Aladdin

A 10 year-long relationship with one man who is also the father of your three children is not a "sexual escapade". It's also odd to accuse somebody of choosing "speculation not reality" when your own assertion that Rhaeneyra is complicit in the deaths of Harwin and Laenor is itself speculation. We're given several potential suspects in both cases. You're clearly set on a specific interpretation and that's totally valid. However your interpretation is not fact. The show's interpretation where Larys kills his brother and father is literally in the book. It's just as valid as your interpretation. I'm not sure why Rhaeneyra's "dedication" to Laenor (or vice versa) is a point of argument at all. What constitutes dedication in a marriage is for each individual couple to decide. Rhaeneyra's "job" in this marriage is to be Laenor's cover not his doting wife. What exactly are the expectations here? Why are we moralizing this?

You’ll never guess who wrote this episode :0

I'm glad they mentioned Cregan is closer to Jace's age I was afraid they'd age him up for a more Ned Stark type (or God forbid Henry Cavill). Will be interesting to see Winterfell next season. Hopefully Jace comes more into his own he's been a bit of a nerd so far lol.

One thing this episode has emphasized for me is how dumb the storming of the Dragonpit is... Like I really, really hate to use such negative language but it honestly was just one of the dumber scenes in the book. You could really see that George was straining to write around the existing lore that he has created ("how the hell do I get rid of all these dragons before I get to Aegon III??"). And it's one of those things I've believed would look 100x more implausible when you're watching it happen on screen instead of imagining it through text. Watching Meleys wade through a crowd of terrified peasants like they're ants confirmed that to me. I think storming of the dragonpit is going to be ripe territory for some story expansion and rewrites in this show.

I find the idea that adults Dragons would have guards silly. It’s a DRAGON not a Rolls Royce. Not like a thief is going to show up and make off with Meleys. The Keepers in the show seem to be more like zoo keepers than guards, and they seem to be doing their own thing. That is to say that they have no inherent loyalty to a political entity but rather have some sort of religious reverence for dragons and their riders. The fact that Rhaenys was able to get to Meleys is very plausible. Personally I could have done without that final scene but I don’t think that aspect of it is an issue.

It needs to end with Viserys and Aegon reuniting. They can do a time-skip or simply move that event up if they want to. But anything else would just be too depressing I think.

With respect, it feels like you took that off-handed “Trump supporter” thing personally. The Greens are treated with far more nuance in this show than George afforded them in the books. The expectation that George or the writers treat both sides of a conflict as equally good/bad is pretty dang odd in of itself, but they’ve indulged that expectation regardless. They’re allowed to have villains in their story if they want villains. We don’t complain that Joffery or the Boltons are too immoral compared to the Starks. That the Bloody Mummers and the Mountain’s Boys are cartoonish. It’s so freakin weird to me how people take a partisan stance on the Dance and then work backwards from there to form their opinions and support their “team”, and then get mad when they’re written in a way that doesn’t conform to their expectations. This isn’t Twilight.

With regards to ending I think it has to be taken within the context of the show as a whole. Alicent has spent what, like 15 years now making way for Aegon to be king against Viserys’ wishes? I don’t think the brief reconciliation we see with Rhaeneyra is ever real. It’s an expression of her brief doubts due to Aegon once again demonstrating that he’s genuinely awful candidate for the throne (and an awful person in general). If she believed in her heart that Rhaeneyra should be queen she wouldn’t have seized on Viserys’ words—which she clearly didn’t understand at all—so quickly. This isn’t her suddenly deciding “oh there’s this important prophecy to fulfill and Aegon must be king”. It’s Alicent backsliding and taking even the tiniest excuse to return to her prior ambitions which she has been building on for 15 years.

Rather than making the Strongs Black they should have just made Baela and Rhaena lightskin imo. Jace and Luke look about right to me for being 1/4th Black. But Baela and Rhaena look like they could be my sisters and I have two African parents. A lot of white people for some reason assume that anybody with even a tiny bit of Black ancestry will look 100% like us. It would have been a strong visual indicator to show the audience that somebody who’s 1/4th Black can usually pass pretty easily and it’s the dark hair that gives the Strong boys away.