conceptualinertia

I agree on both. Especially letting the Red Woman go. We do know that she meets up with Arya again at some point.

There are times when I understand the teleport complaints, but this is not one of them. Obviously things taking place in the same episode are happening at different times. For example, sometimes scenes that clearly take place within one day are interspersed with scenes that take place days apart as with episode 7 of this season where Jon and Sansa's travels around the north must have taken at least month, while Arya and Jaime scenes take place during at most a couple of days. We simply don't know how much time has past between Varys meeting the Queen of Thorns and the scene where they are crossing the sea. It could be 3 months later.

I am pretty sure that after Ja'qen frees Arya and her friends in season 2 he specifically invites her to come to Braavos so she can be trained to kill the people on her list. I always thought that this was a continuity error, but maybe not. Maybe the entire purpose of the training was not so she would become a faceless man but so that she could become Arya the avenging angel of the Stark family.

Oh no. If they have Jamie killing Cersei the way he killed the Mad King to stop the burning of Kings Landing, I am going to be very sad.

I think they are trying to show that since he died, Jon's a lot more of a pessimist. Understandably.

My guess is that it was a rogue group of BwB who are fulfilling the role of the fake Hound crew (Biter et al) from the books.

Couldn't disagree more. In my opinion, so far this has been one of their best seasons, my favourite since season 2. The plot has been moving along a breakneck pace, much faster than the last couple of seasons. And Lady Ollena is the great. Her verbal takedown of Cersei this week was fantastic.

I think Rickon is already dead. Ramsay has no reason to actually keep him alive. He just needs to say that Rickon is alive to get Jon and Sansa to come to him.

It's not. The letter is to Littlefinger asking him for his help in fighting the Boltons. That is why they had the scene where she sees the ravens that the Mormonts have. The letter to the Blackfish she just handed to Brienne.

I was wondering about that also. Why in the world would she go back to the house of black and white?

I was thinking the same thing. It is a message of how to beat the wights: Wildfire.

My understanding is that they were not originally "Others" but rather soldiers that fought for the CoTF. After the peace was brokered they went rogue becoming the "Others."

I didn't say that every Targ riding a dragon was fireproof only that some were. When Dany is burnt by Drogon she is barely burnt, while everyone else melts from Dragonfire. It seems that Dragonfire is more powerful than regular fire (can melt stone!) and still Dany is only mildly burnt from it. So she is extremely heat resistant such that regular fire does nothing to her and dragonfire just causes sores.

I agree. My understanding in reading the books was that only certain rare Targs are fireproof, just like only rare Starks are wargs. There is a strain of these incredible abilities in each of these families but it is far from universal. Those Targs that are genuinely fireproof really do have "the blood of the dragon." In the books Dany may not know that she is always fireproof, not understanding how the power works.

Here's my theory on the Umbers and Rickon. The Umbers are planning on turning on Ramsay (maybe the Karstarks are in on it too), but not of loyalty to the Starks. The Umbers don't care if there is a Stark in Winterfell or not, they just want to make sure that the Ramsay the psycopath is killed. Anyone who takes over after that will be better than Ramsay and the Umbers are willing to sacrifice Rickon to make it happen. They need Jon Snow to unite the North against Ramsay, and the death of Rickon or the hostage use of Rickon will motivate Jon.

Wow. He really is dead in the show. We have to throw out every theory. Geez.

Stannis killed his brother who was in open rebellion. And he wasn't really upset about not getting to kill his bastard nephew. I find it very hard to believe that Mr. Rule of Law Stannis in the books would burn his daughter who he clearly loved. In the books it is going to happen without Stannis' approval. The issue is not that Shireen was murdered, that would be bad enough, the issue is that it is her father who gave the order.

This scene turned my stomach more than any other on Game of Thrones. I couldn't really enjoy the Drogon scene because I was still thinking about it. After all GoT has done, I still thought that Stannis or Davos would save her.

I don't think that Ramsay is planning a real assault. He is probably just planning a guerrilla action. I.e. picking off a stray soldier, flaying the soldier, lighting something on fire and leaving the skinned soldier as a scare tactic. Hopefully, Ramsay gets into a skirmish and is badly wounded. He returns to Winterfell and is killed by Sansa in the season finale.

In Cersei's first interaction with Lancel this season Lancel acted as if Cersei was mostly innocent and it was Lancel that had dragged her to the dark side. Lancel was blaming himself. Later, when Lancel confronts LF, and LF mentions "the Queen" and "family," the camera lingers on Lancel's guilty/concerned expression. I think that it provides the Sparrow someone even better to make an example of such that he will be satisfied with Margeary's and Loras' confession/repentance. Maybe, and this just occurred to me now, LF was referring to Olyvar. Except this time Olyvar will say that Cersei paid him to lie about Loras.

Almost no show, movie, or book will hold up to scrutiny of individual scenes throughout. The question is whether the end result as a whole is entertaining or interesting such that a viewer, reader, or consumer would appreciate it or learn something from it. It is very difficult to ever tell whether or not a series or movie would be better or worse absent one scene unless random groups of people view or read the end result with and without that scene and a survey is taken about their opinions of the series or movie.

I don't think Lancel had yet confessed his sin of sleeping with Cersei and helping to kill Robert, at least not in the specifics of whom he had slept with and whom he had help kill. It took LF's convincing to have Lancel go the extra mile (he still cares for Cersei).

I think that many people here are misunderstanding (or reading too much into) what LF was offering. LF gave Olyvar's confession/testimony to Cersei in order to entrap Loras and Margeary. He was now offering Lancel's confession/testimony to Olenna in order to entrap Cersei. Although Lancel had "repented" he had not confessed all of his sins, he had not told the HS that he had slept with Cersei (LF made Lancel feel guilty about this when Lancel was blocking his way when LF first returned to Kings Landing). LF knew that he could guilt Lancel into confessing (just as he could pay Olyvar into confessing). LF is manipulating Cersei, Olenna, and the High Sparrow.