This show has gotten unbelievably soft and frankly the writers don't have a damn clue what they were doing! They hype up the White Walkers for 7 seasons and Winter lasts 80 damn minutes. This last episode was the writers trying to get rid of the White Walkers because they messed up in a serious way after Tywin's death when they decided to pivot from a show about people to a show about ice zombies. Arya is one of my favorite characters but having her kill the NK was one of the dumbest endings imaginable. I don't know how the show can go from putting Ned's head on a spike and performing an abortion at the Red Wedding to having Arya survive a Darth Vader style choke hold from the NK. We didn't even get a back story to the White Walkers or anything. Talk about a one dimensional "bad person" villain, which is the exact opposite of what this show got its name for. Also, wtf is wrong with Jon? This guy has to be the worst field commander in the 7 kingdoms right? How the hell do you sit there and think to yourself charging the Dothraki horde right at the Wights was a good idea. This dude can not win a battle for himself and is seriously lacking in the "decision making" department. Dany is also definitely her daddy's daughter and should not be allowed anywhere near the throne. I honestly hated Stannis' character so much but looking back now, he should have ended up with the throne, at least he has a basic understanding of how to command an army. There is honestly nobody left who deserves the throne and maybe that is the point the writers are trying to make but I have no clue Team Winterfell defeats Cersei and the Golden Company with out an army unless they predictably have Arya assassinate her. So much for the Prince that was Promised.
There was no "pivot" by the writers.... they were following RR Martin's story.
I think your dislike of say the course of events in the last 2-3 seasons is a symptom of how the show writers did have to pivot from translating RR Martin's published works into TV seasons/episodes, to translating unfinished Winds of Winter manuscript into TV seasons/episodes, and now season 7 and 8 where they had to pivot to fabricating TV seasons/episodes simply from an outline he gave them of how he intended the story to wrap up.
When a guy like RR Martin writes manuscripts in the thousands of pages, which are edited into books that are hundreds of pages, and all you have to do is translate it into TV, that looks great!
When he writes hundreds of pages of manuscript for an unfinished book, and you have to kinda fill in the gaps both where you diverged from him on the show and where he simply hasn't truly finished writing, that is challenging, but still produces solid TV.
When he babbles a vague outline of the remainder of a plot that has dozens and dozens of threads which in many cases were dead ends or deceptions, and you have to take notes and then try to do all the original writing of every event, every conversation, every fight/battle.... that is extremely challenging and it shows in the quality/depth of the content they have produced for seasons 7 and 8.
Look, they were more/less promised by him that the final 2 books would be written and probably published by the time they got 5-6 seasons deep.
He didn't even deliver a full manuscript of Winds of Winter, much less the final book (Something about Spring... A Dream of Spring?)... so it isn't shocking the show had to narrow the plot to a handful of threads and finish them out as best they could.
I still don't excuse some of their bonehead writing as I've discussed, but they didn't really pivot the writing.... RR Martin did... he forced them into writing the ending for him, and it shows, in a bad way unfortunately.
