- “Game of Thrones” ended a year ago.
- As a self-established expert on the series, it’s taken me this long to feel like publicly talking through all my complicated feelings about the show’s final episodes.
- The eighth season of “Game of Thrones” was neither a total disaster nor was it a satisfying conclusion to a show I love so dearly.
- There were good parts (“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”!) and bad parts (a total breakdown of the realism and nuance that made the show great) and everything in-between.
- So here’s a list of all the frequently asked questions I get about “Game of Thrones” and my answers.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
For better or worse, I’ve spent most of my professional career as a writer positioning myself as a public-facing expert on the topic of “Game of Thrones.” I wrote a book about the show. I have a direwolf tattoo on my arm. I love George R.R. Martin’s story, and the world of Westeros, more than almost any other fictional series I ever have in my life.
This also means I’ve spent the last year fielding questions about the show from strangers online, new people I meet at parties, my own friends and family, and everyone in between.
And yet, ever since the series finale aired on May 19, 2019, I’ve struggled with my own feelings about the show’s conclusion and the best way to express those feelings.
The stress and pressure and anxiety I felt (and still have remnants of) around covering the finale season of “Game of Thrones” made me want to curl into a ball for the remainder of 2019 and never speak about dragons or direwolves or White Walkers again.
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But here we are. A year later. The discourse isn’t gone. Where once a towering monument of cinematic television and prestige drama stood proudly in the pop culture landscape, there’s now a graffiti-covered building that people seem to occasionally love hurling rotten food at.
I believe wholeheartedly that there’s no “right” take on the show. I respect people’s own conclusions about the good and bad of it all. But I’m finally at a place where I feel comfortable planting my flag in some hot and cold takes about “Game of Thrones,” including many that place me squarely between the polar opposite sections of the fandom.
“Game of Thrones” season eight was neither a complete trash bag nor was it a flawlessly executed series ending.
I’ll be a part of this fandom for years and years to come. My greatest wish for the fandom as we move forward is room for more nuance and understanding-based conversations, and less energy taken up with all-or-nothing disagreements about how the show ended. I’m sure people will find some of my below opinions in line with their own. Others won’t. That’s perfectly fine.
So, without further ado, here’s a loosely based-in-reality version of the conversation I find myself having with people (and my own subconscious) again and again about “Game of Thrones,” starting with the most common query of all:
I’m mixed-positive on the ending. There were things I hated and things I loved. Those last 15 minutes with the Stark children — Arya heading out on an adventure, Jon joining the Free Folk north of the Wall, and Sansa being crowned Queen in the North — were fantastic.
But it’s complicated.
Some parts left me in awe, or in tears. It also had moments that made me literally roll my eyes, like whenever Euron was on-screen making crude sex jokes or when Daenerys Targaryen “kind of forgot” about the Iron Fleet.
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The last six episodes were both disappointing and an unprecedented feat of epic television making. Turns out, despite what 280 character tweets might lead you to believe, it’s possible to hold many differing opinions about one of the most ambitious and influential drama series ever created all at once.
No, not really. Bran becoming king is the only plot point from the finale that we know for certain George R.R. Martin told the showrunners about. Which means it makes a lot of narrative sense for the story as a whole. But how showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss chose to bring about King Bran is definitely wonky.
We know Benioff and Weiss had a meeting with Martin back in 2013 when the fourth season of the show was in the works. In that meeting, Martin told them some big picture endpoints he had planned for major characters. Assuming that was when they were told King Bran was the endgame, it’s rather egregious that they didn’t do more with his character in seasons five, six, seven, and eight. Heck, he wasn’t in season five at all.
And after he returned, the only meaningful arc his character had was the transformation into the Three-Eyed Raven and the death of Hodor. After that, he served more as a punchline than a true character.
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I also didn’t care at all for “Bran the Broken” as a nickname, which felt ableist, and didn’t understand the purpose of the dragon pit meeting. There should have been more clarity on who all miscellaneous characters were, especially if they were the new leaders of Westeros.
It felt incredibly cynical to have Sam stand up and make the very good point that “maybe the decision that’s best for everyone should be left to, well, everyone,” only to have everybody laugh in his face. Isn’t democracy hilarious?
Following that up with the promise of a faux-democratic system where the leaders choose their next king after Bran dies was even worse. It’s another fragile system that doesn’t “break the wheel,” like Daenerys wanted.
The real nail in the coffin for me came when Bran (jokingly?) replied to Tyrion asking if he’d rule by saying: “Why do you think I came all this way?”
