While I immensely enjoyed the evening with my gf watching the episode and was on the edge of my seat the entire time, it was easily the worst of the battle episodes and sadly makes me feel like this is going down as the second worst season of GOT sadly. I still love it, and am looking forward to the rest of it and talking about it, but this has simply been a letdown. There were lots of awesome moments for sure so I'll try to talk about both...
The battle was too dark, that's nothing to do with the story though, but this definitely was noticeable. I blew out the one candle we had in front of the TV.
The dothraki done in the beginining was pretty crazy. Just like that, all wiped out and actually thought it was awesome. I think the darkness worked in it's favor for this scene as the lights going out was pretty cool.
Melisandre lighting things up to start was nice too although her ending was a bit odd, like, that was her point all along, wtf is she. I guess it's not that important, I thought for sure she would die lighting the fire and sacrificing herself.
Speaking of sacrificing themselves, knew immediately Edd was dead once he saved Sam. But it was cool seeing his eyes go blue.
I think my favorite part about the CGI and look of this fight was when we first got a look at the stampede and just how ridiculous it was. That was HUGE. And now the problem with that, it looked so damn big and insane of a "herd" to ever fend off, my biggest complaint of the episode, it was just too long and it felt like there was no way that stampede was being kept out for the duration of the episode.
It felt like Brienne, Jamie, Tormund, Arya, Jorah, The Hound, Beric all just seemed to be fighting the entire episode, it was all cool for a bit until they were still doing the same thing at the end of the episode. It just got a bit tiring to watch, especially near the end where you see there ist practically no one else alive but them and somehow still fending off all the wights.
Sam standing there at the brink of death all episode and Davos just always standing near something cool happening. After awhile it felt like "no one is going to die" and even with the amounts of deaths which were plenty, it still felt like all the main characters were safe. (which they were)
Well, the obvious crypts happened and it was fairly pointless and meaningless. Did anyone important die down there? Nice scene with Sansa and Tyrion, but they came off as totally pointless which maybe was the point as political people (with Varys) just being useless against the real battle. Seemed Gilly and the baby likely survived down there too.
The dragon fight was cool, but it was hard to tell who was who. I couldn't tell if the dragons had died at all. I guess they didn't, but it was confusing. Made sense for Drogon to fly away though, had to shake everything off. And surprisingly dragon fire doesn't kill the night king, which I totally would ahve thought it would, but the way they shot it made it so obvious it wouldn't work. I'm not sure I understand this at all.
And so, the end of the Night King. Send pointless Theon to him
but while I totally loved Arya killing him, and the way she did so (dropping the dagger move, which she used on Brienne in their spar last season) it just seemed to not make any sense to the "lore" of GOT. In the sense that, the dead army is done now, and just like that the Night King did reveal himself and did not speak and did not seemingly have a purpose and just died so easily from a stab. Bran, seemingly did nothing the enitre episode. I thought he was going to warg at the end, but I'm not sure I get what he was doing other than just "knowing"
Lyanna's death was awesome. Most badass death since Oberyn's. The mormonts are all gone. And I'm not sure a single person survived besides the main characters, but at least with the dragons they should have a fighting chance against Cersei.
The carnage around Winterfell is ridiculous