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I gather that the Battle of Winterfell is slotted for episode 3. I hope for some creative plot development in episode 2, because at the moment Jon Snow -- who is again proving that he has no business commanding an army -- has placed everyone in a trap for a needless battle that they will certainly lose, and badly. This may be nothing more than an arbitrary simplifying device to kill off most of the characters we care about, since that is what GRRM likes to do. Now, I don't object at all to killing main characters if it serves to advance the story. But given all the time and effort devoted to character development over a good many years now, it would be a shame to see our favorites slaughtered simply because Jon Snow is an idiot. It was terrible the way the showrunners threw away Benjen Stark -- the magical doppelganger of the Night King himself -- in a pointless rescue scene that should never have happened. It would be even worse to do this to a wagon load of main characters in a battle that shouldn't be fought to begin with.

The Night King has a dragon. Dany has two dragons and now, in Jon, a second dragon rider. With all due respect to the Dothraki and Unsullied and Westerosi knights and the Night's Watch … well, they're irrelevant at this point. And Bran is a greenseer and warg with an unexplained connection to the Night King. That matters as well. As long as the Night King has a dragon, the ONLY reason to place the army of the living in harm's way would be if the show plausibly explains why this is necessary to bring the Night King on his dragon to battle against Dany, Jon and their two dragons. And that would be a real stretch.

So, unless episode 2 shifts to a different path, Jon is about to throw away most of his army for no reason other than that the showrunners are drunk on battle scenes. We will then be left with a shattered remnant of the living, with Jon and a couple of others as fugitives. The endgame will then become an Alfred the Great in the swamps story, with the survivors hiding out until they stumble on the piece of magic that was the solution all along.

The only plot-worthy justification for the mass slaughter that seems to be in store in episode 3 would be to establish the psychological premise for breaking Dany's pride, and perhaps her sanity, in order to prepare Jon and Dany to play Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa. I can think of more credible ways to bring them to absolute despair, but these would not involve the big battle scene the showrunners, and maybe GRRM, want to stage. The AA-NN business would occur in the last episode, after the White Walkers have reached King's Landing and Cersei, Qyburn and Gregor Clegane have been settled. But that said, the right way for Jon to fight this war, at this moment, would be to withdraw and keep his army intact while he and Dany go dragon hunting with whatever assistance Bran can offer. If they can kill the Night King's dragon, or if Bran can control it by warging, they can then torch the army of the dead. But military logic apparently is not much in demand.