Five years ago this month, Game of Thrones came to an end.
Its grand finale was quickly and vociferously dismissed as the ‘worst in TV history’, while a Change.org petition even urged HBO to remake the season with ‘competent writers’ – and 1.8million people signed it.
The consensus was preserved in cement: The end of Game of Thrones was an irredeemable disaster – a calculated insult to the fans, even – and the show’s creators, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, should be exiled for their crimes.
It was obvious to me at the time but it’s even clearer five years on: We were sitting far too close. It seemed, rather unfortunately, that a perfectly serviceable – if imperfect – ending had been thrown to a fanbase who were far too invested to react to any of it sensibly.
There were, of course, some valid criticisms of the final stretch. As production costs ramped up, the number of episodes came down – thus, the time afforded to its controversial conclusion was considerably condensed.
10 episodes became seven in the penultimate season, then six for the last leg.
Hardcore fans probably needed longer to prepare for the tragic climax of Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) doomed quest for the Iron Throne, as she incinerated thousands of innocents before being assassinated by her nephew-turned-lover-turned-rival, Jon Snow (Kit Harington).
Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) severing his healthy bond with Brienne (Gwen Christie) might have been better received if the audience had been able to brace for impact. Jaime returned instead to the toxic incestuous relationship with his sister Cersei (Lena Headey), and the two perished in Daenerys’ firestorms.
That’s without mentioning Bran the Broken (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) and his unexpected rise to power, or Jon Snow’s repeated insistence that he didn’t want to rule Westeros, or the premature fate of the Night King (Vladimir Furdik) and his White Walkers.
But the nature of the criticism was extreme. Episodes were review-bombed before they were even broadcast, while some of the show’s stars were hounded off social media and then relentlessly quizzed about the finale by angry fans in their day-to-day lives.
A Reddit campaign has ensured that a picture of Benioff and Weiss will appear first when ‘bad writers’ is searched for on Google Images, and there were countless alternative fanfiction endings – created by people who insisted they knew the characters better than those making the show.
But it’s been five years now.
Surely it’s time for even the most hardened anti-season eight stans to see that the Game of Thrones legacy isn’t tarnished, that Benioff and Weiss didn’t half-ass the finish, and that there is significant value in the story’s dramatic conclusion after all.
So hear me out: As Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) once said: ‘You need to take your enemy’s side if you’re going to see things the way they do.’
From the very beginning, Game of Thrones was firmly anti-war and spent its time attempting to deconstruct the very concept of monarchism. Even as it strayed from – and overtook – George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire source material, it still endeavoured to critique these subjects.
Why would the show then endorse these two things by having Daenerys obtain the crown through conquest? Now that would be lazy writing.
Her ending was difficult to witness, but does that mean it made no sense? Call it what you want – her quest for ultimate power and revenge got the better of her.
She didn’t ‘turn evil’ after being a benevolent character for so long, she was someone constantly caught between two compelling forces. And when push came to shove once her destiny was in sight, the darker of those two forces defeated the other.
But, with that being said, the blame for the deaths of thousands in King’s Landing shouldn’t be placed entirely on Daenerys’ shoulders either.
If Daenerys was riding Drogon alone above King’s Landing – the entire city screaming for help, her closest allies either dead or watching on in horror – it was because the corruptive forces of war, revenge, and divine rightism had placed her there.
Soldiers from the North, who had been our friends and allies right up to the penultimate episode, raped and pillaged their way through a crowd of innocent peasants as they seized their ultimate chance for revenge on the people of the South.
Even Tyrion, Varys, and Jon, good as their intentions were, gave Daenerys a series of mixed messages and found themselves caught between devotion and naivety when it was already too late. They didn’t pull the trigger, but they definitely loaded the gun.
Jon, Arya, and Sansa are the three characters who get to walk away with their freedom intact because each of them eventually understands that the game itself is the enemy.
Jon has been dead before. He knows there’s nothing in the great beyond. No legacy, no glory, no family reunions; why would he want anything other than to live his life peacefully, away from conflict?
Arya, still broken after witnessing the death of her father as a 11-year-old, sails into oblivion, not knowing if she’s heading to new lands or her death. Sansa carries out with her wounded heart the dream of Northern independence for her late brother Robb.
Meanwhile, the characters who continue on in what remains of the eponymous game – as the likes of Tyrion, Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham), and Bronn (Jerome Flynn) sit the series’ last small council – are left to squabble over the nature of the arduous King’s Landing rebuild that lies ahead. The wheel is still turning, just slower than before.
The game of thrones consumed them all. Nobody won, everybody lost; catharsis was denied. Isn’t that war, and therefore Game of Thrones, down to a tee?
The conclusion might have been reached at a speed that was much faster than the pace established in the first half of the series, but is that enough to demand an entire remake? Is it enough to justify the vitriol that still remains in some quarters after all this time?
Would Benioff and Weiss have spent three years making 13 episodes of the last two seasons if they were that desperate to run off and make a Star Wars film?
Would numerous members of the Game of Thrones cast have continued working with them on shows such as Netflix’s 3 Body Problem if they really did secretly think they were charlatans? Would House of the Dragon, or the Game of Thrones museum, be so popular if Game of Thrones had truly tarnished the Westeros brand?
The answer to all of those questions is no.
I can understand people being disappointed and underwhelmed by the ending, sure. It’s natural.
Not every ending can work for everyone and the conclusion to Game of Thrones had so many possibilities and variables, not enough space to squeeze everything into, and such an active, devoted fanbase, that no conclusion was failsafe. But angry and bitter enough to still be so combative five years on?
Come on. That’s on the fandom, not the show.
This isn’t to say every moment of Game of Thrones’ final season went swimmingly. I still can’t work out why Bran the Broken ‘came all this way’ or where the Dothraki went after Daenerys was killed.
The series also gave itself a mountain to climb by leaving its more high fantasy plot thread (the war with the White Walkers and the Army of the Dead) completely wide open while its more low fantasy plot thread (the battle for the Iron Throne) was also unresolved.
But I promise you will go back to Game of Thrones one day and I promise you’ll cool on the ending over time. Just look at what’s happened to the Star Wars prequels, for goodness sake.
If redemption is possible for a young Anakin Skywalker’s ‘Now this is podracing!’, Jon Snow’s ‘I don’t want it, I never have’ shouldn’t be far behind.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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