No one in the show ever even seemed to understand what being the Three-Eyed Raven meant. At least twice the audience was given clues that Bran could see the future. That line, which could be interpreted as a throwaway joke, implies that Bran knew he would be crowned King of Westeros and therefore made the journey south. But if he did, then what else did he know? Did he know Daenerys would massacre the city first? If so, did he really just let that happen with no interference?
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Maybe Benioff and Weiss meant nothing by this line. The problem is that we don’t know how much it implies. It wasn’t clear. And I was left feeling no optimism about King Bran’s rule, or the fate of Westeros. So then what was the point of murdering Daenerys?
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I think this argument is removing too much responsibility from Benioff and Weiss. Of course, there wasn’t ever a possible ending that would satisfy every single one of the millions of viewers. That doesn’t mean there weren’t actual differences in the writing quality or story structure of the final six episodes.
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So here’s the rub: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were very good at adapting an immensely complicated book series, the author of which called “unfilmable.”
Benioff and Weiss started “Game of Thrones” under the working assumption George R.R. Martin would finish his books well before the show caught up to him.
George R.R. Martin optioned the rights to his story under the assumption he would finish the books well before a TV show caught up to him.
The fact that this happened cannot be blamed on any single person or event. It just is what it is. It’s not Martin’s fault the show took off and got so popular and made him so famous that his entire life changed and he didn’t have time to focus on writing as much. It’s also true that he had issues with deadlines long before “Game of Thrones” came around.
The core fact of what “Game of Thrones” was (an adaptation versus an original drama series) changed partway through its creation. That was always going to impact the final product. We just didn’t realize how much until we saw the end result. But the wheels clearly started coming off around the end of season four and into season five, when we saw Benioff and Weiss move away from Martin’s carefully detailed roadmap and into their own charted pathway towards the ending.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic via Getty Images
If you think season eight was an anomaly then you weren’t paying enough attention since season four.
The show was never perfect. But it was great for a majority of those first four seasons. Every season had tight character arcs, with phenomenal runs of episodes that will leave you feeling exhilarated if you go back and rewatch them.
Unfortunately, season five is where those runs of episodes start becoming fewer and farther between.
Season five is still the weakest of the entire series. It’s way too bleak and brings all of the characters down to their lows without enough balance and levity. “Hardhome” is the only bright spot, but it’s not enough to make up for the rougher season as a whole.
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My best guess? Fart smelling. Yes, you read that right. Let me explain.
There’s this one quote from Weiss I’ve thought about a lot in the last year. It was said at the very end of an interview published by Variety in 2015, fresh off the fifth season and as he and Benioff were starting to write season six. It was the first time the pair had said they had the endgame for the show in mind.
Here’s the exchange:
Variety: Do you ever take a step back and appreciate it?
Benioff: I think it’s hard to be too appreciative, because there is just the terror of f—ing it up still. It’s just so easy with a show like this to jump the shark at any moment. We’re getting close to the ending, and there is that huge desire to get it right.
A few years down the line, if we are ever masochistic enough to put in the DVDs and watch 70 straight hours of the show, we hope it will hold together. I think it’s hard to take that step back and be like, “We did it.” Because we haven’t done it yet.
Weiss: I think that everything starts to go to hell when you start smelling your own farts and complimenting yourself on how great they smell. We’re not going to turn into fart-smellers.
As I’ve already established, season five was the weakest of the whole series run. And yet, that was the year “Game of Thrones” broke the record for the most Emmys won by a single season of a TV show. (It still holds that record, though now season eight’s 12 Emmys meant the show is tied with itself.)
So, amidst a big backlash in the show’s fifth season, “Game of Thrones” took home a record-breaking number of Emmys. I find myself wondering if that sent a message to the creative team: Don’t sweat the vocal backlash from the fandom, you don’t need to change a thing.
But I think there were lessons to be had from the fifth season, especially when it came to the adaptive choices being made. That’s an essay for another time, though.
Helen Sloan/HBO
My point is, I sit here from afar and sometimes wonder if Benioff and Weiss did accidentally wind up smelling their own farts (to use their own analogy). As the show went on, and more and more people tuned in, and the hype made it seem as if there would never be a show this good again, I think they were comfortable in the creative storytelling choices they were making. And unfortunately, those choices resulted in an overall lackluster final season.
Benioff saying he and Weiss wanted to “avoid the unexpected” by having Arya kill the Night King (as opposed to Jon Snow) stands out to me as an emblematic statement of the final season’s weaker story. Subverting expectations just for the sake of it doesn’t work. That’s not what Martin did. Emotional responses are born from thoughtful character development, not pure shock.
