>loved the music and the whole vibe.
>
>I enjoyed the darkness element...for the most part. Most of
>the battle scenes have been hard to discern anyway so I guess
>I'm just used to that at this point. And in this one we're
>dealing with a bunch of ravenous zombies which makes things
>even harder to slow down. I suppose at times it didnt need to
>be THAT dark but whatever I'm not too bent outta shape over
>it. I think the one thing I had a really hard time figuring
>out were the in-air dragon fighting scenes...it was really
>hard to recognize the good dragons from the undead dragon.
>
>Loved Mellisandra coming back and weaving in some of the
>themes from the early seasons.

same here. they do a pretty excellent job of turning hated characters into beloved and opposite also. honestly one of my favorite parts of the episode is when she told Clegane that Berric "served his purpose"... and initially all that told us was... for... Arya? but pretty damn awesome how ALL OF THAT came together (you'll shut a thousand eyes). there were some really cool throwbacks this episode.

>I enjoyed the hell outta the episode but I think it outright
>failed in effectively explaining what the Night King and his
>army actually wanted and their motivation for terror (unless
>it was just terror for the sake of terror). In an earlier
>episode this season they made a reference to the Night King
>wanting to kill Bran to erase the memory of the world? Or
>something like that? I need a little more than that to know
>what we're fighting for here.

its pretty awful how bad they have really conveyed the Night King. what was it, season 2, that it showed the Children of the Forest creating him? and then we went YEARS without anything shedding light on that. and basically, NK wants to kill the Raven so that the history of man will be forgotten. makes sense to me, but I agree they did a poor job of explaining him in a historical context.

>The episode (or maybe the series in general) also failed to to
>explain Bran's role in that battle and in the fight against
>army of the undead. Bran channeled back into the ravens but I
>have no idea what he accomplished with that. I'm sure I could
>google it but I shouldn't need to do research after watching a
>90 min show.

i am basically a die hard Brann fan and have been since day 1. and its hard to defend him here. I personally think after watching that episode twice is that he warged into the crows to keep "eyes on" the NK until he reached the Godswood. Brann knew what was gonna happen this whole time I think... Giving Arya the dagger was either a MASSIVE COINCIDENCE or he simply knew how this would all play out. if the Red Woman knew, im sure Brann could. just played the Slow Game and getting almost everyone killed.

Jon Snow and Danny were basically superfluous thru that battle. what the HELL happened to Jons dragon? We saw Dannys bounce with all the zombies on him but Jons basically crash landed and we never saw him again.

enjoyed the episode a lot. like you, a lot of the combat is really hard to follow. I think they cheat a lot of it, but should be expected for the cost of everything. i thought it was DUMB AS HELL to rush them w the Dothraki. brave but dumb.

Gray Worm with the mach3 spear spinning with 4000 dead bodies near him was legit.