At the end of last week’s episode we saw Game of Thrones strain plot credulity in order to walk seven named heroes—Jon, the Hound, Jorah, Tormund, Gendry, Beric, Thoros—into a fight they could not possibly win. This was, everyone rightly surmised, a suicide mission. Seven men, however battle-tested, were not going to come out of a clash against the army of the undead unscathed. Except that is, for the most part, exactly what happened. With all due respect to Thoros of Myr (R.I.P.), the least well-known out of seven characters was sacrificed. Sure, it was smart to kill Thoros early on because, without his resurrection powers, the rest of the heroes (even resurrected ones like Jon and Beric) were vulnerable to death. Except, as it turns out, they weren’t. All of the memes comparing this band of brothers to the Seven Samurai or the Magnificent Seven seem kind of laughable now. Those stories are given such enduring weight because the heroes nobly died to protect the innocent.

Source: Who Died on Game of Thrones "Beyond the Wall"?