There has been a lot of conversation brewing about last night’s game-changing episode of Game of Thrones. If we’re being honest, a lot of the feedback is negative. The outcry seems, in large part, due to the fact that the last chunk of the episode (the last 20 minutes or so) is completely off book. That’s right, from Jon Snow’s rousing speech to the rapey (ugh, no more) Craster’s Keep, and all the way out to that eerie ice castle. Off book. And that has a lot of people nervous. But let’s look at it from a storytelling perspective. If you are going to add a bunch of stuff to an already lengthy epic, what’s the thinking behind it? Is it just to stall so George R.R. Martin has more time to write his books? Or is it to address some concerns show watchers have voiced about the show’s weaker elements? Truth be told, it’s probably a little bit of both. But it’s worth noting, in all your righteous indignation, that last night’s episode, “Oathkeeper,” tackled a number of notorious audience complaints. Just like ticking them off a list. Don’t believe me? Here are just five.

We Hate the “Dany as White Savior” Crap

O.K., this beefed-up role for Grey Worm (played with jaw-clenching glory by Jacob Anderson) isn’t high on the list of complaints from show watchers, but it’s worth mentioning because it very specifically addresses the issue many people took with this notion of the very blond Daenerys Targaryen liberating a bunch of, shall we say, tanner individuals last season. The visuals of the final shot of the season was, in particular, a bone of contention. How do we solve this problem? Well I’m not sure it needs to be “solved,” entirely. This is part of Dany’s story which is not at all, if you’ll excuse the expression, black-and-white, when it comes to morality. But to ease the racial tension around this plotline, the writers wisely made Grey Worm (rather than, as it is in the books, Selmy or Mormont) the stirrer of the slave rebellion. And, did you happen to notice that a good deal of those Meereenese slaves were white? Smart.