A lot of critics and fans out think that season 8 of Game of Thrones wasn’t a satisfying conclusion to the epic story that was set up in the earlier year. Many stories — from the Night King’s invasion of Westeros to Cersei and Daenerys’ battle for the Iron Throne — seemed to end abruptly and in strange ways. Dany’s heel turn came on too suddenly and left a bad taste in many fans’ mouths. And Bran being named king because he has the “best story” just plain didn’t make sense.
I know some people who listen to the Take the Black podcast accuse myself and some of my cohorts of being negative just for the sake of it, or because “our theory wasn’t correct.” I don’t think that’s fair. For me, it’s never been about the destination but the journey. The Night King, Cersei, and Dany died in the span of four episodes. Two of those episodes focused on battles and fighting, without the buildup to make those scenes of carnage as meaningful as they could have been.
The pacing has been the root of all the show’s problems these last two seasons. It caught up to the show in a big way in season, resulting in easily the show’s worst reviews from fans and critics alike, even as viewership climbed higher than ever. That is not a good thing. And if you liked the final season or the finale, more power to you. But let’s not pretend that some small contingent of fans are mad at the season for suspect reasons and just shouting louder than anyone else, as happened with The Last Jedi. This was a reaction to the story we were given.
Many characters were given the short shrift, like the members of House Reed. Howland Reed was with Ned when he found Jon, Jojen died getting Bran to the Three-Eyed Raven, and Meera barely survived getting him back to Winterfell. That house played a key role, and it felt like an oversight when they weren’t even mentioned in the final season. And there are many examples like that.
The worst part is, by the final episode, the writers clearly knew that fans would be confused and up in arms about many of the decisions made, so they leaned hard on tropes to land the points that they couldn’t land narratively.
TV Tropes has a great page about the “Writer on Board” trope, where characters will speak for the writers in scenes. That was without a doubt Tyrion’s role during his conversation with Jon, where he bullet points as many things as he can to retroactively explain Dany’s sudden turn to the dark side. That was my least favorite scene.
See if this definition sounds familiar to you:
"Obvious authorial intrusion. When the characters start behaving like idiots or acting against their established characterization because the writer damn well needs them to tell the story in a particular way, often to make a point. Who cares if the characters become less believable as a result? May also occur when a character is accused of being used just to show a particular point of view, and not because they actually have it. The technical literary term for a character designed to express the author’s preferred opinions (often the Only Sane Man) is the raisonneur—here at TV Tropes the preferred term is Author Avatar."
Going back to previous seasons and ret-conning moments that the show clearly portrayed positively is just full-on lazy. Yes, look at this scene where they clearly show Dany is capable of going mad by demanding that children aren’t harmed. Listen as that heroic music swells and Dany’s cunning is revealed. Gaze upon the horror of her freeing the slave soldiers. Truly a mad queen.
Between the Dany ending being so dark and the ending for literally every other character being so…not dark…the show just whips back and forth between Dany dying and an SNL sketch about chairs and small council meetings. It made my head hurt.
When all is said and done, Jon never wanted to be king, so he kind of got what he wanted. Sansa wanted the Starks to remain together to have a free North and she gets to be queen, so she got what she wanted. The Disney-esque ending for everybody BUT Dany is kind of hard to ignore. Even Bronn and Sam got everything they had ever wanted. There was no “bittersweet” ending to all this, just over-the-top sweetness for everyone but Dany.
If you ignore all the bad or silly things then the finale was great! Just don’t think about it. Thinking is the death of fandom. And sometimes…fandom can be the death of thinking.
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