Every time someone says its obvious who kills the NK they are also making a critique of the show in relation to how it was and how it is now.

Spoiler alert, lord of the rings doesn't end like the movies where the ring is dropped in the volcano and then they spend 30 minutes blowing each other.

GRRM has always been open about loving that saga of books and being heavily inspired by it.

The GRRM spin is when Sansa delivers the final blow no one sees coming and rules the ashes having climbed to the top of the ladder. Or whatever.

Watch it a third time.

She drops the ax when she is grabbed. She had the glass dagger in her belt which she used.

I dont have a problem with the NK not being the main threat or that a girl stabbed him. The way at which the stabbing moment was arrived at yes, but we have done that.

He does not have to be the main threat, or the main plot line or whatever, its not a competition, he was still a massive part of the story, and he was dealt with in a cursory lazy way that leaves that large element of the plot resolved in an unsatisfying way.

Its not some binary position whereby only the main plot/threat needs to be treated with due care and attention, who cares about sub plots even if they are huge amount of the content and writing.

The Night King killing Arya in that scene would have been one of the dumbest plot moments in television of all time. Would have made zero sense given everything we know about Arya up to this point.

Cersai has long been the biggest threat to all the houses in GoT. The NK/WW's serve as an existential threat/dread for the North and add to the fantasy/mythology of the story but the fantasy element of GoT has never been the core story. The storyline has mainly served to help Jon have his character arc.

The people who luvv the heavy fantasy element of GoT are bummed cuz that element is now diminished over the remaining episodes. Overall ending it here seems to make sense to me as you were able to resolve several character's storylines in a meaningful way - Melissandre, Beric, Jorah, NK, Theon, and even Jamie in a sense and now they have to deal with the true problem which is Cersai as her plan appears to have worked out perfectly for her.

Danny's army is massively weakened and now everyone has to deal with the "afterwards" which is incredibly messy.

Yeah, because it would have been much better if the NK had stepped on a Dragonglass arrowhead by mistake and that had killed him because at least then it would have been unpredictable. Jfc.

So what about Cersei? I suppose you're going to moan if Jamie kills Cersei as zomg soooo predictable and I like steak, and you're going to moan if it's Arya or Jon because ffs burgers.

ok

arya killing the night king: predictable within the episode (though they did a bunch of stuff to make one forget what she was up to), unpredictable within the narrative as she had no apparent connection to any of that storyline, which made it unpredictable overall

i can only assume that critics wanted something that was predictable within the narrative (so Jon, Dany, or Bran probably), but unpredictable within the episode, because it being predictable in both would be woat


would the night king being torched by drogon be satisfying?
losing a 1v1 duel to jon?
bran warging something?
what?

Unpredictable or predictable is really a very minor issue.

NK being killed by Arya could have been satisfying as any of those things you mention which could all have been as unsatisfying if handled the way the Arya moment was.

Like the whole argument has gone whooooooosh.



Again its not that Arya killed the NK in a vacuum.

Would have been epic if he had been killed by a strawman as huge as this.

in reality the walls of winterfell should have just had like 1000 archers with dragonglass arrowheads and binked him somewhere in the battle
(if arya did that from the roof would that be cool? she's a good archer!)

but that wouldn't be satisfying tv either right

a lot of people here give OAFK a lot of ****. but for someone who has a masters, this is one of the dumbest posts ever. wtf. No wonder you get laughed at a lot for your masters. jfc

no seriously, what should have happened?

what should happen with Cersei?

we just have waaaaaaaaaay too many characters alive at this point and i just don't care about any of them anymore.
they killed off all suspense with that everybody is invulnerable bullcrap

seriously, jon doing something idiotic without consequence must be some kind of running gag by the showrunners at this point

arya kill cersei?? oh wait, cant now because of this stupid plot line.
Anyone kill her, they all hate the *****. Every character arc hates cersei. Many characters will make sense. Ill be pissed also whoever kills her has a throwback line from s3 out of nowhere which made no **** sense at the time, and they appears out of nowhere when it would be impossible to do so. Whilst ignoring every other character arc.

also what's jon doing now anyway?
can't see him giving a **** about GoT either

hes the prince thats promised, to kill cersei...he come back to life because the lord of light cared so much about this one queen. LOOOOOOOOOOL. Not the AotD which is the most important threat for him and every reason why he was saved, just this one women that arya could kill anytime she likes with 0 help from anyone. fk its so bad right now

These two posts really sum up why I felt so underwhelmed by the last episode, and why I can't envisage a endgame scenario that they can give enough time and weight to in three episodes to get excited about

For the sake of clarity, I was not being serious... I didn't think this would need explaining, but there we go.

Most of the biggest whiners in the thread seems to mainly be bitching because the final season version of GoT that existed in their head isn't the same version that the showrunners want to tell.

This is such a dumb point. It basically negates all criticism.

Random thing that annoys me: Unsullied started off as 8,000 people. They've been through like 5 battles and we've seen like hundreds die which really means thousands have died. Yet there is still aways a ton of them. Looked like even more than 8000 still when in reality there would maybe be a few thousand left.

Except it’s partly true. A bunch of the ‘criticism’ is basically someone interpreting something at least somewhat generic in one specific way and then being butt hurt that it’s not what the show did.

People are putting a lot of weight on fantasy prophecies that probably don't even apply.

Melisandre thought Stannis was the PWTP and she was wrong. R'hllor worked miracles for her that aided Stannis' cause but Stannis wasn't the guy.

R'hllor brought back Beric Dondarrion 7 times just so he could help Arya kill the NK. Who's to say he couldn't bring back Jon Snow once for the exact same purpose?

In the end Jon Snow was necessary to end the threat of the AotD because without him, there's no unified North. The Wildlings don't join the fight, Dany doesn't join the fight.

What if Arya is simply the PTWP? What if Bran is R'hllor himself? What if Bran is actually the endgame baddie? What if Bran wants to make the Starks the ruling house of Westeros? What if he simply wants the throne for himself?

This **** isn’t hard. The saying is clearly based on the weather. The show makes this clear and the seasons turning is an aspect of the show itself.

It’s obviously also an analogy for many other things. It’s the generic ‘be prepared’ message of the North and has been applied by the show to many different things.

Your point was that the show abandoned this saying by killing off the NK so easily. Which is just some weird ass view based in your opinion that the saying was only talking about the undead. It’s an extra dumb take because the North needed to prepare a lot for this invasion (getting allies, dragonglass, feeding armies, preparing Winterfell, etc) and has been decimated by the NK. So even with your interpretation it seems like GoT did it justice.

I think the estimate was actually 10,000 Unsullied before Battle of Winterfell.

I've seen reports that Davos actually said there were 100,000 Dothraki but I don't remember hearing that and I'm skeptical that was true.