Finale thoughts: Hollow and clumsy.
They've gotten to the point where they have to fill in the blanks instead of erasing away the edges, and it isn't working. Some entertaining moments, lots of intended fan service
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(Tyrion to rule, Varys appears, Jamie + Bron tag-team Dorne, Brienne revenge, Theon kills hated dog girl)
but mostly hashed events that stutter along and are lucky to connect together at the end with any sense of payoff.
They've lost the magnitude of the events that happen in Martins world.
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When Jon Snow's murder is underwhelming...you've done something wrong. That scene needed to breathe, needed to be a slow trickle of realization that ends in a firecracker moment before fizzling away, leaving only the audience's shock to echo the impact. It was more like a post script. The big hammer fall was Olly, and instead of going "bang" it hit the screen with a thud. That very conspicuous thread being sewn all season got it's final stitch to the surprise of...who? I can only guess he was written to add weight to the scene but the horse doesn't weigh much when you've been beating it into the ground all season long.
I do not envy the showrunners at all, and kind of feel a bit bad for them. They submarined the Greyjoys, Gendry, Thoros, and Bran (and those are only chracters they;ve left out that they have featured on the show) and yet they still don't have enough time to tell anything but a visually spark-noted version of the source material. Realizing this, it seems they've gotten bolder and tried to carve their own path out of Martin's narrative (and now that the great well of material has dried up this is all they can do) but the path they carve is a long lazy bend from point A to point B.
Martin's was a labyrinth of clashing motives, ancient prophecy, the rise of magic, and complex and dynamic characters (something I can all but guess D&D regard as only mythical at this point). While I get you need to "clean up" and simplify the maze to translate it to the screen, it's the dark corners and wrong turns which make the payoffs so rewarding. The adventure is the journey as they say.
Sadly, knowing only the destination, D&D have gotten lost.