They could have really used a longer season to give everything between Winterfell and King's Landing some breathing room. A lot of the plot mechanics like the laser targeting of Rhaegal by a stealth fleet were really rushed and forced, and we should have been able to spend longer exploring Dany's actual fall and the plotting and fretting of those around her.
However I'm really happy with where the metanarrative ended up going, in the sense that this is clearly where GRRM wanted to go. Dany simply had to decide to make a wasteland and call it peace, that's been building up since the beginning and constantly reinforced with her imperiousness and impulse towards burning and violence. She's a teenager with magical nukes who believes she has a destiny and the right to rule a continent she's never been to!
The conquest being fairly easy, but the peace turning out to be nearly impossible except through terror? That was the lesson in Mereen and she couldn't escape it in Westeros either. War turns out to be an unruly slaughter even for a lot of conquerors who think they're liberators. I'm here for it.
I'm also excited to see how GRRM, with the benefit of time and of key characters' interiority, does the same things. I suspect mechanic things like "Greyjoys takes out a dragon" and the process of Dany trying to form a coalition will be a lot more satisfying with book context too.
I'm also really curious how different the story of the coming and the defeat of the dead might be in the books, especially if there isn't actually a Nights King in those.
At any rate, I'm heading into the last episode mostly just curious to see how they make it so Jon, the Good Natured Orphan with a Secretly Noble Heritage, doesn't end up just "winning" instead. Maybe it all turns out the time traveling spirit possessing Bran has been manipulating everything in order to take over itself! Maybe they make a democracy or dissolve the seven kingdoms all together.
