That’s Alys Karstark. She’s at the Wall. But she doesn’t command her house, and the Karstark troops are all with Stannis already.

I’m not sure what you think that proves. There are other banners in the North, but they’re either with Stannis or at Winterfell. There’s no reserve of Northern lords for Jon to rally independent of those two positions, not of any size.

Ramsay wouldn’t let them leave, so either they’d have to kill Ramsay, or he’d kill them.

Not possible. They’re literally in Winterfell with the Boltons, and wouldn’t be allowed to leave.

There really aren’t any “other Northern houses” in the books at this point. Everybody is either committed to Stannis or with the Boltons at Winterfell. If Stannis loses, there’s no real Northern army left.

Aidan Gillen’s horrible acting will haunt the series no longer! Yay! In fairness, the writing for Littlefinger has been terrible for a very long time (the writers frequently took “chaos is a ladder” to mean he would do whatever the plot required of him at any given moment, and as a supposed genius, he suffered the…

Arya intros the sequence by explaining what the game of faces is, and that you “win” by telling a tie that the other person believes. Arya eventually starts acting like a psycho to scare Sansa into thinking she’s about to die (why, I have no idea), before stopping, revealing that she “won” the game by making Sansa…

No, it was Arya indicating that she won the “game of faces” by making Sansa believe she was about to get stabbed.

No, it was the opposite. He was implying that Brienne would protect Arya if Sansa needed to get her out of the way. That’s why the director referred to Sansa realizing that Brienne is Arya’s “natural protector”.

Much like the theories last season that the idiotic sequence where Arya walks around Braavos unarmed and then gets stabbed by the Waif was some sort of plan, this is just an attempt to paper over the show’s terrible writing.

The show isn't cutting down its CGI.

Yes, it is a bad plan. D&D are not very good writers, and never have been; that's just more and more evident the less source material they have to work with.

This show is stupendously profitable, and there's no way any spinoff will equal its value. HBO has always been clear on that, just as the producers have always held the line on approximately how many episodes they wanted.

D&D from the beginning talked about the show lasting 70-80 episodes. Around season 3, they began to talk about 70 episodes. HBO then began to say that the length of the series was undetermined, at which point D&D went back to talking about 7 or 8 seasons, and then said there would be eight, but of indeterminate…

HBO wanted more seasons. D&D wanted fewer. That's been clear at every turn.

This show was easily the most pleasant surprise of the previous TV season. So much fun, and gradually they became pretty solid at some genuine character drama too.

He'll have a FOX News gig soon enough.

She didn't force her Essosi followers to follow her. The lords of Westeros have to follow her or else stop being the lords of Westeros.

No, her cover story was that Lysa killed herself in a rage after convincing herself that Littlefinger was cheating on her with Sansa.

He didn't coerce her into covering for him in the show. She did that all on her own.