"I always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead. That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad-dûm and he falls into the gulf, and his last words are, “Fly, you fools.”
What power that had, how that grabbed me. And then he comes back as Gandalf the White, and if anything he's sort of improved. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead." - GRRM
Proceeds to revive Jon after he was justifiably (in the eyes of the members of the watch) killed. Him reviving wasn't unpredictable by any means, but he came back without a single negative side effect, which was kinda what people were expecting after reading about Lady Stoneheart. Gandalf coming wasn't an unimportant cliffhanger, unlike Jon reviving (we found out the lord of light cares about him, which book readers already knew ["I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow."]).
"The battle between Good and Evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between Good and Evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés. I mean the orc-like creatures who always do dress in black and... they’re really ugly and they’ve got facial deformities or something. You can tell that if somebody’s ugly, he must be evil. And then Tolkien’s heroes are all very attractive people and all that, of course, again this became cliché in the hands of the Tolkien imitators." - GRRM
White Walkers are literally evil creatures created to exterminate humans, dressed in black, ugly and with facial "deformities". All the "White Walkers motivations are misunderstood. GRRM is just baiting us" theories died tonight.
So much for pretending ASOIAF isn't another fantasy series filled with cliches. Evil dudes are clearly evil and their only motivation is being evil. The real protagonists, Jon, Dany and Tyrion, are quite literally unkillable at this point and absolutely everything seems to go their way sooner or later; Arya and Bran are probably going to get to that point eventually. Silly time traveling paradox crap; I really didn't want the "Bran fucking up Hodor in the past" theory to be true, because that reveal only means that Bran's arc only has one way to go: He'll do more paradoxy bullshit at some point, that probably help against the white walkers and will setup the start of this story somehow (~~unexpected twist~~ that even fucking Harry Potter pulled in a book with 300 pages).
The books are relatively entertaining (they have some incredible moments and they are mostly fun to read, but tons of filler boring bullshit at times) and seeing things from non-main characters POV is rather unique (and was an excellent way to trick people into thinking the real heroes of the books can die). However GRRM's writing skills aren't half as good as people say they are; he made some fun books, but he's not the second coming of jesus.
It's either that or the showrunners are doing whatever the fuck they want and changing extremely important plot points, completely incomparable with Dorne in terms of importance (they are conspiring against the Lannisters, just like in the books), for no reason, which sounds unlikely.
Anyway...
King's Landing shit is completely irrelevant at this point. In one side you have Ice necromancers and a zombie army that gets bigger with every battle. In the other you have a massive army, that will get even bigger with the iron born reinforcements, and Dragons that can singlehandedly destroy enemy's armies and castles. King's Landing is destroying itself in the middle and there's a zombie mountain (which is literally nothing compared with what the other sides have); exactly why should we care about this? This series is going to end with White Walkers vs Dragons (~~unexpected~~)
Arya's arc has been consistently boring for two books and two seasons. We are currently 5 episodes in and she has done nothing; you could summarize her whole thing in less than 20 words: Still training. No longer blind. Was asked to kill a filler character nobody gives a shit about.
As much as I disliked the time paradox garbage, Hodor's scene was heartbreaking. Bran made him retarded and ruined his entire life, used him as a bipedal horse / slave, got inside his head a lil bit more, and then sacrificed him to escape and left him dying alone. Also pls stop killing dogs.
Everything else was relatively cool. Dany's story didn't go anywhere this episode, but at least she has done something this season. Not sure why Sansa rejected the help from the Vale tho. She can tell Littlefinger to fuck off / kill him / capture him and still get help from the extremely manipulable Robin and the army that went there just to help her.
I have a feeling Sam is going to do fucking nothing next episode and my dislike for his arc will grow. Nowhere near oldtown or any relevant place. His dad isn't even with the Tyrells, so I'm not sure why they are introducing him.
This season is x100 better than season 5, but I'm not really happy with how the ending is shaping up to be because I expected something different; sadly I can't blame the showrunners for this. On the bright side my hype for TWOW has drastically decreased.