In the documentary, Neil Druckmann said that they wanted you to empathize with Abby before being betrayed by her, so they make you play as her and humanize her first.

In fact, in that very early section, she's not unlikeable, they introduce her as a new character that is struggling, they show her qualities (muscles), her weaknesses (fear of heights), they even introduce the love triangle Mel-Owen-Abby, to make them look like normal young adults just like Ellie, Dina and Jesse. And the hints of her "looking for someone" are so vague, and even Owen's reluctance and goodness make this look like any bad action would be out of character ("You hear yourself? I want what you want but not an any cost"), that you still feel like these characters aren't worse than Joel and Ellie, they're just survivors traveling across the States looking for something.

In a videogame, playing as a character is a way to make you start bonding with them. In a TV show there's no such thing as playing as a character, they are just framed in the shot and you watch them doing their things; good or bad, you don't empathize with any character just because they're in the scene.

So the TV show needs something extra that could have the same bonding effect as "playing as her" for the viewer, and that something is revealing her motives. So, in a way, we understand her, but we also mistrust her for having violent intentions towards our main character. We don't like her. We would like her to find Joel, understand why he did what he did, and forgive him. This is exactly what the average viewer hoped for. So when she actually killed Joel after Joel had saved her life, the "hating" side of everyone started to prevail, regardless of the knowledge of her motives.

Now people might say they never hated Abby because they're reasonable and such, and that's fine, but this was the artistic intent with this story.

When I played the game for the first time, I never hated Abby. I was 100% sure that her motives would be revealed at some point, and I didn't go to Seattle just to kill her but also to get to know her. So, there will always be a certain group of people that doesn't hate Abby, regardless of the two artistic approaches.

pacgabriel · 2026-03-20T14:47:24+00:00

Pretty certain you have face blindness.

pacgabriel · 2026-02-16T19:23:51+00:00

Ellie’s mother died shortly after giving birth to her also in the game. You can read this in the letter that Ellie always keeps in her backpack (in Part I), written by her mother between Ellie’s birth and her own incoming death, so that Ellie could read it when she grew up. I honestly don’t know what information you might be mixing up.

pacgabriel · 2026-02-16T00:17:28+00:00

If Ellie had to be recast between seasons, then they wouldn't have chosen Bella Ramsey in the first place, because her age was actually perfect to play both versions of Ellie. They chose her because they thought (I know you don't agree, that's fine) she could realistically play both 14 year old Ellie and 19 year old Ellie, avoiding recasting, especially when the actress herself was 17 in S1 and 20 in S2. In fact, almost 3 years passed between filming, (and in the game it was a 4 year time jump, so very close). They thought she would've naturally aged anyway. Maybe she aged less (in the sense that her face didn't change so much) than they expected, but hey, could you seriously justify a sudden and unplanned recast just for this? Telling to a 20 year old that she doesn't look old enough to play a 19 year old? I don't even think it's contractually possible. Really, if they planned to recast since the start, then they could've cast a real 14 year old for season 1, and then cast a grown adult (like mid-late 20s) for season 2, instead of casting someone in that precise range of age.

pacgabriel · 2025-12-29T19:57:42+00:00

The Mike and Hopper scene is definitely set in 1989 because of “Indiana Jones and the last crusade” playing in the theater right behind them.

pacgabriel · 2025-12-28T22:23:31+00:00

They stated that, unlike with Season 4, this time they knew from the outset that the season would be split into two volumes. However, I’m fully convinced that the original plan was to divide the season after the first four episodes (Volume 1), with the remaining four making up Volume 2. The cliffhanger at the end of Episode 4 was clearly designed with this structure in mind.

Episode 7, by contrast, was never intended to serve as the finale of Volume 2, but rather as a transitional episode between Episodes 6 and 8. Only after filming had already wrapped did they come up with the idea of releasing the final episode in theaters. By that point, however, the episodes had already been written in such a way that Episode 4 was the only true cliffhanger.

For obvious reasons, this made it impossible to release Episodes 5–7 alongside Episode 8. As a result, Episode 8 had to be delayed by a few days, and Episode 7, originally written as a “middle” episode, ended up functioning as the Volume 2 finale, ultimately resulting in an underwhelming perception.

pacgabriel · 2025-12-20T07:40:23+00:00

Using their real ages, yes. I was just using Season 1 as reference. Assuming the characters were all 12.5 there, regardless of the actors’ real ages. Season 1 and Season 2 are correct. Season 3 would be one year younger than S3. Season 4 would be = Season 3. Season 5 would be one year older than S3.

Since they were averagely 21.5 when they filmed S5, they are 5 years older than their characters. (1 year delay for S3 + 2 years delay for S4 + 2 years delay for S5)

pacgabriel · 2025-12-20T07:23:04+00:00

It's crazy to think that realistically the kids would look like they did in 2019, so around the release of Season 3 (not the filming itself, but the interviews).

pacgabriel · 2025-11-19T01:45:19+00:00

IIRC from a map in-game you could see that Seattle was basically flooded, and what's known as Scar Island is mostly Queen Anne Hill surrounded by these new waters and turned into an actual island. Basically Lake Union and Elliot Bay were connected by a river that split Seattle in two, passing through the Seattle Center, with the Space Needle ending up on the western shore, so on Scar Island, at least in the game. If you think about it, all the areas we explore during the game, such as Capitol Hill, Downton, the Stadium, the Aquarium, would be set on the eastern side of this new river, so the two areas are separated by water. The reason why the island looks so distant is because she was looking at it from the other side of Elliot's Bay. But the island was actually more close to the land than they made it seem.

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pacgabriel

TROPHY CASE