Other tweets say "feeling sorry for the starbucks barrister that had to write out 'Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons' "
My plot outline guess for the remaining three episodes:
Ep 4: aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell, Team Starkgaryen's preparations to take on Cersei and vice versa. Pieces get in place, there might be some short naval battle scenes, but Euron and Yara probably both survive. The main showdown between Starkgaryens and Lannisters doesn't happen until
Ep 5: Battle at King's Landing, but I don't expect it to take the entire episode as the Battle of Winterfell did. There may also be some naval battle in this or the previous episode. Cersei may die at the hands of the valonqar or not, but she will probably be essentially defeated at the end of the episode - either on the run, captured or dead.
[...]
Bronn's pursuit of Tyrion and Jaime will be addressed in episodes 4 and/or 5, but probably won't extend into episode 6, whatever the outcome is. (Bronn may still appear in episode 6 tho.)
Either way, expect many beloved characters to die so they're not accused of making too happy an ending, and Cersei will probably do some horrible shit. Daenerys might as well, if they intend to end without her on the Iron Throne.
So my episode 4 predictions worked out pretty well, but they weren't exactly hard to make and some was telegraphed by the episode 3 "next week on Game of Thrones" preview.
Cersei did some horrible shit, Bronn's pursuit of the Lannister boys was addressed and it does appear they are setting up Daenerys to be kept off the throne, although she didn't do any horrible shit.
This week's "next time on GoT" preview seems to confirm that the major battles at King's Landing will take place. But who knows, they could have battles in both episodes 5 and 6...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus
If the writers want to wrap things up in the normal tv-drama way (which was not the GOT way in earlier series) then:
The Hound will kill The Mountain, probably dying himself in the process.
They certainly want us to think this is what will happen...
Quote:
Likewise Jamie and Cersi?
Again, this is what they're pointing towards, although Arya's goal in going south with the Hound might be in conflict with this. Cersei is the only major character left on Arya's list (Ilyn Payne is as well, but he's likely not to be killed on-screen since the actor who played him has had health problems, which is why he hasn't been seen even in the background in multiple seasons), so unless she's really extremely anti-Daenerys, what else is she going south for?
Jaime can intend to stop Cersei but get beaten to it by Arya, of course.
Quote:
Jon and Dani can ride their dragons into the sunset.
My guess is that Dracarys (sp? can't be arsed to look it up), the last surviving dragon (I think the other one will be killed at some point)
Called it, although I didn't expect it to happen before Ep 5.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
My guess is that Dracarys (sp? can't be arsed to look it up), the last surviving dragon (I think the other one will be killed at some point)
Called it, although I didn't expect it to happen before Ep 5.
She named the dragon Drogon, after Khal Drogo. Dracarys (sp?) is the Valerian word for "fire", and it's the command she gives her dragons to burn shit up!
Fuckin' Missandei. "LET'S BURN THIS MOTHER FUCKER DOWN!"
Things were really sliding sideways for Dany the last few episodes, but what really seemed to seal the deal imho was when she tried to make out with Jon, who just blew her off with the whole "I love you...You will always be my queen" shpeel then couldn't bring himself to kiss her back. I thought Emilia Clarke did such a great job in that scene with the expression on her face while he just stood there like a fucking moron before she said "alright then." Despite not being directly descended from Ned Stark, Jon sure seems to have Ned's stick shoved way up his ass. What a dick.
But then the next day, they took King's Landing sooooo easliy. When the Lannisters surrendered and the bell started ringing, I thought Dany was just going to fly straight at the Red Keep and roast the living shit out of Cersei. Dracarys, as Missandei had said.
But no, just Mad Queen and a shit ton of barbecued small folk, with a side of falling masonry.
Then, I was hoping that Arya would somehow get Qyburn's face and then gently lead Cersei away from CleganeBowl, whispering sweet nothings about safety and escape, down to the Throne Room and then fucking assassinate her ass. And while experiencing the destruction of King's Landing from Arya's perspective gave the scene a lot more emotional investment than if it were just a bunch of random red shirt townies dying horribly, somehow I just knew that Arya was going to survive every one of those close calls.
Nice horse. Wonder if it was actually Bran. Look at my horse, my horse is amazing...
Final observation about Season 8 Episode 5: Cersei got off waaaay too easy.
