My predictions after these first two episodes:
Jon will die, again, during or just after the great battle but Dany is pregnant with their child
Jamie will survive but with a grievous wound that will not allow him to live long but insists on joining the army as it moves south against his sister. Brienne cares for him until his death.
Bran will indeed be the key to killing the Night King (love the idea of him warging into the ice dragon!), surviving but being less human than he is now and will retreat north? to seek refuge away from humanity
Cersei, seeing Dany approaching with her one remaining dragon and seeing her people flee her side to join with Dany, burns the Red Keep with wildfire as soon as Dany's army gets inside the city walls
Bronn kills the remaining dragon but that doesn't stop Kings Landing from being overrun/taken back by the Targareon forces
Tyrion, handed the crossbow by Bronn, kills his sister in mercy to keep her from dying in the fire or to finish her off as she lays dying of burns. He tells Jamie what he did and why before Jamie dies from his wounds
Dany, finding the Iron Throne turned to slag by the fire, returns north to Winterfell to rule from there and raise Jon's child. Sansa is keeping a close eye on her as the madness that took her grandfather seems to be coming for her. Arya, pregnant with Robert Baratheon's grandchild, is Dany's hand. The wheel is set for another round of fights for the Seven Kingdoms with the heirs to the Targareon, Baratheon, and Starks (through Sansa) still around.
Halfway through the final season, I am now even more obsessed with a theory like this! I love how you think, because "resetting the chess board for another cycle of power plays and violence" would be the perfect ending, IMO. Not sure we'll get it, but I would love it.
Boy I was wrong about Bran being useful as more than bait as well as about Jon dying. Not sure what state Jaime is in.
As annoying as it was as a viewer, yeah, leaving the scene dark was the right choice. It made us struggle just like the humans on screen to try to see what was going on. That and the quiet just before the dead attacked was very effective. You can't see 'em, you can't hear 'em, but you know they're coming straight at you and there's way more of them than you.
I was surprised by how many survived the "Great War" although some could still, I suppose, die from their wounds post battle. When I last saw Sam he was buried under a heap of bodies, some trying to kill him, so he might die from having chunks taken out of him. Same goes for Brienne and Jaime I would guess. It would give more punch to a loss if we could spend some time with it instead of it being one more among thousands going on around us.
Glad at least one dragon survived. There's a hell of a lot of bodies around, too many to bury. Sort out any buried survivors and then burn them off. The stench alone from leaving them to rot would be enough to chase all the survivors far, far South.
I disagree though with the idea that Theon's death was futile or only useful as a distraction for Arya though I'm sure it helped her. He went to the weirwood knowing it was a suicide mission. At the end, he chose to fight the fear that emasculated him more than Ramsey's knife did and chose to go out with courage. He wasn't going to collapse in terror or run this time which was a redemption from a lot of his failings.
The Night King holding back his White Walkers was a wise tactical maneuver. He realized the humans learned that taking out one White Walker would kill off a swarth of wights. So let the wights do all the killing at Winterfell and he'd have still more to help him swarm south. Lose his many or all his White Walkers during this battle and he'd be alone again, vastly outnumbered, and as he faced a swarm of humans coming at him, surely one would get though to him with Valarian steel. So it was a good, long term strategy. Just didn't work out.
I'm hoping the horror of battle that she was fully in and the losses she's suffered tempers Dany going forward. Or it could push her further into Mad King territory. There's going to be a lot of time on the march South for her to work through her feelings about Jon's being the true heir though I'm betting he's going to tell her he doesn't want the bloody throne, never did, just wanted to care for his people. Her reaction to that will be something of a litmus test as to what kind of ruler she'll ultimately become --- one like Jon who puts his people first or one like Cersei who puts the pursuit of power before all other considerations.
The plotting of the next three episodes is going to be different than what I originally envisioned seeing the Great War finished in one episode. So now I expect that the next episode will be recuperation, retrenching and heading South with a plan. Ravens will fly to all the remaining part of the Seven Kingdoms that Dany defeated the Knight King and watch the undecided come flocking to her side. Messages will head to the Iron Bank and to other countries as well. How many people hate the Lannisters and will join up with Dany at this point? Will the Iron Bank decide it's been a bad investment after all to back Cersei against Dany and Dragon Company? The following episode will be the truncated trip South with people flocking to Dany's side (swelling her head/ego along with her ranks?) including a mass exodus from Kings Landing and then start of the final battle as that episode closes. The last episode would finish up the battle with Cersei's death giving the Seven Kingdom's back to the Targareon side and then I'm still predicting the same denouement which
@Nick_Miller describes so well as "resetting the chess board for another cycle of power plays and violence".