A few questions after this episode:
1. Would pre-death Jon have charged the frontline?
2. Will Sansa really follow a redemptive story arc or will she meet a sudden death after dealings with Littlefinger?
This late in the season, I hate when storylines go black. Where is Arya? What is happening in King's Landing? Where is Bran? White walkers? I wish they'd have offered a small scene to carry these stories forward.
the Good:
The battle scene was incredibly well done. The intensity of the fight scene was one of, if not the best, I have ever seen. This show has raised the bar for quality fight scenes.
Ramsay is dead
The Bad:
Predictable but appetizing.
It appears all giants are gone, except perhaps in the White Walker army.
Ramsay couldn't die painfully enough.
Jon Snow's death appears to have made him a slave to impulse. Strange development for him, I thought something a little more nuanced would've occurred.
Synopsis:
Fun episode to watch. GRRM/show authors are in a difficult situation: they can't do the unthinkable because that is now expected (I actually thought the Knights of the Vale were going to be on Ramsay's side and finish the job, leaving Snow alive under dead bodies). He also can't do the expected, because it's trite.
The show is still enjoyable but it has lost some of the intrigue. Hope the last episode goes out with a bang and leaves us with enough questions to spend the next 9 months trying to figure out where it's headed.
This is all extremely well put. Definitely the strongest episode of the season and very good overall. Not much to add, but a few thoughts:
-Great battle scene. The battle for Castle Black was probably my favorite all-around, and the set-up in the Battle of Blackwater Bay was the most entertaining. I thought this one had the best choreography and shooting.
-It couldn't compete with the epic feel of the battle for Castle Black because of the setting, but I thought it was also held back by a bit of a muddled "arc." Usually, film/tv battles have their own story: there's a plan/preparation, something happens to disrupt the plan, the protagonist changes course mid-battle, the protagonist prevails. The first of those two elements were pretty weak here. There was never much of a plan other than "let Ramsey charge into our center" which Sansa credibly dismissed. Jon's charge toward Rickon and subsequent charge toward Ramsey were the second element, but the fact that the second charge was a) a choice and b) completely irrational sapped it of some of its strength. Still a great scene, but that kept it from hitting the high of Castle Black or Blackwater for me. The beginning of that fight made so little sense to me that I was actually wondering if everything from Sansa and Jon in the tent through the charge on Ramsey was a dream/flash forward until Jon's horse was shot out from under him.
-So, when Sansa told Jon his plan was dumb and he asked her for a better one, how is the response not "Oh, maybe wait an extra half day. There's this other big army coming to join us"? Maybe her initial lie to Jon while they were still at Castle Black was supposed to set the table for her not mentioning the Knights of the Vale, but that part felt like a total cheat to me. She knew they were coming -- she rode in with them.
-Is this the best Dany episode in 2 seasons? Maybe not, but I can't remember any.
-Several people, myself included, have mentioned that the predictability of the show has taken a bit of the shine off. I want to be clear that I think it's a fantastic show and there's nothing I look forward to more. There's a further claim going around that this predictability is a weakness resulting from the show passing GRRM and "losing" his stronger source material, and I think that's completely wrong. The predictability is down to the fact that once you get this far down the narrative road, there's not much room left for characters who can just die off and there's no time to stand up a replacement unless they've already been developed -- there's no one to step in for Jon as he's basically done for Robb; there's no new Tommin as he was for Joffrey, etc. To an extent, a show's becoming predictable isn't poor writing, it's simple gravity.
-I'm not sure how it happened, but Tormund might have become my favorite character on the show. When this is all over, I'm down for some Misadventures of Tormund and Brienne.
