I wasn't a fan of that either. The one good thing was the way it allowed John Rowlands to shine as a character, in terms of how he reacted to being thrust into these choices by the Old Ones. But then again, that could've been achieved with just the issue of his being asked to judge whether Bran should be involved.

I'm starting to think that the forgetting trope is the next most annoying for fantasy stories after, "And it was all a dream..."