So. The Night King is dead. That was quick.

Yes, that now leaves us with three episodes of non-undead matters to deal with. Matters such as Cersei and the Golden Company, who will sit the Iron Throne, and "Why did so many main characters survive the battle of Winterfell?"

Let's get into all of that, shall we?

Taking stock of the situation post-Winterfell

We know from the Episode 4 preview that Dany means to move south against Cersei, and seems quite giddy at the opportunity to do so. I too would be eager for a chance to roast Cersei Lannister to a crisp, yes, but assuming Bronn isn't about to rapidly fire a couple of scorpion bolts directly into Drogon and Rhaegal's hearts, the attack on King's Landing shouldn't be that difficult. Yes there's the Golden Company, and Dany's army has been seriously depleted after dealing with all the zombies, but she still has a pair of dragons. Cersei, or at least as far as we know, has some spear-launching scorpions, the GC, Lannister forces, the goldcloaks, and probably some wildfire laying around. Only one of those is genuinely effective at dealing with dragons, unless they're going to fling the wildfire jars up and try to ignite them mid-air.

But let's talk about Dany's ground forces again. Her Dothraki are all but gone after what was quite possibly the stupidest calvary charge in the history of Westeros (Seriously, why not use the horses as a secondary wave after pelting the dead with arrows/catapults/dragonfire and letting them wash onto the pikes, if you're even going to place any of your forces outside? Idiots). Her Unsullied took dramatic losses. And who else is marching south with her? We know from the trailer that she's able to rally at least some forces, given the cheers we caught a brief glimpse of. But who are those people?

Are they the remaining Vale lords? Are they Northern lords? Both groups have some loyalty to Sansa, who as we know, is quite interested in having the North remain an independent state. Would she pledge what's left of her people to Dany if she gets assurances that Dany will let the North remain independent? Would Dany even make that promise in the first place?

I highly doubt it. Mayhaps as a convenient lie, but Dany was driven through hell and back by her goal of ruling the Seven Kingdoms, and the North is one of those Seven Kingdoms. We've gotten two episodes of Sansa and Dany being at odds, and they even made sure to include a scene in the crypts last night where Missandei gets pissed off at Sansa seemingly being ungrateful for Dany's aid. If Dany isn't an idiot about how she uses her dragons, King's Landing should be hers.

But what about after that? What about when Sansa puts her foot down about the North staying the North, and looks to Jon for aid in her argument? And, speaking of Jon, what's Dany going to be thinking now that the battle in the North seems to be won, and there's a Targaryen sitting around with a better claim to the throne than her?

Obstacles

Dany seemed to have reach something of an understanding with Sansa before Sansa was firm about Northern independence. Then she drew her hand back and gave us the meme we've been seeing all over social media for the last week. Dany also seemed more than a little perturbed by Jon revealing his true parentage, but they didn't have a chance to really talk about it before the Night King decided to ring the doorbell.

What has happened to past obstacles to Dany's rule? Well, she burned Sam's family alive. And yeah, the Masters were far from good people, but mass crucifixion isn't exactly normal behavior. Dany is a woman of terrible means for destruction and death, and a record of acting on those urges. She's so close to attaining the goal that's kept her going all this time, despite dealing with injustice after injustice and trauma after trauma.

Do we really expect Dany to roll over and play nice? Everything about her character tells us to expect the contrary, especially now that one of her closest advisors and friends isn't there to preach restraint anymore. Dany tended to listen to Jorah. He's gone now, after fighting to the death to protect her and passing away in her arms.

It was one of many traumas she suffered.

Trauma

Aerys Targaryen heard whispers before he was thrown into a cell in Duskendale for half a year, but that was what broke him. Barristan himself expressed regret for rescuing him. Aerys was a little crazy before then, but his paranoia and arousal at burning people fully manifested upon his return to the Red Keep after that.

