Jon, naturally, thought it made sense and took it upon himself to go. The Snowy Seven’s expedition always felt doomed to fail once Tyrion suggested it to Jon. It’s a small, nice moment given the gravity of what was to happen next. Looking at that, though, it makes Dany’s decision to head over the Wall more powerful as Tyrion tries to get through to her before she sets off to help Jon. Tyrion and Dany both discuss the state of the game, before Tyrion makes some cheeky remarks about Jon and Dany already love one another - a look from Dany almost confirms that she does love him somehow - it’s a nice back and forth the two have until Dany just starts accusing Tyrion of siding with his old family again. Speaking of conflict, it feels just as present over in Dragonstone. Give me one or two more episodes where we can explore and actually develop Arya and Sansa’s relationship before Arya turns on her and I think this arc is in a much better place. Arya’s immediate distrust of Sansa makes little sense after everything Littlefinger seems to have not done he’s literally put a cheeky note under his bed to throw Arya off his tracks or, at least, cause conflict between the sisters. The more I think about it, I would be happy to have the 10 episodes for this arc to breathe a little bit more. Why does Brienne need to go? You sound so disinterested, Sansa, so why send her or anyone? Now, I may not have been paying much attention during this, but sending Brienne away - with Pod, presumably - doesn’t make a tonne of sense especially after Sansa brags about not going. So, naturally, it makes sense that Brienne is the one to talk sense into Sansa - and maybe Arya - but FOR SOME REASON Brienne is sent away after Sansa receives a letter from King’s Landing asking them to rock the fuck up for something. Ironic, given that she has TWO massive speeches about detecting liars and deceit with Sansa throughout the episode. We’ve spent the last three and a half seasons watching Arya turn into a no-shit queen only to have her completely falling for Littlefinger’s tactics. It doesn’t help that Littlefinger seems to have them wrapped around his finger (sorry). Winterfell has been a game of cat-and-mouse for a few weeks now, and while that game can be fun the rate at which Arya has turned on her sister seems to have escalated so fast that I almost expected her to knife Sansa on the spot. The same can be said for Arya and Sansa’s dreary scenes this week too. Yet, despite the fun moments between Tormund and the Hound, none of it felt necessary or imperative to say, other than the showrunners having us immediately scream after Tormund says he wants to marry Brienne, “oh, great, he’s fucking dead.” And, even then, that fight had its moments of tension and insurmountable odds, but before that we were wasting time watching the Snowy Seven walk for, like, 5kms and have a chit chat along the way. I understand the shock and horror of bits of the episode and all the action, but I’ll take Dany torching the Lannister forces over a “final stand” fight that almost promises death from the beginning and delivers only one in the form of Thoros. Sure, I was having heart palpitations for some of the fights, but the result felt obvious and filled to the brim with narrative get-out-of-jail-free cards. For all it’s flash, I had nothing but questions for the entire episode. I’ll say this for those that don’t want to read further: this was an average episode of Game of Thrones. However, “Beyond the Wall” feels like an episode where I wish they had their usual run of 10, because the amount of rushing done here to get everything done over the course of just 60 minutes was so fast I felt like I was a spinning pupper waiting for its dinner. When it was announced that HBO and Benioff and Weiss were working on two final seasons with shortened episode orders I thought, “Streamlined storytelling? For Game of Thrones? I can get on board with that!” And season 7 feels to have benefited from cutting some of the episode fat.
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