Game of Thrones Episode 6.5 spoilers

Well, this episode was pretty terrible.  I don’t like dwelling on the fact that I am falling further and further into being a hater of this show.  But, it isn’t completely my fault.  The showrunners keep making bad story decisions.

After making what I didn’t think was a very bold claim last week about Sansa fucking up Littlefinger the next time she saw him, she did not fuck him up the next time she saw him.  I’m a little surprised Sansa didn’t have Brienne at least rough him up a bit.  I did like Sansa’s comments about moving between various sets of monsters who killed her family.  I’m just a little clueless as to what Littlefinger’s role in the story is right now.

I just don’t care about the Iron Islands bit.  As After the Thrones joked, the key in Iron Islands politics seems to be to speak second.  Euron is elected king in two seconds, survives being drowned (I swear in the book they did the Heimlich maneuver as part of the ritual), Yara and Theon get the hell out of dodge.  Where are they going?  I assume to find Dany first, but I really don’t care.

The scene with Dany finding out Ser Jorah has greyscale was somewhat touching.  Who knows if we will ever see him again?  Giving him greyscale was a bad story move anyway.

I wish the story would make a decision on Arya.  The waffling back and forth between is she Arya Stark or is she nobody is a little tedious.  As long as she becomes a super ninja, I don’t really care which way.  I will give the showrunners credit for the play.  I thought that scene was actually pretty well written, describing that part of the story in verse.

We’ll see what happens with Jon and Sansa’s take back the north strategy.  As long as Tormund and Brienne are there, I’m in.  This moment might have redeemed the entire season so far.

And now to Bran.  I don’t really feel like it is that big a deal learning that the children of the forest created the white walkers.  But, it was somewhat cool to see.  That last scene though…wow.  I don’t know if there was a single moment of that scene that made sense.  Why could the Night King see Bran in his vision state?  Why could the Night King mark him?  Why did that suddenly and randomly allow him to enter the cave?  It seemed like Bran really didn’t learn very much during his time with Tree Max Von Sydow when that was set up to be a momentous aspect of the story.  And then, Tree Max Von Sydow died.

And then there is Hodor’s death.  COME ON MAN.  Was I sad to see Hodor die?  Absolutely.  Hodor is a great character.  But, his death was so stupid.  The revelation that Hodor was slurred speech of hold the door makes little sense.  The fact that young Hodor was somehow struck by an epileptic fit from the future makes little sense.  People online said that Bran warged into young Hodor affecting him from the future.  But, I did not think that Bran did anything to young Hodor.  We could hear Meera’s voice from the future.  It didn’t look like Bran did anything.  And there just happened to be a back door to the underground cave?  And Hodor saved Meera and Bran…what two minutes escape time?  Meera wasn’t going anywhere fast.  The white walkers couldn’t have spent the five minutes at most to find them and kill them?  It was just bad storytelling.

But what really ruined the scene for me, and probably strongly affected my reading of Hodor’s death was the worst decision of the episode.  Ahem, dear showrunners, STOP KILLING THE GODDAMN DIRE WOLVES.  Jesus.  They killed Summer for absolutely zero reason.  The show has needlessly killed two dire wolves who we are pretty sure are still alive in the books.  I understand the dire wolves are a tough special effect for the show, but damn, that doesn’t mean you have to kill them.  Seeing as the dire wolves were one of my favorite elements from the books, this seemingly unnecessary decision really disappointed me.

And I’ve heard whispers on the internet that this scene is what George RR had planned.  It doesn’t completely surprise me, because the entire thing was a terrible decision and by the end of book five, George RR had shown that he could make plenty of bad story decisions.  Summer and Hodor both go out in stupid ways.  An already complicated story and relationship with magic is complicated even more by introducing the idea of time travel.  It is just ridiculous.  We’ll see if any semblance of sense can be salvaged with the next episode, but phew, this one was a doozy.

It is crazy for me to think that creating Ned’s head as my spirit animal for the show will turn out to be one of the least worst story decisions made in the show/books.