I have seen some absolute hissyfits on the net on the past 24 hours or so, so let me hastily get this in there before everyone gives actual good arguments to counter my own shitty ones and I could back away gracefully.
This is going to be a long one, and the spoiler tag is not JUST because of spoilers, but also because I care about the page looking like shit after I dump my own hissyfit on it.
First of all, I loved episode 5. But then for me the GOT train is all about the ride, not the destination. I am being told a story, and it isn't my story to tell. I can love a story or leave it, but it would never occur to me to say that the story is somehow "wrong".
People are complaining about... well, not sure what, but it seems to me some people want some sort of hero's journey at the end of this story? Have they been watching/reading the same story I have been, because my one is not a farking fairytale, it is a fantasy re-writing of history realism, with people behaving like real fucking horrible and flawed people rather than fairies and elves. Also the accusation of character arcs being ruined and stomped on is one common one. Wait, what? Whose arc?
We got an amazing, satisfying redemption/hero arc for Theon and I would like to semi-publicly thank GRRM + D&D for that. But did people seriously want that for everyone? Has anyone been honestly expecting a happy ending, at least since we were slapped with reality of that the heroes fucking die in this shit world, right there in the very first season?
Jamie is a horrible person when he is around Cersei, and he knows it and tries to be a better one, but essentially he is addicted to her and like many addicts ultimately prefers to feel the way he does around her than caring what anyone else thinks or feels and goes back to his drug of choice. It sucks, but so do drugs. You can hate the analogy all you like.
People being shocked at Dany's behaviour puzzles me the most. I mean what part of her arc was not leading to this? She was always out of touch with everyone, separated from the people. She thought she knew about slavery and could identify with slaves because she was sold off to Drogo, but no, that was just run-of-the-mill reality for girls back in history even in our world, you married who the guys in your family told you to. But that was the closest she came to the reality of actual people all her life. She is out-of-touch Marie Antoinette and a vicious conqueror wrapped into one.
Even the few instances of her successes that could have been achieved with minimal "blood and fire" (and don't underestimate how much her house words have influenced her idea of what she should be doing) - stuff that the majority of the people love like liberating slaves - she would interject with stupid unnecessary cruelty and violence, and actions she perceived of as shows of strength on her part were not taken and respected the way she imagined they would and frequently backfired. I certainly had hoped that her past failures in that regard had made her see that was not the way, but having her suddenly find reason and her sound mind now would be breaking the character. ESPECIALLY now, as she has lost so much. Not just her closest friends and her children, but also the one thing that has kept her going and on a path of at least perceived justice since her brother died: the firm belief that she has an ironclad RIGHT to the throne. Now that there is someone with a stronger claim everything she has clung to is falling away. And she sees what she considers betrayal everywhere. The losses and anger are building up a rage in her that means she was becoming "mad" in both the American and British senses of that word, truly the Mad Queen, both angry and crazed. The sacking of King's landing too easy? She could burn that shit down with her willpower rage alone. When she does what she wants rather than what her advisers say she get stuff fucking done, but will suffer the consequences of it. She bitches about not being loved yet inspires no love, so she settles for fear, a common course of action for rulers historically. If the war done Tyrion's, Jon's and Varys' way she could have been the ruler she claimed to want to be at the end, loved by the people even, but that would be at too high a risk of defeat and to high a personal cost, as literall ALL OF seasons 7 and 8 have been screaming at us.
Jon is the exact opposite, actually rooted in reality by his experiences with real people, and being firm and decisive, - especially with people's fates - is incredibly difficult for him. He is a walking moral compass, and that makes his pretty useless. He was as doomed as Ned, and tried to be a tough guy after he was given a second chance at life, but ultimately cannot defy his nature. He shirks all leadership burdens that the world forcefully hurdles at him: born the son of a lord, he joins the Nights Watch to be just "one of the guys" - they make him Lord Commander. He gives that up - they make him King of the North. He happily surrenders that to plead fealty to Queen Dany - they throw heir to the Iron Throne at him. If he gives that up for the greater good I guess he becomes a god?
Ok, the horse was weird, but I like the idea that that might be Bran. Seems like he would do that.
