The final season of Game of Thrones evoked strong reactions, with loyal viewers questioning the HBO fantasy drama’s plot twists, the violence, and the writing.
Sophie Turner — who played Sansa Stark for all eight seasons of the hit series — told The New York Times in a post-finale interview Monday she wasn’t surprised by the backlash.
“People always have an idea in their heads of how they want a show to finish, and so when it doesn’t go to their liking, they start to speak up about it and rebel,” Turner said.
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The actress went on to criticize a viral fan petition demanding a do-over of season 8. The Change.org petition, which now has more than 1.3 million signatures, described GoT creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff as “woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material.”
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Turner called the petition “disrespectful.”
“All of these petitions and things like that — I think it’s disrespectful to the crew, and the writers, and the filmmakers who have worked tirelessly over 10 years, and for 11 months shooting the last season,” she said. “Like 50-something night shoots. So many people worked so, so hard on it, and for people to just rubbish it because it’s not what they want to see is just disrespectful.”
Despite getting mixed reviews from fans, Sunday night’s season closer titled “The Iron Throne” scored record ratings.
As Deadline reported earlier today, the finale attracted 19.3 million viewers on all platforms (including HBO GO and HBO Now), topping last week’s previous series high of 18.4 million viewers.
On TV alone, 13.6 million people tuned in to the initial broadcast, topping the HBO single-episode record of 13.4 for the season 4 opener of The Sopranos 17 years ago.
