Season 8 / Episode 3 episode had some cool moments for sure (from what I could actually discern on a 55" HD TV anyway), but it was a bit of a shark jump for me.
My reading of 'Game of Thrones' has always been in the description- a frivolous game played by narcissistic mortals, but ultimately irrelevant to the millennia old threat beyond the wall, now making it's play (backed up by the onset of a severe ice-age).
That has been the underlying narrative, as the viewer was made aware in the first few minutes of the first scene almost 10 years ago.
That threat was summarily negated in this episode, over the course of mere hours, with relatively little cost to mankind (or the main cast) and with a completely unsatisfying one-punch kill.
Whats next for A Song of Curry and Rice?
Our heroes take on Cersei and Pop-Up Pirate (who joined the cast 20 minutes ago) then have a final kerfuffle among themselves over who gets to sit on the melted swords?
Underwhelming.
I'm kind of in the same boat. Viscerally thrilling from moment to moment, but narratively unsatisfying in the grander scope of the story after so much build up. I get it from a plot expediency pov, but to me it still totally deflates the existential threat of the White Walkers given that they were dispatched in a single battle by the first organised force they came into contact with.
It's similarly dramtically underwhelming as when last season it transpired that it was indirectly Jon and Dany's fault that the White Walkers were even able to breach the wall in the first place. It got the plot from a to b but also totally undermined the wider narrative (arguably
the key plotline of the entire saga) that Jon and Dany are the prophesied saviours of Westeros.
As for Bran, my understanding (though i couldn't tell from the episode itself) is that he was using the crows to harass the night king and assist Jon and Dany. As for motivation etc we almost certainly won't be getting any further explanation as for why he was the target of the Night King beyond the line last episode about Bran being a trove of human memory and the night king wanting to destroy him because of that.