A few things:

- Skip the scene of Bran and Sam discussing Jon's true parents because they had that scene intercut with Jon boning his aunt, which is a plain weird choice on their parts. I think that if any reveal should have cut to black, this is the one, which I'll explain later.

- Remove the dragon date from the earlier episode and don't have Jon riding Rhaegal at the start of the battle because he didn't do anything, including lighting the verdammt trench when he was right bloody next to it. This allows Dany to have her own time dueling the Night King with a bit less pointless, meandering chaos in the air while two main characters get nothing done, leading to the reveal of dragon fire failing to harm the Night King.

- Don't have so many soldiers that they all couldn't fit inside the castle in the best (worst?) case scenario, but maybe they could have used Winter fell like a proper defensive structure, while Danny's mysterious replenishing army could be explained by them being kept in the reserves.

- Ghost is in the crypts protecting the women, children, elderly, and mentally handicapped (ahem, Tyrion and Varys past season 4...) because he's awolf. He is biologically incapable of utilizing the necessary tools to actuallykillthe undead. So putting him not just on the front lines, but sending him off with the Dothraki suicide charge? Does show-Jon justhateGhost, or something?


- When Jon finds himself in a position where he needs saving,thatis when Rhaegal shows up to not only save him, but allows Jon to ride him for the first time.
(1) This gives Jon a means to get past the newly raised horde and make inroads into the castle courtyard.
(2) Rhaegal could fight undead Viserion as the dance of dragons continues so that we don't have to buy everyone not being incinerated by an undead dragon aimlessly flooding an entire courtyard with the same fire that took down the Wall.
(3) From a narrative perspective, this makes his Targaryen lineage far more impactful because he isn't yet 100% confirmed a Targaryen by the show.
(4) Now he and everyone else has a reason for thinking that it's madness that he rode a dragon because as far as they know, he's just some Northerner and not their mother/a Targ, and this later helps prove to Jon and others that he really is a Targaryen.

- Let's just go with "Arya believes that the Night King, the show's chosen avatar for death itself, is her final test after Melisandre's words." But for the love of the seven, get rid of the retconned eyes line.

- We see Arya scaling the walls in order to attempt a sneak attack on the Night King, with the scene flipping between her and Jon pushing towards the Godswood.

- The Godswood is where main characters fall back towards as the battle progresses, which serves several purposes:
(1) This makes the most logical sense because they all know how killing the White Walkers or the Night King himself is the key to weakening the undead army's ranks.
(2) They have been conveniently granting main characters these Valaryian Steel weapons with storied pasts or personal value, so do something with them.
(3) We could see some Hardhome style White Walker fights.
(4) The added chaos will make the very notion of Arya trying to get the jump onanyof the White Walkers far more feasible.

- Jon actually reaches the Godswood because (a) he had a dragon save him from the impossible number of raised wights that surrounded him in the field, and (b) Viserion is busy fighting Rhaegal instead of doing his best Godzilla impression on Winterfell.

- Arya finds a position and at the right time manages to leap at the Night King, but he catches her midair and throws her to the ground in one fluid movement. She tries to outplay the Night King with her swordsmanship, yet it becomes immediately clear that she is way over her head and maybe sparring with Brienne isn't the same as a real fight. Instead, the Night King is merely toying with her, swatting aside her feeble strikes with his falchion, easily disarming her.

- In a scene mirroring the Tower of Joy fight, it is Jon who stabs the Night King in the back like Howland Reed saving Ned, momentarily causing the Night King to stumble to his knees. Now Arya retrieves her dropped knife and slices at the Night King's throat with the same swiftness as her strike during Littlefinger's trial.

- The Catspaw is the one that shatters, and our heroes attempt a last minute rally to begin a retreat as they are overwhelmed, leaving Bran in the center of the Godswood as the swarm of wights and enclosing White Walkers slowly occlude all view of him.

From there...

- The whole battle is a goddamn massacre, as it should have been. People in the crypts barely managed to escape through the hidden passageways, with some main characters leading their retreat, converging with the reserve forces. Maybe if there were actual stakes, they wouldn't have had to write off scores of Dany's armies in order to even the odds for her confrontation with Cersei?

- Bran's fate is left ambiguous for future episodes; is he alive? Dead? Is Bran working with the Night King all along? At least he isn't a spongecake on wheels.

- Sam still reveals Jon's parentsafterthe battle, because why in the hell would this political bollocks matter right before the vying apocalypse? Furthermore by moving the conversation to after the battle at Winterfell, the political tensions actually make sense because Sam then questions Daenerys for burning his family after a failed defense (because what kind of ingrate would still try to push thataftershe just helped win the greatest war against the living?!?), and only when the dust has somewhat cleared is this new issue raised as opposed to being yet another thought swimming in anyone's head, again, right before what they thought was the last stand for humanity.

- What do we say to the God of Death? Not today, and that's exactly what happened, not that day. But as Beric Dondarrion said: "Life. Death is the enemy. The first enemy, and the last." Did you really think that you could merely stabdeath?

- Cersei ignored the war for the living, and now the Army of the Dead prepares to march south behind the remaining survivors of the battle.

- Perhaps in a scenario somewhat paralleling Jon and Sansa rallying Northern Houses to their cause against the Boltons, Dany and company now attempt to rally the other regions of Westeros. Maybe we get to meet that new Dornish prince who we most likely won't hear another peep about. Then we can see all of the major players like Dany, Jon, Sansa, Varys, and Tyrion being in a situation where they have to put their political wiles together to gain support over Cersei and towards fighting the undead.

- This also serves a means for both those involved and the viewers ourselves to see how these different individuals handle leadership instead of everyone justassumingthat Jon or Dany or Sansa or a horse's arse would make the best ruler.

- Arya has a reason to head to King's Landing instead of giving some "family" lecture to Jon, only to fukk off, never to be seen or heard from again.

- Hey remember how CerseihatesSansa and is still convinced she had a part to play in her son's murder? Extra tension for any future parlay where she's involved that makes matters much more complicated and personal.

- If the Northerners and Dany gain the support of the entire Seven Kingdoms other than King's Landing itself, then they control the Seven Kingdoms by everything but throne and crown. Say, that might actually be a far more interesting political gambit than writing off most of the bloody continent and having two armies stay at each other outside the capital gates...