Episode 3, "The Long Night" is wonderful technically, but the plot just doesn't make any sense. Why do people hide in crypts ... from an army that raises the dead? Why did they spend so much time talking about Azor Ahai only to have Arya kill the Night King? And if their point was that prophecy is all manipulative BS, why not at least address the point later? I thought that surely we'd see red priests in the last few episodes talking about how obviously it was Arya all along, trying to shoehorn her into the prophecy, but no. And why did we spend multiple seasons with Arya learning her face-shifting ability not to use it in this episode or any later ones?
While everything that came after was somehow incredibly worse, I think they irreversibly ruined the series after Episode 3. I mean, George has made it clear that the White Walkers/Others are a stand-in for the existential threat of climate change, and the short-sighted humans are ignoring it to play their petty "Game of Thrones" and other political bullshlt that ultimately doesn't matter. I am not sure if the writers were too stupid to realize this or if they just stopped caring (or both), but they ALSO beat us over the head with this message for 7+ seasons ... to have the Night King be a cartoonishly evil "AI gone rogue" villain with no complex motivation and then rely on the cheap fantasy trope of having all of his minions just die when he dies because the writers couldn't figure out another way out of that dilemma was just unforgivable.
Like, what message does that send? As long as you have a skilled ninja who can come stab climate change in the back, you can go right back to fighting for the Throne?? Lol, having another battle for that chair be the climax of the series (rather than a "come-down" finale) was just AWFUL storytelling and totally betrayed the themes of the series (and especially the books) up until that point. I think D&D just didn't have the skills or the interest to deal with the fantasy stuff properly, so they turned the White Walkers into something simplistic that they were more comfortable with and wrote them away without much effort so they could be rid of them. A super depressing quote from the actor who played the Night King was something along the lines of, "I realized while reading the script for Season 8 that I had really just been a side character all along." That is a damning revelation to have about the main antagonist that you have been building up for YEARS, lol.
Luckily, George has made it quite clear in the books that the Others are pretty complex and might have a hidden motive that will serve as a pretty satisfying twist if he ever gets that far. I can flat-out guarantee that the White Walkers will not be mindless embodiments of death with no other motive, and the evidence is that in the earlier seasons they didn't even behave that way on the show. For God's sake, one walks RIGHT BY SAM in Season 2 and ignores him, haha.
P.S. One of the funniest instances that I think displays the writing mindset D&D have is in the logically awful Beyond the Wall episode in Season 7. While they're all surrounded, Beric suggests to Jon that if they kill the Night King, they can defeat the entire Army of the Dead. The camera dramatically swings up the Night King and his (ultimately irrelevant and pointless) generals as ominous music plays. Jon turns to Beric and says, as if he knows some ancient/mystical knowledge, "You don't understand." Uh, WHAT DIDN'T BERIC UNDERSTAND?! Haha. These writers actually wrote that line into this episode when they KNEW how the series would end just to create a mysterious and eerie moment. They're straight-up hacks.
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