Specific: Did Hodor need to die? It seems to me that Hodor's entire reason for being was unnecessary. In the end, yes, he held the door long enough for Bran and Meera to get a good head start. But it seems to me that the head start they gained was roughly equivalent to the amount of time that Bran and the Three-eyed raven spend hanging around in past-Winterfell looking at Willis and his horses, while Meera tried to get them to wake up. Even worse, the Three-eyed raven already knew that Bran had broken the protection around their cave, yet they decided to go back under for one last jaunt to the past? Bran, Meera, Hodor, and even the Children could have easily escaped with plenty of time. Why did they hang around?

General: After watching six seasons of Game of Thrones, I have one giant problem with all these different factions trying to rule the world: why? From everything I've seen, the entire world of GoT is pretty much the shittiest place you could ever spend time. Every single non-important character we've encountered in this entire series is either miserable, evil, or murdered. The happiest, most well-adjusted people we've met in the entire show were building a little settlement on a hill, and they got mass-murdered within a single episode. Is this the point of the story or something?