Excellent points all around Jayhawk. My only response is that even the best written tv shows will always have some plot holes if you analyze them enough.


What about the white walker army? Even if that army is marching at like 3 miles per hour, how can it be taking that long to get down into the south of Westeros? How many years have passed on the show between the beginning of season 1 and the start of season 7?

Yup, the timeline in the show - as opposed to the books - is really sketchy. A good indicator is (or should be) Little Sam. He was born in Season 3, now, in Season 7, he still is an infant. So he either does not age as normal kids do (due to extreme inbreeding?), or the timeline of the last seasons has been a mere 5 or 6 months.

It also should take the protagonists a good while to travel. Iron Isles to Mereen to Dragonstone should take some time. Or traveling from the Wall to Old Town.

Maybe the White Walkers are simply lost? Due to the snowstorm of their own making, they are walking around in circles.

"Listen up, men/beasts/giants. I know you are a bunch of mindless zombies, but even you should be able to find a friggin' 700 foot wall of ice! I get the feeling that some of you are not really into our project of bringing death and destruction to the living."

Lucky for Westeros that it's not Attila's Hun army but instead an incompetent army of zombies. Had it been the former, Westeros would have been invaded in season 2 at the latest!

Maybe all the zombies are hosts and every time they march to the wall they look at it and say, "It doesn't look like anything to me." Then turn around and continue looking elsewhere.
But, I might be mixing up my HBO shows.

Much of that naval battle was silly.
My biggest gripe is Yara and Theon apparently don't believe in having lookouts or watches and are caught totally unprepared. Wasn't Yara supposed to be experienced in these things? What about the rest of the crew? Who was on watch? The rest of the fleet? They just let them all sneak right up to them? They must have gotten the Iron Isles B team in the split.

It was also odd how thorough all the storm and fog Euron's ship made right for their flagship, he must have some magic contraption telling him where to steer.

The other thing about 1,000 ships, is how the heck do they crew them all?
Let's say 50-100 people per ship, which is probably fairly conservative for ships of the size we see. That's 50,000 - 100,000 people. How flipping big are the iron isles? Do they have some sort of sailor breeding program going on that nobody knows about?
Or does the 1,000 ships consist of 50 large ships and 950 rowboats?

Conscripts. Before being King of the Iron Isles, Euron is primarily, a pirate.

The term for "conscription" to service on a ship would be shanghaiing, or whatever equivalent they might have in Westeros, bravosing maybe?!

To be fair, the ships themselves are not complicated with just rope and canvas compared to the mechanical complications of the 17 the century age of sails ships. It wouldn't be difficult to teach soldiers to run the ships as Vikings used to do in their longboats.

On the Iron Isles fleets:

Yara scraped up enough crew to take the ships; I was under the impression that they were pretty much skeleton crews, as the major lords were at Euron's drowning. So Euron finding crews for the ships shouldn't be a problem; they got the wood for the ships because he needed it and it's just a story. Bear in mind that the Greyjoys "do not sow," meaning that every Iron Isle free born is a sailor and raider. They get around the whole ban on slavery by having a serf system that is the same in all but name for everything else. I didn't read the books, but I did watch the extras on the BluRay disks.

Tyene Sand couldn't be killed, as she is the most beautiful woman in Westeros. Don't believe me? Ask Bron, he'll tell you.

Euron is in trouble. When he killed the not-the-most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world Sand, she was coughing up black stuff, and she cut him with the same blade. Hell, Tyene cut him, too. Both are avid poison users.

Theon did the smart thing. Euron was set to do some awesome clever DLC purchased move where in one smooth motion he slits Yara's throat and chops up Theon. Screw your special move. Euron is all up-up-a-b-a-b-up-down and Theon is "player has disconnected" in that duel. Call Theon a punk all you want, but his zero killed stat was saved and he remains on the leader board.

Seriously, it was good for them to show that all that Stark training with a blade wasn't for naught. Theon held his own and then some.

On Greyworm and Missandei, her look of surprise meant to me that he was castrated in the Arabic way, with a nub left, rather than the Chinese which was all the way down.

Yucky detail:

That makes sense to me since Mereen looks just like a city that could have been in the Middle East during the early Middle Ages. There's nothing about Mereen that looks Far Eastern (ie Chinese/Japanese).

