*Full Season Five Spoiler Alert*
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the books. I tried. I got about three chapters in. It was just too much detail, and too little progression.
I generally found it very enjoyable; I thought this was the season everyone hated? I liked that characters finally started to cross over. I love the pairing of Dany and Tyrion. Jon Snow working for Stannis was interesting.
The Hardhome battle was absolutely amazing. I think I liked it more than Blackwater or the Wall assault. It just looked insanely real, expensive, and gorgeous. The dread of the coming snow was such an incredible moment; WINTER IS HERE!!! It was a payoff of five years of waiting for something and it was so creepy. The image of the White Walkers sitting on horses on the mountaintops motionlessly watching the battle was so creepy. Jon Snow gets to kill a White Walker. We see a Giant kicking ass. And the ending show of the White Walker just staring at Jon Snow with this EFF YOU look on his face as he raises the dead was my favorite moment of the series.
My second favorite moment, another I’ve been waiting forever for this moment, is Dany’s dragon coming to the rescue and her flying on it and toasting the cultists. I’ve gotten so sick of her story line spinning its wheels since the end of Season 2. So her actually flying a grown up dragon was great.
The season finale wasn’t amazing but there were lots of nice little moments in it. It’s a real shame they killed Jon Snow; he was basically the only sympathetic character in the series aside from Tyrion. I don’t particularly care about anyone else as a person.
Derek Beebe 