Some impressions:
- Cleganebowl was fantastic. Everything about the fight itself was thematically on point. Sandor was obviously overpowered, and his struggle was hard to watch. But in the end, he finally finished Oberyn's work and the fall into the fire was a beautiful and sad moment. I just don't understand why he was there. Did he ride all the way back to KL just to face Gregor? It was a perfect way for both characters to go out, but everything leading up to it felt rushed and I'm confused as to what motivated him to do that. At first I thought he was going to kill Cersei but he just let that bitch slide on past. It was a satisfying battle, but it feels like Sandor's only reason for being there was because the plot required it of him.
- Dany's fall from grace on paper is a powerfully tragic moment that COULD have worked, but again, it felt rushed. I guess her advisors were the only thing preventing her losing her shit at moment's notice? There seems to be a built-in theme in story that she can't outrun her bloodline, which is kind of weird. She clearly has empathy and sympathy for the downtrodden, for those vulnerable to power so for her to start torching all of the peasants in KL at the ring of a bell felt very out of fucking nowhere. It's not that it isn;t plausible, but the way it was depicted in the show definitely felt implausible. There should've been at least a good three episode run of building up to that, of showing her suffering from her mental illness and showing the descent into madness to create tension leading up to the sack of KL that makes you wonder IF she could snap. But in the show it felt more like she was mourning the deaths of her advisors and then snapped without a moment's notice. It's a very iffy thing because it implies that she was three or four advisors away from being a mad queen. To the show's credit, the POSSIBILITY of this happening was always hanging somewhere in the air, but the execution of it felt rushed and betrayed a lot of the character she showed, a lot of the things she clearly believed in. In short, I think the mad queen twist could definitely work and it won't surprise me if it makes it into the books, but the show dropped the ball enormously on portraying her descent into madness in a convincing enough way. SHE WON THE FUCKING WAR. SHE HAD IT IN THE BAG. IT WAS OVER. What possible fucking reason at that point did she have for going mad queen!!!????
- Anyone saying Jamie's death wasn't fitting and ruined his character arc did not pay attention. He lost the plot when he raped Cersei (fuck Cersei, but rape is rape) and definitely reached a new low when he sacked The Riverlands and killed Olenna Tyrell. Incest, he pushed an innocent boy out of a window and crippled him, conspired against Winterfell and bares some responsible for the death of Ned Stark, murdered a person for no reason, committed rape, killed people in the Riverlands including the true bad bitch queen of the whole series, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. He had his moments, but he was not a good person lol. Going back to Cersei was fitting enough, but the real character assassination moment if there was one was the scene of him admitting to not caring about anyone - not even the innocent lives he saved by slaying the king. It's an attempt to contextualize him as someone who only ever did any honorable things because of his loyalty to Cersei and doesn't make a lot of sense.It's contradicted several times throughout the show, even in this very season.