there were much more logical ways to give the NK a dragon. for example, they were pretty close to Eastwatch. (it took them only a few hours to meet the NK beyond the Wall). Bran could have seen a vision of the NK marching towards Eastwatch, prepared to attack the Wildings and Tormund defending it. Bran sends a raven to Dragonstone informing Jon of this. Davis, Jorah, Gendry and Jon sail back to Eastwatch. When they get there, Thoros, The Hound and Berric are locked in the cell. They have their little funny scene, and then the NK begins to attack the Eastwatch, and they let the three of them out of the cell to help fight. They are getting overwhelmed and their asses kicked when Dany arrives with her dragons. Everyone nearly killed, they could have played out the ending of the previous episode similarly. NK spears a dragon, everyone gets on Drogon and they retreat to Winterfell. Eastwatch is destroyed, everyone dead, season ends with Viserion having the blue eyes.
Not great, and I'm sure many people could write the whole thing out much better than that, but IMO that is certainly more plausible than our heroes going north of the wall in search for a wight...to bring to fucking Cersei, lol.
Also, they could have handled the whole Benjen thing better. Since Benjen can't actually pass the Wall, it would've made more sense if they had actually set something up where Benjen saved someone near the Wall, but couldn't accompany whoever saved past the Wall bc he can't cross it, and instead just stayed just outside the Wall and died taking out a few more wights or whatever.
