tyrion is just about to meet daenarys
jon snow dies to stabbings (bookreaders had to sit on this unanswered for like 8 years)
cersei goes on da walk of shame

presumedly GRRM has a lot of "Winds of Winter" finished but books diverting from show in lots of spots obviously. he probably isn't providing much beyond a general outline.

Isn't it just water hitting the sword and the camera.

starting in season 6 they had to make it up as they go.

stannis is still alive and jon is still dead in the base material

I have no clue why people are assuming it has anything to do with Bran, that seems absurd to me as well. But it definitely does look like the eye of the wolf opens when Jon comes out of the water. It's possible it was just a very lucky optical illusion caused by the zooming or lighting and was unintentional, but the one thing i can say with confidence is that it was NOT a drop of fkn water lol.

I believe in S5 and even S6 they still had a couple of book plotlines to wrap up, but the majority of the stories and dialogue were Dumb and Dumber's doing. Starting with the death of Barristan Selmy, whom GRRM said still had important things left to do in the books at the time.

Probably because Bran wargs all the time, usually through animals, or trees which are made of wood, often with faces/eyes carved into the wood.

Lion? LION!?

Oops my bad that was a mental slip obviously.

And when has it ever shown Bran warging into a tree or anything else inanimate? Warging has always been strictly about animals/humans as far as I remember. It has been stated the children used the trees to communicate, but I don't recall anything beyond that. Am I forgetting a scene?

Anyway even if he could warg into trees, they are still living creatures at least, while Longclaw is not.

Furthermore, what purpose would it serve the story for Bran to have warged into the sword?

This.

It's probably just a reflection of Jon's hand, maybe off of a lighting prop that is then reflected off the white of the eye. That would explain why it only appears exactly as Jon's hand comes forward. The showrunners aren't that subtle, if it were meant to be something, they'd probably have made it a bit more obvious.

The lighting props could be as simple as things like these or whatever else people use:

I'm just going to assume Arya is playing some kind of angle against LF here. Just like I'm going to assume the Night King can see the future. The writing has gotten worse, but I'm holding out hope it hasn't gotten that bad.

Nailed it

The only thing worse than how much of a letdown this episode was is the people who are arguing over whether or not Bran warged into a sword. jfc

I really doubt the Iron Throne exists at the end of the show. Aside from anything else, Daenerys has a vision of a destroyed Red Keep at the House of the Undying in S2.

Obsidian was never a thing for killing wights. In early show, it's very difficult to kill them with anything but fire. They appear to have relaxed this so that we can have super sick battle scenes.

I wasn't impressed with last night's episode (other than the banter as the troop marched north of the wall), but for all of you bemoaning how bad you think the post-book episodes are - have you forgotten last season's epic final two episodes? There's hope still.

On a side note, do any other unspoilered think that next episode could be Littlefinger's last?

When speaking to Dany in the last episode, Tyrion seemed to be laying the groundwork for alternative forms of government (bringing up the Night Watch's system of voting, talking about "breaking the wheel"). I suspect we see some sort of democracy at the end of the series.

It seems wildly inconsistent to assert that Arya arc writing is subtle and sophisticated at the same time we've just seen an episode where the north of the wall writing is so abysmal. FALL BACK to where, you morons? They're on a tiny ****ing island with nowhere to go. The whole Tormund is dead and then he isn't was lame. Jon falling into the water and the cold hands rescue was idiocy. And the dragon arrival and dragon death were as predictable and lame as any stupid Hollywood formula battle epic. What the showrunners have done here is a thoughtless travesty.

I'm at risk of rage-quitting the show.

And the whole bait-them-with-fire bit also made no sense.

BotB was epic in its spectacle and it was very well shot. The writing, and the convoluted way it got to where it needed to get, was stupid. Just like this episode.

They just need to get the show back on the reservation. Have the characters start behaving like actual, reasonable human beings again and stop all the tired tv cliche stuff.

A little tv cliche stuff you can get away, but this last episode... if the final season ends up being ridiculous you can call this past episode the Jump the Shark moment for the show.

Maisie's delivery of her lines does seem to have become worse. Just as in Doctor Who, her performance is stiff.

Did Sansa send Brienne away so she cpuld not interfere with a plot to kill arya

Well said Howard.

Unfortunately, I've seen this coming for some time, thus my desire to see knight king Jon Snow on an ice dragon.

The heavy action scenes are becoming more and more ridiculous. Pretty soon they'll introduce a new character type yo spice things up, sea animals will come ashore to claim the Iron throne.

I think you are giving the writers too much credit. It seems like nothing more than a bad plot device to create conflict between the sisters. It's possible Arya figures out it was all LF in the end, but as of now I'm convinced she's actually angry at Sansa. For what I have no idea... which is why it's terrible writing either way. No one really thinks she'd be angry about that note, so even as a ruse to trick LF it's dumb because Sansa wouldn't believe Arya was really mad either.

Seems to me they have been trying to paint Sansa as a power hungry villain for a while now and this is just a clunky attempt to move that story arc forward.

The thing that would really suck about Jon on the Iron Throne is that he's just not that clever. He is good and brave and all that but he just does so much dumb ****. If they were going to put him on the throne while highlighting that (e.g. as a critique of who people want to follow), that would actually be good... like Jon ascends to the throne and then fast forward to two years later, he can't figure out how to compound the interest on his loans or arrange food storage for winter, then he dies trying to swim to Pyke and fight Euron over some goonish remark he made in 1973, and the whole realm descends back into war and mindless savagery.

I think if GRRM has an outline in mind it will either be a cautionary tale / price of power type scenario, or they decide to start a whole new type of govt entirely.

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It's bad writing for Littlefinger. Arya has to fall for it to show how diabolical he is or wtf, did he have a stroke? They just aren't clever enough to write for his character.

I interpreted that scene as Arya using Sansa's face to send Brienne away so she couldn't get in the way of her plan to kill Sansa. But I'm probably wrong.

Can't you only use the face of dead people though?