Jon H. Ryan said:

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100% agree. I was expecting Bronn to have his head cut off when he fell off and pondered for a moment about collecting the gold or to keep fighting. Imagine the Oh **** feeling? When the party went north of the wall we all knew Dani would come with a dragon and save the day. We also all knew the NK would find a way to kill and turn one of the dragons. I felt like this past episode we were just seeing how what we already knew would unravel when in seasons past we had no idea what as coming week to week. I hate the predictable roll my eyes feeling I get watching.

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You give the internet as long as we've had the stories (over 20 years) and nearly every possible outcome has been mentioned in some form as to how the whole series will play out.

For some context of how convoluted the books became and what an absolute mess HBO had on their hands to omit character and story arcs and condense this thing to something they could bring to the screen and ultimately finish the story, here is where the books ended when ADWD was published. I am doing this from memory and will get some of this wrong but you'll get the point if you are a non book reader.

Jon just got stabbed to death.
Mission to Hardhome is underway and ravens are coming back to Castle Black
Mance is at Winterfell, prisoner of Ramsay. Roose still alive.
Stannis is marching on Winterfell
Sam just got to the Citadel
Asha/Yarra, Theon, and fake Arya are Stannis's prisoners
Euron rules the Iron Islands
Euron's brother Victarion is sailing in to Slavers Bay and planning on bedding Dany and controlling her dragons with a horn
The Ironborn are attacking islands that belong to Highgarten
Loras is dieing slowly at Drangonstone (or maybe it was Storms End)
Cercei is under house arrest at the Red Keep
Tommen is king, married to Marg, and the Small Council/Tyrell's essentially run the realm
KL is essentially join governed by the small council and the Faith Militant/High Septon
Mycella is still in Dorne, the guy that tried to kill her still on the loose
Doran Martell has jailed the Sand Snakes and Arianne Martell
Doran has sent his son to Mereen to ask Dany to marry him and align with Dorne, she laughs at him, he tries to steal a dragon and is roasted
Fake Aegon and the Golden Company have just landed in the Stormlands
John Connington is dieing from greyscale
Brienne, Pod, and some knight are about to be hung by Lady Stoneheart
Jamie is riding off to find Brienne
Qyburn has just delivered Zombie Mountain to Cercei
There is a faceless man at the Citadel up to something
The Hound is at some type of monestary
Randyl Tarly is the Riverlands restoring order
The Blackfish remains at large (was able to flee Riverrun)
The WW's haven't been heard from since book 3
Davos has just been sent to Skagos to find Rickon
Bran is still in the tree roots
Sansa is still with LF at the Vale or somewhere around there
The battle of Mereen hasn't started
Dany is about to be taken prisoner by the Dothraki cause Drogon is taking a nap somewhere
Ser Barristan essentially runs Mereen
Tyrion and Jorah have joined a sellsword company and Tyrion is trying to get them to flip for Dany
Keven is Tommens hand and he and Pycelle were just murdered by some street urchins that work for Varys
Varys had returned to KL to cause havoc
Arya still in Bravos
Olena is eating cheese

honestly i had forgotten what a complete and utter mess the books had turned into.

I just don't understand why they want to wrap things up so quickly. They have mine and countless millions full attention for the next 3-4 years...easy.

Urban Ag said:

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For some context of how convoluted the books became and what an absolute mess HBO had on their hands to omit character and story arcs and condense this thing to something they could bring to the screen and ultimately finish the story, here is where the books ended when ADWD was published. I am doing this from memory and will get some of this wrong but you'll get the point if you are a non book reader.

