The guy who plays Bran was interviewed and apparently there was a deleted scene where Sansa asked Bran to look up some stuff on Little Finger after their conversation. But they obviously ditched that in favor of a "mind blowing surprise". I think the whole thing would have worked better if Arya worked out what he was up to over the course of the season and then Sansa worked out how to expose him.
I've been reading a lot of opinions about the Winterfell subplot from various sources and I don't agree with all the complaints but I agree with some.
tldr; don't mind the Littlefinger and Sansa arcs but thought the last scene and the general pacing of the subplot were done poorly, and that they made a mistake leaving out the resolution/discovery of Littlefinger's past deeds.
Overall I thought the subplot was pretty shit and that season 7 suffered from killing so many characters in S6EP9 and S6EP10. Honestly Ramsay and even the Faith were a hard act to follow as subplots; they had many more main characters involved and had been developing for a much longer time.
Lots of people complaining about Littlefinger's personal arc/character turning to shit. I don't really agree with this, I think his goal was to be in the box seat to gain control of the North with the added bonus of being Sansa's husband. Maybe it could have been done better but I think his story this season illustrated that he's out of his depth now and that his scheming could never overcome real magic (i.e Bran). I've seen people say "how could he think Sansa still trusts him" but pretty much every scene where Sansa is displaying mistrust of Littlefinger, he's not even in the scene, how would he know?? She has always indulged him. He thinks she thinks she will always owe him for the Battle of the Bastards. His obsession with her blinds him as well. Granted he probably was used as a bit of a plot device to bring the Stark children back together completely.
I am happy with how Sansa progressed too and I think it was done well enough. She never really trusted him, but still didn't know what his game was - his own words about assuming the worst helped her piece it together. Arya I honestly don't know what to make of she has just become a weirdo.
My complaint is the resolution seem rushed and a cheap way to shock the audience while glossing over how it made sense in their world. It was almost as if the while the plot was being written the writers were like "oh SHIT we only have one episode left, better wrap this up". So much time spent showing Littlefinger's plotting and Sansa and Arya's 'disagreements' only for both parts to be resolved mostly off-screen with the magical help of Bran?? The Sansa & Arya disagreements were real imo, which makes it even more bizarre that the resolution of these disagreements were held off-screen. If they weren't real, then it is even more nonsensical, because it was only the audience witnessing them.
The final scene was 100% just to set up to shock the audience but you just have to laugh at how it must have gone down in-universe. Sansa: Okay Arya I'm going to call you in right, everyone's going to be standing around and I'm going to make it seem like I'm going to sentence you to death but then BAM! I'll turn my head and actually be talking to Littlefinger. Arya: Can't I just stab the merkin?
I think it was a purposeful set up (by all the northerners/vale folk) for Littlefinger mind you as he would have got the f**k out of there if he suspected anything. I think it could have been done better by not having the focus on Arya from the start of the scene but rather Arya could have just been in the crowd, and the camera could have been on her while Sansa was talking (with no back and forth between Sansa and Arya) and then the 'switcheroo' could occur with asking Littlefinger to step forward rather than Arya.
Leaving out the resolution of their differences/the discovery of what Littlefinger has been up to was made particularly worse by Arya and Sansa rambling off all these things Littlefinger had done lol. Did they know all these things from Bran or did they piece them together from other mysterious means. Did they approach Bran in the first place or did he just do his autistic thing and be like "Oh yeah Littlefinger owned that dagger and set up father up for death btw" at dinner one night. Only explanation to me is they wasted too much time on the build-up and wanted to contain the entire resolution in one episode but maybe they forgot had to deal with a bunch of other shit as well, so they cut down it on massively.
