You are not alone in thinking this. Why else would she be so, well, shook? I don’t think seeing a white walker or a wight would terrify Arya so much. It’s got to be something more. It could be one of her brothers, but Lady Stoneheart ties in with the books.
WTA: The runtimes I’ve seen released are 2 60 minute episodes and 4 80 minute episodes.
[spoiler] I agree. I’m not sure this all belongs in a spoiler, since it’s just my guessing, but just in case…
Assume the timing we have is correct, that this gigantic battle with the Night King forces happens at Winterfell in Episode 3. All of Danny’s forces (the Dothraki, the Unsullied, her two dragons) are apparently in place there by the first episode. Whatever forces Jon can muster, the North Lords and their men and the Wildlings, are on site. (Though way, way diminished in numbers because of the already massive slaughter at the Battle of the Bastards.)
Now the battle starts … and what happens? Lots and lots of the living will inevitably die. If Jon and the Bran/Sam braintrust figured it out, they should basically have the regular soldiers trying to chop up overwhelming numbers of the wights with obsidian spears and arrows.
Meanwhile they try various methods to kill the White Walkers, since we’re assuming (Have we actually seen this?) that each time you kill a White Walker you take out all the wights he personally reanimated, and we’ve only seen six or seven WWs at a time, so killing seven generals is a more comprehensible goal than hacking up many tens of thousands of wights. (Which, face it, would inevitably get boring if there was nothing else to see for an entire hour!)
So mostly who can get to and go up against a WW? The big strong guys with Valerian swords, obviously.
Clearly it will be Danny on Drogon dueling vs. the Night King on the dead dragon. Will the second dragon just be backing them up, riderless? My guess is not. That’s all that could happen without a rider on Dragon B (forgot the other names) but they’ve clearly hinted that the dragons found Jon --what, intriguing? Acceptable? so maybe Jon will be the rider. But I think it will be Tyrion based on past hints. It was Tyrion who was able to safely unchain the dragons when they were already pissed off from being chained in the dungeons, even though it was the very first time either had seen the other AND they didn’t have Mommy D. on hand to smooth the encounter. It was a meeting of minds between Tyrion and Dragons B and C all by themselves. (So the “You’re no son of mine” from Tywin is likely literally true – I guess WikiBran will have to reveal it – and Tyrion is the Mad King’s bastard giving him dragon-whispering powers.)
Plus it was Tyrion who invented a saddle so Bran could ride his horse. He will come up with some saddle-ish thing to enable him to stay atop the dragon despite his short arms/legs.
An added advantage is that that leaves Jon free to do what he does best, swing a sword, command and inspire the forces on the ground. He shouldn’t suddenly be a master of 3D air fighting tactics.
So Danny will be taking on the Night King with Tyrion on the other dragon as weak-backup-but-better-than-nothing. Jon is heading a group of their best fighters (likely mostly the same gang as went to get the wight) who are trying to cut their way through to WW generals. Maybe Gendry can figure out how to incorporate obsidian into a new hammer.
And, yes, Ghost should be at his side, providing significant assistance. (Those Chekov’s Wolves HAVE to have some real import at long last.)
Arya and the Cat’s Paw dagger must come into it, too, though Jon will rightfully keep her out of his assault group – her skills aren’t suited to bulling your way through a battle. She and Sansa and Bran and so forth will be left inside Winterfell.
Lots of heroics, lots of death ensue, but in the end I think Jon and co. will manage to do significant damage, like kill four or five of the WW generals. Arya will take out one who will manage to get inside Winterfell, letting her get in range for a one-on-one desperation last ditch thingy.
I also think Tyrion and his dragon will account for one of the generals. He’ll see an opening and peel off from the Danny/Night King duel to strafe a WW.
A huge percentage of the wights do drop dead(er) but the Night King and his dragon
survive when Danny/Drogon is injured and forced to retreat from their fight. And before the Good Guys can even draw a breath, the Night King simply does that Raise His Hands things and bingo, all the dead Good Guys become his new army.
Yes, the Good Guys know they should burn the bodies or whatever, but there wasn’t time enough to do this before the Night King worked his magic.
This army is smaller, of course, since he’d had centuries to acquire the current one AND the help of the other WWs in raising/controlling them all, but the Good Guys are significantly reduced, too.
The Night King no longer has an army that can simply roll over the entirety of Westeros easily – he will have to fight his way south, building his forces as they destroy Holds and town on the way, but the remaining Good Guys have to flee, er, strategically retreat for now. Danny/Drogon need to heal from whatever injuries took them out, all the remaining fighters need to rest/heal/recover/rearm. They did their best, they came close to winning, but in the end they weren’t able to kill the Night King and so it was a loss.
That’s the end of Ep. 3. Then the focus (I hope!) will turn from the big battle scenes I know a lot of people find cool to the political/personal stuff I prefer. The northerners retreating south will run into Cersei’s forces, enhanced with the Golden Company she sent Euron for. Another battle, or at least skirmishing, until Jon manages to convince them that it’s vital to join together to finally defeat the Night King. Or maybe he convinces Cersei of it. Or maybe Jaime or Arya kill Cersei.
