I have to say the tactics used in the fight against the dead were pretty bad... it’s like they were trying to get as many people killed as possible... let’s send all the Calvary in alone before we even try hitting them with artillary or anything... they had all sorts of time and manpower to prepare the field and all they did building a trench with some logs in it. They didn’t bother to man the wall until after the dead had broken through the trench. There didn’t seem to be any fallback positions or any organization at all once the dead broke through gates... all the other battles in the show displayed some brilliant tactics from one side or the other... this one was just about numbers... kinda disappointing...

I’m sure if Martin doesn’t finish the series then they will have another author take it up.  That ended up being a good thing with the wheel of time series.  Robert Jordan just kept creating new pointless threads that didn’t progress his story.  After he passed they gave it to Brandon Sanderson who then finished the series with the 3 best books in the series....

still, I kinda doubt it will come to that.  Martin will finish it eventually.  He just isn’t a very productive writer, never has been.  All his books are like 5-7 years apart...

Battle of the bastards is widely considered to be one of the best episodes in the entire series. It was easy to follow because it was a well directed episode. You seem to be one of those people that likes to say everything was obvious after the fact.

Did you pay attention or what they were being overwhelmed till the dragons slowed them down.

What you said about Robert Jordan is true, but at least he kept the ball going, even if the pace of the books was slowing so much that it literally moved backward in time in book 10. I'm not particularly a fan of his works, but at least he delivered the sense the series were all along moving to a grand ending and demanded of himself to finish it with A Memory of Light.

About Martin, we'll see. Though the whole D&D shenaningans has left me feeling cold (hah) about the series, including the books.

Amazing episode. They really do rival movies with the music and camera work in these big battle episodes. They’ve all been pretty good. When the Dothraki first run up on the undead and they’re running crazy like WWZ zombies, that was shocking.

I loved the end, doesn’t bother me a bit how it happened. Better than Jon somehow living through a battle with all those undead, AND a dragon, and then saves Bran. If any of you watch reaction videos, check out the Burlington Bar video on the reaction to the end, it’s amazing.

Also, I have no faith in GRRM ever finishing the books.

The episode was better than what I expected, with some very nice scenes, and a pretty nice ending after all.

But yeah, as usual since it started to not follow the books, you have some weird logic...

From the beginning, I was wondering "Why the hell did they send the dothrakis alone first, just to offer some soldiers to the others? Why did they put the catapults on the front line, just being them? Both the dothrakis and the catapults have been utterly useless"...

The cinematics were the top-notch quality expected from Sapotchnik, but the story was poor.

Jon lived through the battle to scream at Viserion's face at the end, after flying blind half the episode along with Dany. Dude literally didn't do a thing. The writers obviously didn't know what to do with the dragons even after the winter storm nerf.

I'm OK with Arya being the one, just not the timing and pacing of the plot. Imagine if half of the Return of the King was about the Scouring of the Shire... I mean, what can Jack Sparrow and the Queen with no elephants do against Arya, Bran, the dragons etc. She has nothing to counter the three-eyed raven and the scorpion crossbows are merely thorns on the hide of the dragons.

Another inconsistency was undead breaking through the granite of the crypts while before they were safely hauled across half the continent in a wooden box.

I agree. Somehow a new army will materialize for Dany and company and corner the Golden Company into King's Landing. Arya, the Hound and Jaime sneak in, and Cleganebowl, Valonqar etc. happen. Perhaps King's Landing is blown by wildfire. Jon and/or Dany rule, the last monarch to gain the Westerosi throne by force, mimicking the War of the Roses. Ghost makes two cameos in episode 4 and 6 respectively.

The End.

Episode 3 was good in terms of production values. The battle sequences were phenomenal and it really put me on the edge of my seat most of the time. At one point nearing the end of the episode I was really feeling hopeless and truly believed some unexpected tragedy would happen, but then, it went back to being this light mood Got it is now. I mean, Arya is probably my favorite character and the scene where she kills the Night King is pretty cool, but that resolution was SO anticlimatic I don't know what to say. Eight seasons of buildup for this threat that made the Throne Wars feel like child's play, Jon (who is now the main character) had his entire arc revolving around the enemies in the north, and then it ends so simply. And the worst part is that there's probably not going to be real consequences of this battle in the plot. The writers are really failing to make us feel the weight these events have in the story, and that's why Got has become another simple popcorn watch. They are even afraid of killing off characters, so they just kill those that people don't really care that much anymore. I mean, back then we felt really scared for these characters, now we know plot armor will protect then. It's near the end damnit just kill some main characters. Well, let's see how this wraps up.

Honestly, after all the "death scare" moments this episode I think most of the characters are pretty safe.

Jaime and maybe Tyrion are probably the ones at most risk since their arcs still tie directly to Cersei. The Starks are 100% guaranteed to make it.