His brother was an enemy combatant. Renly knew that his life was on the line if he continued to fight in the war. Shireen was an innocent bystander.

I think you're generally right BDA, but also consider that Shireen is his only heir. Even if the sacrifice works and he wins the throne, he has nothing once he dies. The Baratheon name dies with him now. He's sacrificed his legacy to win a single battle. What a moron. bullet is right, it's character assassination.

They've definitely been setting this up all season, but they've been explicitly indicating that Mel or Selyse would do it without Stannis' consent. That would have been just as horrifying and in-line with the arc.

I don't think it's out of character for Stannis, the first time we meet him he's burning half of Dragonstone.

I wouldn't think it out of character, except for the one scene a few episodes ago on how, everyone be damned, he'd save his daughter because she is family. Now, I suppose, that was the scene that was out of character, and it hurts even more knowing that.

I was very, very glad to see Staniss' wife finally develop a will of her own, even if it was too little, too late.

That was my favourite bit as well!

I loved the season finale. I generally like most of what the show does. I'm also now comfortable with watching the show end the story, as it looks like GRRM is years away from finishing the next book, let alone the one after that.

Regarding Stannis, I thought they handled him well here. What he did last episode has had an enormous effect on him and whilst it worked with the weather, it failed to elicit the same benefit from humanity (as it should not have). Of course, his death reveals that ultimately Stannis is doomed to fail in the books as well.

Could be, it's easy to get so conditioned by the violence and gore to expect it whenever a character is killed but I don't believe that the absence of a shot with Stannis' head rolling across the snow should be taken as a sign. Though we really don't know at this point! It happens in the books all the time....

And on Jon, that could just as easily be taken to mean that they wanted to let you know that nothing was happening, he wasn't warging into Ghost, he was really dying there and no-one was jumping in to save him. The actor and producers are saying that he's really dead and not coming back. I'm not sure how much to trust that, but it would be insane to have waited out the last 5 years expecting Jon to live/come back to life only for him to be really dead vs mostly dead.

I see what you mean in terms of closure for Brienne. It is a little weird that we don't at least see her after she 'kills' him.

I don't see how Jon's death was in any way wishy washy though. As I said before, the length of the shot clearly establishes that he's dead and there's not really anything cliffhanger about it.

A month or two ago, Melisandre's actress said that she filmed a "big scene" with Kit, but that scene never actually happened on screen. I wouldn't be surprised if they filmed his resurrection as part of season 5 but are saving the scene itself for season 6. I don't think they'll put him in a new body -- Kit Harrington is too popular for the show to let him go.

Also, why does anyone think Theon and Sansa might be dead? The scene pretty clearly wasn't indicating that they both committed suicide. This was an escape scene. Presumably the snow is deep enough that it could cushion their fall.