So for those of you that have hated this season...what specifically were you wanting to see/expecting to see?
:not snark, truly curious:
Among other stuff, I was disappointed in the battle scenes. IMO, the Battle at Castle Black is the greatest battle scene ever filmed. The Battles of Winterfell and King's Landing weren't.
These responses are interesting. Just goes to show how we all watch for different stuff.
I don't even remember there being a Castle Black battle scene, which goes to show how little impression battle scenes make on me (unless that was the one where the ice dragon melted the wall? I just remember an attack and a wall-melt that was awesome, so my memory must have just skipped over the associated battle).
I always wanted to see more of the Faceless Man (Hagar, I think his name was), but he'd obviously served his purpose plot-wise.
I also don't remember a subplot involving the bank (which some posters have noted they wanted to see followed up), though I vaguely remember the bank being mentioned in the books occasionally. It's funny how I'm interested in banking/money stuff IRL, but apparently not in fiction at all.
I agree with several of you that the show built the White Walkers up enough that they should have gotten more screen time (perhaps a half dozen episodes rather than a couple), but I freely admit that I personally would have been dreading that b/c I found the White Walkers the most uninteresting part of the show (and the books..I usually just skimmed all the stuff related to them). Don't care who/what the Night King was....'some magical evil dude' is good enough for me. The less White Walkers, the better, as far as my viewing satisfaction.
Apart from just building in more episodes for the past 2 seasons, I'm trying to think what I really wanted to see and didn't...
I agree that it would have been nice to see Arya's direwolf specifically, and a bit more of the two direwolves in general (obs not crucial to the plot).
I wish they'd given Circe something to do this past couple years b/c I always liked getting into her twisted POV.
I would have had Bran warg into one of the dragons at some point; not sure how to work that into the plot.
I would have handled Jamie's end a little differently, as I noted earlier. Just cut the scene with Euron, have him sneak in and ring the bells in the city (heroic moment that nevertheless fails to affect the outcome), then go to Circe. I would have had some setup where he and Circe were about to be captured, and he mercy-kills her (actually I envisioned something kind of similar to the Jon/Dany scene), and then either is killed or is captured and executed.
I wouldn't have minded a little more of Dorne, but I also remember the bitching among the fanbase when the books began focusing on Dornish characters, so I kind of doubt that would have been popular with the viewers.
I didn't give a shit about Cleganebowl (which I gather was one of the more popular things among fans this season) and would have preferred the Hound give up his vendetta and end up as an enforcer for Sansa (ANY additional interaction with Sansa would have been great), or off adventuring with Arya.
I'm sure I can think of a few other things. But considering the ginormous cast/number of plot threads, I'm surprised how fine I am with how it all went down. It's funny, b/c I love to mentally re-write my favorite stories. I remember when
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended, I also liked the last season a lot more than many fans, BUT I also had a very detailed 'alternate version' of that season in my head that would have taken only a few tweaks to do and would have been SOOO much more satisfying in terms of character arcs and some of the themes that season was playing with. I actually wrote it down at the time, and even looking at it a few years later, I remember how good an outline I still thought it was. I have it somewhere...I wonder what I'd think of it now, ~ 10 years on?
It just goes to show, there really is no pleasing the whole audience, or probably even the majority of the audience, with a long-running complex story. I admit I am much more curious to read Martin's version now than I have been in years. Supposedly the show runners were working from his outline of how all the characters ended up. Given how pissed most people seem about Bran being king, I'm wondering if Martin would consider changing his original idea, pretending it was the show-runners', and ending the series differently from how he's been planning it all these decades LOL.