Jon just got stabbed to death.
Mission to Hardhome is underway and ravens are coming back to Castle Black
Mance is at Winterfell, prisoner of Ramsay. Roose still alive.
Stannis is marching on Winterfell
Sam just got to the Citadel
Asha/Yarra, Theon, and fake Arya are Stannis's prisoners
Euron rules the Iron Islands
Euron's brother Victarion is sailing in to Slavers Bay and planning on bedding Dany and controlling her dragons with a horn
The Ironborn are attacking islands that belong to Highgarten
Loras is dieing slowly at Drangonstone (or maybe it was Storms End)
Cercei is under house arrest at the Red Keep
Tommen is king, married to Marg, and the Small Council/Tyrell's essentially run the realm
KL is essentially join governed by the small council and the Faith Militant/High Septon
Mycella is still in Dorne, the guy that tried to kill her still on the loose
Doran Martell has jailed the Sand Snakes and Arianne Martell
Doran has sent his son to Mereen to ask Dany to marry him and align with Dorne, she laughs at him, he tries to steal a dragon and is roasted
Fake Aegon and the Golden Company have just landed in the Stormlands
John Connington is dieing from greyscale
Brienne, Pod, and some knight are about to be hung by Lady Stoneheart
Jamie is riding off to find Brienne
Qyburn has just delivered Zombie Mountain to Cercei
There is a faceless man at the Citadel up to something
The Hound is at some type of monestary
Randyl Tarly is the Riverlands restoring order
The Blackfish remains at large (was able to flee Riverrun)
The WW's haven't been heard from since book 3
Davos has just been sent to Skagos to find Rickon
Bran is still in the tree roots
Sansa is still with LF at the Vale or somewhere around there
The battle of Mereen hasn't started
Dany is about to be taken prisoner by the Dothraki cause Drogon is taking a nap somewhere
Ser Barristan essentially runs Mereen
Tyrion and Jorah have joined a sellsword company and Tyrion is trying to get them to flip for Dany
Keven is Tommens hand and he and Pycelle were just murdered by some street urchins that work for Varys
Varys had returned to KL to cause havoc
Arya still in Bravos
Olena is eating cheese

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from a non book reader....
wow

i don't think there is any question that some of the actors may want to move on. Look how many have been on since season 1:

Dany
Jorah
Tyrion
Varys
The Hound
Jon
Sansa
Arya
Bran
Cercei
Jamie
LF
Beric (off and on)

Since season 2:
Pod
Brienne
Asha/Yarra

When this wraps next year some of these people will have been on this project for nearly a decade.

Additionally, I read that Kit, Emilia, Lena, Peter, and Nikolaj all made $3.5 million for this season. I don't know how much of their time this takes on an annual basis but at least Kit and Emilia have potential for much bigger pay checks elsewhere.

Cool episode! Definitely a fun and thrilling rollercoaster ride! I wish they had committed the entire episode ONLY to North of the Wall. That's a fun treat when shows do that as a way to kind of break up the monotony of week after week stuff. Though I understand why they couldn't do that.

1) Polar bear attack seemed odd. If the polar bear was a wight, why wasn't he with the rest of the army and why was he acting like a polar bear instead of a wight being controlled by a WW? Also, how cheesy was it that only one wight stayed alive when Jon killed that WW? If another WW comes by, can they reanimate those skeletons again or is there a one-time use provision?

2) Speaking of the WW Jon killed, I'm really glad Jorah didn't accept Longclaw back because I don't trust Jorah's sword fighting to have been able to kill that WW like Jon did. That conversation should have happened on Dragonstone, but whatever, glad they finally had it. Did someone grab Gendry's cartoon hammer? Why didn't Beric stick his flaming sword into the ice to re-melt it? Or smash the ice with the hammer?

3) Jon not dying of hypothermia was ok to me because, in the books, the Starks have some magical protection against the cold, much like Dany has against fire.

4) Why are people complaining about the chains? Clearly they came from the docks at Hardhome and presumably it could have taken days for them to retrieve them in order to pull Visirion out of the water. Would have been cooler had that scene been the opening scene for next week though to build a little bit of suspense during the week.

5) Gendry marathon was a weird thing. I wish they just had Bran watching the crew as a raven and then sending word to Dany immediately when he saw them trapped. Would have made much more sense and given Bran some sense of involvement in this war.

6) Speaking of Bran, ever since he has turned fully into 3ER, he's only taken action twice, immediately telling Sansa he needs to talk to Jon and sending Jon the raven about the undead army's advance towards Eastwatch. We all assume he means to tell Jon about his mother, but that doesn't really seem to jive with the current state of Bran. He doesn't care about personal stuff or about people really. So why would he care to tell Jon something like that when Jon is far more concerned with the war against the WWs? I think he's trying to tell Jon something else. Perhaps he knows Jon must sacrifice himself to defeat the WWs? It feels like there has to be a reason Bran allowed Jon to go north, though it's probably more likely HBO just doesn't really care about this and only wants Bran to be all powerful when it is convenient for them to show a flashback.

