Yea, I went through those emotions last season when they had Jamie charge at a fukking dragon and somehow survive. He was pushed into a lake or river or something and managed to not come out of the water until he was far enough away that the dragon couldn't harm him.
Season 7 already made me come to accept that this show is no longer above putting characters they know they're not going to kill in impossible situations just to give that audience a

moment. It's cheap, it's now GOT's mo.
Sunday's battle just missed a lot of opportunities in other aspects. Such as not letting the White Walkers fight. We seen one fight at Hardhome. And we've seen what happens to wights when one dies. If they let the walkers fight they could've provided more realistic ways for these characters to survive. Such as Brienne's in combat with a Walker. The Hound and Gendry are getting overwhelmed by some wights. Brienne makes a great move to slice the Walker with her Valyrian steel sword, and a bunch of wights in the area evaporate with him.
This. If I have one critique, because they had me until the end thinking all those characters were done for, is that they didn't incorporate that element. NK didn't make all the wites directly - they had a good opportunity to move away from the overwhelming hoards by having the key fighters going one on one with the lieutenants. NK could've gone solo (although that slow walk with his boys in the shot was dope af) to Bran and all his lieutenants could have been with Tormund, Brienne, Jaimie, Jorah etc. Then when they made those kills, that could eliminate convenient hoards, like the ones that swarmed Sam or swarmed Daenerys. Convenient writing, but a whole lot more sense.
Have multiple waves of Dothraki and Unsullied going at the NK's foot soldiers, really line it up where NK's cannon fodder goes up against the North's fodder, letter the mid levels go mid level and main guys against main guys. It's probably expected but it's also logical for the purposes of the fight.
The visuals were incredible, the emotional pulls were flawless, I FELT it when the Dothraki lights went out. I FELT it when NK waved his hands to make them all lay down on the flames to clear a path, sacrificing themselves for the rest to move on. When they ALL jumped on Drogon and swarmed I was freaking the fukk out. Theon, Arya, all that, trying to build and create emotional responses to feel the dread and feel like it was over, that was clearly big on their white board. They went for a lot of FEELS this episode and for me it worked, they're not banking on logic because it's a show about zombies and dragons, I get it. But from a story telling perspective, they could've made it a whole lot easier on themselves to have some sword play among the main characters in isolated sections and hoards against army's to make things a little easier - then, once they truly get overwhelmed, that's when you have the killshot so just when it hits it's zenith, you pull that Knights of the Vale BOB swerve.
Instead they went to that swarm well so many times I can see why it's considered unrealistic if you watch it without the emotion. They could've gotten the same points across without doing the same pull away shot for the same characters multiple times. Have a Brienne swarm ONCE, a Jaime swarm ONCE, etc. and then you can at least claim the showing wasn't linear and we're watching all these events happen at the same time as the NK making his slow walk. You build that suspense, get those same points across, without having it look like the same characters should've died about 4 or 5 times each
I gotta watch this episode again ive been in this thread too much.