OT: Game of Thrones final season (episode discussion)

I figure we might as well get one of these going so we can discuss each episode as it airs and check the status of our guesses from the previous thread.

For starters, it was great just to have GoT back. When the intro music started playing I was lit. There were a few things I didn't particularly like about the episode (looking at you 'stink eye' from a dragon), just felt a little too cheesy for Thrones.

I really enjoyed that they have started to get the reunions and important revelations going right out of the gate rather than have them hanging over the short season. The most important being Sam telling Jon who is really is (and what I think may in fact be the most important line of the whole episode when he asks him if he thinks Dany would give up her crown to save her people)

Jaime already arriving at Winterfell and Bran and him sharing a look - great.
Tyrion and Sansa talking about their previous (and I guess technically still in force?) wedding.
Arya and Jon sharing one of the few genuinely happy moments the series has ever had was fantastic. Her line about using Needle "once or twice" was excellent
Learning that Tormund and Edd both made it off the wall alive
Arya, The Hound, and Gendry talking together, and seeing that Gendry can make dragonglass weapons

Poor Ned Umber...although that was a nice creepy scene to close out the episode

All in all I expected it to be a set up episode, and for the most part it was the characters reuniting and explaining their various motivations. I was fine with that to set up the bigger events coming.

My one updated theory from what we saw is I think they are dropping a number of hints that Bran and the Night King are super connected, if not outright Bran = The Night King. My thinking is that we keep seeing those spiral shaped patterns left by NK (Ned Umber, the horses at the Fist of the First Men, etc). We also keep seeing those spiral patterns left by the Children of the Forest (in the caverns below Dragonstone, as they zoom above the weirwood when they created the NK in the first place).

We don't know if there are any Children left, but we do know one "something like a man" that is closely connected with them now. I doubt the NK is leaving the spirals as a warning, as everyone already knows that bad shit is headed their way. Its some other kind of message. Perhaps Bran's way of saying who he is.