Game of Thrones begins....

[Sophie Scholl]

I am annoyed that I did not get the slaughter of the Dothraki that I've been dreaming of this whole time. Oh, well. At least lots of them died at Winterfell.

They are magical Dothraki, appearing and disappearing according to the writers' needs.

Much like the Unsullied who are either magical or reproduce like Gremlins at an all you can eat after midnight restaurant with the sprinklers on.

[Josephus]

I don't get why Drogon, upset that his mother was killed, and the killer was standing right next to him, took his rage out on the chair.

[Maladict]

I don't get why Drogon, upset that his mother was killed, and the killer was standing right next to him, took his rage out on the chair.

That's the chair force for you.

[Habbaku]

[Camerus]

It was Dany's Gollum moment, with the One Ring she had obsessed over going into the flames.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Could you imagine the *immediate* new wars that would start, as most of the nobles of Westeros NOT sitting at that table would say "BRANTHEWHOTHEFUCK????" and put forth their own candidate?

Hell, at the point fucking Gendry has a better claim than he does.

I wrote off the book series long ago and haven't seen all of the show (was never my thing, I quit watching after s3 or s4, but did watch all of the most recent season); but I suspect this is just a good example of show runners working backward from Martin's ending with little help on the journey there, and trying to shove too much into too limited an episode count. HBO wanted the last two seasons to be full 10 episode seasons, the production team wanted the shorter seasons.

My suspicion, if Martin ever finishes his books (which I somewhat doubt he ever will), is Bran will be far more involved in leading and winning the campaign against the Others than Bran the TV character was, which will make his ascension far more logical. In the TV series Bran, probably because his story isn't easy to tell on TV and because the show I think chose to put less emphasis on magic than the books, spent so much of his time sitting in his wheelchair staring oddly into the distance that he just wasn't well set up to be a logical King.

The books don't even have a direct analogue to the Night King [the Night's King from ancient Westeros myth in the books was a human Night's Watch commander who, 8000 years ago had allied with the Others and briefly setup the Night's Watch as an independent Kingdom, when he was defeated it was found he had been performing human sacrifices to the Others and his actions are one reason all of the Night's Watch fortresses are not fortified to the South, so that they are defenseless versus the lands of the 7 Kingdoms]; so we can assume the scene with Arya flying in from the sky to kill him was entirely a D&D/HBO invention, and it's reasonable to conclude that a malignant magical force like the Others likely will require a powerful magical user on the opposite side to defeat, which to me suggests Bran is probably going to be much more directly involved in the books.

I think HBO could've "gotten there" with Bran being a logical King, but they just didn't do the work of telling the story that way, and it appears they just tried to force it in with a 3 minute speech by Tyrion which leaves us with a very in-universe illogical outcome. [Even weirder, Bran is crowned King but let's ignore the fact he's the rightful heir to Ned Stark, not Sansa, so it shouldn't even be Sansa's decision on what the North does.]

[Grey Fox]

This was really bad    Like, Dexter level bad.

I feel bad for the actors, especially Emilia Clarke. What a shit sandwich they made them eat.

It wasn't even the same galaxy than the Dexter ending. For an American series, this ending was top 10 recent.

[Habbaku]

I don't understand why Bran couldn't be King of the 6 Kingdoms and also King in the North a la the Stuarts. 

Oh, wait, because the writers are stupids.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't understand why Bran couldn't be King of the 6 Kingdoms and also King in the North a la the Stuarts. 

Because then Sansa wouldn't get her coronation scene at the end.

[Habbaku]

Oh, right. Girl power.

[The Brain]

Why didn't Grey Worm kill Jon immediately after the murder of Daenerys? He seemed pretty upset generally even before the murder and no one could have blamed him. Did I miss something or was it just another piece of lazy writing?

[Berkut]

And you could have even made that work as well.

The North wants indepenence, and given the sacrifices they uniquely made to stop to the zombies, they get it. But they want true independence, and they are concerned that any dual monarchy would inevitable lead to them being subsumed back into a practical subservience, and some of the notable nobles resist.

So the compromise is that they agree to the political divide, but only as long as the Westerosi King is separate from the Northern monarch, hence Bran gives up all claim to the North in favor of a Start that can actually provide an heir, Sansa.

But of course that would require them to take valuable time away from the dragon burning up children, so fuck it, lets just go with the 3 minutes speechifying instead.

[grumbler]

Why didn't Grey Worm kill Jon immediately after the murder of Daenerys? He seemed pretty upset generally even before the murder and no one could have blamed him. Did I miss something or was it just another piece of lazy writing?

Grey Worm wasn't in the room when Jon assassinated Dani.  I'm not sure why; none of her guards were.

Unless Drogon was actually taking Dani's body to Grey Worm, GW wouldn't even know she was dead, let alone that Jon had killed her.

[Habbaku]

Spending screentime on succession discussions seems dumb when we can just have more Bronn threatening people with a crossbow, though.

[grumbler]

But of course that would require them to take valuable time away from the dragon burning up children, so fuck it, lets just go with the 3 minutes speechifying instead.

You could have kept the child-cooking bit but then you'd have had to eliminate one of the six scenes where Arya narrowly avoids death.  Can't have too many of those.