I love Ygritte. She brings humor which so welcomed on this show which is masochistic to watch.
i don't think you intended this to mean anything beyond the way she keeps repeating her catchphrase all the time, but her final use of it when she catches up to him in ep 10 is just crazy good. the masochistic comment about the show rings especially true in her display of love for him when she shoots three fucking arrows into him! excellent break up scene.
overall i was disappointed with the last episode. maybe because the red wedding was just so world shattering, but i think the problems with the finale go deeper:
- there was way too much exposition for a season closer, it felt like an opener. there was even unnecessary reminders of relationships like it was consciously trying to fill in late comer viewers who tune in only to see season finales of shows. this is a thing. the wrap up (FINALLY) for theon greyjoy's story was a good example of the characters talking WAYY too much about the significance of who is doing what to who and why.. it's like they were just summarizing a whole chunk of the book to someone who hasn't been paying attention.
- the emotional note they were going for in the last scene is just a lazy rehash of the heights they already reached when khaleesi liberated the unsullied. the lead up to the yunkai liberation was also messy and hard to follow, made worse by the awkward waiting for the gates to open. i get that she's OBVIOUSLY the real hero of the story but there's nothing in that last scene that we haven't felt before. we're already onboard, at this point it's just getting annoying.
- arya killing her first dude was the best part.
i think my overall criticism of this finale is that it reflects a badly structured season. obviously the red wedding would have been a good ending because it fundamentally changed the show. leaving it the way they did is just moving the plot along a little bit, it really felt like it just fizzled out. the entire show is a cliffhanger so it's not a good enough excuse to say "well they left us hanging cos we don't know what's gonna happen next.." duh that's the whole point of every episode, not just season finales. a GOOD finale needs to either provide closure -- this did NOT -- or at least burn shit to the ground (so to speak ) so that we can imagine what could possible grow from the ruins.. and they wasted that on the red wedding.
honestly, if THAT is all that happened in 1100 pages then that is a goddamn boring book! we know that more occurred because the book itself had to have an ending beyond the massacre at 2/3rds the way through. my friend who's read the whole thing confirmed that there was indeed at least ONE more major event that was supposed to take place. it's just poor structuring to not include it this season, whatever it is. that's why this felt ultimately unsatisfying.