I always meant to get into Games of Thrones when it was airing, but wanted to read the books first. Is the ending to the TV series really that bad?
There have been many good shows ruined by a shoddy finale, but few (if any) compare to Game of Thrones.
The ire that surrounded Thrones’ final season and its perceived drop in quality has been compared, endlessly, to shows such as Dexter, Lost and The Sopranos, although none of them hold a candle to the particular brand of chaos and contempt that Thrones managed to conjure.
But now, exactly one year on from the HBO epic’s final ending, we must finally accept the truth. No show has ever pulled off a finale more disastrous than Game of Thrones, and no show has ever – ever – seen its cultural footprint erased quicker either.
It’s hard to even imagine that when 2019 began, appetite for the return of Jon Snow (Kit Harington), Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) was at an all-time high. Sure, the seventh season had seen a slight drop in quality and bizarre story choices (why, exactly do seven men storm into the land of ice zombies again? Please?) but this was going to be a supercharged season of Game of Thrones. Six blockbuster episodes, in and out. No problem.
There are many reasons why this eighth and final season was a distinct, total failure and we’re sure many, many books will be written on the finer, succinct points for time immemorial. But, to put it bluntly, this is what happens when writers don’t write well in an effort to land this dragon as quickly and pain-free as possible.
Much of the blame for Thrones’ crash and burn has been put at the feet of creators and showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss, and for once the internet has come to a sensible conclusion. Everything else about season eight – the performances, the design, the effects – were firing on all cylinders for their lap of glory. But the writing was DOA.
Characters marvelled for their intelligence – Tyrion, Varys – became remarkably stupid. The Big Bad of the series – the Night King – was dispatched with alarming ease in a world-ending battle where precisely one major character died. Cersei Lannister decided to take time out of her busy schedule to sip wine on a balcony and never return. Daernerys Targayren turned into Hitler.
Thrones had, by its last series, passed the material of its source novels and then some (the final two instalments of George RR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series are still yet to be published) and all the intricacy and nimble characterisation that brought the show into the international spotlight in its brilliant earlier seasons seemed to have evaporated by dragon fire on its home-run.
We could write 5,000 words on why this season was so bad – the rushed path to a clearly pre-determined ending, the suspension of the world’s realism in order to get people where they needed to be, the inability to write female characters without turning them into a tyrannical villain or a femme fatale – but we don’t want to upset you, or ourselves.
It now doesn’t matter why Game of Thrones’ final run of episodes was so bad, because the damage has been done. It has happened and it can’t be reversed. The legacy of Game of Thrones has been ruined, irrevocably, forever.
Look online, now, and you’ll find that the show’s cultural footprint has almost disappeared.
It’s estimated that almost 20 million viewers tuned into The Iron Throne when it aired in the US on 19 May 2019. That’s just above 16% of that country’s entire population. It was the most popular show of the decade, if not the most popular TV show to exist in modern times, and we won’t see anything to rival it again any time soon.
But, just look around on the internet today, search for Game of Thrones. Whereas, at any other given time, you will find people still tweeting about The Big Bang Theory or Friends, commentary of Thrones has ground to a halt after its disastrous ending. It was such a sudden and complete grind to a halt, we think it’s given every single viewer emotional whiplash.
No one is talking about Game of Thrones, because no one wants to talk about Game of Thrones. At any time in the past 12 months have you fancied a re-watch of the show? To once again experience the shocking death of Ned Stark, the battle of Blackwater Bay and Cersei’s destruction of the Sept of Baelor in all their glory? Have you talked yourself out of it because you know if you do that, you’ll have to once again watch season eight?
And, really, who can blame you? You invested so much in that show. You watched every episode live, without fail, since it debuted (or when people started to rave about it to you – it’s like fantasy, but for normal people!) You followed all the cast on Instagram. You bought all the books. You tweeted so, so many memes of Daenerys shouting ‘Dracarys!’ Only for the show to re-pay you for your loyalty and your obsession by turning into a parody of itself. It wasn’t just sad, it was a bit insulting. This is what you wasted two years of your life waiting for?
