As with the library, I like this broader view of the possibilities with regards to cycles. Again, you're seeing a bigger and more inventive picture than I am.

So cool. I'm sure sharper minds than mine don't have a problem grasping that, but the relative time scales there are mind boggling to me, too.

Wow — that is an incredible combination of self-restraint and self-sabatoge! :)

Yes, I believe the Wall is 700+ feet tall. Others here have suggested that it's magical in origin, at least in part, so from a fiction standpoint, it could just have easily been a magically-non-freezable moat. But as you say, there's no way that would have been as cool as the Wall. Chances are GRRM came up with the (I…

I'd say yes. As another commenter said, the difference between open ocean and inland streams or ponds would be huge. And it's possible that stretch of coast near Hardhome will freeze eventually, especially if the WW actually bring Winter with them. But presumably the ocean at the latitude of the Wall doesn't freeze,…

Yes — very good points. I like that a lot! I wasn't being imaginative enough about all the ways that an ancient library could be complex or inefficient or flawed. More like this, show! Ha ha.

I know, right? What's worse than getting flayed alive? How about whatever Melissandre does to you if Ser Davos doesn't set you free?

I like this theory, and I really like the idea that the WW could be working on time scales that dwarf those of humans. (Sorry, Tyrion.) There are definitely more layers of the onion to be revealed there, or perhaps just hinted at, and I hope we get to see more of the bigger picture by the end: how The Children and the…

Yeah, I agree that would have been a bridge too far. But if they had done it — or something crazier, like turning Jon into a WW in that last scene — I think we'd be sitting here saying, "Yeah, wow… we should have seen that coming!"

"Uhm.. so yeah — sorry about turning all your children into soulless walking corpses and all, but if you look here at the final tally on the spreadsheet — I mean, like the hardcore net net — you'll see that our Q4 numbers are just into the black, and we expect a strong resurgence next year as our debt to earnings…

Yeah! Cool, huh? Especially because the crows would be the second example of living things that the WW partner with, or allow to exist (Craster being No. 1). Which already gives them more depth or nuance than "mindless horde wants to exterminate all life".

Right. Unless that was an uber-long con to recruit Arya (which seems unlikely even for GoT), his special assassin powers weren't enough to prevent getting captured, or presumably burning to death in that cart without Arya's help.

I'll watch it again — I think my memory of everything that happened in the first half hour got mostly wiped by the second.

Lastly.

Now that Jacquen is handing out assassination jobs to Arya, can we assume that he was in Westeros to kill someone, when he got captured by the Lannisters? If so, who was it?

Well, there goes the next 75 minutes!

That would be the equivalent if a telephone had a "randomly dial 1000 numbers in succession" button. Since it doesn't, one shouldn't expect that to work well.

I presume this only got three upvotes because Disqus. It deserved many more.

They did it on a smaller scale with Jaime, right? The Kingslayer morphed into the savior of KL and his father with just a couple scenes of dialogue.

Yeah, I doubt he'll be back as we knew him. That line about flying was pretty heavy. But I think he'll be back as a character or entity the influences the end game, probably in a big way. If there's some elemental power animating the WW and the army of the dead, Bran seems to have found the source of a counter power.