Westeros must be really small.
Wormholes.
I don't know if attempting to break the ice that surrounded them was feasible before they were swarmed? Perhaps they could have had a throwing rota to maintain the break as soon as it was an option. I personally didn't have a problem with this aspect of the story but there are moments that give me concern for how coming episodes might be handled. Your wight point is, eh... on point. And I'm sure the speedy intervention by Daenerys could have been written any number of ways more convincingly than we saw.
It's odd that this season the production had extra time and fewer episodes (that include large set pieces to take pressure off much of the writing) and yet there's perhaps an attitude of 'that'll do' creeping in to more important areas. It's shame, the attention to detail and finely crafted narrative is generally the hallmark of the show, it would be a shame to drop the ball on the end run
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle and implications of the episode, The banter and resulting camaraderie between the wight hunting crew was great too and added much. So many shows can't get this relatability right with even one character let alone an ensemble.
Yeah, I mean, on the whole, the spectacle was great, as penultimate episodes always are. But as with Battle of the Bastards, I found the characters to simply turn stupid for the sake of creating what the showrunners think is a cool scene. I hate that. I hate when character gives way to spectacle.
There were two other things I REALLY hated about this episode, and they're somewhat related.
1. The Sansa/Arya feud. This is total bull****. I'm sorry, but it is. The show has
not earned this, and Arya just looks like an idiot. The show also is doing a lousy job of laying the groundwork for this to be a long con on Littlefinger, mostly because it shows Arya and Sansa arguing alone, and never having, say, Littlefinger smirking in the background. None of this is to say that such a conflict
couldn't work, but they needed more time and to spend much more of it showing the breakdown of their relationship and other things eroding their trust. Then, at least, it would be believable, if also frustrating. As it stands, it just looks like "Hey, we need these two to have some conflict so we can stretch this out, so...uh....make 'em fight about some stupid crap. K? Cool."
2. Jon's fakeout "death." Dude. Don't even. You know why people have "plot armor" at this point? Because we have invested a TON of time into them narratively speaking. To kill them now isn't just some Whedonesque out-of-left-field thing that will pay dividends down the road. There IS no "down the road." That means that a character's death
must serve a narrative purpose, and Jon snuffing it in the frozen lake doesn't meet that definition. Jon dying in this episode
at all doesn't meet that definition.
Other characters could've died, though. Jorah, Tormund, Beric (oh man, so much Beric), Thoros (RIP), but definitely not Jon, probably not The Hound, and most likely not Gendry who only just resurfaced. But the show -- with the exception of Tormund and Thoros -- doesn't even try to make me think they're gonna die. It's too busy trying to fake me out by having Jon plunge into the icy waters of death...only to SOMEHOW FLOAT BECAUSE THAT'S HOW METAL ARMOR AND HEAVY FURS WORK, RIGHT and pull himself up out of the ice. Which, also, every zombie around him just kinda lets him do. You wanna make me fear for a character? Put Tyrion and Cersei alone in a room together, and have Jaime hurrying to meet them. NOW I'm worried. Jon in the ice lake? GTFO with that nonsense. Don't even try, man.
So, how are these two things related. Well, they're related in three ways. First, they stretch out the time, which is stupid, because we're running out of time, not trying to fill it with pointless crap. Second, they require the characters to act contrary to who we know they are or at least who they're supposed to be. Jon's supposed to be a good commander, no? Then why does he repeatedly make tactical blunders like this? Arya is supposed to be a trained assassin, who should be able to smell a con when it's happening. So why is she buying into this "conveniently discovered" letter?! Finally, all of these things happen in service to something
other than the characters or the narrative. They're done to set up a cool scene, for example, or to introduce a complication so that people wonder where we're headed when we know damn well where we're headed. Like, honestly, I flat out do not believe Arya will kill Sansa. I just don't. It doesn't fit the character, it doesn't fit the overall narrative, and the show hasn't effectively sold it as a real decision for them. So, as with Jon in the ice lake, it's just...not believable. All it elicits from me is a massive eyeroll.
I hate when writers try to show off how clever they are. It very rarely works, and usually because they're actually showing off instead of letting the work speak for itself. Sometimes this takes the form of writers trying to frustrate audience expectations -- usually expectations they themselves have built up over time. They'll throw in a twist to "keep the audience guessing," in spite of having already led the audience to the very point where they are, and in a way that audience members have been able to guess the actual outcome already. Or they'll try to throw the audience off the scent at least, by introducing a complication. But the problem is that these efforts are often poorly executed, and end up not working. That's how I think this episode played out. They wanted to introduce some cool scenes and some plot complications, but how they got to those points was really poorly executed.
Re: the ease of Viserion's death, I think it's safe to say it was the Night King's magic that slew the dragon, more than the hit from the ice javelin... dragons are creatures of magic, and getting hit by the NK's weapon disrupted the magic that made Viserion what he was.
Yeah, the ice spear thing...it's no
just a spear of ice. It's a spear of magic undead evil ice +2/+5 vs. Dragons. In seriousness, though, this didn't bother me at all.
