Game Of Thrones Season 7: 10 Ups And 3 Downs From 'Beyond The Wall'

1. The Leaps Of Logic

Game of Thrones has been making some frustrating moves this season, with bad decisions and, more noticably, characters zipping around all over the map. For the most part it's been easy enough to ignore (speaking personally anyway, though plenty have been very annoyed by it).

Beyond The Wall feels particularly egregious in that regard, to the extent it's a lot harder to ignore. Jon sends Gendry running back to Eastwatch (four years of cardio paid off, but how does Jon know he's the fastest? I guess it's a fair assumption, but still), he sends a raven to Dragonstone (who the hell is Eastwatch's Maester?), and Daenerys flies in with her dragons to save the day. Just how fast are ravens these days?!

Then there are the issues that come down to the whole idea in the first place. It's a terrible plan, and not at any point does someone question whether Cersei - y'know, the *Mad* Queen - will listen to any of this. They also apparently didn't expect to encounter such a large army of the dead, despite Jon going on about it for so long, and made no contingency plans. Why didn't they ask Daenerys for her dragons before the sh*t hit the fan? Why can't anyone try and ask Bran for some information about any of this?

This all serves to push us into the season finale, which to be fair looks epic, but there are some very frustrating leaps of logic here. The payoff should be worth it, but also Thrones should be better than this. Discussing the Benjen moment, David Benioff said:

"The thing with Coldhands is it allows us to work in a pretty compressed time frame because there just isn't time."

Therein lies the real crux of the issue with this episode, and Season 7 as a whole. When Benioff and Weiss announced they were doing just seven episodes, it seemed like a fair move. They knew how much story was left, after all, and HBO weren't going to drag it out for the sake of money.

The longer the season has gone on, though, the harder that decision becomes to understand. Some narrative elements work in the context of 'well, there are only seven episodes', but it's a qualifier that doesn't really need to exist. Doing 10 episodes would solve a number of this season's issues, make the storytelling more satisfying, and there's easily enough material for it, and this being the penultimate episode highlights that more than in previous weeks.

What did you think of Beyond The Wall? Let us know down in the comments.