I was trying to wrap my head around how this show could exist and be good, and someone over on reddit (NOTE: I've hoisted/copy/pasted this idea nearly wholesale from there, I added a dash of two of clarifiers of my own) made a suggestion that I really like.
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An all-out war with the White Walkers?
The HotD show clearly establishes the Targaryens conquering Westeros to unify it against the White Walkers and they knew about the threat for generations, it makes even less sense that Jon being Rhaegar's prophesied saviour ended up being a red herring in season 8.
A Jon Snow show sounded pointless when it was announced because there's almost nowhere to take his story.
But if they use the show to effectively SORT OF softly retcon season 8 (retcon is probably the wrong word...perhaps adding more context and definition to make S8 a sort of precursor to the real events....) and say the majority of the White Walkers are still way up north and the threat is not ended, and so they give us a multi-season ‘Long Night’ that's actually a full-on war rather than one underwhelming battle, that could be great and maybe even soften the blow from S8 somewhat.
Like a CLONE WARS series for GOT...sort of.
The more I think about it the more convinced I am that this is what they're doing, because like everyone says, what the hell is this show gonna be about post White-Walkers?
Kit has said he was "pissed off" Jon didn't do anything in The Long Night, and we know he himself pitched the idea behind this new show to GRRM and HBO and brought his own people to make it...
Thoughts?