From my experience of reading and being annoyed at reactions to popular culture over the last few years, and I don't know how to say this without coming off incredibly pretentious or like the fat nerd from simpsons, I view the reactions to this episode largely fall into two camps of people.
1) The group that will love this episode are the people who are only really fans of the show because a lot of other people are and they want to be part of the popular group too. I understand this mindset, if your group of buddies are all talking about the latest episode of GoT in the coffee room every monday, you want to feel included in the fun no? It was the same for every other massively popular television show in the last decade or two. Breaking Bad, The Office, The Sopranos, Lost, etc. Same thing with internet reactions, you want to part of the thing everyone's talking about, what every blog is writing article's about, you don't want to feel left out do you? You don't really care about the deeper story or the setting's history, you just want to be entertained by shiny cgi, quippy dialogue, and over the top fan-service moments that you can meme about with everyone on twitter after the episode (YAS QUEEN SLAY!!11!). It's just dumb popcorn entertainment about magical dragons, just turn your brain off and enjoy it, don't be a debbie downer.
I realize how incredibly dismissive and smug that sounds so apologies for that, I've just read too many repeating versions of this same argument in recent years to not see a pattern.
2) The group that will hate this episode will largely hate it solely for the ending and are the people who are far more invested in the setting that the story is being told in than the group above. They'll be the ones who know the history's of the characters, the motivations behind various interactions based on established precedents, and overly care about events making actual logical sense within the confines of the story's own internal consistency more so than just the flashy battle sequences and occasional nudity. So they'll notice and be bothered by the small details that make no sense, that to the prior group will come of as incessant nitpicking and wanting to hate what's popular. Really in a way they're right, why are you investing yourself so much into a story to the point that every example of bad writing ruins the experience for you, when you could be spending your time doing anything else that you actually enjoy. I wish I could take that advice to heart at times because I wouldn't for example be wasting time writing this pointless drivel but oh well.
You can already see a backlash forming towards those who are critiquing the faulty logic of the ending on various forums for the show. I'm sure there will be plenty of blogs and "think pieces" over the next few days explaining why this episode was the best thing since sliced bread thanks to all the fan-service moments despite all logic being thrown out the window, empty spectacle and social media reactions are increasingly all that seem to matter nowadays. Feel like that's the deathknell for most well written properties nowadays, they start out being written for a niche audience who actually care, then if they outgrow the audience the creators cater to the new larger casual passerby's in an attempt to milk the property for as much as possible before it's 15 minites are up.
Really the Marvel movies mentioned are one of the only examples of this I can think of that seemed to maintain a level of quality despite it's audience continually rising to the point the original niche target audience was fully eclipsed by the lowest common denominator. There's problems with certain movies sure, but the overall above average quality (some reaching pretty unanimous excellence ) of the series I'd argue is pretty impressive considering how long they've been able to maintain it. GoT in comparison at least to me pretty clearly began a precipitous decline a few seasons back, not coincidentally as soon as the show-runners ran out of book material to write off of, which isn't in the end their fault, but a shame nonetheless.
