First, a fair warning: This piece has Game of Thrones spoilers. If you didn't watch last night and don't want to know what happens, close this tab.

Now that they are gone, and it's just us, the shell-shocked, left to consider last night's 1.5-hour episode,, let's talk honestly: That sure felt like a finale, didn't it?

The Night King, the supervillain, evil incarnate, the threat to all humanity is … dead. He was killed in spectacular fashion in episode three of the final season. With his death, the great war, the big battle, the thing the whole show, the whole book series, has been working toward—the struggle between darkness and light, life and death—is just … over.

Now we have three episodes left to watch as these badass death-slayers fight against each other over who gets to sit on a crusty old Iron Throne. But after last night's episode, who cares? You could easily skip the rest. The battle that mattered is already won.

The premature conclusion of the fight between life and death feels like a serious misreading of the books and of the fans, perhaps even a betrayal of them. That's odd, given that the showrunners seemingly went out of their way to appease the fandom by keeping their favorite characters alive. (Although, RIP Lyanna and Jorah. What does this show have against the Mormonts, anyway?)

I was prepared for far more loss, far more sacrifice. In George R. R. Martin fashion, I was braced for Tyrion or Sansa to die, for either Brienne to die saving Jamie or vice versa. Hell, I don't think they even killed Grey Worm! Instead they sacrificed the entire Dothraki horde and many of the Unsullied, which was both awful and not surprising, smacked of genocidal racial politics, and yet still didn’t count as killing a "main character." Instead, all the major players lived. The show even hinted, weirdly, that Sansa and Tyrion have love for each other, and for a brief moment, as the crypts were full of the dead arisen, it seemed like they actually might kiss, which would have been, uh, slightly inappropriate timing.

In keeping all the Starks, Targaryens, and most of their allies alive, HBO broke with Martin's penchant for active hostility to fan expectations.

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Where the show did subvert expectation was by inverting the central Game of Thrones priorities. All along, Martin's series The Song of Ice and Fire, on which the show is based, has driven home the point that the battle for the Iron Throne is a game. Games, by nature, are trivial. The battle between ice and fire, on the other hand? That is existential. The point has always been that what really mattered was who would win in the ultimate face-off between good and evil.