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Do you think the zombie ice dragon version of Viserion will breathe frosty death instead of the usual dragonfire?Romantic comedy Archives

There's one episode remaining in Game of Thronesseventh season, and it's shaping up to be a big one. Queen Dany and King John have captured their proof that an undead army is marching and they're off to sell Queen Cersei on a truce so they can all come together and save everyone.

SEE ALSO: Did you catch Daenerys' 'Terminator' moment in 'Game of Thrones'?

But oh, what it cost them. Viserion is (un)dead, Thoros is gone too -- and with him, the power to resurrect stabbed Jon Snow. We also said goodbye to, Uncle Benjen Stark -- the lame version of "Coldhands," if you know the books -- but only Jon knows or cares.

Here's what the experts are saying about Game of Thrones' Season 7 journey "Beyond the Wall."

Mashable's own Laura Prudom has had quite enough of the narrative shortcuts and artificial tension-building. Tormund and Jorah both landed in situations that would have killed them during earlier seasons. So did Jon, for that matter. Why is the show suddenly being precious with everyone who matters?

Perhaps the showrunners want to save all of their heartbreaking character deaths for the final season to really twist the knife as we enter the home stretch, but to have made it through two huge clashes without losing any of the characters we care about (sorry not sorry Thoros) is both unsatisfying and frankly unrealistic, given how gleefully the show used to dispatch its heroes and villains when we least expected it. 

The Guardian's Sarah Hughes expressed similar disappointment with the way this final arc of Season 7 has been plotted out. It's an issue that goes back to the original decision for Jon and his gang of gruff pals to venture beyond the wall in search of a Wight.

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Yes, they got what they came for. But it's still a wonder anyone ever thought that would be a good idea.

Tyrion himself tells Daenerys-Not-Dany that Cersei won’t give a damn about her ice zombie present. Sure, there’s a lot of waffle about how you need to see the undead to truly understand – but where every other big penultimate battle has risen organically out of the series’ events, this felt like a contrivance created solely so everyone could converge on King’s Landing next week for what looks increasingly like it’ll be the mother of all cliffhangers.

Over at The Hollywood Reporter, Josh Wigler observed a seeming link between Viserion's undeath and a prophetic vision Dany had all the way back in Qarth. Fans have long puzzled over the vision's meaning, and we might now have an answer.

There are some silver linings in Viserion's death and subsequent resurrection, including the fact that it seemingly answers one of the show's longest-running riddles: "The dragon has three heads." Most fans agreed Daenerys and Jon were two of the prophesied characters who would ride dragons by the end of the series, but there has never been a clean common consensus on the third dragon-rider. Now, it looks like we have the very unexpected answer: the Night King.

Meanwhile, icy Winterfell was the site of a fiery exchange between two sisters. Arya is starting to view Sansa -- thanks to Littlefinger's sly meddling, natch -- as a traitor to her family. Sansa, on the other hand, can't comprehend why Arya won't hear her side of things.

Remember: these two sisters are relative strangers at this point in their lives. The Washington Post's Alyssa Rosenberg sees their heated exchange as a succinct summary of all the interpersonal conflicts highlighted in "Beyond the Wall."

Arya and Sansa’s disagreement about the letter Sansa wrote at Cersei’s behest so long ago is the most substantive of these disagreements about the past — about these moments when it’s impossible to make someone who wasn’t there understand what happened because you don’t understand it yourself. Though it doesn’t end in bloodshed, at least not this time, their exchange adds a visceral urgency to an idea that shows up in every storyline this episode. If you can’t make someone else understand the past, or if you refuse to interrogate the past, you can both end up victims of your misunderstanding.

That deeper read of the scene certainly tracks -- one could argue that all the Game of Thronesmurder politics are driven by characters who refuse to see the lessons of the past -- but the deadly exchange between sisters is still hard to swallow from a narrative standpoint.

As Myles McNutt of A.V. Club wrote, unpredictable teenage impulses allow us to let some of the sharper words slide, but it's increasingly difficult to buy the Arya/Sansa showdown we seem to be hurtling toward. And that, he said, may be a symptom of business decisions pressing in on the series from the outside.

I am willing to accept that Sansa and Arya might not get along swimmingly in the wake of their reunion, but the speed at which they’ve turned on one another—Arya legit threatens to cut off her face here—and the implied lack of communication between them up to this point are shortcuts that make both characters look worse than I think the story intends. And if this is, in fact, a giant plot to manipulate Littlefinger that the two sisters have devised, it’s not worth the way it’s selling out the characters in the interim. It’s about the disconnect between how a story sounds in the abstract and how it plays out in context, which seems to be the most significant consequence of the shortened season order.

There's only one episode left in Season 7, and it's going to deliver exactly what the past six episodes have been leading up to: a meeting between Jon, Dany, Cersei, Jamie, and all their assembled forces.

Will the Clegane Bros finally scrap? Will the heisted Wight actually make a convincing case for calling a truce? Or will Cersei live out her truth as we've come to know it and betray literally everyone? All we can do for now is speculate.

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