Gravity cat wrote...
The Battle of Winterfell could've done with more episodes. The White Walkers and the Night King were hyped up for literally years, and it's just done in a single episode with excessively dark visuals and questionable battle tactics. At one point even goes Resident Evil with the zombies in the library. Still don't know what Bran was doing while being defended by Theon and some no-names. I hoped that would get explained at some point, but I guess he decided to go for a fly. Not sure if Bran becoming king was ever really his intention either, but apparently it was?
Other than that, I might just be contrarian to popular opinion but I feel like I'm one of the few who actually liked Season 8. It wrapped up quite nicely and gave mostly everyone a decent send-off. Greyworm became a bit of a psychopath after losing his girl, though.
But honestly I feel like ending it here is a mistake, there's so much more of the world and its lore that could be explored, including the reformation of the monarchy in more intimate detail. Arya literally goes sailing to fill in her own map because there's uncharted territory.
The Battle of Winterfell should definitely have been drawn out across multiple episodes. And fuck D&D for having Arya kill the Night King just for shock-value (which it didn't shock me, just left me dumbfounded). Anyone else killing him would have been 100x more interesting, she didn't deserve it, as much as I love her. I agree with that video someone made about how it should have been Theon.
Regarding Bran, this pretty much sums up my thoughts on him:
I'm fine with Bran being king but his arc wasn't written well enough for it IMO. Plus, at one point he says how he doesn't want to be king, then when they make him king he's all like, "Why do you think I came here?"
I agree with you that it ended well, I'm happy with where everyone ended up, but it was just too rushed for me to care that much, plus I didn't like a lot of the dialogue in S8. Jon just whines the entire time, Bran continues with his unhelpful cryptic one-liners, Tyrion just says the same things over and over about how he supports Dany.
Definitely buying the books soon and looking forward to GRRM finishing the last two.