I'm going with OOT and calling body double. lol natural body, nobody has an ass like that at 40+ without working hard for it. Anyways the episode as a whole was waaaayyy too packed with a ton of stuff imo. OMG we have to finish all the storylines nowwwww, let's gogogogo. Thought it was pretty bad.

99% sure it was a body double unless she had some serious work done. She's been nood before. Her bewbs are not that big. Not even the nips were the same. But maybe she had a baby and that ermmmm changed things up? I believe that she trains hard tho for what she has. We could call foul on other nood scenes she's done, but she's been spotted in bikinis and the like, and she is in great shape.

As far as actual content, when they had Drogo pick up Dany and carry her off last episode I figured they were going to jump all the storylines to the point where the book Dance of Dragons ended, and that is basically what they did. I thought they actually did a pretty good job.

As I said earlier I also think it is important and not an accident that Melisandre ended up back at Castle Black before Jon died, and she is going to be involved in his resurrection somehow. Oh, I should add that I didn't like the Dorne storyline at all, and it really makes no sense, in either the show or book universes. I assumed Myrcella (and Tommen) are gonna die at some point because of what the fortune teller told Cersei when she was a kid, but I don't really like how they executed it. I think the way they killed off Stannis's daughter makes more sense in the world they built.

I definitely like the Doth'Raki becoming relevant again. I literally forgot they even existed or that the vast majority of them did not follow Dany and went off to do their own thing. This is a really great and interesting way of finally making Dany's story interesting, as it's been pretty bad since book 1 really.

Okay. So we have to remember GRRM started the ideas for this series in the late 80s or early 90s before the internet had exploded. His R+L=J thing probably would seem revolutionary back then before it was so easy to share fan theories and we had an HBO show. He never could have predicted that. So the R+L=J thing seems "too obvious" to us to be real, but it was probably put in place so long ago that it wouldn't have been "too obvious" back then.

I was disappointed by the stabbing, but also not. If they were going to permanently kill him off, they probably would have done it with some White Walkers battle off in the middle of the forest or something at a different time. Benjen thing got me for about 2.5 seconds but then I said lol no way. The little boy was ****ing stupid and shouldn't have been in the show at all. His stabbing was probably justified by the rest of the watch, not for letting the wildlings through, that was okay, but for getting too involved in the affairs of everyone south of the wall. They're supposed to be impartial and all that yet he's clearly supporting Stannis. The fact that it went down like this + the timing of Melisandre's return makes it REALLY obvious he's about to be resurrected and he's Azor Ahai reborn or whatever and him + Dany are going to push back the white walkers and co-rule the 7 kingdoms at the end of the series or fight it out or something like that.

I looovvvveeddd the Arya scene this episode and I'm glad they changed it from the books. It felt so much more compelling and AFAIK Trant was the one always beating the **** out of Sansa so it was kinda interesting for them to callback to that and have this be some weird fetish thing. Sucks she goes blind and all but I think it was handled better than in the books, where, to me anyway, her blindness felt kind of purposeless. Here it made more sense.

I'm thinking Jorah+Dario on a trek to find Dany is going to be the new boring segment I'm not looking forward to.

I thought they moved the Stannis arc along forward at just the right pace. In the books it just ****ing CRAWLS and it's all through Asha's POV and it's like "durr marching through the snow and hungry" for hundreds of pages with nothing happening. I'm sure the Shireen sacrifice will go down almost exactly that way in book 6 as well. I liked that they didn't beat around the bush and got right to it. I liked Brienne finally having her resolution even though she killed a character I liked. I'm sure that's not happening in the books at all, but Brienne is one of the best characters in the books and I'm happy the show gives her more attention and has her doing more badass stuff instead of frothing at the loins for Jamie.

i think R+L=J is super obvious in the books and it would be a bigger surprise if it wasn't. but I also think you would never guess it from the shows. I would be shocked if a show only watcher could come to that conclusion based on the show so far and assume they were lying and they had read some stuff on Internet or talked to a book reader. The show just doesn't give all the hints (yet) the books do. For me the giveaway is they just made Ned's character too uptight and noble to believe he would have an affair with his pregnant wife at home, especially when we find out he married Cat in his brothers place. Then when we find about how R + L ran away together and the affair was consensual everything clicks into place.

Also, at the end of Dance with Dragons doesn't Theon tell Asha that Stannis is dead? Also, I don't remember Shireen being On the March. I don't remember her even leaving the island. I am pretty sure Stannis is dead, Melisandre is at the wall, and I don't think Shireen being burned alive happens at all in the books.

Shireen+Stannis's wife who's name I can't remember+Melisandre are all at the wall. I'm almost certain they will still end up burning her
somehow in book 6. Maybe it will be to resurrect JSnow instead.


Also, was there a single Bran scene this whole season? I remember those being my absolute favorite parts of book 5. Those and Theon's chapters were pretty damn good.