7) I'll save most of my thoughts on Arya/Sansa/Littlefinger for another post, but a lot of people are upset they have regressed after reuniting. But this is fine to me because that's what siblings do. It doesn't matter how much money I make, how many kids I have; my older sister is still going to treat me like a dumb younger brother at Thanksgiving. I think that's why you saw Arya react so harshly.

G Martin 87 said:

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I see a lot of *****ing about the number of episodes left that completely misses the point. It's the amount of screen time left that matters. The remaining episodes will each be longer than in previous seasons. When TV writers talk about needing X number of "episodes," it really means the same thing as an author talking about the number of "chapters" left. The number of minutes/pages is what's important.

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Does anybody here disagree that this season has been rushed and could have possibly benefited from being the normal length?

No matter which way you look at it, we all know they're running out of time. If the producers didn't have to worry about squeezing everything into 7 episodes instead of 10 then maybe we would have skipped by so much or had these unrealistic travel scenarios. I hope this is the last time Jon has to use the "press 1 for dragon to immediately save my ass" tactic.

G Martin 87 said:

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I see a lot of *****ing about the number of episodes left that completely misses the point. It's the amount of screen time left that matters. The remaining episodes will each be longer than in previous seasons. When TV writers talk about needing X number of "episodes," it really means the same thing as an author talking about the number of "chapters" left. The number of minutes/pages is what's important.

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We've had a 50 and 70 minute episode and the next one is 80 minutes. That is 7 hours and 20 minutes total for 7 episodes. They are spending the extra money on visual effects.

RDV-1992 said:

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smokeythebear said:

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Is there any history of the WWs battling dragons in the last Long Night?

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Not that I can recall from the books or backup material.

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They Targs weren't in Westeros at that point. The Long Night happened ~8,000 yrs ago (or maybe 6,000), but the Targs have only been ruling in Westeros for about 300 years. The First Men and Children of the Forest were the ones who defeated the WW during the Long Night in what was known as the Age of Heroes.

aggie93 said:

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M.C. Swag said:

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Quote:

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My ep 7 guesses:

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Where I stop reading.

lol no offense, but it seems like too many people's 'guesses' are based tangentially on what other (potentially spoiler *******s) have postulated.

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That's mainly because the show is becoming more predictable. I know the post earlier about the outrageous spoilers had mostly things I would have guessed and I wasn't surprised by any of it. I didn't know it was going to happen but I wasn't shocked by it.

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I mean, Dany saving Jon with a dragon was pretty predictable, but here's a few things I definitely did not predict this season.

1. Yara getting blindsided by Euron so soon.
2. Jamie abandoning Castly Rock and taking Highgarden instead.
3. Bran being super creepy but still giving us zero help or flashbacks.
4. Cersi being safe in King's Landing all season.
5. Dickon willingly being executed with his father by Drogon.
6. Sam leaving the Citadel.
7. Gendry showing up, having a giant hammer, and killing wights with it.
8. Jon, Jorah, the Hound, and Gendry going north of the wall based on a stupidly foolish plan concocted by Tyrion.
9. Missande's boobs again

Get amped for the the finale lads.

Yea, we definitely take for granted how immensely awesome season 6 was.

1. Arya finishes her training and decides to return to Westeros
2. Dany gains a giant army and returns to Westeros
3. Jon comes south from the wall and wins Winterfell back
4. Bran fully transforms into the 3ER and starts to head back to Winterfell
5. Cersi wipes out like 8 different plotlines all at once

It wasn't quite as noticeable back then I suppose, but once they passed the books, they've been quickly tying up any loose ends they can.

I think I'm going to go ahead and watch Hardhome again tonight.

It just seems like such an obvious and more satisfying narrative if Rhaegal saves Jon rather than Benjen. You propel the R+L=J story, create an interesting reaction by Dany (and subsequently Tyrion and Varys) and have a bad ass visual of Jon riding a dragon.

But they wanted a zombie bear.