Game of Thrones begins....

[celedhring]

It's the Night King who kindly gets closer himself...

[Iormlund]

The main problem with the whole White Walker narrative is nothing makes sense unless Bran is so dangerous to the Night King that he has to be dealt with immediately and personally.
In RotK Aragorn uses both the Ring and the Palantir to drawn Sauron into battle on his own terms. But in GoT we see no indication of that danger to the Night King anywhere, so his actions make absolutely no sense.

The Army of the Undead could have simply turned south, wiped out White Harbor and -- leaving a detachment at Moat Caillin -- simply went on slaughtering throughout Westeros while the Army of Light froze their asses off and starved to death.

[The Brain]

The last two seasons are best forgotten, at most used as coasters on table of life.

[Tonitrus]

The last two seasons are best forgotten, at most used as coasters on table of life.

They prevent staining our fine wooden furniture?

[The Brain]

The last two seasons are best forgotten, at most used as coasters on table of life.

They prevent staining our fine wooden furniture?

I have none.

[KRonn]

So Jon was brought back to life in a miracle in order to assassinate Dani?  The whole Azura Ahai thing as well as The Prince That Was Promised were just misdirection?

It also strikes me that all of the sacrifices of the troops and civilians who died in the Battle of Winterfell were completely unnecessary.  Everytbody runs south while Bran sits beneath the Weirwoord tree and Arya hides in the branches.  When the the Night King comes to kill Bran, Arya kills him, all the wights and ice dragon and White Walkers turn to ice and disintegrate, and not a single human suffers (except maybe from some colds).

As Habbaku notes, this was a very Peter Jackson sort of pointless-sacrifice-before-deus-ex-machina-saves-the-day sort of story.  The more I think about it, the worse it is.

I have to agree with those who say this finale season was written poorly. I didn't have a strong view on how the series should end up as I realized anything could happen in a story like this, but it ended up being almost implausible. 

[grumbler]

It'd be a lot harder for Arya to get close to the Night King if his army wasn't occupied.

His army wasn't occupied when she got closer in the show.  Lots of wights and White Walkers were right where Bran was (the scene where the Ironborn get wiped out took place around Bran).  My plan has her start close enough to Bran to kill the NK when he shows up to kill Bran.  She doesn't even have to teleport past the wights and White Walkers in my plan.

[viper37]

So Jon was brought back to life in a miracle in order to assassinate Dani?  The whole Azura Ahai thing as well as The Prince That Was Promised were just misdirection?

they've been known to be wrong before.
But yeah, that was silly to place so much importance on it...

But Jon's heroic (also, dumb) stand against the army of the dead was necessary so they would be distracted.

[grumbler]

they've been known to be wrong before.
But yeah, that was silly to place so much importance on it...

The rule of Checkov's gun says don't introduce distractions.

But Jon's heroic (also, dumb) stand against the army of the dead was necessary so they would be distracted.

What were they being distracted from?  And who are "they?"

[Josquius]

I'm increasingly coming to think that the night walker was created by the children as a weapon only to turn against them. The raven is another one of their weapon who he was determined to stop.
Perhaps he became so dedicated to the cause he forgot why he was trying to stop him in the first place and became unconcerned about human life.

Given the talked about prequel, I wonder how many of the unanswered threads were incompetent handling of trying to tantalise us to want to know the answers.

[viper37]

What were they being distracted from?  And who are "they?"

the white undead dudes on horses controlling the armies.  Or sort of.  I don't really know.

but it seemed obvious their number needed to be thinned and they needed to be occupied.  Arya was great, but she wasn't so great that she could bypass the entire army.

[Razgovory]

So am I the only one who actually liked it?

[Grinning_Colossus]

I thought the 8th season was flawed but worth watching. Actually an improvement over the 7th season.

Here's how I'd rate the episodes:

1: 5/10 Kind of a waste of an episode.
2: 9/10 Wonderful farewell to the characters. 1 point removed because it wasn't actually a farewell to most of the characters.
3: 1/10 Total crap. 1 point added because the darkness slightly obscured the incompetence of the writer, director, and showrunners.
4: 5/10 Waste of an episode. Dragon died stupidly.
5: 8/10 Beautiful effects and an important message that even good leaders will commit atrocities when unchecked.
6: 7/10 Decent wrap-up with only a handful of truly nonsensical decisions. 1 point added for remembering that Edmure exists. 1 point removed for unnecessarily humiliating Edmure.

[Zoupa]

They got our expectations quite high from the first 6 seasons. Seasons 7-8 became normal television fare, rushed yet boring, and full of plot holes you could drive a truck through.

I give season 8 a 5/10, purely because it was beautiful cinematography and decent acting with the scripts they were given. I don't care about "it's GRRM's ending". What was presented to us on screen was stupid and made no sense in the context of the world they had previously built.

[viper37]

I thought the 8th season was flawed but worth watching. Actually an improvement over the 7th season.

Here's how I'd rate the episodes:

1: 5/10 Kind of a waste of an episode.
2: 9/10 Wonderful farewell to the characters. 1 point removed because it wasn't actually a farewell to most of the characters.
3: 1/10 Total crap. 1 point added because the darkness slightly obscured the incompetence of the writer, director, and showrunners.
4: 5/10 Waste of an episode. Dragon died stupidly.
5: 8/10 Beautiful effects and an important message that even good leaders will commit atrocities when unchecked.
6: 7/10 Decent wrap-up with only a handful of truly nonsensical decisions. 1 point added for remembering that Edmure exists. 1 point removed for unnecessarily humiliating Edmure.

Edmure was a turn coat, ultimately.