People who are seriously saying that all of this was planned and foreshadowed from the beginning are in so much denial over d&d’s writing habits.
Last season Sansa found out the truth through Bran so she wasn’t actually that cunning or clever. The director just outright said that the scene was removed, likely to bring more surprise to the viewers when Littlefinger was caught. This season they made her some sort of mastermind that can seed betrayal and chaos.
Cersei was supposed to have miscarried last season so the viewers could see her still manipulating the people around her with a fake pregnancy. They stuck with her actually being pregnant to humanize and victimize her.
Arya was only chosen to be the one to kill the Night King three seasons ago. The “brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes” thing Melisandre said was just bullshit thrown in to justify it despite Melisandre having much more stronger prophecies about bringing ice and fire together. The Night King was never supposed to be her kill.
Daenerys talked about marriage for allies at the end of season 6 and the entirety of season 7 was hinting towards marriage and even foreshadowing her pregnancy.
The Army of the Dead was always built up to be the apocalyptic bane of humanity and the Night King being the true threat that humans had to set aside their differences to unite against.
In an attempt to “subvert viewer expectations” we got:
A dumb Tyrion that continues to protect his sister because she actually is pregnant. Tyrion is unrecognizable to his former self at this point.
Cersei advertised as this bad bitch queen ready to blow people up with wildfire suddenly crying about her baby and being crushed by rocks instead of being despicable and taking out more people in Kings Landing if it means clinging onto her power.
The war for the dawn not being apocalyptic to the entire continent of Westeros as we were sold it would be for 8 years.
Arya swiping the Night King kill and not getting to kill Cersei which crushed Jon’s character arc and left Cersei to be crushed by rocks.
Jaime going back to Cersei because she has a baby so he has a reason to love her and go back to save her. His redemption arc people were rooting for fails.
Daenerys not even bringing up the possibility of marriage to Jon even though that was literally on her mind since Mereen.
Jon’s parentage reveal ultimately being used as a tool to divide him and Daenerys and we don’t even get his feelings about his identity. We know more about how Theon feels being a Stark and Greyjoy than we know of Jon’s feelings being a Targaryen and Stark
Nonsensical dragon death and respawning military forces.
In order to push Daenerys further we had to see Missandei being executed in front of her and Greyworm. The most obvious solution to this was to infiltrate the Red Keep and conquer it from the inside out. Instead we get this stupid scene of Dany and a small group of soldiers standing outside Kings Landing with scorpions pointed at them that can kill them all
Brienne’s virginity being used as fodder in Jaime’s story and being abandoned, making all her fears of men true.
Sansa betraying her brother’s trust because we need to undermine Daenerys even though she had done nothing at that point to deserve anyone undermining her.
Bran being set up as the mainplayer against the Night King and would use his greenseeing abilities to help defeat him. Instead we get him warging out and really just being bait.
Jon kind of just floundering around the entire season because the only thing his character was being aimed towards was stolen from his storyline. He also only knows how to say “she is my queen” and “I love her”.
Daenerys winning the battle for the throne and reaching her goal, but for an inexplicable reason she burns Kings Landing to the ground because we need a surprise final villain. She didn’t even just burn the Red Keep where Cersei was. No, that would make too much sense because even the writers said “she wanted to make it personal”. We need to somehow destroy King Landing and because we didn’t write Cersei as the type to blow civilians up with wildfire to win anymore, we need Daenerys to do the destroying.
The story had an extremely clear narrative structure up until this point.
Jon and Dany political marriage -> Deal with Cersei -> Save the world from the Night King -> Epilogue
Apparently that was “too predictable” for d&d though, and they kind of just do shit because they think it’d look cool. Let’s not forget that a big reason why the expedition beyond the wall happened was because they really wanted to write in a dead polar bear somewhere in their scripts for years and needed to make it happen.