However exactly it comes out, I think the Night King will finally be killed in King’s Landing, and involve a whole bunch more of wildfire explosions, leading to the ruins/ashes Danny saw in that vision way back.
That’ll be episode 5, I guess, with Episode Six being denouement, when we learn who survived and who will inherit the throne and so on and so forth.
Anyway, that’s my current guess. 
[/spoiler]
On AV i joked its a headless Ned and a Headless Rob bumping into each other.
I assume you meant Ned instead of Edd, since the latter is still alive.
Of maybe Zed, because…
Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.
Ned was short for Eddard Stark, but yes, I meant her father.
Eddard Stark was always called Ned on the show, while Eddison Tollett of the Night’s Watch went by Edd.
He probably should have been called Ted.
Could be. But I suspect (some wildass speculation that I’ve indulged in before) that he’s going to have to, with great reluctance, kill Cersei, and will thus become a Queenslayer too.
I’m in, and don’t mind putting up, say, $20 to make it interesting. Thanks for the offer.
My predictions:
They will have to go back to Hard Home for the green dragon glass, which will be used to heal the night king.
He was a double agent, a Stark, and his job was to gain control of the white walkers and lead them into the trap which the North was supposed to have remembered to lay.* (The story of all this wouldn’t fit in the season, so we’ll be left with a lot of questions. That’s why they started thinking “prequel.”)
*Which the north forgot to do. But fortunately the three-eyed raven manipulated King Aerys into doing it. King’s landing is a walled execution room waiting to be set ablaze.
There is some question as to whether a new Night’s King will be needed, (do white walkers wake up in batches, like cicadas?) but if so, I predict that Jamie will take the role as a final penance.
Qyburn finds Cersei’s pregnancy inconvenient so he slips something into her drink to end it. She figures this out and has the Mountain kill him. She dies in the conflagration of King’s Landing.
The Hound kills the Mountain, but he does it out of mercy, to end his brother’s suffering.
Sansa recognizes Tyrion’s worth and re-marries him, this time in front of the heart tree.
Bran goes to the God’s eye, and we finally find out what ritual craziness goes on there.
Daario shows up as a member of the golden company. He proves he actually loves Danaerys, by giving his life to save the man she wants, Jon.
Tormund makes a complete arse of himself attempting to woo Brienne, but she finds it charming. We leave her pregnant, and they head to Tarth to regain her birthright.
Arya runs right past Jon to hug Gendry when they first arrive. Whatever has her so afraid in the trailer is a threat to him.
I really hope we get to see Davos Seaworth return to his wife, and a cozy keep.
Here’s Entertainment Weekly on the very difficult filming of a massive S8 battle (no spoilers): Game of Thrones first look: Inside the brutal battle to make season 8 | EW.com
I have discovered a YouTube channeler who has posted, among other things, The Adventures of [Character] where he strings together, season by season, the scenes involving that character, plus sometimes a couple others to provide some background. They’re upwards of an hour apiece per season for the main characters so there is not a time savings over simply running the previous seasons, especially with the overlap (Jamie and Brienne for example) but they do distill that person’s POV about what’s happened to them. In Arya’s adventure for example, I noticed parallels in dialogue between her being at Ned’s execution and her execution of Balish.
Well, thanks for this total time sink! Also, thanks for reminding me what a great ass Kit Harrington has as I went straight for Jon Snow’s season 7 for a refresher and was gifted with his beautiful, glow-in-the-dark butt. Surprising how much more girl fan service that scene was than boy. Could be because the actress that plays Dany has stated she doesn’t want to do any more nude scenes.
What, no Adventures of Rickon?
In the immortal words of Leslie Jones: Zig, motherfucker, zag!!!
Serpentine! Serpentine!
Actual run times according to HBO.
E1 - 54min
E2 - 58min
E3 - 1hr
E4 - 1hr 18min
E5 - 1hr 20min
E6 - 1hr 20min
The interwebs I read are full of mad people because the episodes are not as long as had been rumored My butt is happy, though. Sitting still for that long is a problem for me. I don’t remember, do they run commercials during the show?
No, they don’t run commercials during the show. It’s HBO. But you should be able to pause it in some way. I feel like watching live, normal TV should’ve been phased out 20 years ago by everyone.
Those episodes are short, though. I don’t remember where I saw it but I thought they flat out said that all 6 episodes would be movie length.
My work here is done. 
IIRC, Emilia Clarke did do another nude scene (boobs only) after she’d said she din’t wanna any more. They must have had some naked pictures they were threatening to show – oh, wait.
And speaking of Kit Harrington’s butt, didn’t everybody get a bit of fan service when Jon and Ygritte got in the pool? I haven’t covered Jon’s story yet.
She didn’t want to do any more gratuitous nudity, but decided that the scene where she emerges from the flames of the Dothraki palace was important and dramatic enough to justify it. She is seen briefly full-body (but distantly), then from the waist up in close-ups.
In her bedroom scene with Jon Snow she was technically (supposed-to-be) nude but the scene is so dark not much can be seen.
If you think people are mad about the length of episodes just wait until they decide the ending is not what Martin would have written. You might need an umbrella to avoid all the debris from exploding heads.