Using the "Law & Order" rule of star wattage, I assume Anya will spend a bit of time with the troupe, only because Richard Grant was the leader of it.

I do not like the off-handed way they're killing the wolves.

Me neither.

and there's a large part of me that instinctively thinks of the show as "unofficial" or less real

Oh, that too. Except it's not just a part, I'm gonna say all my parts are in agreement.

I like thinking about how while we see the Starks as sympathetic and noble they could easily be painted as the villains in the south: they're basically all wargs, they worship the the old gods instead of the seven, they rebelled after Ned was executed for treason that he confessed to, it looks pretty bad. The play was interesting from that perspective.

Is it wrong that I think the show is better now that they've gone past the books? I haven't read the books yet, but the women seem to have much more agency this season and things are actually happening.

I think that a lot of the issue in the last season or two was that the books got kind of weird with the timelines -- Martin essentially realized that he had too many characters and too many places, so the last couple of books just focused on a few each. The show couldn't really do that, thus, we had Arya and the Hound wandering around Westeros forever until the rest of the stories got up to the place where she could go to Braavos. Though, I kind of expected something more to happen with her -- the show hasn't been following her storyline exactly, but she's in roughly the same place in the show as she is in the books now, while a lot of the other characters have moved a lot further forward.

I liked Sansa embroidering the wolf on her dress. In the books, it's kind of a thing that she doesn't really identify as a Stark, or as a northerner, too much -- she sees herself as her mother's daughter -- so that struck me as a big deal. That she's sick of playing the southern courtly games, and she's all in with the North.

A Song of Ice and Fire,

or

How Dolorous Edd Came To Be

Lord Commander Of The Night's Watch.

In other thoughts...

I liked Sansa embroidering the wolf on her dress. In the books, it's kind of a thing that she doesn't really identify as a Stark, or as a northerner, too much -- she sees herself as her mother's daughter -- so that struck me as a big deal. That she's sick of playing the southern courtly games, and she's all in with the North.

I hadn't put that together until you pointed it out, Hil.

I imagine many huge sighs of relief around the writers room table once they realized they were far enough past the books they could just write a good story, and not be tied down to GRRM's unintelligible mutterings grand vision. (Though I am somewhat skeptical that the Stark plan to ride around the North talking to minor characters we've never met will yield much in the way of narrative oomph. Probably something will go wrong that will make it more exciting.)

Sansa was spectacular last night. Her face when she told Littlefinger "I AM harmed."

Play!Ned saying "I'm starting to think you people can't be trusted" = comedy GOLD.

I would also at some point like Arya's story to move forward. Either she becomes a Faceless Man or she learns all their tricks and then escapes with a sack full of faces so she can murder Cersei.

Somebody elsewhere in some comments thread explained the Wyllis-Hodor thing in a way that got me to grasp it better.

Bran warging into Hodor while being in the presence of Wylis linked Wylis and Hodor - so just in case you thought it couldn't get worse think about young Wylis experiencing everything Hodor was going through.

Which means also that Hodor knew that moment was coming his whole life.

Which means also that Hodor knew that moment was coming his whole life.

Oh SHIT. No wonder he was so loyal to Bran.

Yeah, it really is so much worse than you initially think it is, on a couple of levels. Because there was a functioning mind still in there. He understood when other people spoke. Since he was mostly a functional person, one can only hope that he mostly suppressed the memory (although it certainly explains why he was always utterly freaked out by violence). But even with it partially or mostly suppressed, he had to understand on some level where the journey was taking him (the deep cryptic sadness in Kristian Nairn's "hodors" this season are so perfectly played).

So it's is simultaneously both this horrible thing Bran did to Hodor, and yet still Hodor's heroic, selfless choice.

And of course, part of why and how it so gutting, on top of just caring about Hodor as a character, is the realization that the awful truth has been right in front of your face the entire time. You just didn't understand what you were looking at.

CALLING ALL BUFFISTAE - please check out my post in Beep Me (probably should have put it in Press, too late now).

So it's is simultaneously both this horrible thing Bran did to Hodor, and yet still Hodor's heroic, selfless choice.

I like the idea that Hodor knew it was coming and so he deliberately stayed with Bran to protect him all this time because it was bothering me that the actual door-holding was not his decision.