Killing Balish without letting the Knights of the Vale know what happened could easily lead to the loss of an ally they could ill afford. Exposing everything in front of God and everybody ensured that the Vale would remain with Jon/Sansa.

I think Lord Varys would beg to differ.

It’s not completely clear that the Mountain is dead. We never saw him actually die, and even though he was under a sheet in Qyburn’s lab, he could well have been alive the whole time. Qyburn’s methods of saving him have changed him, but I think he is quite alive.

Unfortunately this is just another function of the time-space vortex Thrones has placed itself in to complete the story. This Sansa-Arya-Balish thing could have been made very interesting over a longer period of time. Pretty much the expected outcome, but in some ways I’ll miss the smarmy snake.

Podrick almost certainly left with Brianne. I was wondering about Bronn though.