The ep started strong and progressively went downhill until that Arya scene. I hated the music, i didn't like at all..., it sounded more like an episode of Grey's Anathomy than Game of Thrones...so cheesy. Arya killing Night King is fine, it makes sense for her character and arc, but i didn't like the excution at all. It was poorly directed all that scene. And now, after 8 seasons, we solve this huge problem for humanity like this....smh. I see Cersei saying..."i told ya, you showed your cards to soon people". The definition of anticlimatic. Vegeta jober tier enemy....XD.

And by the way, if the end of the tv series, if the "final boss" is Cersei....., oh lord...., how low has the series gone after GRRM stoped doing the books.

Seasons 1-4 were historically good TV material. Seasons 5-8 have been the worst kind of popcorn film quality material possible. We all are going to see how it ends, because even the ones who doesn't like the series anymore like me, are curious, but i'am being honest if i say i don't really care anymore what happens. For me the real story and ending will be what GRRM writes, not this. This is just mediocre fan fiction script with a lot of money for production behind. Nothing more. Enjoyable but not impressive.

George R.R. Martin will never ever finish his story.

Originally, as per his leaked outline, this was planned as a trilogy dealing with 1) the war of the five kings, and a five year time gap 2) the dothraki invasion of Westeros and 3) the threat of the others. A full generation after the first book released, we're 33% through his intended history. 50%, if you are willing to consider AFFC and ADWD, the two books that have filled the space of the time gap, as an arc on their own.

Meanwhile we've had:

- All Harry Potter books released

- Two Star Wars trilogies

- The LOTR and the Hobbit movie trilogies

- The whole Malazan Book of the Fallen series released, for comparison's sake

So... yeah. Not happening.

This is very frustrating and somewhat disrespectful with his audience, if you want to know what I think. People bought these books on the premise there would be a conclusion to it. How many would buy it otherwise? I wouldn't go as far as calling it fraud, but people were absolutely not making a high-risk investment on an author who clearly don't know how to disentangle the convoluted mess he created himself.

No, we'll have to make do with D&D's dumb interpretation and ending I'm afraid.

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.

Nah I am pretty certain the structure will be:

4. Setup and talking episode with maybe a bit of showing some consequences of the war against the dead

5. Big war good guys vs Cersei and a cliffhanger

6. Cersei loses and is killed by Arya. Everyone is happy. Arya sails to the land in the east and Sam finishes the episode with writing "The Lord of the Rings" "A Song of Ice and Fire"