So what should Benioff and Weiss have done differently?
I think the show could have benefited from a larger writing staff. Again, as I established, it’s not Benioff and Weiss’ fault they ran out of detailed material to adapt from in Martin’s books. But since their writing strength clearly lays in adaptation (and not wholly original material), I think bringing in more people (and namely, more non-male perspectives) to help craft the final seasons might have helped.
Benioff and Weiss seem to have mistakenly believed that people primarily loved the show because of its epic battles and very expensive CGI dragons.
The truth is that those events — the Red Wedding or Battle of the Bastards or Cersei blowing up the Sept of Baelor — were only massively popular and impactful because of the emotional groundwork laid before them with dozens of hours of quiet character scenes.
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Overall the eighth season was sorely lacking in well-developed and well-executed character arcs. There’s a reason why “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is such a beloved episode. It slowed everything down and gave us emotionally resonant exchanges between characters. We needed more of that in the final season, not less.
It’s understandable that Benioff, Weiss, and the “Game of Thrones” team felt ready to wrap up the series after a decade of round-the-clock, exhausting work that was primarily done in a whole other country.
It’s also true that the show could have benefited from a longer final season, with more time spent on the characters. Case-in-point: Daenerys Targaryen’s fall.
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I don’t think Benioff and Weiss would have made that dramatic of a character ending up without Martin telling them the general scope of Daenerys’ fate. So, yes. I think she will have some sort of downfall. But I also think it will be handled with much more nuance and empathy in Martin’s writing.
Dany’s choices in the final two episodes are not the problem — it was how quickly and confusingly it happened. We needed more dialogue from her to explain the turn from “I will not be queen of the ashes” to “I’m going to burn innocent people in King’s Landing for no clear reason” in the span of an episode-and-a-half.
The same emotional whiplash happened for Brienne and Jaime’s relationship. It wasn’t a good choice to have them finally engage with a physical romantic relationship and then pull the rug on that relationship all in the same episode.
I believe Martin will finish the last two books in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series at some point. I have no idea how soon. Don’t ask me and definitely don’t ask him. Leave the man alone!
Videos, like this one titled “3 Minutes of the Game of Thrones Cast Being Disappointed by Season 8,” get tens of millions of hits on YouTube. Some of the clips in there, like actor Ian McElhinney (who played Barristan Selmy), are very direct examples of the cast expressing disappointment with the way their time on the show ended.
But others, like Kit Harington deadpan saying “disappointing” when asked for a word to describe the final season before laughing, could be interpreted in many ways. Was he just joking around? Trying to deflect the interviewer?
The very famous one shows Emilia Clarke (Daenerys), Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), and Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei) answering an ET red carpet interviewer when asked if “they’re happy how things ended.” Clarke looks torn, and says in a sarcastic-sounding voice “best season ever!” But again, her intentions there are up for interpretation. Is she talking about just Dany’s heartbreaking ending? Or the whole show?
Taking screenshots or videos out of context, and projecting your own feelings onto the faces of actors in the middle of press interviews or a long table read (like Conleth Hill in this viral tweet) is unfair armchair analysis.
A lot of the examples that people point to (like this interview with Peter Dinklage) looks to me more like an actor, one known for disliking press interviews, trying to promote a completely different movie but giving a general quote about “Game of Thrones” while he’s at it because the reporter asked.
But hey, that’s just my assumption, too. We don’t know for sure, unless you’re an actor who worked on “Game of Thrones” for most of a decade.
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What is true is that a lot of the actors seem to misunderstand why fans were upset with the finale. It frustrates me whenever someone involved with the show dismisses criticism of it by saying “people were always going to be upset because the show was ending and they didn’t want it to.”
People aren’t upset because characters didn’t wind up in the places we wanted or expected, it was because the writing just felt completely out of touch with what made earlier seasons so great.
There are very sound reasons why people didn’t love season eight. There are also a lot of fans who did love season eight. Both of these things can be true, and are OK and valid.
It’s also understandable that the actors involved aren’t familiarizing themselves with the nuance of fandom arguments about the show. That’s not their job.
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Having criticisms of a show does not equal hating it.
Criticism is a valid and essential part of processing and analyzing any piece of creative work, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a book. Martin’s original books are not without fault, and neither is “Game of Thrones.” In fact, I would argue that caring enough about something like “Game of Thrones” to the point where I feel like writing a 4,000-word critical analysis of its finale (not to mention an entire 384-page book) means I am a huge fan of it.
For me, being a fan means wanting to stew on how and why a show I love might have felt disappointing in some ways while also really incredible in others.
