It's online now so...spoilers below! Beware

Solid finale. Boi do they love their horrid birth scenes!

Poor Luke, that was pretty brutal. Interesting that it's an accident between two uncontrollable dragons instead of Aemond outright killing him. I liked his "no no nooo ugh!" to his dragon as it happened

Excited for the war to begin now. Just gotta wait like....two years! Wahoo

Great first season overall. The middle stretch was the highlight for sure. IIRC:
1-3 very solid
4-8 great
9-10 very solid

I am whelmed. Felt like mostly setup but the whole Aemond/Luc sequence was well done. They did a really good job conveying just how ridiculously big Vhagar is. Also Aemond's sapphire eye was p cool

looking forward to meeting the Stark lord next season

older Rhaenrya still seems kinda boring compared to the younger version, but maybe now that her wrath is about to be unleashed we'll see more from her. idk! I like just about everyone else on her squad tho (although Rhaenys looks like an even bigger dummy for not ending the war last week if she ends up siding with Rhaenyra anyway)

8 was definitely the high point of this season

I think I'm roughly around this with the episodes this season. Give or take a point.

1x01 - 8/10
1x02 - 8.5/10
1x03 - 9.5/10
1x04 - 9.5/10
1x05 - 4/10
1x06 - 7.5/10
1x07 - 8/10
1x08 - 10/10
1x09 - 6/10
1x10 - 7.5/10

I thought the first four episodes were really strong. I remember thinking before episode five, this is GoT season 1 levels of quality. Young Rhaenyra slaying a bore and coming back to camp bloodied was my favorite part of the season until we got episode eight, which was magnificent. Such a fun early binge.

The low points were really low, like the joust/tourney violence montage in the pilot, endings of episodes five and nine, to name a few. My biggest disappointment comes from my lack of trust with the creatives. Given how they handled the end of five and nine, and how they basically did the same to get their ending in ten, too, it's frustrating. For season two, I'm hoping for a deeper focus on character consistency. From episode to episode, and scene to scene.

It was odd that within the whole war council not a soul thought to say, let's not send off two of our nuclear weapon generating machines with no escort, and not your heirs, my queen, them, too. Let's do it this way so the audience can be filled with dread and engrossed by all the tension of feeling like something horrible is about to happen to one or both of them. (Ravens are slower, is an actual reason given for sending these two boys off to potentially become hostages or to outright die, which happens.) In the end it's bad luck that Aemond is there, is how it's presented to us.

The absolute lack of courage on these showrunners, too, in that final scene. I genuinely could not believe when they took the decision making of who is at fault away from the characters by having them say the dragons acted on their own. You can't blame the greens, audience. The dragons acted on their own. You can't blame Rhaenyra for launching war in S2, audience, her son was just killed. Pick a side. Tweet about the show!

I was almost too flabbergasted by that to even enjoy how visually impressive and cool the scene was, which is was! But all of a sudden Aemond can't be shown to actively want to kill this kid. He can threaten him all sinisterly, chase him on a nuclear weapon, but then is saying no?

That stuff aside, I absolutely loved how they presented Rhaenyra's look and vibe this episode. Her landing her dragon behind Otto and all those knights and just walking through them like a boss. Risky, but cool. Her walking around wearing the crown with guards following her, visually stunning. That table was beautiful, too. The War talks were intriguing. And I love what the actor playing the sea snake was doing.

Seeing Aemond with his glittering eye, that whole space, was just so well done, too. Such great atmosphere outside but inside as well. Especially inside. Overall, a really tense episode. I wish I had watched it drunk or something.

idk I didn't mind the accident thing, you can still 100% blame Aemond cuz he was at best trying to "prank" Luc by chasing him around with a giant nuclear weapon, and seemed pretty serious about getting his eye for an eye retribution as well. He just didn't intend for it to escalate QUITE that far. I think now that the deed is done he'll slip into a more villainous personality tho (ala Jaime in S1, who may have been justified by being a Kingslayer, but his reputation wore on him), really this should push every character into their worst impulses if they were still holding anything back

If they're going for a gradual descent into madness/murder, I'm all for that arc compared to certain characters just being evil from the jump. Kinda like with Alicent in S1, they went out of their way to make her more sympathetic than I know she is in the books, even though she'll probably let out her inner Cersei a bit more as the war goes on

Man what a close to the finish. This season was honestly really good and it continued to draw me in episode after episode like the original show did. There are a few things I didn’t love but overall I was glued to the screen.

I actually liked it being an accident. I am definitely one of the small minded peasants that HBO is catering to because I actually kind of like Aemond. He’s obviously an asshole but I think he was a younger brother that got teased and bullies and when he became a strapping young man and got the power he didn’t know how to behave. His eye also looks pretty badass. The size of Vhagar versus Luc’s was insane.

I do agree with old Rhaenarya being not as stellar as Milly. She’s not bad persay I just don’t get the same feeling of ambition that young Rhaenarya had. I do think her reaction to not wanting to go to war kind of somewhat justified the decision last episode to not roast the royal family? Still don’t love it but it helped.

Now we wait until probably spring 24 for season 2? Especially with the amount of dragon battles that are likely.

It was all good basically