I'm sorry, that's not a ship, that's the central romantic relationship of A:TLA.

A Song of Ice and Fire: Burkean allegory.

Wow. I… I… I don't even…

I loved the requisite "bad guy realizes with abject terror that Jack Bauer's involved" scene.

Tony Almeida's clone brother?

They've been good about this before sometimes too, though. Either in S2 or S3 (or both?) I remember them leaving Sarah Clarke's name out of the opening credits in the episodes where Nina returned at the end.

Actually, as emisan said, Fox doesn't (or at least didn't) allow 24 to kill off a sitting president. Ex-presidents, sure. And they've incapacited sitting presidents like it's no one's business. But I recall they left the Air Force One thing intentionally vague (and then specified later that Keeler didn't die)…

I asked in the comments about the "sitting president" thing last week. I assumed they had Heller resign beforehand for precisely that reason, even if that's a bit of a technicality.

I'm only okay with the Zombie Mountain plotline if it means they get yet another actor for him. That role should be the real-life equivalent of the Defense Against the Dark Arts position.

Between Jon and Mel (foreshadowed pretty strongly already in the last episode), Bran's stuff, and Arya going off to the Faceless Men, I'm pretty sure that next season will get that plotline started in force.

Book reader nitpick alert: in the Vulture interview, he says Ramsay is the King of the North, which doesn't that mean that he literally has no idea what's going on with the storyline up there, for like so many reasons?

Actually, I don't think 24's ever killed a sitting president. Incapacitated, sure. Like, half a dozen times. But not killed. I recall they left Keeler's fate intentionally ambiguous because they wanted to kill him, but Fox wouldn't allow it. I don't know if the network changed its tone between then and tonight, or if…

"Jack, I've given you a pardon for everything you did four years ago, and anything you might do today. Including if it's the exact same thing you did four years ago."

Archer Season 6?

Or more likely, they could have brought it up in another episode this season. Easily.

I like to think that literally every ball he's thrown into the air will end up having wildly significant repercussions. Just you wait.

Maybe, but to be fair, we haven't seen yet where GRRM is going with that storyline.

I don't know. By this point, I don't think it would have made much sense to bring up a story the audience hadn't heard in literally more than three years.

*pounds

He's the season's Big Bad.