Any fans disappointed in no Reeds or Dawn sword in the long night battle? Felt there was so much missing that should have been there. Even after rewatching I still think they missed a lot of opportunities. Like if they cut out the Arya library stuff they could have introduced those elements before the battle.
It's not like they were held to a time limit on the length of the episode as that went 80 minutes. If they wanted to introduce any other stuff to the story they could have easily done so without needing to cut that Arya scene.
They didn't add the stuff you would like to have seen because they didn't think it added anything to the story.
I'm pretty sure his point was more that they didn't need the Arya in the library scene as it added almost nothing to the story. IMO, that has been a pretty consistent problem with the show once they advanced past the books. There is a lot of useless stuff, but yet they don't have stuff that should be in there or that would help fill in tremendous gaps and holes. The show really has gone down hill and they absolutely took a crap on the first 6 seasons in the last 10 minutes of the last episode.
The point of the library stuff was to change pace from the huge battle to focus tension around a single major character and to prep the viewer for her sneak attack on the Night King. Cramming in more mythology or references only a book-reader would know about only makes the overall story denser with no real added narrative value. They've made some dumb decisions on the show but trimming down the lore and storylines in favor of more character beats hasn't been one of them.
I disagree with the choice. Arya had seasons of prepping she didn't need another scene, the library did nothing. Also they had change of pace that had tension and drama that was much better already with Theon and Bran left in the Gods wood. That was good because we saw the redemption of Theon and finish to his story arch.
Also it's not adding lore it's building off what the show already introduced in Reeds being so involved already with the fight and then not one being there in the end and then Stanis lightbringer/dawn there at Jon's birth. It's bring that to a close.
No worries on disagreement, I enjoyed it the first time through even while mostly disappointed with the overall episode, but to each their own on liking or not. Alfie Allen did an excellent job with Theon's end just as he did for about all of the series, for sure.
But the Reeds have barely been in the show - Jojen's dead, Meera helped Bran travel then had no more purpose, Howland only in flashback. Barely mentioned outside of that. Dawn I believe is never even named in the flashback where Dayne has 2 swords, while Lightbringer comes up exactly once and is never seen again, and the whole point of it in the books is that it's a fraud. They'd have had to shoehorn them in there really late in the game and we don't even know from the books if any of the sword stuff is going to actually matter. Hell, might as well just say the dagger was the true Lightbringer.