But was it a forgivable disaster? HBO are gambling that it was – their new prequel series, House of the Dragon, is coming this August. Not only does this assume a continued appetite for all things Game of Thrones in a world where some have turned their back on the series, it’s focused on House Targaryen, the very House that came out of the finale looking so bad.
While all those people who named their daughters Khaleesi may be looking into how to legally change someone’s name, Daenerys’ character arc probably is, in the long run, forgivable. If we take the time to re-watch the series, we’ll see some hints dropped here and there, and some fans had predicted it all along. The problem with Daenerys’ story, aside from upsetting fans of the character, wasn’t so much the story itself as the pacing. With hindsight and knowing where it’s heading, that may not be anyone’s favourite story development, but it will likely be something many fans can live with.
Cersei and Jaime’s endings are trickier. Cersei get her comeuppance, sort of, and viewers can probably live with that, but Jaime’s story is left flapping all over the place. His primary, over-riding motivation throughout is love, and “the things we do for love”, so his ending is perhaps forgivable – he loves Cersei too much and can’t help but go back to her – but it’s frustrating, as his apparent redemption had been such a satisfying story.
Stop Before King Bran?
But then we come back to King Bran. This is where fans are really going to struggle. Years and years of viewing, hours of television, to lead to an unsatisfying climax that makes no sense. That might just put viewers off all together. Sure, we all know that the journey can be more important than the destination, but when the destination is such a great disappointment, the journey does become tainted.
Still, fans do always have the option of watching until Season 8, Episode 3, and then stopping. That cuts out Jaime’s return to Cersei, it cuts out Daenerys’ turn to complete destruction and death, and it cuts out King Bran. Arya being the person who killed the Night King came a bit out of left field, but she’s a fan favourite character so they can get away with it, and we can all imagine that Sansa became Queen of the Seven Kingdoms like she should have done. Or fill in your preferred ending.
The drawback to the new series being a prequel is that, like the earlier seasons of the show, it is a story building to an unsatisfying climax. But the advantage to the prequel is that it doesn’t have to talk about the ending of Game of Thrones at all. None of those events have happened yet. There might be the odd obscure prophecy, but there’s no need to talk about Daenerys’ rushed character development, Jaime’s slide backwards, or Bran’s baffling rise to power. If we so choose, we can just pretend Episodes 4, 5, and 6 of Season 8 never happened. And in the end, that might be the only way the fans are finally able to forgive the show, and enjoy its early – fantastic – seasons again.
