It's been speculated that the Faceless Men caused the Doom of Valyria and that they have a connection to dragons. Arya's assassin training would have been a neat avenue to backstory, or even to meeting or working with Dany for a while, but the showrunners didn't seem to see the puppet strings in the setup.

I always saw it as some kind of military tradition, or an act of war, like it was something that was widely done and not just the Starks being weird.

We've seen the Starks take in Theon and then Osha. It's not totally out of left-field for the Tarlys to put Gilly to work, though I agree that it didn't work in the speech as it was scripted.

He's a competent military dude who knows his own limits and isn't interested in making alliances where it doesn't suit him. Honestly, there are worse guys in the series. I appreciate that Randyll's ideologies are easy to pin down.

The writers have smartly settled in on some plot wells that are gratifying when examined. We could totally spend entire episodes tearing down the stupid corrupt religions. We could (AND SHOULD) spend whole episodes watching the Children and the Walkers running around. We could give Gwen Christie and Diana Rigg more…

I never hated Randyll in the books. I got the impression that he, like every other dad on the show, was prioritizing his family unit and maybe even saving Sam's life by getting him out of the way and sending him to the Wall, which would have been relatively safe before the White Walkers re-emerged.

Bran saw Jaime swooping in to kill Aerys, interspersed with Jaime pushing him out the window. Iiiiiiiiiinteresting. And I'm not the first to raise this point: do we think Aerys wanted to burn the White Walkers? Or was he really a boring old insane person who wanted to kill people?

I mean, Maisie really does have great brows.

"but the episode positions her actions as an alternative to something she had no way of knowing was happening."

A lot of the Lost hate comes from people who were annoyed that it ended up being a flag-waving sci-fi show. Yes, there is literally a light of human goodness in the center of the world. Yes, there are time machines and magic ghosts. I understood the element of the parable in "Across the Sea" but I can see how other…

Also, I'm gonna get drunk and yell THIS WORLD IS OUR HELL at the holiday beach tourists tomorrow. Bennies go home!

The Margaery thing makes the most sense if you assume she's only protecting herself and is lying to everyone else.

Lost did it with "Across the Sea." It can work but you have to avoid pissing off viewers. Like, try not to ramp up a bunch of cliffhangers and then throw in an unconnected backstory episode when there are only two episodes left.

Kevan's in over his head, in the middle of a mess that he didn't make. He's an extension of the tragedy of Tommen and Margaery: together they'd actually be a great ruling couple, but it's too little too late.

In a "spot the puppet strings" sense, this show has always liked to end talk-heavy mid-season episodes by flashing to Dany doing something really dramatic far away from everyone else's quiet scheming.

It depends on whether the writers are done with Brienne. They've had a lot of fun using her for fanservice, and I think the show would lose a lot by cutting her interactions with the idiots around her.

Ah, I guess a BURN THEM sounded like BALON to me. Silly me, I thought maybe Balon actually showed up to fight a war. Or something.

I love Davos and his "disappointed dad" vibes.

Did I hear Aerys yelling BALON during the flashback? Or was it RHAEGAR?

It's pretty amazing how the English rose transforms into a western woman with a tan and a little grime on her. She wore the look well.