Also, the fans needed more time (to absorb the same stuff that 10+ rewatches could have given them, to be fair) so the last two seasons really should have been regular 10-episode length to allow for a pacing more familiar from earlier seasons. Were people paying attention and remembering the Story So Far they shouldn't actually need that, but that is not how the public works.
And complaining about bad writing? GTFOH. D&D were left high and dry after book 5, with probably a lot of material to use from the yet-unpublished-but-essentially-written book 6; did people really want them to just stop after season 6, honestly? Take a 10-year break in the show to wait for more books? What they got after that was literally bullet points, and yes, it shows in the pacing. They are not GRRM, none of us are, and if anyone is to blame it is him for not being more ACTUALLY involved in the later seasons to make up for the lack of source material.
Fuck it, I need some tea. They say tea is soothing.
As a general note, it is highly likely that the main outline of the ending was given to Benioff and Weiss by GRRM. So if you have a problem with the outcome in the broad sense (who sits on the Iron Throne and such), that's probably what GRRM intended. I have had issues with seasons 7 and 8, but it's more about how they arrived at the outcomes they've reached.
Last night's episode...
My previous predictions have held up pretty well, still. The battle of King's Landing was not as long or monotonous as the Battle of Winterfell (thankfully). Cersei was defeated, although the valonqar didn't deliver. Episode 6 will obviously be about conflict between the Starks/Jon Snow and Daenerys.
I wasn't a fan of the episode, mostly because the dark turn Daenerys took was not really fitting with her personality. Burning the city is something she would consider, for sure! There have been hints of that in both the books and the show for a long time, so this being the way it ends isn't crazy if you're looking at Dany from seasons 1-4 (the seasons most closely following the books). And they certainly foreshadowed it very heavily the past two seasons.
But foreshadowing doesn't mean that it made sense! Burning the city after having already won? No, that doesn't make sense with her prior behavior. And if she wanted to demonstrate the sheer destructive power of Drogon, destroying the Red Keep and thus killing Cersei after laying waste to her army and navy would've been adequate to the purpose. Losing her friends wouldn't mean throwing away her conception as the breaker of chains and liberator of peoples. When she won and the people in the city were ringing the bells, as Tyrion told her would be the sign of surrender, she didn't have a reason to do it. And even the creators, in the after-commentary, gave a nonsensical explanation (basically, she decided to do it because she saw the Red Keep, the symbol of what was taken from her family. So she decided to "make it personal" which makes no sense in describing her actions).
An alternate justification is that with another claimant to the throne, she needs to demonstrate that her sheer will to rule and destroy her enemies makes any attempt to seat Jon/Aegon on the throne suicidal. Trying to put Jon on the throne will mean yet more mass slaughter.
Of course, it's a dumb idea, since Drogon is the real source of that power, and Daenerys herself is eminently vulnerable. She can't live on the back of a dragon at all times. She will never be safe from assassins now. (Tbf she may not be aware of just how skilled Arya is at assassination although she ought to have a decent idea given what happened to the Night King.)
I do have some ideas about how Dany's heel-turn could've worked better:
Daenerys could've accidentally ignited the wildfire stores under the city, causing a massive explosion, and leading everyone to conclude she went mass-murder-y and turning everyone against her, at which point she becomes villainous to maintain power.
Cersei could've put scorpions all around the city on top of buildings, making burning the city more necessary militarily, thus Daenerys is making the choice to win no matter the cost, rather than to gratuitously slaughter.
This works even better if Rhaegal hadn't died in the previous episode, enabling the burning of the city to be triggered by Rhaegal's death (and Jon's apparent death if he was riding Rhaegal). Add in the sounds of the common folk cheering the death of her beloved "child" and her lover, and deciding to burn all the scorpions even if it means burning the people of the city would be a more believable choice.
This is more of a change to season 7 than this episode, but instead of having the Tyrells be defeated by Jaime and Lannister forces, they could've been neutralized by a rebellion of the common folk. If the Tyrells were deposed by their own people because Olenna allied with Daenerys, it would give her far more reason to be skeptical of the Westerosi and her ability to rule without first instilling fear into the people. It also suits the obvious purpose they had over season 7 of weakening Daenerys's forces in order to increase the stakes of the final confrontations with the Night King and Cersei. This one obviously could've been combined with one of the other ideas.
