Small Council: How long do we want Game of Thrones to run?

Last week, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss said that the final two seasons of the show may be shortened. They’re not crazy about the idea of spin-offs, either. How do we feel about this? Do we want Game of Thrones to last longer? Shorter? Will abbreviated Seasons 7 and 8 be enough to tell the story properly? The Small Council is in session.

COREY: I would say longer. Much longer. Although I’ve been a fan of some of the shortcuts taken by producers, others have been less successful. Cersei’s rule over King’s Landing is a prime example. The books go into much greater detail regarding her mismanagement of the Seven Kingdoms, as Cersei blunders from one mistake to the next, all the while Cersei begins to drink heavily, gain weight, and mismanage the crown’s financial affairs. Sound like anyone we know? Cersei’s actions directly imitate Robert Baratheon’s, and interesting parallel for someone who hated Robert so much. That’s an interesting point left out of the show, an example of something that could have been expanded upon. Instead we got the cliff notes.

I don’t mean to sound like I am complaining, because I’m not. There is a fair argument to make that had the show gone the denser route, that the fan base would not have been as large. And while I generally agree with the choices to leave some plots that end up on the cutting room floor (looking at you, Aegon), I believe some of the plots suffered. The Dornish plot, for instance, is much more satisfying in the books. There, we get the impression that Prince Doran is a Tywin Lannister-level schemer, but on the show it mostly looked like he couldn’t control his underlings. I understand it’s an incredibly difficult show to make, and some short cuts are necessary, but I’d have liked more details. Like where the heck did Shagga go? Did he ever get to feed someone’s manhood to the goats? Or did he have to make do?

On the flip side, I do agree with the others that an unnecessary expanding of the story could have created a negative effect on the series. We don’t need to know the ultimate fate of the innkeeper from Season 1, or why the Eyrie has to be closed down during the winter because (it gets too cold—GRRM took an entire chapter to explain this), but I think a little bit more would have been easy to do, especially considering the reports that the last two seasons will be less than ten episodes each.

KATIE: Speaking as someone who can only examine this question from a television viewer’s perspective, it seems that three more seasons—even if the final two are shorter than the rest—sounds like they’ll do the trick. A big problem with a lot of successful shows is that they push their luck, and in doing so they stretch themselves thin for the sake of another storyline. As much as you want the good shows to last forever, the quality would surely diminish when plots that should have been resolved suddenly aren’t because the showrunners need to squeeze in another season or two. It’s a matter of quality over quantity, and we’re getting to the point in Game of Thrones where winter just needs to come already, and the characters face off with the threats they’ve been worried about for so long.

On the flip-side of the coin, I think Corey makes a good point—if the show was a truer adaptation of the books, it could presumably go on much longer and be successful in doing so. But since it’s diverged so much and become an entity all its own, it’s probably best to quit while ahead. Benioff, Weiss, & Co. know when the show needs to end, and they’ll dole out the pieces accordingly.

RICHARD: Heart versus head here. My heart wishes the show would go on forever. Well, maybe not forever, but at least, like, 10 seasons? As I sit here locked in severe waiting-for-the new-season-to-start cold sweats, my perspective is that of the loving addict. I mean, (as per Corey) there’s even untouched stuff in the existing books! And George R. R. Martin is going to be able to pump out two more hefty tomes (the last one arriving in perhaps 2022, hopefully not posthumously), so why can’t the HBO show wring at least 3 or even 4 more full seasons out of that? And, by the way, nothing is written in stone …yet.

But then the Spock in my head starts offering up some annoying, sobering logic. David and Dan know what they’re doing, and (as per Katie) I agree that they’ve mapped out the dramatic arcs with all of the depth and the beats that their unique ending requires. We have to remember that they are telling their own tale from this point forward, not GRRM’s. They’re not cutting their version of the end of the series short, and despite the rising costs of the episodes, it is obvious that HBO is ready and willing to write more checks to keep things going. And then there’s what I like to call ‘the TV show wall,” (I guess with Game of Thrones we can just call it the Wall), which is the fact that almost all highly successful TV series tend to run out of gas, faceplant, stumble, lose steam—whatever you want to call it—in the neighborhood of their seventh season. This doesn’t mean the show falls apart, but it suffers a drop in quality. I don’t want to see that happen to Game of Thrones.

If we only get in the neighborhood of 23 more episodes from this point forward, so be it, especially if its all great. But…why can’t if be 50 more? I’ll accept a few turkey episodes if I get 50! I rage, rage against the dying of the Westerosi light! Sigh. But would I order a giant, overcooked steak riddled with needless fat or a small but perfect filet mignon? I’d want the fabulous filet mignon. But it would look so small.

DAN: I am thoroughly enjoying these responses. Extra points for Richard’s stake metaphor and Katie’s point about winter just needing to come already.

