I should have known the moment they gave Varys some actual dialogue, he was royally fucked. I think the fate of Varys/LF will be the hardest pill for me to swallow with this show. To me, they encompassed the entire political theme of what made this show so interesting. I'm BUMMED.

Euron v Jamie felt super forced. They just needed a reason for Jamie to get fucked up before finding Cersei. It's hard to believe that battle-savvy Euron, who has completely dominated every fight he's been in, met his end to the man with one hand. I would have preferred to see him get obliterated by Drogon, especially after he killed one of the dragons.

I was cool with Cleganebowl. I don't know if it was better than Brienne but it had some great beats and a satisfying ending. I also really liked the scene with the Hound and Arya, it felt like a nice way to end their story. They might be the best duo in the series IMO.

The Dany switch is like...whateverrrrr. They have definitely hinted at it before in the series, but it still doesn't make the turn feel 100% motivated. D&D just don't know how to write characters without feeling forced and rushed. They are forced to wrap up so much in so little time, which feels nearly impossible to do efficiently. Putting her in a situation wherein her mind, she has no choice to kill thousands of innocents would at least make the flip more justified, but the way they set it up, it just kind of feels like she's bitter about not being as popular as Jon.

Cersei deserved better. Much like what Curtis said, Cersei felt more like a set piece than an actual character this season. They just didn't know what to do except having her stand in one place and look menacing. Her and Jamie's ending was disappointing. It felt like everything they did to grow Jamie as a character was completely redacted. I thought for sure that when they entered the crypt, he would hear soldiers coming and didn't want them to rape/torture her and instead decided to kill her out of mercy before he died from his wounds. That at least would have felt motivated and satisfying. Instead, the whole scene felt corny and very lackluster.

My coworker brought up a great point with the observation that once Dany goes full crazy, we never see her POV for the rest of the episode, which I think adds much more insult to the way they handled this flip. Shouldn't we get to see Dany's face while she's burning innocent people? Isn't it important to at least get some sort of idea of what's going through her head or how she is handling everything?

Part of what made the story so interesting is the fact that every decision that every character makes is motivated. We can hate Cersei all we want, but we understand why she's doing what she's doing. She has motivation. With Dany, it's like they completely gave up on trying to humanize her or make her descent into madness somehow relatable. The moment she turned "evil" she became a force of nature, rather than a character.