Spoilers, for the three of you who didn’t watch the hacked version or read the blow-by-blow spoilers that got posted.

Quick takes: Sober analysis to follow but first FUCK YEAH. FUCK YEAH DOTHRAKI. FUCK YEAH DROGON/VISERION/WHOEVER. FUCK YEAH DANY BURNING UP THE WAGON TRAIN, FUCK THE OREGON TRAIL. FUCK YEAH LANNISTERS TURNING TO DUST. FUCK YEAH THE RAINS OF CASTAMERE. FUCKING FUCK YEAH.

Also a minor fuck yeah to Jon for finally saying what I’ve been yelling for seasons, that Tyrion’s been dining out on the Battle of the Blackwater which was Tywin’s victory, and all his Byzantine plans are shit and never do anything for anyone.

Glorious: Arya fighting Brienne, alive with the joy of movement for the sake of it, remembering her training with Syrio Forel, water dancing once again, Needle in her hands and Winterfell’s ground beneath her feet.

Love how every living Stark in turn has now told Littlefinger to eat direwolf dick.

I was sorely hoping the reunion between Jon and Theon would be cut short by Drogon swooping by for a snack.

DAVOS. Stop falling in love with every head of state who wanders past. Is this an authority fetish or what? (If so, come see me in my office immediately, lone silver fox of Dragonstone.)

Every time I decide to loathe Jaime Lannister he does something perfect and stupid and beautiful and brave, like jumping into the bear pit to save Brienne, or charging the wounded dragon and its pissed-off mom. This story’s at its strongest when it’s an inverted fairy tale: the brave knight goes to slay the monster, and winds up saved from burnination by Bronn, whose major talent in this world is saying the word “cunt.”

Littlefinger’s reference to the War of the Five Kings was a reminder how long this has been going on. The Stark children have grown up with the war, and their spoils are all around them.

Sansa and Arya stand in the crypt, listening to the water drip and the candles hiss going out. They know their father’s face, but they don’t know one another’s. Sansa watches Arya dance and she might as well be watching a stranger; Arya looks at Sansa and sees her mother, and whispers her names for the first time in months.

She said names at the gate, names that might as well have been stones, so solidly was her childhood built upon them. Luwin, Rodrick, Jon. All gone now, or changed beyond recognizance, along with the halls her father walked.

Bran turns his fate over and over in his hands. He sees it all now, from a place deep within the tree roots, running underground, but he still has enough of his old life in him to look at Littlefinger and tell him, I remember.

Jon takes Dany deep into the rock and shows her the carvings, out of options, exhausted, so far from who he thought he’d be, so far from that angry, alienated boy who climbed the Wall all those years ago. He had no people then, and no loyalty to the North. His loyalty is so strong now it keeps him from the only hope he has of victory.

War has spoiled them, and nothing’s the same anymore.

A.