Spoilers inside.

Quick takes: FROST DRAGON WTF. I don’t know what they could have done exactly, set the wet lizard corpse on fire somehow I guess, but leaving it behind in the river for the Night King to zombie-fy seems like the least sensible option.

As does just about everything about this episode from a strategy standpoint. Trying to capture a wight? Just send one of the enormous scaly critters to swoop down in the storm, scoop one up, and bring it back. Why do they have to tie it up in person? And how is a zombie corpse wiggling around going to convince Cersei Lannister WHO HAS ONE AS HER QUEENSGUARD that she needs to stop fucking her twin brother, forget all her dead kids and sign on for Dany and Jon’s Excellent Adventure?

Speaking of Dany and Jon, the only thing that saved the sappy way they were looking at each other was that he immediately apologized for getting her kid killed. I think as boner-killers go that’s a big one, though she still looked like she was going to hop right in the sack with his Swiss cheese ass.

Once more and for all the marbles: SHUT UP, TYRION.

Where’s Bran? Is he just hanging out under a tree with full knowledge that Littlefinger is trying to get his sisters to kill each other, doing nothing about it? We made this giant honking deal out of his omniscience and apparently the Three Eyed Raven has more important things to think about than if two of his last three living relatives poison each other’s wine.

Bout ready to put Ghost on a milk carton, I’ll be honest here.

Sansa needed to call a press conference and be like, “Let me tell you a story about what Cersei told me to do so my father could go free. I will apologize, you can get all judgy and mad, and then we’ll move on to how we avoid eating the Winterfell pets during the coming 100-year winter.” Instead, she sent Brienne away and was a dick about it. It’s too bad there aren’t any Boltons left to do target practice on. She’s been grumpy with no one to feed to the dogs.

I’ve been thinking about momentum since last week’s episode. About what carries you forward when your head’s past where your feet can take you and you’re running to keep up with yourself, to keep yourself alive, to get through the next day and the next and the next.

Beric Dondarrion has been ready to die for a long time. Has died, over and over, and been brought back under the hands of Thoros of Myr, whether Beric wanted it or not. Jon Snow asks him about the Lord of Light, about why he’s there, about everything he’s seen beyond the tallest Wall there is, and Beric is so tired. They all are, walking out to meet the dead.

Death is the enemy, and the enemy always wins. The Brotherhood Without Banners has been riding the Riverlands for years by this time, trying to save the common folk from the violence the gentry create. Beric doesn’t even know how many he’s saved. He doesn’t know if he’s saved any at all.

All he knows is the fight. He stands in the storm with his sword lit up, taking another step and another and another, because if the fight is all that matters, it’s the action that counts, not the result. He might not save anyone else. He might not save himself. But he has just enough left for another step and he takes it.

I’m sad he won’t meet Arya. I feel like they’d get on.

Arya doesn’t know the lash Sansa was under, doesn’t know her sister’s suffering. You ever have those awful one-up conversations where you say you’re tired and your friend spits back that until you have a newborn baby while you defend your dissertation while moving across the country with two broken hips and a dislocated collarbone YOU DON’T KNOW TIRED? That’s Arya right now, remembering Ser Amory Lorch, Ilyn Payne, the Tickler and the Hound. That’s Arya, so desperate to be the little girl she was in Winterfell that she’ll make her sister a monster.

She doesn’t want to hear about how Sansa survived. She doesn’t care. She can barely think of how she survived, and how many good people she loved along the way, didn’t. It’s so very awful but it’s also very human. We’re limited, people, for a reason. We can only carry so much without shoving it off onto everyone around us. We’re lucky if we can grow up and outward by recognizing that everybody’s got their own suffering and it’s nobody’s job to hold yours.

You can’t fight your brother’s enemy. You can only ever fight your own, and you do it for as long as you can, through as many resurrections as your soul can bear.

A.