The Problem With Game of Thrones Was Much Deeper Than Its Final Season.
On May 19, 2019, a monolithic cultural event finally came to an end. Game of Thrones finished its eight season run, limping to the finish line after a phenomenal start. Looking back on it a year and a half later, the show has not been remembered for its 59 Emmy Awards or its stellar work on the first few seasons. Instead, it has become the newest inductee into the listicle hall of fame for “Most Controversial Endings”, along with Lost, Dexter, and that one movie where the demon goes into the cat and then you find out the narrator was the demon all along, remember that one?
The TV show’s controversial ending was met with vitriol and petitions to redo the entire final season, a season which was generally panned by critics as a lackluster finale to a fantastic series. The question remains though, was it really a problem with the ending? Or was it something more? Looking back on it now, was it really that bad? Did the final season merit the hatred it received from critics and beloved fans?
The answer is two-fold. Time heals some wounds. Not this one. Although the final season is not without its beauties, it is the nearest thing to an irredeemable disappointment as is possible in the world of adaption, beaten out in that contest only by Shyamalan’s cut at the Avatar pie.
However, the ending is not solely to blame for the hatred the show received. It was a multitude of issues that I believe spread from one singular moment: The beginning of Season 6, when the show finally ran out of books to adapt.
It all comes down to this key fact, and emphasis is placed on how bad the ending was because, well, ending something is harder than maintaining it and people remember the end of things more than the beginning. It’s in our nature, but there were maintenance issues here long before there were issues with the ending, despite how memorably bad that ending was. I’m not excusing the ending here. I very much disliked the ending and still do. There is just more to it than that.
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (“D and D”) and the multitude of writers and directors involved in this pop culture juggernaut did a fantastic job adapting George R.R. Martin’s works. However, when they had to make it up for themselves, they tripped and fell in spectacular fashion. To be fair, D.B. Weiss had never really gotten anything to launch prior to Game of Thrones, and most of David Benioff’s previous work consisted of adaptations, so that’s the world he knows. He even adapted a book of his own and had Spike Lee direct it, which is super bad-ass.
Perhaps this experience with adaptation somewhat explains the narrative discontinuity that erupted when the show outran the books after the fifth season. And it shows. Oh god it shows. And yes, I’m familiar with the fact that Martin gave D and D some main, basic plot points, but that’s like saying you can paint the Mona Lisa after being given a Mona Lisa paint-by-numbers. The bones are step 1. There is deep, meaningful work that Martin puts into worldbuilding, relationship dynamics, pacing, word choice, and character arcs in his books. They aren’t perfect, but D and D certainly benefitted from this silent infrastructure. It is also incorrect to assume that D and D even followed Martin’s advice to the letter in the first place. Martin has come out and said his books straight-up end differently.
But I digress. In reflecting on it a year and a half later, there are three main ways that this departure from adaption into the realm of creation took shape:
Shock value without character consistency, a lack of pacing, and the complete thematic tone shift of the ending.
First, let’s talk about the use of shock value. George R.R. Martin expertly uses the natural (brutal) consequences of poor, in-character decision-making. D and D use a lazy exploitation of out-of-character shock value for its own sake.
Martin makes you mad at his characters for acting like themselves even when it kills them. D and D just want you to be mad, whether it means being in-character or not.
Like, in the second episode of their first season without the books, a goddamn infant and his mother get eaten by a pack of dogs while a guy watches, and Ramsay — yeah that guy — just basically takes over the season from that point on with gruesome glee because it’s easier to write a true psychopath than a complex character. We were all happy he died the way he did OVER A SEASON LATER. No sympathy there. Should have happened earlier.
My point is, this showcases a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes for a good emotional sledgehammer. A viewer will feel sad if a character they love makes a terrible decision, but they will respect you as long as it makes sense for how you have crafted that character. On the flip side, your audience will feel betrayed if you try to keep the emotional sledgehammer without putting in any work to explain WHY the character made that decision. That’s bad shock value.
