Cersei was a bit anti-climatic, but other than that, the wife and I put that one right up there with The Red Wedding.
I quite enjoyed the episode. It had it's moments of good and bad, but best of the season. Dany going mad queen in a single episode only works if you force it. The hints were there, but the producers did a really awful job making it organic. Probably the best of the season, which isn't saying much...
Cersei was very anti-climatic. Jaime's 180 character development didn't work at all. In a manner of speaking, he did kill her, insofar as he led her down to the collapsing catacombs.
Clegane-bowl was pure fan service. And I have no problem with that. It ended the only way that would have worked.
I think they were better off with Joffrey as King
I'm not sure if you meant this as sarcasm, but this is pretty spot on.
I think the Cersei move was pretty deliberate by the writers - piss the fans off by effectively giving none of the Starks their redeeming moment by killing her.
Starks and company won't ever even find the body. They'll go to their graves with the suspecion that she may still be alive somewhere.
My real burning questions at this point:
How will Dany die? Will it be Arya, or Jon? Maybe some sort of double-up where Arya has to kill Grey Worm or something so Jon can kill Dany? Maybe Tyrion does it?
What's the deal with Sansa at this point? I feel like she can't just chill out at Winterfell and not be integral to the ending.
They're setting it up for Arya. Not sure how exactly, but I'm not sure how she was in position to kill the night king. I like where you're going though with some coordinated strike. You did a good job predicting last week
All signs unambiguously point to Arya with the killshot. Which means that Dany will trip over her dress and fall akwardly forward, snapping her neck on a chair.+
Sansa doesn't have to do anything. She can try to stay warm in Winterfell and wait for the epilougue scenes/montage. We'll see her become Queen in the North, monarch of Riverrun and the Eirye.
From the tone of the show and the brief preview at the end, it seems like Dany would have secured a spot towards the top of Arya's list...watching the mom and little girl get roasted...so, ideally Arya will do it. Then again, the final scene of her on the horse could be her saying F- this, I'm going back to Winterfell.
The whole horse scene, was high school freshman english symbolism for Angle of Death. The way it was filmed is so classic (hackneyed) that it was covered in my Into to Film for non-majors class in college. I was groaning at the TV the whole time...
So lets say Arya / Jon kill's Greyworm and Dany - it looked like there was enough unsullied left to be a problem if / when this happens.
Will they bow to Jon / Arya if they kill Greyworm since he is their leader? What will they really do? I wonder if well see some type of North versus Unsullied / Dothraki battle?
The seven kingdoms will have a lot on their hands to figure out how to deal with what remains of Dany's army. Those unsullied and dothraki won't just hop on the next boat to Essos after their queen/savior/person who freed them gets assassinated. I'm not sure how the producers will wave that one away. The North/Eyrie/Riverun armies won't be enough to stop them on an open field. And this is without the flying nuke on the battlefield.
I kind of wonder if EP 5, showing Arya's small size not very effective in an actual battle is going to make her rethink her life's purpose?
It looked that way for about 10 minutes. But that cliched white horse of death scene removed any notion of that.
I think they're so programmed to follow rank, they would just listen to Tyrion since he effectively becomes their new leader. Maybe alluding to this when he total them to get lost before freeing Jamie and they obliged with no resistance?
Somehow I just don't think they'll care about the chain of command if Tyrion and company assassinate Dany and greyworm.
Could be a way to show everyone that Jon is really a Targaryan...psycho tries to torch him and it doesn't hurt him
This is the only way I see it "working" or Drogon refuses to breathe fire on him. Ditto for Tyrion, who is strongly implied in the books to be targaryn, but I don't think the show will explore this. FWIW fire did hurt Jon back in season 1/2.
R version: GRRM plants seeds and just lets the story grow with the characters go where their development says they should go. The show's writers took over, had a set ending (and set number of seasons/episodes to do it) to tie up all the loose ends and reverse-engineered the last two seasons to get to the finish line as easily as possible.
