Thought I’d break some of this down by character rather than chronologically. Jump to the end if you want to skip the ramblings.
Daenerys — Suffered some of the biggest plot hole / plot armour issues, which initially made me feel pretty mad at this episode. Destroying the Iron Fleet in the space of mere minutes, where only last episode she flew over them without a word to say about it. Likewise sacking the entire defences of King’s Landing with a few breaths of fire, when the whole point of the first two dragons being killed was to introduce some tension because it might have evened up the fight? Weird choice. Overall I think her actions in the rest of the episode did make sense, but would have been much more understandable if there’d been a bit more breathing space in how long it took her to turn. All the things happened to justify her turning like this — losing Missandei, her dragons, claim to the throne etc — but it happened too quickly. That’s why when the episode went into full-blown callous civilian-killing, I initially felt like it was really motivated by a mere sick desire for carnage on the part of the writers, playing up to the brutality that GoT became famous for, rather than being motivated by her character (@Andysol this was the "pathetic" moment). But, on the other hand, I think overall by the end it just about qualified as ‘good’ uncomfortable rather than sick. I can see why some people think it’s a desertion of character for her to have gone full-on butcher and at the time of watching I agreed, but thinking more deeply it’s understandable that she would see the city’s surrender and not be able to stop herself feeling that Cersei hadn’t suffered enough yet. It was certainly moving. And, for the first time in a while, I felt EC’s acting was really noteworthy and very good. Final question — where the bloody hell did the Dothraki reappear from. I mean come on. They got butchered.
Cersei — Again very well acted by Lena. The death was a bit of a let-down perhaps, but again as with the Night King, I think almost anything would have been a let-down after the years of build-up. Realistically some fans would only have been satisfied if she’d been gratuitously tortured, but apart from maybe Daenerys this would have been a huge mistake to write for anyone else.
Euron and Jaime — Euron turned out a bit wet and useless didn’t he? Wasn’t mad about his end but it did slightly smack of the convenient washing-up-right-where-we-want-you-to as with the attack on Dany’s fleet, when he got blown to kingdom come by dragon fire and happened to turn up at Jaime’s feet. Jaime’s death I wasn’t that fussed about, bit of a shame, but I think most people will have been distracted by being mad about Cersei so they’ll get away with it.
Arya — Actually well handled I thought. I was worried that her end would be an issue because when she went after Cersei, I thought the only options were for her to be the one to end Cersei (predictable and unsatisfying) or get killed trying (also unsatisfying). The sequence with her seeing the very real effects of Dany’s attack was very effective and one of my favourite parts, and the visual echo of her trying to escape King’s Landing way back in the day was poignant and very neat. The horse was questionable at best but by this point it was kind of the least of several evils so let’s go with it.
Jon — Had a good episode for finally being allowed out of his “You are my queen” schtick. I was also glad they gave him the beat saving the civilian lady from the soldier abducting her before the writers fell into another really-not-ok set piece of gratuitousness, which I thought it was heading for.
Overall I did enjoy this episode — a lot of it genuinely did have me holding my breath. And, it goes without saying the production and cinematography were awe-inspiring and genuinely incredible (the redesign of King’s Landing made more sense this episode and both the wide shots and the closeup ground-level set design were excellent). There were moments I thought it was going really, really wrong — but it just about avoided completely falling into those major traps for the most part. The plot holes early on perhaps set me off on the wrong foot for viewing it sympathetically, but I’m inclined to agree with @rhino4evr that overall the ‘shock’ moments that people didn’t necessarily want were good for keeping it fresh rather than being ‘disappointments’. And this also speaks to something wider: it’s easy to be unpredictable and in character at an early stage of shows like GoT, but gets progressively harder when people think they know more about the characters so in a sense the unpredictable becomes predictable, and it’s much harder to tread the line between surprise and being true to character.
Daenerys — Suffered some of the biggest plot hole / plot armour issues, which initially made me feel pretty mad at this episode. Destroying the Iron Fleet in the space of mere minutes, where only last episode she flew over them without a word to say about it. Likewise sacking the entire defences of King’s Landing with a few breaths of fire, when the whole point of the first two dragons being killed was to introduce some tension because it might have evened up the fight? Weird choice. Overall I think her actions in the rest of the episode did make sense, but would have been much more understandable if there’d been a bit more breathing space in how long it took her to turn. All the things happened to justify her turning like this — losing Missandei, her dragons, claim to the throne etc — but it happened too quickly. That’s why when the episode went into full-blown callous civilian-killing, I initially felt like it was really motivated by a mere sick desire for carnage on the part of the writers, playing up to the brutality that GoT became famous for, rather than being motivated by her character (@Andysol this was the "pathetic" moment). But, on the other hand, I think overall by the end it just about qualified as ‘good’ uncomfortable rather than sick. I can see why some people think it’s a desertion of character for her to have gone full-on butcher and at the time of watching I agreed, but thinking more deeply it’s understandable that she would see the city’s surrender and not be able to stop herself feeling that Cersei hadn’t suffered enough yet. It was certainly moving. And, for the first time in a while, I felt EC’s acting was really noteworthy and very good. Final question — where the bloody hell did the Dothraki reappear from. I mean come on. They got butchered.
Cersei — Again very well acted by Lena. The death was a bit of a let-down perhaps, but again as with the Night King, I think almost anything would have been a let-down after the years of build-up. Realistically some fans would only have been satisfied if she’d been gratuitously tortured, but apart from maybe Daenerys this would have been a huge mistake to write for anyone else.
Euron and Jaime — Euron turned out a bit wet and useless didn’t he? Wasn’t mad about his end but it did slightly smack of the convenient washing-up-right-where-we-want-you-to as with the attack on Dany’s fleet, when he got blown to kingdom come by dragon fire and happened to turn up at Jaime’s feet. Jaime’s death I wasn’t that fussed about, bit of a shame, but I think most people will have been distracted by being mad about Cersei so they’ll get away with it.
Arya — Actually well handled I thought. I was worried that her end would be an issue because when she went after Cersei, I thought the only options were for her to be the one to end Cersei (predictable and unsatisfying) or get killed trying (also unsatisfying). The sequence with her seeing the very real effects of Dany’s attack was very effective and one of my favourite parts, and the visual echo of her trying to escape King’s Landing way back in the day was poignant and very neat. The horse was questionable at best but by this point it was kind of the least of several evils so let’s go with it.
Jon — Had a good episode for finally being allowed out of his “You are my queen” schtick. I was also glad they gave him the beat saving the civilian lady from the soldier abducting her before the writers fell into another really-not-ok set piece of gratuitousness, which I thought it was heading for.
Overall I did enjoy this episode — a lot of it genuinely did have me holding my breath. And, it goes without saying the production and cinematography were awe-inspiring and genuinely incredible (the redesign of King’s Landing made more sense this episode and both the wide shots and the closeup ground-level set design were excellent). There were moments I thought it was going really, really wrong — but it just about avoided completely falling into those major traps for the most part. The plot holes early on perhaps set me off on the wrong foot for viewing it sympathetically, but I’m inclined to agree with @rhino4evr that overall the ‘shock’ moments that people didn’t necessarily want were good for keeping it fresh rather than being ‘disappointments’. And this also speaks to something wider: it’s easy to be unpredictable and in character at an early stage of shows like GoT, but gets progressively harder when people think they know more about the characters so in a sense the unpredictable becomes predictable, and it’s much harder to tread the line between surprise and being true to character.
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