Game Of Thrones is done and dusted and we have an epic wait ahead, with the final season expected to air in a way too far away 2019.
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The show delivered its usual thrills and spills, with ever inventive action set pieces and a twisting storyline featuring characters we love, and even better, love to hate.
As the hit HBO show moves further onward from the source material however, it seems to be losing its way.
Gone are the nuanced, tight plot lines. Instead we are left with a story which remains incredibly entertaining and most of all fun, but falls to pieces if you apply a moment’s thought to the action.
We take a look at a few of the issues the show needs to resolve over the next couple of years.
Space and Time
The inhabitants of Westeros now move around instantaneously. I doubt many of us want to watch hours of uneventful TV where characters plod around chatting without doing much else while getting from A to B.
However, the first four series of the show spent a painstaking amount of time world building, which included showing just how long it takes to travel across this continent. Indeed the whole of the second ever episode was spent on the road.
The change of pace is dizzying for the viewer, and begs the question why was distance initially so important only to be an irrelevance for season six and beyond?
Jon Snow and Daenerys get it on
It’s entirely unclear what the producers want from the viewer with this subplot – are we supposed to be rooting for them to get together despite being close relatives?
Are they saying incest is ok if the protagonists are hot? To then intersperse a sex scene with pure exposition between Bran and Sam, the only two living characters who know the truth of Jon’s parentage, in order to ram home the point, was one weird choice.
The show already has an incestuous couple; does it really need a second? When we met Daenerys and her brother we were told that it was common for Targaryens to marry their siblings, which might be used as an excuse by the producers, but this doesn’t make this relationship any easier to stomach.
What does The Night’s King want?
In the books, the Others are leaderless and The Night’s King only an old wives’ tale.
The show has taken great pains to build him up as The Bad Guy, but we don’t know anything about his motives. He is clearly a sentient being, so must have some reason for wanting to conquer south of the Wall.
Development of his character has yet to go beyond hints of some connection with Bran – and there are only six episodes left. It’s a disappointing state of affairs given the great job the show usually does in creating well rounded, realistic characters with strengths and flaws. Eyebrows must also be raised that the show is going down a straight forward good vs evil route, after so many seasons of grey.
We also learnt that he is thousands of years old, but why is he attacking now? It’s difficult to believe he has been sat waiting patiently for an ice dragon to help him tear a hole in the Wall.
Jon Snow is now invincible
Part of the fun of Game Of Thrones is that every character is expendable, at any time, a lesson we brutally learnt with the beheading of Ned Stark.
There is now a tedious inevitability that Jon will survive every battle thanks to some unforeseen force saving him, from dragons to half-zombie uncles.
Even worse is every single person insisting he’s a great leader and military commander, despite all evidence to the contrary. He took a group of men north of the Wall to capture a wight.
This was his entire plan. There was no thought given to the logistics of moving the wight after capture or having a rescue party on hand in case of trouble, and no intelligence from a scouting party or anyone actually thinking about this endeavour. Indeed his incompetence goes back even further, as he was completely outsmarted by Ramsay Snow in the Battle of the Bastards, and was again incredibly lucky to survive.
Stark sisters’ strife
What was that entire plot about? None of it made sense. Was Arya threatening to cut off Sansa’s face for real to set up Littlefinger? Well given that their entire evidence against him came from Bran’s visions, it was an irrelevant sideshow at best.
The timing of the execution could have happened at any point in the second half of season seven, yet felt shoe-horned into the final episode just so the finale had a big name death talking point.
While the Stark sisters seem to have reconciled their differences, bringing their differences from some five or six years ago seems absurd. As both have recognised, they have both been through a lot. Would Arya still be jealous that her sister was groomed to be a queen after she has trained to become an assassin, nearly died many times over, seen friends die, been blinded temporarily? It seems highly unlikely, especially given her constant yearning for home.
Why did anyone trust Cersei?
As Tyrion pointed out, everyone present at the parley hates each other. The last time all of Cersei’s enemies were gathered in one place, a wildfire explosion conveniently took place and destroyed the Sept – why would anyone have considered such a meeting to be a good idea, especially the lengths they went to to set it up, which resulted in the demise of one of Daenerys’ three WMDs.
Cersei prevaricated before deciding to agree to a truce, and did very little to show her good faith. Yet instant trust was granted – and betrayed.
Why didn’t Tyrion or Daenerys insist upon the drawing up of some kind of treaty or agreement in order to avoid this kind of situation? Tyrion knows his sister better than anyone, and must have some suspicions that she is capable of such schemes, such her involvement in her husband’s death. It’s inconceivable that as one of the cleverest men in Westeros he could not foresee such an obvious stratagem.
Can Bran actually see everything?
Bran: Hi Sam
Sam: You remember me?
Bran: Yeah I know everyone and everything in the past, present and future
Sam: Did you know Rhaegar and Lyanna got married?
Bran: OMG GTFO
The TV show is now far beyond the books, and the lack of material to cherry pick from has meant Benioff and Weiss have had to put together the story themselves.
As a result the characters seem less consistent, and we are hurried from one set piece to another with little pause for breath.
Perhaps the solution is to give George RR Martin more of a prominent role in the production of season eight, so the show gets the rip-roaring finale it deserves, without the nagging, doubting questions.
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