Cersei could've tried to escape through the city, as Daenerys gives chase on Drogon, spewing fire all the while. Cersei, the Mountain and Qyburn pop in and out of alleyways and buildings as the Benny Hill theme song plays. After Dany finally succeeds in catching and burning Cersei, she turns to see that the whole city is on fire. As she looks at the camera with an "aw shucks" expression, the episode ends with an iris shot centered on her face, Looney Toons-style.
As for what I think the series finale will hold/what I want to happen...
It certainly looks like Arya will be aiming to assassinate Daenerys. She's death, riding a pale horse.
I think a plausible outcome is that Jon, ever the honorable and honest-to-a-fault dumb-ass, will let his horror at Daenerys's behavior be known, leading her to view him as her enemy. Dany will kill Jon, and Arya will kill Dany.
As for what I prefer: I don't want Jon Snow on the throne. The whole fucking first season was dedicated to demonstrating the downsides of ruling with honor but without wisdom or guile. Jon Snow, if anything, has Ned Stark's faults to an even higher degree. Ned was smart enough to keep Jon's ancestry a secret for almost 20 years, even though it damaged his marriage. Jon has literally gotten himself killed (and at a younger age than Ned!), nearly lost the Battle of the Bastards due to emotion, and demonstrated poor judgment in spreading the story of his true ancestry while being unwilling to press his claim or strategize around it. And beyond that, it doesn't solve anything.
Or rather - if Jon must triumph and sit on the throne, I don't want it portrayed as a "happily ever after" ending. It should be what it is: a continuation of the same stupid cycle and same stupid feudal monarchical system that provides nothing but, at best, temporary relief for the people of Westeros until he's either assassinated by yet another ambitious climber OR his inevitable failson or faildaughter descendant takes the throne and rules horribly or he fails to maintain control and the kingdoms return to the pre-Targaryen situation of independence and squabbling.
Another downer ending option is for Daenerys to defeat Jon, Arya's assassination attempt to fail, and Sansa to either bend the knee or burn (showing that borrowing the tactics of Littlefinger results in a similar outcome for her as it did for him). Whether she subsequently rules as a tyrant, she can never make up for her genocidal behavior. The lesson here would be that the truth is that conquest entails brutality and the viewers got what they thought they wanted.
Clearly, Dany cannot sit on the throne and be a happy ending though. The better outcome, is as I said, the end of the feudal system altogether and the beginnings of a better political system.
But if someone must sit on the throne as absolute monarch and be portrayed as a "good" ending, I'd prefer that it not be Jon or Daenerys at this point.
But I'm not optimistic and I won't be surprised if we end with happy King Jon.
Jon and Arya and Sansa and Bran will all share the throne. If the Pevensey kids could do it in Narnia, the Stark kids and their cousin can do it in Westeros!
Bran is still really the Night King and kills everyone.
I don't know how or why, but Tyrion's going to die.
Loose ends: not sure if we're going to see Bronn again. Almost certainly not Tormund as he's wandered off the edge of the plot. But Yara surely has unfinished plot narrative?
And ... the thought occurred to me during the closing of ep5 that the final episode could be set a few years in the future. Not so much that all the actors would need lots of ageing in make-up, but it could be an effective way of showing what happens after Dany's little tantrum and the consequences of it. A chance to include Winterfell and beyond the wall and the Iron Islands and whatever.
I might not have been able to get the fucking dragon's name right to save my life (despite having read all the books - please donate to CRS research today), but I was exactly right about what he'd do. I also never would've guessed that it would be HIS decision.
I'm not going to blather on about what I thought was done right or wrong; the entire rest of the Internet has that more than covered. I'll just say that, other than some relatively minor quibbles, I think the ending was handled pretty well. Relative to the pixels I've seen so far, I seem to have a higher than average opinion of it. Stupid Internet.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Not gonna use spoiler tags here, because every message in this thread is 90% spoiler tags now, and it’s getting annoying. If you care about not getting spoiled, why are you still reading this thread anyway?
(I already posted most of this on Balloon Juice BTW, but I’ll reuse it here.)
With the caveat that I haven’t actually seen the last two seasons due to currently lacking an HBO subscription, and have instead simply been keeping up with the story via recaps, I nonetheless feel fairly confident in saying that the series has suffered from what I am going to term X-Men: The Last Stand Syndrome. The problem is that the production’s dominant narrative voice has changed midstream from one that was heavily focused on character development to one that was… not.
