GoT had awesome character development leading up to season 8.
You can clearly tell that GRRM did not have much say in how Season 8 would conclude.
I was fine with Arya killing the Night King, and for one battle Jon be near worthless. But you can clearly see that the writers went total SJW/MeToo
Clegane Bowl - i was fine with
Cerci deserved a better death
The Golden Company had less value than the Dothraki at night in the cold.
Everyone expects Arya to kill Daenerys next week. Give us a plot twist next week.
Arya considers returning to Gendry but, in the end, chooses Hotpie instead (because she doesn't want to be a lady), and settles down to running the inn at the crossing.
I thought the episode was genuinely awful. There were a few nuggets - the Clegane brothers finishing each other off, the tension right before the battle, the total chaos in the city. But most of it was rote, far too bloody, Daeneyres looks like she is spaced out, not angry; there is no purpose in burning down your capital city with thousands of innocent taxpayers whom you will need after you take over; Cersie seemed out of it and not involved in the battle to the slightest degree. It was one of the worst, if not the worst episode in the eight years GOT has been broadcast. And, frankly, it was boring.
Cerci might not be dead.
I don't think GRRM knew how to end the story, hence the unfinished state of the saga in book form. Allegedly, the ending conforms to where he wanted to take the story. However, I do not think he or the show-runners knew how to make GRRM's bare outline work.
For example, GRRM probably told them that the second dragon is supposed to die. But how does one kill a dragon? GRRM probably said "I am still trying to work that out". The show-runners came up with an impossibly accurate version of the Roman Scorpion weapon which knocked Rhaeghal out of the sky. These weapons went on to destroy Daenerys's fleet (in order to have the plot device of Missandei's capture).
So, we go into last night's episode expecting some sort of death for Drogon from all those Scorpions that lined the walls of King's Landing Euron's ships. However, the weapons became utterly useless last night, as Drogon torched every single one of them without getting scratched.
I assume GRRM had planned for Daenerys to go mad all along. Two episodes ago, Daenerys selflessly flew to Jon Snow's rescue on Drogon while almost getting herself and Drogon killed. Now she is stark raving mad. I guess they wanted us to wonder if she was the chosen one, and they felt that the only way to do so was to make her go mad in the space of an episode and a half.
To me the ending is rushed and not terribly well thought out.
Martin was heavily involved with the storyline.
I hope the twist is Jon telling Drogo, “Dracarys” and the dragon makes Dani toast.
“I was fine with Arya killing the Night King, and for one battle Jon be near worthless.”
Don’t forget the Battle of the Bastards where he led his whole army into a trap and then spent most of the time buried under a pile of bodies until the Vale knights showed up to rescue him.
I think it's more likely that Danaerys heads back to Essos than that she gets killed. Killing Danaerys would mean a whole bunch of angry Dothraki, UnSullied, and a ticked-off dragon. With only one episode left, I don't think there's really any way to resolve all that.
But she's made numerous comments that she knows what it is like to have people look at her like they look at Jon, and that was all in Essos. So if she takes her army and her dragon back home to rule the people who love her...it kind of solves all those issues.