[Posting this without reading any replies or reviews yet. Also, it got long, so I included subheads.]
Welp this is going to be a divisive one for sure. I pretty much loved it by the end, though. Why? Because we've fully crossed over into bonkers fantasy, that's not going to stop, and I'm prepared.
I'll get some quibbles out of the way first. Feel free to rebut any of them, because I did love this episode...
– Build-up to the blue eye was at least 5 seconds too long. We all knew what was going to happen.
– Benjen had time, right? Maybe he needed to serve as a distraction, but that wasn't communicated well.
– Tyrion's fireside dialogue was not good. He sounded like an idiot. Dany's responses were great though, so maybe a wash.
Pre-emptive fan-splainingSansa confided in Littlefinger. People are going to hate that. But did she actually make a mistake? Watch that scene carefully — she actually gets a lot of information out of him. Littlefinger basically reveals that he wants Arya dead, and that Brienne might be the one to do it. So what does Sansa do? She
immediately sends Brienne away so Littlefinger's plan cannot be executed.
[Just emailed that ^ in as podcast feedback, complete with a clickbait subject line. If it makes it in, I can die happy.]
The real dumb one here is Arya. That's going to break a lot of people's hearts — fans who've been rooting for her from the beginning. Well guess what, this is what Arya has become. It's quite dark. A couple more crucial things to note here. Arya made much of her lie detector test. Sansa appears to have passed it. Inevitable conclusion: Arya performs this test on Littlefinger and he fails.
Just based on the responses to this season, I know people are going to complain hardcore about that raven. I thought they conveyed clearly that significant time had passed — Thoros had completely frozen, and the rest of them were not far behind. Also someone on Reddit
did the math, and it seems to check out, although it is very close:
In conclusion: It seems to me that the just over 4 day travel time required for Dany to to receive the Raven and fly to Eastwatch, seems to line up accurately with the amount of time it would take ice to grow enough to support an army of undead to fight on top of it in those conditions.
This was a truly frightening episode, wasn't it? The journey beyond the wall, Dany and Tyrion fighting, and ice-cold Arya. I don't think I have been more afraid during an episode from the beginning to the end. I really wonder if that deep unease — feeling lost, like you don't really know this world, like anything could happen — is going to color people's assessment of this episode. But I welcome all of that. It really was time for the show to punish us again.
A contrarian opinion that you will find convincingTyrion and Jon's plan turned out to be just as dumb as expected. But, four mitigating points:
(1) They have both proven themselves to be horrible strategists.
(2) People do dumb things. I don't mind seeing that in GoT. It happens a lot. This is certainly not competence porn. Mistakes in this show quite often lead to difficulty — and there were very real consequences here.
(3) The plan is one of those "so crazy it just might work" scenarios. I am fine with that, because this episode feels very true in a way to the spirit of GoT — even an improbable and heroic win creates new challenges. The feel of the story right now might even presage the "bittersweet" ending that Martin envisions.
(4) Jon expressing regret (finally confessing his stupidity?) went a long way for me. And then of course we get to the real point of this venture, which was showing Daenerys. "You don't really know until you see," she said. Cersei is just a bonus. Dany is going to win this thing. Now it's personal.
If this boat's a-rockin'...The final 18 minutes, starting with Dany's arrival, was 100% gold. Probably one of my favorite stretches in the show's history. And the scene between Jon and Dany — wow, they nailed that so hard. Speaking of which, Dany looked like she was about to jump him right then and there, were it not for him being almost dead.
When Jon said "how about my queen" my head literally exploded. I don't have a head anymore. For some reason that hit me like a ton of bricks — like, wait, did I fantasize that line, or did it actually just happen? Beautiful performances there. Now these two have really been through some shit together, as they say. It's remarkable how this is one of the most vividly realized relationships ever done on the show, and it was fully accomplished in the space of 4 episodes, even admist everything else that's been happening.