That doesn't negate what I said.

In the show, Dondarrion, after Arya left the gang, is mostly nothing more than an extra sword with maybe a line or two of dialogue per ep. Dondarrion ultimately dies in the final battle against zombies. He never had any of his own storylines, he was always a part of someone else's.

Replacing him with Stoneheart as in the books would have required whole new storylines. Stoneheart as a character would have required an end point and she would have needed a more significant ending than what Beric got since Cat was a majorly prominent character. So, like I said, it would have been another storyline/character to wrap up in a show where D&D were already very clearly struggling to juggle storylines and characters.

I agree that Arya becoming a superhuman, and her "growth" as a character in general, were awful.

That said, all of the issues you brought up could have been fixed with better writing of her character.

Adding Stoneheart in in place of Arya just for your reasons would have been a complete waste of time. You're clearly very attached to the books so you should obviously be aware that as of this point, Stoneheart has had literally no effect on anything of importance in the story. I'll be generous and say she's in or referenced in maybe...15 pages of the books at this point? For all we know Brienne will get out of her noose and chop off Stoneheart's head right there. We have - and probably will continue to have - no idea.

So either you only read my first two sentences and completely overlooked the multiple times I criticized D&D or you're talking about other people in this thread. Your reply is very vague.

So here, D&D divebombed the show spectacularly, but losing Stoneheart was one of their rare right choices.

We don't know if it goes anywhere but the show has been long over and the books don't seem likely to be finished so really, it doesn't matter whether or not Stoneheart is vital to the book storyline.

But currently, she just seems to be a revenge zombie which wasn't something the show needed.

I recently did a full rewatch and I don't think the story lost much without her. I think D&D made the right decision.

For starters, it would've been another storyline/character that D&D would have had to wrap up before the end and they clearly were struggling with what they already had.

They had Arya do what, 1 or 2 scenes taking revenge on the Freys? They would have needed to add more to justify Stoneheart or it wouldn't have been at all worth it to keep/revise a character that had little to do with the main story. Did we need more scenes of the Freys being hunted down? Nah. Arya standing in place was fine and took care of the Freys.

With John and Beric and the Mountain being revived from deaths, yet another character coming back would have lessened the stakes. (That said, D&D lessened the stakes anyhow with plot armor for the main "good guy" characters).

They wouldn't have had time to shoe-in more of John struggling about coming back than what was already in the show.

There were so many other problems with the later seasons that Stoneheart would've just been a waste of time.

Love Justified. I've watched the entire series more times than I can count.

The intro doesn't work. The visual style is great. But the song doesn't fit the show's tone at all. I skip it every time.

Sounds like a real Dym bulb.