Alfie Allen “pissed off” about backlash to Game of Thrones’ final season

The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones was undeniably a divisive one — so much so that many fans are still arguing over whether it should have ended differently. And while any series finale is going to have some fans who love it and some who hate it, the eighth season of the show brought out a darker side of the fandom. Not only were there petitions to remake the entire season, but some fans bordered on harassing the showrunners and crew members behind the episodes, as though they should be held responsible for fans’ disappointment.

And many of the cast and crew who worked on the show’s final season have clapped back at those criticizing the amount of effort that went into it. Alfie Allen, who played Theon Greyjoy, is one of the most recent people to respond to the backlash, admitting that parts of it pissed him off. In an interview with Deadline, Allen dove into why the Game of Thrones fandom might have felt this way about the show’s ending — along with why it’s not OK to lash out at those who created it.

“I think we’ve seen it before, in other shows that have been massive, where people didn’t agree with how things ended,” Allen said. “Where people are like, ‘This is not really feeding what I need anymore.’ So inevitably, that was going to happen. David and Dan were under huge pressure to finish this series off and do it in the right way.”

Allen’s words suggest that, no matter what the showrunners did, there was no way to please everyone with the ending. And on top of that, viewers seem to frequently have emotional reactions to series they’ve grown attached to ending — something also seen with Lost. That plays into the negative feelings surrounding finales, even if there are valid complaints in there.

“In my opinion, HBO set out to have a fantasy show—in inverted commas—that was steeped in familiar relationships, and those things were always at the core of it,” he added. “I think that’s what those last few episodes were. It rounded up all those relationships, and of course people will be unhappy to leave them.”

But no matter how sorry fans were to say farewell to the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens of Westeros, Allen emphasized that they shouldn’t take those feelings out on the real people who work on the series.

“What pisses me off, though, is when you see people like the camera operators, who are the best in the world—people behind the scenes who break their backs for this show—who are then getting trolled online by people. I can’t even delve into that world too much, for my own sanity. But to read all that stuff… People laying into the DPs. It blows my mind.”

And while it’s fair to be disappointed with the way something ends, Allen does have a point. Pointing fingers and demanding do-overs only negates the hard work that the cast and crew put into the series, something that isn’t exactly fair to them after all these seasons. Whether you enjoyed the ending or not, one thing is certain: Those behind Game of Thrones put their hearts and souls into it for nearly a decade. Thankfully, they’ve got enough Emmy nominations for their work on the final season to balance out all the negative talk from the fandom.

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