Meh. Could've been worse.

Ok, some actual thoughts.

• making your mystical shaman-type person king is a bad idea. Nobody does that.

• the North is gonna break away and Dorne isn't? Right.

• hey, let's come out of decades of wars of succession by having officially making each succcession a free for all! I'm sure it will all stay civil debate and no one will be killing anyone.

I am kind of pleased that none of the prophecies came to much of anything in the end.

Ghost got petted. Jon and Tormund ride again.

Drogon decided not to flame broil his Mom's killer and settled for melting the Iron Throne into slag and nobody gets to sit there. It looked like he was saying, if it weren't for this thing she wouldn't have gone all crazy.

Arya goes off for a life of adventure and Sansa wins the Throne of the North. Right on. My inner fan girl is happy.

What Katerina said.

I liked (or understood/approved of) everyone's fate, except maybe Jon's. Well, his fate was fine; I thought his sentence was bullshit. He killed a genocidal maniac.

I wasn't crazy about the execution of the episode. Very slow. The scene with Tyrion rearranging chairs made me keep looking at the clock.

Overall though, I am please. Dh is not. I feel sorry for him, because he was a much more regular fan than I was.

Arya goes off for a life of adventure and Sansa wins the Throne of the North. Right on. My inner fan girl is happy.

This.

Arya sails off into the Uttermost West? Where have I heard that one again?

the North is gonna break away and Dorne isn't? Right.

I was thinking the same thing!

Also, how are the Followers of the Faith going to feel, especially so soon after their Pope was murdered, about having a devout follower of the old gods be their new king? He's probably going to have a weirwood tree planted in King Landing!

Also, so now Sam is now the head of House Tarly, and also the Grand Maester? How is that supposed to work?

Now that it's done, I think the big mistake was shortening the season. All of that could have played out a lot more dramatically and understandably with a regular season. Even Dany's death -- that should have been an episode in itself, with Jon needing convincing, and some kind of plotting about how to do it, when to do it. Instead it was just too easy, like everything else has been (hello, Night King).

I'm on board with where everyone ended up, more or less, but they really screwed up some chances for actual tension and drama by giving us endless shots of people walking. Tyrion walking toward the castle, or whatever. Jon, walking toward the castle. Arya ... Ugh.

And tone was so weird -- like someone said on Facebook, I think, the ending shots were pure telenovella romance, and so was Dany's death and Drogon's rage, but then they switched gears from this high fantasy to an almost too realistic (for values of realism that include dragons, I guess) epilogue where you've got the cleanup and rebuilding, and Bronn snarking and Tyrion sighing. All of which could have worked on its own, but smashed into one episode was a little jarring.

Also, the moment Sam invented a republic was a little TOO too for me, much as I love him, and I just can't buy that the group of nobility assembled there took seriously 30 seconds to chuck their entire system of government for electing whoever without a single argument. Bull. Shit.

Arya's end was really anticlimactic, too. I'm all for her going off to see the world and have adventures, but in this episode she basically walked around, said goodbye to Jon, and laughed at her uncle putting himself forward as king. Not satisfying.

My other real criticism was the jump from Dany being carried off by Drogon to Tyrion being led to the council of nobility. I don't know if I missed something, but they did not make it clear that weeks had passed, so it took me a minute to catch up.

the North is gonna break away and Dorne isn't? Right

Totes this.

I loved Sansa getting her crown. I liked Drogon melting the iron throne.

Bran winning High King was a little too much "And eventually the children were rescued by, oh, let's say, Moe" for me, but whatever, FINE.