He's hanging in there. In his one POV chapter he seemed like an alright dude. I'm glad to see him get to stick around. He'll probably just get murdered by Lancel at some point.

That's exactly what happened. Everyone hated the Dorne stuff so they just kind of dropped it. And I, for one, am not going to complain about that.

It wouldn't be a moral thing for Walder, it's more that he would take it as a personal slight, and an insult to his power as a lord.

Maybe he'll hit his head on a log on the way there and forget the last season and a half.

He now has "ask me about my pronouns" engraved in high valeryian on the hilt of his sword.

It's a bit weird though that Jaime's answer to everything is still to slash his way through it. He doesn't have the hammer anymore, why does he still see every problem as a nail?

It seems like an integral part of Brienne and to a certain extent Jaime's, arc. They could have the Blackfish serve the same role in a pinch though.

I'm curious to see if Walder Frey has any reaction to his daughter suddenly disappearing under an extremely sketchy pretext. As a wannabe major lord, he really can't let his daughter and newborn heir to Winterfell be murdered and have it go unanswered.

For me Dorne and the Iron Islands were a lot of boring lead up to some seriously cool speeches. If they had just cut down the boring stuff and kept the cool parts, I would have been happy. Instead they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

It's almost as if he'd had some kind of tool to guarantee his ability to control the dragons, then his pitch might have made a modicum of sense.

You could see the dread he was feeling leading up to the moment as well. Underrated performance from that guy all around.

Dorne, Winterfell, and now the Iron Islands all now hinge on everyone just kind of shrugging at people killing their own families.

True, it might not fit well at this point in the show. This plot line has been a lot less challenging for Brienne. She gets to keep all of her oaths, killing Stannis and rescuing Sansa, even when it seemed like the two had come into conflict.

But why even have that race? If the point is to speed things up, just send a whole fleet straight to Mereen.

I felt like it was a bit overplayed from a directorial standpoint.

Could we at least not have one more plot this season that hinges on people going along with kinslaying just cuz?

"That's alright that they took off with our best ships that we never bothered to send someone to guard. We'll just find a bunch of trees, cut em down and make our own ships. With blackjack, and strippers! You know what? Forget the ships!"

This was closest to my reaction honestly. The Hodor thing was pretty cool, but something felt off about the direction of this episode for me. Hodor's death was drawn out and hyper directed to the point of overkill for me. It was cool to see some fan theories confirmed, but idk what else people are going apeshit about…

Counterpoints: She brings Breinne's story full circle by forcing her to confront the limits of her devotion to oathkeeping. Her resurrection doesn't cheapen Jons anymore than Beric's cheapens hers.

The Ironborn stuff drags a bit, but I always really liked the scene of the kingsmoot itself. However the show basically stripped it of everything that made it interesting in order to shift the focus to Asha and Theon. Which makes sense for the show I guess, but why bring in Euron at all then?