Unlike The Last Stand, Game of Thrones hasn’t actually undergone any changes in personnel; instead, the problem came from the fact that the first six seasons were effectively coasting on Martin’s books, and once they got in front of the source material, the character development dried up. (To be clear, there are only five books right now, but I’m including season six in the “based on Martin’s source material” category because The Winds of Winter is evidently already partially written. It remains to be seen whether Martin will ever complete it, but I’m fairly certain that Benioff & Weiss had a lot more in the way of source material to draw from when they were producing season six than they have had for the last two seasons.)
Benioff & Weiss seem to have viewed the characters as pieces on a chessboard to be moved around at will, not as living, breathing human beings. And that seems to have resulted in a… less than ideal ending.
There was a good Twitter thread I saw awhile back that divided writers into “pantsers” versus “plotters”. Martin himself uses the terminology of “gardeners” versus “architects”, which is what I’m going to use for the rest of this message.
Gardeners are writers who develop characters, throw them into situations, and see how those situations develop organically, based on what the characters would do. They may have a destination in mind, as Martin seems to have had, but the journey to that destination is not set in stone. Martin is, by his own admission, a gardener. This approach typically results in very richly detailed and realistic characters, but the plot can suffer. And as we have seen in Martin’s case, this can result in massive delays if the characters aren’t behaving the way the writer expects them to.
Architects, by contrast, have to have everything set in stone, if you will, before they begin writing. This isn’t necessarily an inferior storytelling technique; it means that the plot will be very skilfully constructed, but characterisation can suffer. The characters have a preordained set of actions that they have to undertake, and if writers don’t devote enough time to character development, their characters can feel as though they’re simply running through preordained actions mandated by a plot outline rather than living, breathing people.
This sounds like I’m bashing architects in comparison to gardeners, and I’m really not. The gardener approach can not merely lead to infamous delays like Martin’s, but it can also result in terrible endings. Hardly anyone likes most of Stephen King’s endings; almost everyone agrees that he has great characters and that his settings are superb, but it’s almost universally agreed that the man can’t write a good ending to save his life. This is no doubt a result of his seat-of-the-pants approach to writing; he doesn’t begin with endings in mind, by his own admission.
My own philosophy is that you need a balanced combination of the two approaches to have a great story: you need an idea of where the plot is going, but you also need believable characters, which means that you can’t treat your outline as a rigid set of boxes that have to be ticked off. To mix the gardening and architect metaphors, if a plant grows in a manner that threatens the foundation, then rather than cutting off the branches of the plant, you rebuild the foundation in a way that accommodates the plant. The plant is… well, OK, it’s not a plant, actually. It’s a person. People are more important than buildings. You can rebuild a building. A person’s life is irreplaceable.
You have to have a coherent plot. But your plot can’t come at the expense of your characters; if your audience doesn’t believe your characters’ actions, then you’ve failed as a storyteller. By telling a fictional story with dragons and priests that raise the dead, you’re asking your viewers to suspend their disbelief. When you break that suspension of disbelief, you’ve disserviced your audience.
Essentially, Game of Thrones switched from the gardening approach to storytelling over the first six seasons to the architect approach over the last two. And this is a failure on Benioff & Weiss’ part in stripping their characters of their development – and thus their moral agency.
Daenerys seems to have been the most notable failure on their part. Her descent into madness is heavily foreshadowed in the books, where she is much more impulsive and arrogant; although some of this comes across in the show, many of her flaws are whitewashed, and thus the writers failed to sell her ultimate heel turn. This is demonstrative of their mistake in declining HBO’s offer to extend the show. They ultimately violated one of the principal rules of storytelling: “Show, don’t tell”.
By ultimately relying on Peter Dinklage’s performance to explain away Daenerys’ villainous turn, they’ve deprived the audience of actually seeing her character arc develop. I suspect they expected this to be some sort of shocking last-minute twist, but it’s unsatisfying. It’s like having the main character in a romance end up with a cardboard cutout introduced in the last five minutes (I have repeatedly criticised La La Land for this), or having the murderer in a murder mystery be introduced in the last scene. You don’t do it if you want to satisfy your audience.