I agree with both Katie and Richard when they say that television shows, especially dramas, tend to drop off in quality around the sixth or seventh seasons. (To throw out some examples off the top of my head: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Dexter.) It’s just inertia. Things degrade, and people get tired. Game of Thrones is a difficult show to make, and by all accounts the cast and crew members work feverishly hard on it. (I cite the Variety report where David Benioff said that Season 6 had almost 700 hours of dailies, compared to 500 for Season 6. That is a LOT OF FOOTAGE.) It wouldn’t do to let the show drag on until it became a shadow of its former self, especially considering some fans already called out the fifth season for what they saw as a drop in quality.

And while I see Corey’s point that, if adapted in detail, George R.R. Martin’s novels provide enough material for more than eight seasons (or seven-and-a-half, or whatever we’re getting), I think that ship has sailed. We’re no longer getting George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones; we’re getting HBO’s Game of Thrones, and it’s a good time for that show to start barreling toward the finish line.

All the same, I was hoping for a full eight seasons of ten episodes each. For anyone just joining this conversation, Benioff and Weiss recently said that, at the moment, their plan is to make Seasons 7 and 8, but that they would only consist of seven and six episodes respectively. (This plan isn’t set in stone, and HBO’s vaguely worded renewal notice didn’t clarify things.) That means we’d have a grand total of 73 episodes when all was said and done. That’s perfectly respectable, especially considering that an hour of Game of Thrones is actually, y’know, an hour of Game of Thrones, not an hour minus commercials, which usually amounts to around 43 minutes. All the same, a clean 80 hours would have been nice.

But I also respect that Benioff and Weiss are sticking to their vision. I get the idea that they always wanted to wrap up with 70 episodes, HBO pushed for 80, and they’re compromising at 73 or so. Part of me, the part that engages in what-could-have-been fantasies, wonders why Game of Thrones didn’t take a year off in between Seasons 4 and 5—that could’ve given the producers time to rest up, and taking a year off has worked for shows like The Sopranos in HBO’s past. Then again, Game of Thrones is not The Sopranos. It’s much more complicated, and it probably would have been difficult to round up the 900-odd cast and crew members after a year apart. Plus, how much older-looking could Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran) get and still play a convincing tweenager?

CAMERON: I think we’re reaching a point of Thrones burnout across the board, critics and viewers alike. At this point, book-readers can no longer discuss the differences and similarities the show has with the books, since we’re now 1.5-ish books behind the show. At the same time, the longer a premium cable show runs, the less fun and more ridiculous it becomes. We need only look to HBO’s other big genre show of recent years, True Blood, to see how that went, and I don’t know many people who find the later seasons of Dexter and Weeds more entertaining than the earlier years.

I think something similar happened with LOST: by the time we reached the agreed-upon final season, an inconceivable number of LOST rip-offs had come and gone from the airwaves as LOST itself just kept doing what it was doing. For these high-profile, high-concept shows, there are definitely diminishing returns on later seasons; at some point, you just have to call it. I’m personally exhausted with the whole “who’s dead and who’s not” game that is played on endless loop in the entertainment media with this show in particular, so I can only sigh in relief at the news that the ending will be brief, rather than drawn-out.

ANI: Do I want a spin off? Of COURSE I want a spin-off. But I’m in the camp of “there’s so much the show left out” that a spin-off to me feels like a way to get some of that content left on the floor onto the screen.

But let’s be real here—if there’s a spin off, Benioff and Weiss won’t be running it. And that’s okay. They can stay on, executive produce, make sure the overall aesthetic remains the same, but allow a new set of showrunners to fulfill their own vision. And they can do anything. Fans would probably love a series based on Robert’s Rebellion, although I fear that Bran’s visions in Season 6 may render the need for that moot. (My personal dream of a single “flashback” season where we see most of Robert’s Rebellion play out will never be.)

The Tales of Dunk and Egg is the most natural choice for a spin-off, of course, and unlike with Game of Thrones, there’s actually a finished piece to be working from. (Yeah, I said it.)  Then there’s a different path, like the one taken by J.K. Rowling, where she is focusing her spin-offs on history that hasn’t been fully fleshed out—do a show based on the Targaryen dynasty, maybe from the time of the conquest through the Dance of Dragons. It would be, in a way, the bookend and opposite of Game of Thrones. In our series, the dragons start out tiny, and grow to insane proportions. In the new one, they start out enormous, and by the end barely grow the size of a small dog.

But I would watch all of it and cover the production process just as obsessively as I do for this show. I don’t see myself tiring of Westeros any time soon, or the sheer scale of production it takes to bring it to me on screen.

RAZOR: Give me seven seasons and call it a night. I do not want there to be some convoluted shortened Season 7, followed by a long break, then another short and final Season 8. No, just rip the band-aid off quickly, and be done…it’s so much better that way. Benioff and Weiss have more than done their part to bring Westeros to life, and it’s been a great pleasure watching this show grow into an international sensation.

As far as a prequel season or seasons go, I am down for that. Give me Robert’s Rebellion, give me Dunk and Egg. Heck, I’d even be happy with some random tales plucked from the pages of The World of Ice and Fire, because that book has tons of detailed history in it.

However, I am 100% against two shortened seasons, and I feel that HBO would be making a huge mistake with the legacy of Game of Thrones if they were to finish the main series off, that way.