*gets on soapbox*
*turns on bullhorn*
JAIME KNIGHTING BRIENNE IS THE SINGLE BEST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED IN THE FINAL SEASON AND I NEVER EXPECTED IT WHICH MAKES IT EVEN BETTER.
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Yes! “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is a perfect episode of television. And not just for Ser Brienne, though that was the clear emotional climax, but so much of the episode is rooted in the quiet little character interactions that always made “Game of Thrones” special. Sansa and Daenerys’ conversation was so well done, especially back-to-back with Theon’s emotional return to Winterfell. It was also really great at subtly introducing Daenerys’ loneliness and her isolation among Jon and his followers.
Don’t even get me going on Podrick singing “Jenny of Oldstones.” I’ll probably start crying again.
Unfortunately the emotional set up in “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” just made “The Long Night” that much more disappointing.
Yes, I’m getting things off my chest. And you came for the takes!
For starters, way, way, way too many people survived.
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It’s not like I wanted character deaths because I’m a sadist. I wasn’t mad that “more people didn’t die” at the Battle of Winterfell, full stop. I was mad that many named characters were visually placed in completely inescapable mortal peril and survived anyways, when earlier in the show (and in Martin’s books) those are the exact scenarios that would have resulted in tragic and realistic deaths.
That tragedy and realism were what made “Game of Thrones” special in its beginning. The loss of that tragedy and realism, replaced with fantastical saves or simple cuts away that allow our heroes to inexplicably get out from the middle of a hundred murderous wight zombies, is why people like me got frustrated.
You can’t set up an internal logic of consequences in earlier seasons and then break that logic later and try to fall back on the claim that “well it’s TV” or “well it’s fantasy.”
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Way too many characters we knew and loved survived the final White Walker battle, given the threat and how much they were overpowered. By that token, Jon, Tormund, Podrick, Sam, Gendry, Brienne (and probably Gilly and baby Sam and Sansa and Tyrion) should all be dead.
I also still can’t believe they put people in the crypts of Winterfell and then had wights surprise-attack them. But I refuse to waste a second more of my brainpower on that. So, moving on.
I got some of the biggest search traffic hits of the season when I rewatched the episode and wrote an article explaining who was alive and wasn’t. That tells me that a lot of people watching were left confused, which is never a good sign for storytelling.
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Then again, not everyone had the same viewing experience. Some people’s TV settings, or stream qualities, meant they had no issue with the visual component of “The Long Night.” But that doesn’t mean other people’s negative experiences didn’t happen.
Yes, and it’s really tough to see behind-the-scenes features about the cast and crew working themselves into the ground. They put so much into the show, and for such a long time. I hope they know that work they did has no bearing on how fans feel about the story. Everything from the costumes to the score to the production design and more was a true feat of television that I have the utmost respect for.
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It may seem like that, but I think way more people enjoyed it than you might realize. And I think the ending will improve in people’s minds with time, the same way the finales of “The Sopranos” and “Lost” were deeply controversial at the time and are now considered fine (if not great).
Though, even as I type that, I have to admit that comparing the final season of “Game of Thrones” to any other show is inherently unfair. This was a show unlike any others before it, both in terms of its adaptation process (and the loss of that backbone) and in terms of the fandom surrounding it in the day-and-age of Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube.
There will probably never be another show like “Game of Thrones.”
All that said, it is true that “Game of Thrones” had so much potential, and so many fans are justified in their negative reactions to how the last six episodes shook out.
It feels like once a month a tweet or Reddit post claiming “nobody even talks about ‘Game of Thrones’ anymore” goes viral, claiming that no show before it has ever vanished from importance so quickly.
I just flat out don’t think that’s true.
The mere fact that tens of thousands of people are still sharing opinions about the show on Twitter a year later disproves this point. Negative discussion is still discussion. Most shows these days barely get noticed by millions of people, let alone have a sustained fandom and discourse years later.
The fandom was always going to shrink after the show ended. That’s just the nature of any show’s ending. There are still a lot of people who loved the show and the final season and who are excited to see what’s next with the prequel series.
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I’m not saying there wasn’t a very dramatic shift in the public opinion of “Game of Thrones” last year. There was. But it didn’t get erased from everyone’s minds. The missteps with the ending cannot undo the decade’s worth of influence “Game of Thrones” had on television as a whole and fantasy storytelling in particular. No one has that power. Not even Benioff and Weiss.
IT WASN’T A STARBUCKS CUP. Stop giving Starbucks free press and stop talking about the coffee cup for the love of all the gods.
