It’s true that there are only a few mutineers by the end there, but you don’t need many people to undermine a siege. (Four guys almost blew Storm’s End during the Rebellion.)

Stannis didn’t leave much strength behind to protect the Wall. He left behind the dregs of his army and took his main strength to Winterfell, where they have apparently lost; at least, they haven’t managed to remove Ramsay from power and deprive him of a substantial fighting force. Ser Patrek could probably overpower Three-Fingered Hobb if it came to that for some reason, but that doesn’t make them a match for the Dreadfort’s men. That’s if they don’t just make a break for it when they hear their king is dead - and if the plan is to sit around for two and a half weeks, they will hear about it - which is not an assumption Jon would be wise to make. Even if they still consider themselves bound to the dead king, their first duty is going to be to protect Shireen and Selyse.

Even if he did have reliable and usable men, those stairways and towers only go so far in holding off an enemy. Castle Black, with the numbers it had before Jon started staffing the empty forts, made it a few days holding off Mance - with his inexperienced wildling army mostly on the other side of the Wall - only because Stannis showed up. And the castle is in bad enough shape after the wildling attack, and unlike the wildlings who may have wanted it for shelter, Ramsay has no reason not to burn the whole thing to the ground, which is something that would really hurt the effort against the Others.

There’s nothing about the Pink Letter that makes me think Roose is calling the shots. I think he and Walda have beat it back to the Dreadfort. Sending a big, bombastic threat on the Night’s Watch and giving the enemy two weeks to prepare is the opposite of Roose’s usual MO. Both of them know better than to make a threat like this and not follow through. And I’m not sure what political incentive Roose has not to send Ramsay. The disavowal thing works both ways. Roose got away with shrugging off Ramsay’s actions against not just Hornwood but Winterfell itself, while Roose was still in Robb’s army. Nobody cares more about the NW than they do about the Starks.

Jon doesn’t have the preview chapters, you know? He doesn’t have reason to justify the assumption that this is a bluff, and if he makes that assumption and is wrong, the costs are likely to be massive. I mean, storming off only thinking “FUCK IT, I’M GOING TO GO DOWN THERE AND RIP HIS THROAT OUT MYSELF” would be a completely believable response. But that doesn’t mean it is necessarily what he’s doing. I think there’s a lot of evidence that he thought about it, and that he came to a reasonable conclusion as to the least bad option.

“Easier” only in the sense that it would be over soon. Castle Black is specifically designed so that it cannot defend itself from the south.

In theory, banding together in self-defense at least sounds nice. In practice, he’s spent months trying to get them to band together against an enemy much more daunting than Ramsay, and the Watch hasn’t budged. And the Watch is unreliable for other reasons. Remember, Marsh was trying to sell out to the Lannisters before Jon was ever even elected, based on the terrifying threat that Tywin wasn’t going to send the men or provisions that he has no track record or intention of sending in any event.

Wildlings, as fierce as they are, aren’t much of an asset in this situation. They don’t have the discipline or general mindset to fight that kind of battle. Their strategies are limited to stacking the decks in their favor with sneak attacks, and running like hell if they start to lose. They don’t have any emotional investment in this place or this group identity. They signed on to fight the Others from the human side of the Wall, and they understand why that’s in their best interests - and even that plan is dependent on Jon having time to train the warriors among them. And remember, not all of the wildlings are warriors. There are a lot of civilians at Castle Black, who he may or may not have time to relocate.

So a defensive strategy isn’t a viable option. Riding south makes sense, because as you say, it takes 18 days to get between points A and B. Ramsay isn’t going to wait two and a half weeks for hostage delivery. He might wait a couple of days for a raven promising the hostages, if he’s leveled up in sanity, which is a pretty big if. Riding to Winterfell means riding toward Winterfell, meeting Ramsay’s forces somewhere in the middle. (Just as easy to bait Ramsay out of his castle, after all.) And in this situation, the wildlings are an asset. They’re accustomed to the terrain in the same way the mountain clans are, and they’re great at ambushes.

