Visually this season was impressive. Very high end production values and special effects. Those dragons looked fake and unconvincing in the early seasons, but everything is glorious now.
I'm not a fan of the long drawn out Jon Snow parentage and lineage reveal. Never understood why people were so excited about this and so invested in the culture of speculation about it. For me, it undermines the show's whole narrative reversal in propping up the downtrodden and disadvantaged, where women, bastards, dwarves, and the disabled come out on top against the odds. Until now, blood rights were often revealed to be smoke and mirrors, recipes for vanity, self-destruction, and violence.
The only saving grace in all this is that there may be a potential conflict once Dany figures out she isn't the chosen one destined to take the throne, but it's yet another able bodied man who has this birthright, and potentially more painfully, one she loves and respects. We'll see how it plays out, but given all the fan service this season where it looks like it's no longer Martin piloting the ship, I fear a tidy, happy ending where beautiful royals take their proper place and rule peacefully into the sunset, which would undermine seasons of catharsis denial and the show's deconstruction of the traditional monarch. In one season, the show has gone from one of the most ambitious approaches to high drama by pushing its narrative boundaries and conventions to one of the most safest and predictable. This goes without mentioning all the ridiculous and convenient plotting in the past couple of episodes, which thankfully, was less egregious here.
Night King spearing dragon out of the sky remains one of the most stunning and jaw dropping moments in the entire series though. It's a case where predictablity doesn't undermine, but rather dovetails with menace, terror, and heartbreak. It fulfills a genuine sense of dread, and executed with poetry and stately grandeur. Simply remarkable.