One of this show's best season openers. Surprised by its patience and depth across multiple storylines. Feels sensationally focused, and love how it brought drama back from nuance rather than banal action and dialogue. Season 7's set up has everything interconnected in a way Game of Thrones never has been before, and that is very, very exciting.
Podeswa is cetainly a strong director for this show (glad he is doing the finale) and D&D certainly showed some storytelling grace this ep. I might have a bit of a complaint but I want to see how it plays out...
Enjoyed it overall but hopefully Pilou Asbaek's goofy performance is just an act by the character, as I suspect it is, to seem harmless and to set up Cersei for another one of her classic fuck ups e.g. the High Sparrow. Otherwise every book reader will just be distracted by the charisma gap between the show and book versions. There's a clear difference between this and Asbaek's season 6 performance and Jaime fed Cersei the Ironborn stereotype in the preceding scene so I think it has to be an act to get her guard down, although I wasn't really impressed with him last season either. This isn't exactly a spoiler (not in the leaks) but I'm pretty confident in this prediction so I'll tag it anyway
Since they're not doing the dragon horn I think they'll do a nod to that by having Euron take control of the mountain instead by torturing Qyburn. It's sort of been set up with how Gregor stepped up to Euron when he walked up towards the throne. Euron will get on Cersei's good side and convince her to send Jaime on a suicide mission by meeting Dany in the field.
It's good that they had Arya interact with those Lannisters so that she won't be completely blinded by her vengeance and associate everyone in red with the people on her list. But maybe it'll turn sour overnight and just reinforce her blood lust, idk. The North scenes were good. Dragon girl isn't fit to wash that banner she cast aside.
Whew, still trying to take everything in! The endgame is finally upon us and it's not taking its time. The Walkers are moving, the Lannisters are crumbling, and Dany has finally landed. This was such a wonderfully executed way to kick things off. Given the small amount of episodes left I knew things were going to move fast but I didn't think we'd already find a hidden load of Dragonglass and watch Dany set foot in Westeros for the first time (and seriously, what an incredible moment. Been waiting for that since day one!). My favorite scene, though, may have been the first; Arya is ruthless now, and hungry for blood. I'm already nervous for next Sunday's episode. No holds barred from here, it seems.
I can't think of one bad scene, everything was just so good, even the scene with the Freys, which we all knew what was going to happen. Sam and Clegane's scenes were the best imo.
