For the sake of continuity and letting the actors age into their roles. In the interim, they've got the Fantastic Beasts series to play out. I think 'Harry Potter' is a prestigious enough franchise for Warner Brothers - and Rowling has enough clout with them - that they'll play the long game milking it.

I don't know - it seems like the White Walkers are almost there to expressly refute Littlefinger's worldview. In the books I'd say Euron is the one most likely to bargain with them - I really wish the TV show had established him more pirate-sorcerer than pirate-thug.

This was inevitable as soon as the stage play was announced. In ten years or so, there will be a 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' film. I doubt (but I wouldn't be happy betting too much on it) J.K. Rowling will ever do a straight sequel to the series - about his kids or something - but I expect there'll be a good…

Articulate sarcasm dressed up in old-timey language is one of my favourite comedy bits. I enjoyed this comment.

Oooh I like that. I remember feeling like, at the end of Storm of Swords, Littlefinger was getting set up as the true villain of the piece. At this stage of the story, it's hard to see him really fulfilling that role. All the people he secretly hated or had to get along with, bar Varys, are dead. Much like Cersei -…

Loved it, loved it, loved it! I found this episode as engaging as fiction - literature, film, television, music - gets. Just amazing stuff.

I don't get it - everybody loves rats, but they don't wanna eat the rats' meat?

"Well, what do you call him?"

Oh I'm sure plenty of people who hear about this will be offended by it. I was using hyperbole to stress how few people I believe this will have been to warrant it being a story, and to show disdain for the delicate sensibilities of anyone who would get offended at the idea of their home getting blown up in a…

In those words?

This is one of those things I'm sure that, deep down, no-one is actually offended by. It's a bit of over the top fluff, in mildly poor taste - but only 'mildly poor' in the sense that 'I feel sorry for the naive bastard who innocently put this up not realising how many people are going to piss and moan about it'.

Well duh. Can you imagine the amount of concurrent massive heart attacks among Disney's shareholders that would have occurred if, after buying Lucasfilm, Bob Iger immediately announced: 'I consider myself a steward of film, and - bar single, comprehensive releases when new home video formats are created every decade…

I'm seeing a lot of jokes at the expense of the people who attend conventions - jokes about extra extra large t-shirts, sweat, etc. As commenters on the AV Club, are we not already almost certainly in the nerdiest ten percent of nerdy people? Are we so different from the nerdiest one percent of nerdy people?

It's not the plot, it's the sequence. There's nothing wrong with having a character survive something by the skin of their teeth now and then, particularly in a battlezone. GoT has also had characters be unlucky plenty of times, so it's earned a few lucky escapes.

If he's that invested in not being that type of person, his enlightened moral sense should prevent him from enjoying seeing a fictional torturing rapist and mass murderer get his head kicked in - he's responsible, not the show. Or, it's not the show's fault how he is and how he'd like to be don't jive.

"My hounds will never harm me."

EXT. - DAVOS intrudes on STANNIS and MELISANDRE in STANNIS's SNOWBOUND STRATEGY TENT.

We know that the resurrection thing isn't reliable and that getting killed and coming back are nightmarishly traumatic.

He wasn't hit by any of them. He was lucky. He's not being protected. That's massively different from magically burning them away as they hit him.

I disagree. You want your chosen one to be as vulnerable as possible - making him an invulnerable demi-god would kill a lot of drama, and make Jon considerably less relatable.