HOLY SHIT THIS EPISODE WAS AWESOME
My one main complaint about it was Jon and Ygritte's reunion. Who the fuck was that kid, and why did the writers feel that he needed to be the one who killed Ygritte? Why not have, you know, an actual character do it? Sam could have done it. Or Gilly. Anyone would have been better than that fucking random kid. And then grieving for her in the middle of the battle like that was such a silly cliché. Also, I'm confused about what happened to Thorne. Is he dead? We don't see him die, but everyone's kind of acting like he's dead, without coming right out and saying that he's dead.
But apart from that, it was fantastic. Jon was great, Sam was great, Thorne was great, hell, pretty much everyone in this episode got a few badass moments - with the obvious exception of Slynt.