Bad reviews scared Game of Thrones star off watching the final season

Irish actor Michael McElhatton has had a busy schedule of late; you can see him fighting Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max, and he plays the villain in the new thriller The Winter Lake. But Game of Thrones fans will always remember him as the hard-hearted Roose Bolton, who used his cunning and pitilessness to supplant the Starks as the rulers of the North…at least until his crazy son Ramsay stabbed him in the gut.

Roose Bolton died in season 6, but McElhatton continued to watch into season 7 because he was a fan of the show. Then came the infamous season 8, which got a ton of blowback from fans and press alike. That scared him off watching the rest, at least for now. “I always watched them a little bit later, I absolutely loved them, but I wasn’t kind of chomping at the bit to see (the final episodes),” McElhatton told Express. “And then I guess – I will watch them one day, but it got such negative press, didn’t it? I mean, I just, I was really disappointed.”

It’s a shame to hear that, but I can’t blame him. The backlash was very loud and I get why it would make you a bit skittish. He does plan to watch the final season “one day.”

Why did the final season of Game of Thrones get so much hate?

As for why the final season got so much backlash, McElhatton has his theories. “How can you be that big and that original and that new for eight seasons?” he asked. “Eventually something’s got to give. And in a way, maybe it might have been better to finish at seven seasons.”

"But I understand the pressure HBO probably put them under to say, ‘look, this thing is just a cash cow, it’s delivering and you’ve got to keep it going.’ Some series really do suffer from that, you know. They go on way too long and pass their story. But that’s where I guess art and commerce meet."

Detractors who watched the final season often point to the series needing to be longer, not shorter, but I take McElhatton’s point. We can add it to the rich well of discourse on this topic.

What Game of Thrones cast members didn’t like the final season?

Incidentally, McElhatton isn’t the only cast member put off by the final season. Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister) said he was “underwhelmed.” Natalia Tena (Osha the wilding) went even further:

"I liked it to the bit where she [Arya] stabs him [the Night King] in the heart. I liked it up to then. But after that, I just feel like… I just didn’t understand. The calibre of writing towards the end and the plots and everything that happens and how they wrapped it up compared to any other season, any other bit, it just feels like it’s been written by different people. It doesn’t make sense, for me."

Eventually, I’m sure the debate about the final season of Game of Thrones will go away, but it still seems to have a bit of gas left in the tank.

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