Anyone else think their fight was completely unnecessary?
Just like.
"I swore to protect her."
"No"
And then swords.
I haven't seen much of the series, but watched it the other night with my friend, and I was like "What the **** are you two doing? Crippling each other is not going to help either of you protect that Stark girl. Goddamn."
The audience would have deemed it underwhelming had the Hound simply collapsed from his infected wounds or been killed by someone random or at least not very well known. Seeing as these two characters were in the general area of each other, and both wanted Arya for their own reasons, I thought it was a decent way to get rid of him while still pandering to the TV fanbase.
On the other hand, I'm extremely dissapointed they didn't include the Hound's glorious final words from the book, said before the fight. 'Bugger that. Bugger him. Bugger you.' Truly, he was a poet.
I think repeatedly screaming "kill me" into the distance seemed more dramatic. It made me think of how much more painful it'd be for him to be left truly alone and slowly die of infection than to die like a knight.
Kinda spoiler on how the book differed from the show on the end of season 4.
In the book Jamie told Tyrion that the woman who Tyrion first loved, the woman who they previously told him was a whore and was only with him for his money and forced him to watch her be mounted by every man in the army while gold coins flowed through her hands in fact actually wasn't a whore and did truly love Tyrion, this is the moment in the book which makes Tyrion snap and want to kill Tywin but in the show its never said.
a friend of mine spoiled this for me a season a go by mistake, i was kind of shocked on how it happens. after i watched the episode i discovered that it was told to me twice before, one from my friend and one from a comment on youtube, i had totally forgotten about it. only realized when the episode finished.