"What is dead can never die". What if Euron really drowned and died in that ritual and was brought back (instead of merely being reanimated, Baywatch-style)? Death these days in Westeros is not as final as it used to be, before those pesky Dragons came back into the world (and with them, magic).

[Seriously, the books make this very clear: before Dany's Dragons were born, there was no - or very little, and weak - magic. Afterwards, in abundance. There is a pretty funny scene in Qarth (IIRC) when all those market-square charlatan's tricks suddenly become real magic spells and they are rightfully confused by that. ].

(All speculation on my part....with spoilers on the interwebs I think now I have to make this disclaimer every time I discuss a theory on the plot).

That would be logical and awesome, but I doubt it. We have been told several times of the poison blades of the Sand Snakes, but we have seen those effects to take in the short term. I don't think they were ready for a battle and had not prepared their weapons with the poison. Additionally spoiled by Euron's triumphant march bit in next week's preview.

What I do think is that Cersei will have a very bloody revenge on Ellaria. She killed her daughter, the one she thought was the most pure of her children. Remember what Cersei planned for the nun of the Sept (Septa Unella) that humiliated her turning her into a plaything for Zombie Mountain? I'd multiply that by 10. And the procedures will start by killing Tyenne in front of Ellaria and then playing "I'm crushing your head" with The Mountain.

Of course, Bron, and probably Jaimie will try to stop and reign in Cersei's wrath, but I think this is where Jamie will see the parallels with The Mad King and Cersei more clearly.

As for Theon...he did not do the smart thing. He did the only possible thing he could do. If Cersei saves Yara for dessert, he might have a chance to save her. But I think all he might have is a chance for revenge.


Now for a separate thing.


Again, purely speculative. I could be very wrong on this.

I find it interesting how Sam is now getting his own version of "Jedi training" just like Arya got in season 6 when she was in Bravos. The only difference is that Sam is studying to be a Jedi Consular with Arya became a Jedi Guardian.

I hope they come up with some other explanation why Sam is the only one wanting to try curing that disease. That was a little thin. It was done only once, it's documented, but none of them since has given it a shot and improved on safety measures? It didn't look exactly complicated from what they showed us.
It was a little too "Wesley Crusher" IMO. None of these adults know what to do, so let the ensign save the day behind their backs!

Think the Master that Sam was apprenticed to explained it perfectly. They are highly entitled jerks who stay out if the fighting and rule over those who survived with the knowledge they keep to themselves, like Comstar in battletech.

I thought the Maister was spot on for why they don't f*ck around with grayscale.

It's insanely contagious (a simple touch of unexposed skin and you've got it), nearly impossible to cure, and turns the victim into a crazed reaver that will run around attacking and touching people in a berserker rage.

Nope. Not going to play that game.

What I don't understand why they send them to Valeria.* Chop their heads off and burn the bodies to ashes. Now. Do it now. Grayscale is too dangerous to let spread.

* I think that most folks in Essos who get grayscale exile themselves there.

Lot's of talk on this episode. Things did not advance much really from last week.

Jon Snow seems to be as headstrong as Ned. And makes his life more complicated because of it. I thought the experience with Mance had taught him that bending the knee can save time and lives. He got the dragon glass, but no dragons.

Bran in Winterfell was an emotional moment, but he kind of bummed out Sansa forcing her to remember her wedding night to Ramsay.

So not Olenna, but it is obvious someone is letting Daenerys plans out. Too convenient for Euron to be waiting for the Unsullied on The Rock. Hmmm...

Off screen deaths? Is this still Game of Thrones?

If he bent the knee, he would have to commit himself to the war with Cersei Lannister while defenceless towards threat of the Night King.

If he bent the knee, he would have nothing to come back to. The North would have proclamed Bran as ruler, with Sansa ruling in his name. Even now that is a possibility - regardless of what Bran wants. He is the heir.

I think alot happened - Tyrells are gone. Dorne are gone (but that mostly happened last time). Castlery Rock has fallen. The remainder of Daenerys fleet is sunk.

Jorah is back in play - should be interesting. I wish Meisandra had stayed for a fiery reunion with Davos and Jon.