Hey all, I don't know how to do the spoilers thingy, if a mod wants to add it in, please go ahead. That said Spoilers ahead!!!
The tactics of the episode got me right away. I'm by no means a warfare expert, but I've played enough strategy games to know some simple, basic ideas. Light cavalry charging straight into an unknown enemy? Siege weapons at the front of your formation that you only shoot once? Building a trench with a collapsible bridge behind your primary infantry? No archers behind your infantry wall? No dragons providing close air support? No light at the front of your forces so you can...you know, see the bad guys? No burning pitch/traps for the inevitable besieging of the castle? About the shallowest moat you can imagine? No Phalanx? I could go on and on, but, this episode went out of it's way to show moronic tactics just to get the outcomes it wanted. Why not show humanity doing everything right, only to be overwhelmed by pure attrition? Between the poor tactics, the awful lighting, the terrible "quick cut" editing, this episode was by far the worst battle sequence they have ever portrayed. Which is so weird, b/c the battles that I found to be the best so far in the series (Hardhome/Battle of the Bastards) were directed by the same guy.
The word I've been using since about the middle of season 7 is lazy. This show has just gotten so lazy with it's writing, execution, etc. It's become all fan service with relationships and "haha jk" moments. Nothing pissed me off more then the fact that the Night King has been marching towards the Wall for 6+ seasons, only to basically luck into getting a dragon. Yet that's what he uses to knock down the Wall? What was his plan if there was no dragon? He couldn't have known when he started marching 5-6 years ago that all of a sudden the one thing he would need would magically show up and he'd be able to use it on the Wall right? So again, what was his plan for getting past the Wall pre-zombie dragon? The Deus Ex Machina has become so bad on this show now. And this last episode leaves even more questions. Why did the Night King start marching towards the Wall when he did? What prompted him gathering literally his entire crew to go beyond the Wall? Why did he need Crastor's babies? Why did he turn them into White Walkers, and not just wights? Why did he want to kill Bran/3ER so bad? What was Bran doing the whole time the fight scene was going on? How did a wooden box hold a Wight all the way from the Wall to King's Landing but then at Winterfell they could punch through solid stone crypts?
For eight years they hyped this as the endgame. It ended in one night. To total Deus Ex Machina, with the bad guy pulling a Bond Villain-esque ending and barely anything of consequence happening from a character perspective. No sick fight between Jon and the Night King. No badass moment with Brienne taking on all the White Walkers. No Dany having to seriously face her "child" Viseron in a way that has resonance. Not a single important person dying, and many unimportant people living for seemingly no reason. Oh and Melisandre showing up out of nowhere, then getting to seppuku in the snow? So. f***ing. Lazy.
I think they made a massive mistake by not figuring out who "beats Cersei" first, then using the Night King and the Army of the dead to reset the "game" for one last push. After this episode, it's hard for me to give two shits about who runs the kingdom. Which btw, for everyone who's been paying attention, has been Cersei since literally Season 1 Episode 1. First it was Robert Baratheon (husband), then it was Joffery/Tommen (sons) and now it's her. If I was a peasant, I'd be wondering why anyone even thought they had a right to "take the throne" when she's literally or figuratively been Queen since Baratheon was crowned 20ish now years ago.
I have zero faith in Benioff and Weiss pulling off a GoT prequel after the disaster the last two seasons have been. It's pretty clear that the real talent has always been GRRM, those two hacks are just standard Hollywood.