["inside the episode” talk]
D&D: We planned to end the episode on that big moment of the dragon’s eye opening blue, that was a huge impact moment.
Me: ...Is there a single person watching this show that didn’t know that moment was coming in the exact same moment the zombie king picked up his knock off scorpion bolt?? You guys really aren’t that great at this. You should have ended it on the Night King throwing his ice spear, before we see it hit, that’s a cliffhanger. Or on the dragon gushing tons of blood and smashing into the ice, that was an impact moment.
That last moment was terrible, story-wise, and it left me with tons of questions as well, to start with: 1)where the fuck do ice zombies get that much chain? 2)who swam down and attached it to the dragon in the first place? 3)if ice zombies can function underwater why didn’t they just rush the island instead of waiting for the water to freeze? 4)why does the Night King have to touch the dragon to zombify it (he has not needed to do this previously, see Hardhome where he raised an entire army of dead just by lifting his arms); is he getting less powerful the deeper we get into winter?
Honestly, the Night King raising his arms and Zombie!Viserion rising out of the lake would have been a hell of a lot more gut wrenching of a end scene.