At the start of this article, we mentioned Dexter, Lost, and The Sopranos. Each of these shows, to varying degrees, had unsatisfying finales, people say. Whether it was the complex myth-making of Lost or The Sopranos’ refusal to give any ending, at all.
But Dexter and Lost were well past the peak of their cultural powers by the time they drew to a close and The Sopranos is, still, considered by many to be the finest achievement of any TV show, ever. Its ending wasn’t bad in the way that Thrones’ was, it only ended up enhancing the show’s mystique.
Game of Thrones was ruined by its own ending, and its a wound from which the show will never recover. Of course, there’s still hope for fans, either in the (eventual) publication of the final two books, or the debut of the promising, Targaryen-centric prequel.
Even if the franchise finds success in its future, every conversation will eventually wind back to ‘Game of Thrones? Yeah, great show, terrible ending.’
So, it’s finally time to admit it. Game of Thrones is dead, long live Game of Thrones. Or perhaps not.
Game of Thrones is available to stream via NOW TV.
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"They wanted the pretty white people to ride off into the sunset together. By the way, it's fiction. There's dragons in it," said Peter Dinklage
Peter Dinklage is aware Game of Thrones fans weren't too fond of how the series ended.
When the HBO hit wrapped in 2019, fans were quick to voice their dissatisfaction with the show's finale. Their disappointed reactions even led to the creation of a Change.org petition calling for a re-do.
Dinklage, 52, addressed the GoT finale in a recent interview with The New York Times.
"They wanted the pretty white people to ride off into the sunset together. By the way, it's fiction. There's dragons in it. Move on," joked Dinklage, who is set to star as the romantic lead in the new movie musical Cyrano.
"No, but the show subverts what you think, and that's what I love about it. Yeah, it was called Game of Thrones, but at the end, the whole dialogue when people would approach me on the street was, 'Who's going to be on the throne?' I don't know why that was their takeaway because the show really was more than that," the actor continued.
"One of my favorite moments was when the dragon burned the throne because it sort of just killed that whole conversation, which is really irreverent and kind of brilliant on behalf of the show's creators: 'Shut up, it's not about that,' " he shared. "They constantly did that, where you thought one thing and they delivered another. Everybody had their own stories going on while watching that show, but nobody's was as good as what the show delivered, I think."
Karwai Tang/WireImage
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As for why he believes fans disliked the ending so much? Dinklage said: "I think the reason there was some backlash about the ending is because they were angry at us for breaking up with them."
The star added, "We were going off the air and they didn't know what to do with their Sunday nights anymore. They wanted more, so they backlashed about that. We had to end when we did, because what the show was really good at was breaking preconceived notions: Villains became heroes, and heroes became villains."
Helen Sloan/HBO
"If you know your history, when you track the progress of tyrants, they don't start off as tyrants. I'm talking about, spoiler alert, what happened at the end of Game of Thrones with that character change," he said. "It's gradual, and I loved how power corrupted these people. What happens to your moral compass when you get a taste of power? Human beings are complicated characters, you know?"
Game of Thrones ran from 2011 to 2019 for eight seasons. Based on author George R.R. Martin's fantasy novels, the acclaimed series followed nine noble families as they battled to gain control over Westeros.
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For his role as Tyrion Lannister, Dinklage was awarded four Emmy Awards.
Given the amount of success the HBO hit had throughout its run, it's easy to understand why Martin, 73, wanted two more seasons of the show. But Dinklage believes it's best that the series concluded when it did.
Helen Sloan/HBO
"It was the right time. No less, no more," he said. "You don't want to wear out your welcome, although I'm not sure that show could have."
Fans don't have to say goodbye to the Game of Thrones franchise just yet. A bevy of spinoff shows are currently in development, including the upcoming House of the Dragon series.
Matt Smith and Olivia Cooke star in the project, which is a prequel to the former HBO program. It follows the Targaryen civil war occurring roughly 300 years before what transpired in Game of Thrones.