So whatever you think ethically, it makes sense tactically. We as the readers see Jon’s emotional decision that he’s going to do it, but we don’t read the conversation in the two hours he spent with Tormund. Tormund is going to know how to maximize the chances of this working, and with what he’s gone through to try and save his people, he’s not going to let Jon throw them into the meat grinder now.

Finally, Jon’s leaving gives the NW plausible deniability. If he lets the Boltons come to them, then it’s officially between the Watch and the Boltons. Jon Snow the person riding south with a bunch of unaffiliated individuals means that even if he does lose, then Marsh can surrender and say, Jon deserted, we had nothing to do with it. That’s not likely to work, because Ramsay is Ramsay and he’s not going to resist the opportunity for a good slaughter, but as Sam says, a paper shield is better than none.

Hi there, and thank you very much!

I don’t actually think that they do think Mance is dead. The best information they have is what Jon reads them in the Pink Letter, which says that Stannis is dead and Mance is alive and locked in the cage with the skins of those six spearwives. While they may not know who the "six whores” were, they can guess that any woman traveling with Mance would have been one of their own.

So they’re on a mission to save Mance, like Robb’s Northerners were after Ned’s arrest in AGOT. The wildlings’ devotion to Mance is if anything probably even deeper, because they have the investment of having chosen him, and because he succeeded in bringing them south and saving them from the walkers, like he promised. Not only does the letter say that Mance is alive, but it claims that Jon somehow used cunning and trickery to save their king. (We know he didn’t, but the letter makes it sound like he did, and it’s understandable why he’d just let it stand rather than telling the truth - the black brothers who don’t want to trust him will just decide that he’s making excuses, while he’d be giving up the goodwill of the wildlings. Showing weakness about Mance’s survival wouldn’t have helped Jon with anyone.) And aside from loyalty to Mance, they have really good reason to stick close to Jon - they swore themselves to him when they crossed under the Wall, and they know that their relationship to him is really important to their welfare going forward. If he’s offering to take them farther south than they expected to get, that much farther from the white walkers, they’re going to take it.

On top of that, though, this is the ultimate morale boost for them. This time they can feel justified in going on the raid to end all raids. (I mean. The King of the Free Folk, locked in a cage! And the prize for winning him back is the legendary Winterfell.) It’s a chance to go on the offensive with a fight they think they can actually win, rather what they’ve experienced the last few years of running for their lives from the unkillable demons of ice. And Ramsay vs. Jon is a narrative that validates their sense of cultural superiority, right? Ramsay’s depravity makes him the perfect kneeler antagonist - see, being some fancy lord doesn’t make them any better than us! And Jon is just as vindicating as a hero. He’s a ~real Northerner, Ned Stark’s own true son, exiled to the frigid ends of the earth for some arbitrary kneeler bullshit, just, personifying that core wildling grievance.

So, yeah, I think the wildlings are mostly desperate to tear some shit up, and the letter gives them a perfect storm of reasons to rally for this mission in particular.

I’m actually not so much up on the ASOIAF fic world (nojudgment, I’m just on a meta kick) so I don’t exactly know, but I take yourgeneral point. There’s a lot about this conversation that I find troubling aswell. (Translation: here, have a quasi-coherent 30% of my episode review that I didn’t have the nerve topost the first time around, SORRY ABOUT THE TL;DR.)

Hi, and thank you!

I’m quite terrible at predictions, to be honest. But yes, the circumstances are entirely different than they are in the books. Mostly I feel like poor “Arya’s” marriage to Ramsay was a lot like Sansa being married to Joffrey, whereas Sansa’s engagement to Ramsay feels more like Margaery’s engagement to Joffrey: still a terrible situation that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but a qualitatively different one in terms of her maturity and the existence of some sort of support network, possibly quite an extensive one.

Mostly, though, I bring up the analogy because (1) Sansa explicitly brought up the Red Wedding, (2) the whole thing’s been arranged by Littlefinger who also orchestrated the Purple Wedding, and (3) Daven Lannister and his betrothed are conspicuously absent from the show so far. So, while they might well be wed, I wouldn’t bet the farm on Ramsay living long enough for there to be an actual marriage, if you know what I mean.