John Bradley, along with the rest of the cast, is finally able to speak freely about the final season of Game of Thrones. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been keeping secrets since they got the scripts back in October of 2017. How the heck do you not mess up and spill the beans at some point?!
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bradley spoke at great length about season 8, Sam’s journey, and how he felt about the controversial ending. Just like the fans, Bradley was surprised to learn that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss intended to wrap up the story in six episodes:
"As soon as we found out the last season would only be six episodes, we thought David and Dan were very bold. We thought it was brave, trying to wrap it up in six, knowing how many stories there were to tie up and how many major resolutions they needed to land. It might lead you to think six episodes is not quite enough. Then we got the scripts, and we started reading them back in October 2017, and we saw what a rich season it was going to be. The episodes were slightly longer than the average episode, and they contained so many pivotal events and so much information. The season was going to gain and gain momentum. That’s when we really started trusting they could do this in six episodes."
The Game of Thrones fandom has had very strong opinions about the series finale, “The Iron Throne.” But what did Bradley think? “There was so much humanity in episode six,” he said. “So many stories got tied up in really quiet, low-key ways.”
"Think about the election of Bran as king. It was done through a brilliantly written and a beautifully acted monologue from a wonderful actor, one of the central parts of the show. Bran didn’t become king because he’s the last man standing and everyone else was wiped out by a dragon. It wasn’t done as spectacularly as that. It was done through political rhetoric and persuasion. It was done with language, and performance of that language. It was David and Dan recapturing that essence of what these people were all about. There’s an intellectual capacity in Tyrion that sometimes is the best way to tell a story. It doesn’t have to be about the millions of dollars you spend on CGI. It can be about putting the right words in the right character’s mouth. It was such an effective way of doing it. It let the actors act and let our characters do the talking."
I’m thinking not everyone agrees with him, but I’m not here to second-guess Samwell Tarly.
Before the season began, fans were wondering if Sam would be the one to write the whole story in a book. That didn’t exactly happen, because Archmaester Ebrose wrote A Song of Ice and Fire, but Sam came up with the title, so we’ll call that half-confirmed. I don’t know about anyone else, but that scene made me very happy!
"We nearly gave the predictors what they wanted. It must have been so frustrating, but also thrilling, for people who predicted it. It was really clever, to pull the rug out from under those feet, nearly giving them exactly what they wanted, but taking it away at the last minute… it was an evil but delicious thing to do."
In the grand arc of the show, Sam went from someone who got little respect to someone with a family and a reputable position on the Small Council. As a fan, I feel like a proud parent. “When we met him, he was a shell of a boy with no confidence,” Bradley said. “Now, he can have a positive impact on the world. I’m so proud of the place I left him in. He’s an essential person with an essential perspective in any room he’s in.” Damn straight!
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One of the final scenes of the series finale focuses on Sam and other members of the Small Council debating and arguing over decisions they’re trying to make. It leaves us with a bittersweet sense of sadness and hope, because we can sit here and imagine how their stories will continue to play out. “As long as you keep that imagination alive, the show will never really end,” Bradley said. “You’ll never really say goodbye to these characters. They may cross your mind every now and again. That’s a great legacy.”
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