I don't see the point of having Bran do ANY of this. The Wylis/Hodor thing was a neat trick and also sort of taught Bran a lesson of a) listen to people who are smarter than you and b) don't mess with the past or all your friends will die (even though the ink is dry and they were all going to die anyway, now you know…

This, exactly, is what makes the scene unbearable. Hodor gets warged; we don't see him get un-warged. Presumably, Bran is simultaneously warging Wylis and Hodor, which means their brains are essentially one brain. I don't see anything to indicate that Hodor had any say in what happened.

Sansa's plan is really stupid, if we are to take it at face value.

Calling this episode tragic is almost too kind. It's just epically sad. Hodor was forced to sacrifice his life (in more than one sense) because Bran, again, doesn't listen to those who know better. This is some bleak shit.

I feel like we've been saying this for a while now.

Jorah's Greyscale will do one of three things (in order of most to least probable, by my estimation):

I would pay good money for a deleted scene of the two of them telling one another what they've been through. I feel like "I saw dad get beheaded with his own sword" would be, like, the 5th worst thing that would get mentioned.

#2: Seems like another miscalculation by Cersei. She probably thinks the can trick the faith militant into killing Margerey by having the Tyrells invade and then the Tyrells will kill off the high sparrow. All that may happen, but then she'll still have a very well-provisioned army inside her gates and no hope of…

As long as Rickon is alive, it really doesn't matter. So it will probably matter soon.

The Riverlands are being totally ignored at this point. No mention of Freys or Tullys at all. You figure at some point they'll have to deal with the Freys on the show, but it's getting pretty hard to see how they're going to get there. So there's not even going to be a need for her.

Or at least sympathetic since S1E9, right? Who was still thinking, "Oh, this girl who is surrounded by enemies and got betrayed by them and watched her father get beheaded is so ANNOYING!"

Was the last time when Bran and Rickon split up? Or was it the Red Wedding? I can't remember which happened first.

And can we just talk about how much THAT turn of events sucks. In the books, Jaime goes to the Riverlands and sort of begins to become a better person and basically decides that he wants nothing to do with Cersei. On the show, he basically is the same prick that he always was. I don't even see the point of his…

I think his main play is to generate chaos. I don't think he ultimately cares which side (Starks/Lannisters) wins. He just wants to create situations that he can find a way to exploit.

I believe children can be cured (or, prevented from dying and stuff), but it's always fatal in adults.

Just feels pretty typical for this show. "OK, this character has done what we created him/her to do, so now he/she has to die because we kind find anything else for him/her to do." Generally, I'm fine with that.

Sansa cannot be the heir as long as Rickon lives, therefore Ramsay is not the Lord of Winterfell. Rickon is. Keeping him captive doesn't change that. He killed his infant brother, who had a far worse claim to Winterfell than Rickon does. It just doesn't make sense.

It would be shocking for book readers. For non-readers, it would be more like, "Who? Oh, her? OK."

She's definitely being set up as a supporting character, to the point that the child of the forest is basically saying, "Your job is to take Bran places."

Yeah, that's also possible. I figure there's no way they kill a direwolf offscreen. But this show does lazy/dumb crap all the time, so who knows?