It’s why I felt angry at Ned when he met his end after needlessly following his masochistic loyalty, but felt angry at the writers when Tyrion stupidly betrayed his friend, Varys, when he had spent the last…I don’t know…years with him and his whole thing was being smart, drinking, and not betraying your friends.
It’s why I felt angry at Oberon (but not the writers) when he let his emotions control his actions in combat even though he was a sexy, skilled melee combatant. The writers had set up both sides of his character, and they both played out. The shock value was in which part of his character caused him to meet his end. It came out of nowhere…but it also didn’t.
My point is, you want your viewers to be mad at your characters, not you. That’s the difference between being a shock-jock and a good writer.
Secondly, let’s talk about pacing. The pacing of the final seasons was…god-awful. Reading articles and interviews after the fact I know why too. D and D were literally offered more seasons and more money to tell what was clearly a multi-season story and they said basically: “Nah we don’t want to be paid more to write a better story.” Then, get this, then they said NO TO MAKING A STAR WARS TRILOGY. These guys do not understand a good decision when they see one.
Like…re-watch the final two seasons. The pacing is so fast it’s painfully noticeable. They needed more seasons. Even the writers admit that they just decided to “get on with it” and not really care about the logistics of it. Events happen and people speed-travel and it’s all a mess. There’s even one scene where a few people are like “let’s go across the sea” and Varys is just magically on the ship with them when we just saw him somewhere entirely different.
Thirdly, let’s talk about that ending. The ending absolutely, 100% did not fit the ethos of the show. Plot-wise I could care less. The entire show was brutally nihilistic, realistic, and down-to-earth, with a hint of the magical. The ending, in many respects, was the opposite. It was abstractly philosophical.
What, you’re telling me that after seasons of bloody chaos, it fits the mood of the show to have a dragon suddenly intuit that it was the pursuit of the throne itself that killed its master? Or that after a political chess-match show literally called “Game of Thrones”, the council would be self-aware enough to laugh at democracy and then appoint the “story-teller” because it seems like a cool theme to have a story within the story?
It just didn’t make sense. It was like when you try to mix two really good things that simply don’t go together. It was a philosophical ending to a decidedly unphilosophical show. It was an abstract, heady ending to a visceral, body-centric show. It was steak with ice cream on top…okay that actually doesn’t sound bad, but you get my point.
All that being said, through the terrible and the overly-fast and the stupidly out-of-character, there was a bright spot in the final season for me…well two if you count this baller song by Sir Podrick the Absolute Unit.
That bright spot is Sansa. Sansa is bad-ass and my favorite character. She begins her arc as the stuck-up, mean daughter of the King in the North who only ever wants to be a gentleman’s lady. She discovers that most of the men in the show are…NOT gentlemen by any stretch, and decides to be a lady but like, her OWN lady and becomes the Queen in the North and rules her own way. She achieves her goal in a way that honors its underlying desire while also respecting her evolution as a character.
She goes through so much brutality in that show and, while I think some of it was played off for shock value, which was awful, her arc as a whole is awesome. She lets Ramsay get eaten alive by his own dogs. The only thing better would have been if someone had flayed him first. Change my mind. She changes so much from the beginning of the show and it’s great and I’m here for it.
The rest of the final season though? It was about as bad as the two seasons before it: Better than your average television, but far, far worse than the first 5 seasons. You can chalk it up to unrealistic expectations but, honestly, if you’re served Wagyu five times in a row and someone serves you Arby’s without telling you to expect a dramatic shift in how that sweet marbling is gonna look, I think you have a right to be mad at the guys who served you the Arby’s, especially if they were offered Wagyu, turned it down, and chose Arby’s instead, which is…exactly how it went down. Now if you’ll excuse me, since we’re talking about meat, I have to go buy some steak and ice cream. For science.
