Well, that’s over. The Starks “won”, as much as they could. And the extended Tully family rules over most of the west in this ending:
– Edmure clearly runs the Riverlands.
– Robert Arryn is coming into his own in the Vale.
– Sansa runs the free North.
– Bran runs the over-all Six Kingdoms.
Now, onto the show itself.
There was no way Arya/Jon could allow Dany to leave King’s Landing. And they didn’t. Up until the moment’s after Jon kills his usurper aunt, the last episode was about as good a bow on the stupidity of the season as possible. What happened after that was an utter disaster from a story-telling perspective:
– All of Jon’s lineage and the drama around it meant nothing. I get the message here, but it is a slap in the face to the fans because you spent years with all this bullshit implying it was super important. A Macguffin is fine. But lying to people to trick them is poor story telling.
– Arya’s face swapping didn’t matter after she killed the Freys. Is that all there is to it? Is she just done now? When did she become an explorer?
– Sansa has it in her power to pardon Jon is he abandons the Watch; this is established earlier in the series (Stannis’ offer, Ramsay’s offer… etc).
– Jon killed a person who had just murdered a half-a-million people. Grey Worm and his cronies were murdering innocent people who surrendered. Why the fuck do they get off scot-free and also get to impose their will on the people of Westeros? Arya should have sneaked up on that brooding dickhead and cut him from his scar to his chin.
– Yara Greyjoy is also a dumb ass for similar reasons. “We swore allegiance to Dany raaah.” We in this case is you and Grey Worm. Literally no one else on that dais swore fealty to Dany. Also, she was sitting not far from the burned out ruins of the city where Dany killed a half a million women and children. If I were Bran I’d see to it that Arya followed through on her threat to slit her throat just because she’s an unstable lunatic.
– Who the hell were the other people at Tyrion’s trial/the election? There were two folks we’ve never seen before, one between Sam and Edmure, and one with Royce and Robert Arryn. At least the Dornish guy was clearly a Dornish guy. Don’t put randos in the important end-game scene.
– Doesn’t the Three-Eyed Raven live for a very long time? Bran clearly still has his abilities. Wouldn’t he end up being the King for centuries then?
– What point is there to a Night’s Watch now? If anything they should be turned into a Coast Guard in case those Unsullied dipshits return.
– Seriously, Bran needs to do something to guarantee the support of Dorne and get Bronn way on-board: there is trouble brewing, because the Unsullied/Dothraki and the Greyjoys cannot be trusted.
All in all, it could have been worse. But it could have been much better.