,:I
After thinking about it and watching an analysis
I think I have my feeling about this pinned down.
This was a tragedy, in the literary sense. But there just wasn't enough time for it to work. Rather than carefully scattering clues around to make the end result an inevitable outcome of characters' flawed natures, stuff is just pointed to, like, "See THAT'S why so n so did the thing!" Plot points happened without really developing character arcs or contributing to a central theme.... which is kind of a shame, because tragedies are some of the best ways to examine the nature of the human heart, even if it often requires figuratively ripping them from characters' ribcages to do so.
I think the season really suffered from its structure overall. It's only 6 eps, split cleanly in two, with 3 eps dedicated to the Long Night and Dany's conquest each. The two events feel almost wholly unrelated, and for such cataclysmic events, they really hardly feed into one another at all. Armies get decimated and rebuilt instantly, like the DothrakI and Unsullied just multiply asexually or smth. Character development happens and gets immediately backtracked... Jaime fookin' Lannister. It's like they took the last 3 eps of a 10 ep season, cut out everything else, and smushed em together. I've wondered if eps 1-3 could have benefited from being the finale of season 7 rather than the midpoint of 8. Then, 8 could have spent its time actually developing towards those events...
So yeah I'm sad, likely the kind of sad intended by the writing. I also have a feeling that this ending could have remained relatively unchanged but still satisfying, had it played out in a much more logical, complex, and gradual way, rather than juggling two almost completely unrelated climaxes, and dedicating the minimum amount of time to executing each.