The impression I’m getting from the summaries I’ve read is that a lot of the story elements are individually satisfying, but the characterisation isn’t there. The story they crammed into the final thirteen episodes really needed two full seasons to tell, maybe even three. It seems like Benioff & Weiss just wanted to rush onto their Star Wars, project rather than putting the time and effort into ending Game of Thrones properly.
I can understand, to some extent, getting sick of a project after spending ten years on it, but maybe they should’ve just handed the reins to someone else who wanted to see it stick the landing properly. There are plenty of talented storytellers in Hollywood and elsewhere; B&W could’ve stayed on as executive producers or something, while letting someone else fill in the characterisation details that they pretty clearly no longer cared about.
I think the book ending will be great, though, if Martin ever finishes it. I’ve seen the suggestion that he might’ve been biding his time on the last couple of books to see if the show gave him ideas to finish them. If nothing else, he now has a good guide to what not to do, based on some of the reactions on the Internet. He’ll know, for instance, that a lot more work needs to be put into Daenerys’ character arc than the show provided. Hopefully he’ll get his arse in gear and finish the damn thing now. I started out reading this story and, as great as the TV show has been in parts, I want to finish it that way.
All of these criticisms are mostly with the final two seasons as a whole, though. The last episode proper seems like it was… fine. Not amazing, but… fine.
Again, though, all of this has the massive caveat that I’m relying on plot summaries. Game of Thrones is a TV show, and I’m sure actually seeing it is a different experience than reading about it. But still, it seems like it could’ve been more if the ending hadn’t been rushed.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I had little emotional reaction to the finale. I had some amount of hope they would salvage something, but it just wasn't that great and was mostly a kind of boring episode. Although it wasn't as bad as it could have been - Jon wasn't crowned king and everything ends hunky-dory, and they at least gesture at political reform, but not in a way that would really make a difference.
There was still room for some twists and turns and there were still some ridiculous bits. Daenerys took a murderous turn - either because everyone betrayed her and she went crazy and they love Jon more than her... or because she recognized with Jon as the heir with a stronger claim, she needs to demonstrate that resistance is futile and that backing another monarch will only lead to your doom. Either way... wouldn't it have made more sense for her to murder Jon, as either the final potential impediment to her rule... or as another betrayer who comes in yelling about how awful she is?
I had thought that maybe she'd kill Jon, and then perhaps Arya would kill her, using another's face to cover her tracks. The rest of it could've turned out pretty much the same.
Or they might have elucidated more of why Bran, who apparently could predict that he would be named king, spent the past two seasons doing nothing useful except telling people that Littlefinger was a backstabbing schemer... and perhaps less usefully, given that it was the first in a chain of dominoes leading to the massacre at King's Landing, that perhaps the Three-Eyed Raven of all people might see coming, that Jon was the true heir to the Iron Throne... why did Bran not give any more useful information to people? Hell, if they'd revealed as a twist that Bran, as he kept saying, wasn't Bran, but as now the Three-Eyed Raven, he viewed his self-preservation (the preservation of the memories of humankind) as more important than all of that and purposely arranged things to result in himself being named king - or something like that. A twist ending, sure, but more interesting than what they gave us.
Anyway...
Jon - should've died, but north of the wall is ok
Daenerys - continued to be poorly written, but I accepted that the most likely end for her was dead
Sansa - the best ending, although it's a bit pat that she was able to secede so easily. Seems like it would ensure that the Iron Islands and Dorne end up seceding as well.
Arya - it's fine I guess, but it's dumb that she spent multiple seasons learning how to be a faceless assassin and then only used her ability to change faces to kill the Freys, something that was satisfying to watch but evidently of little relevance to the story
Bran - Three-Eyed Raven should've done something more with his power, but I will say I wasn't expecting him to be king
Brienne - so her last major scenes are crying in a robe that her man is abandoning her to return to his psycho ex, and then writing a glowing Wikipedia entry about him? ummmm
the Dothraki - where did they go? First they all died in Ep 3, then they came back, then they disappeared again
All I can say is that I was satisfied with the ending. Probably because I had lowered my expectations in light of how the show-runners had handled the past two seasons.
Am I the only one who thought they got as big a leap towards democracy that that medieval world could handle at that moment? Seems at least as important a change as the Magna Carta. Sure, it can all change back with one determined charismatic tyrant, but it seems that is still the case in our world.