I feel sure that Sandor will win, even though logically speaking, Gregor is a bigger, meaner version of the same thing. But at the same time, I feel sure that Cersei will take down the Sparrows, before Dany/Jaime settle her hash. I guess that means the Sparrows will win a battle against the Lannisters, but go on to…

Does this mean Zombie Mountain is now Commander of the Kingsguard? In the show, do we even know the names of any other remaining Kingsguard members? …Maybe if Loras gets away from the Sparrows alive, he gets to join? As others have mentioned, he's supposed to be a mighty warrior in the books.

Yes, the character really has one big scene in the books, but it's a good one. Great opportunity to cast a famous guest star for the show. The character hasn't reappeared in the books, but isn't dead that we know of.

There are plenty of rootable characters in other locales, so I'm okay with KL being bad and badderer. Maybe less so in episodes that really focus heavily on KL, but I'm still happily waiting for all the appropriate bad guys to get their comeuppance.

If R+L were secretly married, then Jon would actually be the legitimate heir to the Westerosi portion of Dany's titles, due to the Targ preference for male succession.

The Wildlings take our jobs!

If TV Club does their bet on who dies thing this week, The Waif is gonna be easy, easy money.

I believe that Martin has explicitly compared the dragons to nukes. IMO this supports the "Dany could be an antagonist" argument. Everything we've seen of the dragons in the books and shows suggests that they are savage, violent creatures, utterly inimical to human life. And the Dothraki are about two percent better.…

Maybe she figures the dragons will soften the enemy up, and then any halfway competent fighters can come in and finish the job? I don't remember if it's in the show, but in the books, Jorah fights a Dothraki warrior and kills him fairly easily… And Martin makes it pretty clear that in head-to-head combat, an armored…

To be fair, the Braavos storyline in the books is pretty boring, too. Arya hooking up with the Faceless Men and facing a moral quandary is a perfectly good idea, it just stretched out waaaaay too long.

Starks. She hates the Starks.

Good point. Maragaery's whole schtick, in both the books and the show, is being inscrutable. IMO, the talk of her playing a bigger role in the show is somewhat off-base. She gets a little more screen/"screen" time, but is still a secondary character.

Benjen doesn't look dead or wight-like in the show. I agree that he's sort of a semi-Coldhands stand-in, without being the same character as the one in the books. Not to say he isn't magic-y, the Children de-wighted him and all, or stopped him in mid-wight. Maybe he can't go south of the Wall?

She totally is. I feel like Martin has written himself into a corner where the best resolution for Dany would be to realize that she never had a life in Westeros, that she's built one for herself in Essos as a liberator/abolitionist, and that she should just stick with it. I'm pretty sure that won't happen, though.

Dorne.

Maybe Aeron Damphair is Ben Carson?

…Or IS there? In the books, there's a weird fallible-memory thing with Sansa remembering the Hound kissing her even though he didn't. He clearly has a bit of a crush on her at King's Landing, even though he realizes that she's a naive dope, and she starts to think of him as a sort of flawed, tragic monster/hero…

Catfight!

Ol' Dirty Craster.

Several others have beaten me to likening show-Euron to Donald Trump. In an effort to catch up, I'd like to trademark the nickname "Salt Trump."