caravaggio

I rate the episode a 10 for visuals and a 5 for anything that happened in the battle or with the characters actually making sense.

I have nothing to base this on, but I think maybe you can replace Jon with Stannis in the battle of the bastards and that will be how it goes in the book (with a few changes for sure). Maybe Jon is never a part of the battle to retake Winterfell just like he wasn't at Hardhome in the books.

Because Dany was born later at Dragonstone with witnesses such as her brother.

I thought this episode was one of the stronger ones of the series for many reasons (all of them listed above). I found the Stannis and family scenes especially moving for some reason. Especially Shireen! You really feel for her. I wondered (during the Stannis/Selyse interactions) if the show was implying that the reason Selyse gets involved with Melisandre is some attempt to bring the dead sons to life or fix Shireen. Is Shireen locked up because Selyse thinks the greyscale can be spread? Is that why she doesn't want Stannis to see her? I wondered while watching if Melisandre was going to ask to burn Shireen instead of Edric/Gendry. Oh and I think its possible we will still have Patchface. I think there is going to be a great juxtaposition of the Dany talking to Greyworm scene from this episode (feeling good about freeing slaves) with Dany crucifying slavers (the other side of the coin) in a future episode. Here is a question I had... since they don't seem to be bringing the Northern Lords back for this season who is going to be there to witness Robb signing his will and take it North? The Blackfish and Edmure? I've always thought that would turn out to be something important in later books, so they wouldn't cut the will out entirely would they? I agree that the Jon storyline hasn't gained the traction it needs. His story really suffers from having such limited time (why only 10 episodes HBO, WHY?) and so many things get cut or put in fastforward. If Jon is going to climb the Wall next episode, I guess he won't be talking to Mance again until he goes to bargain with him after his return to the NW.