Yep! After that I kicked myself for thinking it because "he's the main character and the biggest name on the show so he'll obviously have plot armour until at least season 4 or 5". Plus it was impossible to understand how the story could survive after that.
That's kind of what I love and hate about the show. We're now at a point where everything seems too formatted - boy loves girl, girl loves boy, together they'll find the big enemy blah blah. But the show was always about these central characters, it was just that the entire thing was shrouded in mystery and written in a very intricate way. For years it defied our expectations and instead of being short sighted and complaining about how linear the story has become we should celebrate how well the story has been designed to get us to this point, and how it's now time for it to come to a close. The rubbish beyond the wall fighting the Night King's army on a frozen lake doesn't diminish the impact of things like The Red Wedding, not just from an entertainment point of view but also from a story progression one.
What we can celebrate is that George wrote some amazing books and the show did a fantastic job converting those books to script. Since the material stopped the shows gone down a notch in quality but it's still a fantastic show with great characters. I'm not sure how many more shocks they could have given us without the show falling apart anyway and giving us an underwhelming final season. We won't get any shocks this season either, it's like end game in chess with only a third of the pieces left.
I have no doubt they'll deliver a great final season imo. Just a bit depressing it's a year away!