I made the mistake of perusing online forums during the airings of past great series' and decided to avoid that during the last couple years of this and I'm glad I did. The trouble with social media is anyone who can string a few syllables together gets the same or more airtime than a well thought out critique. Someone wrote 'what was the point of Jon?...' Effen eyeroll. He killed the queen, dummy. This whole series has all but explicitly stated and constantly reinforced the idea that we are all just small cogs in a great machine (or wheel, to use the vernacular of the show), and the point of Jon was "to be exactly where [he] was meant to be" to paraphrase Bran. The series finale was, in my small opinion, absolutely perfect, and to me seemed to predict and address the problems the audience would have after the previous episode.
In season four, I believe, Oberon tells Cersei "we don't hurt little girls in Dorne" to which Cersei replies "everywhere in the world they hurt little girls." The entire series has been 'hurt little girls' from the very first blue-eyed undead in episode 1 to Arya watching her father's beheading to the death of Shereen (and her toy horse) to the girl that Arya tries to save (and her toy horse) and all the other terrified little girls we see in the second last episode... In the final episode when the camera is panning through the rubble at the beginning, what do we see? Dead little girl. So the ultimate hurt little girl in Daenerys gets her dream of a new world order but has to become dead little girl for it to come to pass.
It's impossible for a television show to satisfy the well established and utterly dull tropes and the resultant basic, inane cravings that Joe and Joanne Audience feel entitled to, while at the same time providing thoughtful and interesting television that stays true to both theme and the overarching "point' or 'meaning' of the show, for lack of a better word. IMO, this show took a chance in the second last episode by taking a popular character that some people actually named their children after down a well prepared, questionable, albeit somewhat predictable path, but pulled off a surprising, original, and excellent conclusion to the series. "Edmure... sit down." Probably just easier to type 'garbage,' I guess.
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