Our dragon queen isn't hearing whispers, if you don't count Quaithe, whom the show seems to have abandoned. But her life has been one of traumas that the Mad King could not have possibly imagined.

Dany has been hunted by assassins her entire life. She was sold away like a common good to a bloodthirsty reaver and raped on her wedding night. She grew to love this man, and then had him snatched away. Her son was born a dead monstrosity, and used as a catalyst for the birth of her draconic surrogate children. She wandered in the Red Waste to the point of near death, and her saviors stole her children from her. She secured an army for herself, and then ruled a city that did everything in its power to try to kill her and her associates. Her favorite child rejected her, and she had to put the other two in chains. When she finally reached the land that she was told all her life is her birthright, her conquering is sidetracked by Jon and the threat in the North. She quickly loses one of her three children to the Night King. She finds love again, but soon after finds out that the man she's fallen for is actually her nephew and has more of a claim to the throne than her. While still reeling from that, she watches the bowels of hell spill out over Winterfell, and onto her favorite child.

Everyone who survived the Battle of Winterfell will be haunted by what they saw that night. It would not shock me in the least if this, in combination with Jon's true identity and Sansa's defiance, is what makes Dany snap. The Madness of the Targaryens is well-documented. Its' greatest victim was Dany's father.

Will it be madness if Dany turns on Sansa? Or will it just be her dealing with the latest in a long line of fools she has been made to suffer while questing for what she sees to be as rightfully hers?

The last time a Targaryen ruler had a traumatic experience, he wound up trying to burn them all. I don't expect Dany to torch all the citizens of King's Landing. She might try to torch Sansa and Jon.

Madness, and emotional payoff

Why kill the Night King so quickly? Well, because ending on Jon deciding whether to side with Dany or Sansa, or to take the throne for himself, is a more character-driven climax than having The Avengers of Westeros get slaughtered by the Night King. We didn't meet Dany in the first episode and follow her journey to Westeros just so that she could provide air support in the Battle of Winterfell, and we sure as hell didn't do it just so she could snark at Cersei before telling Drogon to dracarys.

The Night King is a silent force of nature, a proper big bad for a big battle. But he's not the sort of villain you end on. Did seven seasons of zombie buildup happen just to be tossed aside? Partially, and I'm not here to defend every decision the show-runners have made. But the show was never going to end with the dead sweeping over the continent and a lingering final shot of wights wandering the deserted streets of King's Landing. That's not how mass media works, and when it does, you get a whole second movie with time travel to undo that.

This is a show about characters interacting with other characters, and the Night King's only way of interacting with people (from a pure television perspective) is to lop their heads off or send zombies at them. For better and for worse, this has become a show about Jon and Dany, and the choices they have to make. Is it more emotionally impactful to have Jon go into a 1v1 showdown with the Night King as the climax of the series, or to have the core of main characters resolve their interpersonal conflict while Dany makes an unspeakable choice?

The Night King isn't the final villain of the story, and yeah, that feels a little weird. But I think it makes perfect sense for the show's final conflict to be about Dany turning on the Starks we've grown to love, and for Jon to have to choose. Does Jon take her side? Does he stand in opposition to her with Sansa? Does he have to kill her, for the good of his family and possibly for the realm? I already expect Jaime to kill Cersei. There may yet be a second queen who is run through with a Valyrian steel sword, and if and when that happens, does Aegon Targaryen take his place on the Iron Throne at the beseeching of Tyrion and Davos?

I expect that we'll see Dany use increasingly ruthless techniques as she takes King's Landing and disposes of Cersei and Euron, and that hunger for power will boil over with Sansa and the Starks right in the crosshairs.

TL;DR: The decision to dispose of the Night King so quickly makes sense from a storytelling perspective if it's not Cersei as the final big bad, but Daenerys herself. Dany will turn on Sansa, with Jon caught in the middle. This provides a better emotional sendoff than ending the series with the Night King's defeat, and GRRM's long-discussed bittersweet ending.