Promo

The Wall coming down (hopefully).

I promise you as soon as Cersei rides a dragon I'll change it lmfao

Not gonna lie, i support this than the crazy Tyrion = dragon rider tinfoil. 

Mmmm yes I think you might be right. I need some more badass Cersei shots

Oh btw, something about the Frey and Jaime scene.

Man, Jaime dying next episode would be a thousand times worse than what happened to Stannis last year. At least it made sense for Stannis to die then, but Jaime being killed now by Arya, BwB, LSH or whoever it may be, while feasting at the Twins happily alongside Freys, would be absolutely ridiculous and a complete disservice to his character.

On the other hand, Jaime deciding to party at the Twins for no reason is the stupidest thing he's done in a while 

Think realistically, besides Cersei going postal, this episode has disappointment written all over it, tbh. Besides the fact directors of high profile episodes often turn in a weaker follow ups when put on finale duty with most of the creative juices spent (Nutter's S3 finale post-RW, case in point) ... you can just feel the lack of hype from the production evident in everything from the fewer Emmy submissions to the fact that of the two, the one they only wanted to big up from the outset has been nine.

S4, the pre-release hyperbole for the finale episode was deafening (and as arguably the best finale, it lived up to it ... almost.) Maybe we'll get a bit of buzz about this one being the longest ever etc, we shall see. Don't wanna piss in the punch bowl with the naysaying just yet, but ...

My own gut feeling is it'll (obviously) be the coup de grace on the LSH debacle at the same time as potentially (cuz can only hope I'm proven spectacularly wrong!) making Arya a bit of a plot-wrecker for a lot of people where her decline in popularity has already been set in motion by weaker writing for the later Braavos sections of the show. If they off JL in untimely fashion for shock value, that pretty much seals the deal.

IMO, Jaime survives a , then stumbles out into the surrounding wooded area (that lovely shot of The Twins at sunset has to get some traction.) Arya sneaks up and mission-impossible face-offs him, or is interrupted by Hound Without Banners who take him captive if she hasn't offed him already. It’s pretty obvious at this point she at least confronts Jaime and is the supposed 'top secret' character whose name was script-encoded he encounters in the woods.

Stoneheart, of course, won’t be involved, that’s a given. Fuck knows, they'll probably bench Nymeria again too. I’m sure as hell not adopting beaten wife syndrome holding on to that 0.01% of hope and crawling back, only for them to punch me in the face again.

The worrying thing re: how the R/L section will be received is that I don’t think D&D have any idea how unsatisfying and deus ex machina it already feels when Arya switches faces, in part because they didn't find a more interesting and esoteric way to visualise it on screen other than the cornball Hollywood 'peeling off latex mask' effect you get in bad sci-fi/action movies (contrast this with how it was handled back in Jaquen's first reveal as a faceless back in S2 - another example of how the old show's 'less is more' approach has denigrated over time.)

She'll probably just pop up already incognito, the face swap device becoming narrative short-hand as to how she arrived and got there. Unless they decide to make things wholly less predictable and have her somehow fail (which they won't. They think all fans basically want is Walder dead regardless of the fact that people – readers & non-readers alike - really like the original Riverlands revenge plot.) Chances are, it'll just feel like a grander redux of her plot in last year's finale with Meryn Trant, i.e:
Unfortunately (and I say this as a fan of magical realism, nonetheless) the whole face-swap device usually suits their penchant for that longtime/infuriating trend of G.O.T. storytelling at its most economic - the ommission of a 'connective middle scene'. In other words, you go from plot a) premise to plot c) outcome, without plot b) to connect them, and G.O.T. classically does this time & time again, especially when its under time/financial pressure.

E.g: this week we cut straight from the battle of Mereen to Yara & Theon stood in Dany’s throne room. We don't see them being received or arriving in the midst of all that chaos, their reaction to it as a seafaring people (or to dragons trashing galleons, for that matter!) or the point of Theon first laying eyes on Tyrion again. Nothing.

Initially, it was a budget thing as much as anything, e.g: Tyrion knocked out in the battle in S1, or how we had to presume, when Bran and co. walk back into an empty Winterfell, that Theon was captured by Ramsay only to wake up in his torture chamber cuz the whole thing happened off screen. Since then its feels more like a kind of stylistic shorthand they've adopted regardless.

Point being, R+L=J excepted (which they have set up expertly since the whole series began, to be fair) expect this finale to have a shitload of frustrating a-c's.

I know I am.

This could even get worse for Cersei if: