In May of 2019, Game of Thrones aired its series finale, "The Iron Throne." In the space of one episode, Jon Snow killed Daenerys Targaryen, who the episode prior had roasted the men, women and children of King's Landing. Bran Stark was elected king in a meeting of the great lords of Westeros, Tyrion Lannister became his Hand of the King, Arya Stark sailed off for parts unknown, Sansa became Queen in the North and Jon Snow was banished beyond the Wall.
And the verdict at the time was, more or less, that it was trash. The backlash was huge. Nearly two million people signed a petition to remake the final season, a campaign of angry fans conspired for showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss to show in Google images whenever you search for "bad writers" (it worked, try it), and cast members were quizzed about the ending in their day-to-day lives. The bad vibes got rolling early. Episodes were review bombed before they came out, and people acted like a coffee cup left on a table in one scene — edited out within hours of airing — was evidence of the showrunner's contempt for the series, or else their laziness, or their incompetence. Benioff and Weiss got a lot of flack; thank goodness they had to sense never to engage with social media.
A lot silly narratives emerged after the finale. "No one cares about Game of Thrones anymore." The success of the Game of Thrones Studio Tour and the prequel show House of the Dragon suggests otherwise. "David Benioff and Dan Weiss will never work in Hollywood again." Their excellent Netflix show 3 Body Problem is returning for a second season, complete with Game of Thrones veterans on board.
Most of those narratives were dumb at the time, and history has only borne out that dumbness. But what about the final episode itself, or the final couple of episodes? How have they aged? Now that we're at the five-year mark, think piece authors are giving their takes, and they're not in agreement.
"Five years on, the Game of Thrones ending has stood the test of time"
Writing for Metro, Robert Oliver argues that time has been kind to the ending. "Surely it’s time for even the most hardened anti-season eight stans to see that the Game of Thrones legacy isn’t tarnished, that Benioff and Weiss didn’t half-ass the finish, and that there is significant value in the story’s dramatic conclusion after all."
The idea that Benioff and Weiss shrugged off the end of Game of Thrones is another one of those narratives that doesn't hold up to even slight scrutiny. I have plenty of problems with the eighth and final season of the show, but it's the only one that took two years to produce, rather than one. And it took two years because the cast and crew were grinding to bring us record-breaking sequences like the final battle between humanity and the White Walkers, which took 11 weeks to film. I can understand not liking the result, but laziness was not the problem.
"From the very beginning, Game of Thrones was firmly anti-war and spent its time attempting to deconstruct the very concept of monarchism. Even as it strayed from – and overtook – George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire source material, it still endeavoured to critique these subjects," Oliver writers. "Why would the show then endorse these two things by having Daenerys obtain the crown through conquest? Now that would be lazy writing. Her ending was difficult to witness, but does that mean it made no sense? Call it what you want – her quest for ultimate power and revenge got the better of her. She didn’t ‘turn evil’ after being a benevolent character for so long, she was someone constantly caught between two compelling forces. And when push came to shove once her destiny was in sight, the darker of those two forces defeated the other."
I agree generally that the end of Game of Thrones kept with the ethos of the series. There were no straight-up good guys on this series, including Daenerys Targaryen. I've always thought that her homicidal run on King's Landing was a bold stroke in keeping with major twists like the execution of Ned Stark or the deaths of Robb and Catelyn Stark at the Red Wedding. In the abstract, Dany's turn works.
But I think the story fell apart in the details. Even Oliver acknowledges that the final season moved "at a speed that was much faster than the pace established in the first half of the series." Had the show slowed down and built up to Dany's heel turn, would it have gone over better, or would fans have objected to their hero breaking bad no matter what? We can't know, but I think moving more slowly would have done a lot to shore up the ending.
That said, I agree with Oliver that the ending, flawed as it is, doesn't rob the series of value. "I promise you will go back to Game of Thrones one day and I promise you’ll cool on the ending over time," he writes. "Just look at what’s happened to the Star Wars prequels, for goodness sake."
Game of Thrones should have ended like The Sopranos
The Star Wars prequel trilogy, for reference, was the Game of Thrones backlash before the Game of Thrones backlash; when The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, it was greeted with a wave of anger and confusion that was all the more impressive because it gained momentum before the widespread adoption of the modern internet. And indeed, today the movies are regarded more kindly, although they still have their detractors. I can see that happening to the Game of Thrones ending in time.
But right now, the debate continues. Joe Allen of Inverse is more critical of the ending, writing that it didn't work because it tried to provide a tidy end to a story that, by its nature, isn't designed to end, at least not in the way we usually think of it.
"[A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin] strove to tell a fantasy story in which the political realities were much more urgent and ongoing, which doesn’t necessarily merit a happy ending (or any ending at all)," Allen writes. "That’s why the first four seasons, when the world is still complex and it feels like the stakes keep growing, were so excellent, and it’s why the world started to feel smaller and smaller as the show cruised towards its conclusion. Endings almost always have to hem in the edges of a story to make them simpler."
"The only honest ending for Game of Thrones was taken more than 10 years ago by another legendary HBO show, The Sopranos, which famously concluded on an ambiguous cut to black. You never learn what happens to Tony, but you come to understand that he’ll either live to see another day or he won’t. The lack of closure was the point."
"Thrones, on the other hand, found itself winding its way toward a much more traditional conclusion after eight seasons of subverting viewers’ expectations of the fantasy genre," Allen continues. "Sure, Daenerys, one of the show’s ostensible heroes, breaks bad, but that development feels rushed, and her demise is just a speed bump in a finale that’s otherwise about leaving most of its characters in good places."
I don't think the ending was quite as traditional as Allen is making out to be; Daenerys Targaryen, a character millions of people had come to admire, flipped and torched thousands of civilians. It's baffling that her demise doesn't get an episode all to itself (it happens halfway through the series finale), but it was much more than a "speed bump." But I do like the idea of Game of Thrones ending in a way that leaves things ambiguous, acknowledging that the game will go on.
Of course, the actual ending does do that; otherwise, why would there have been so much chatter about a Jon Snow sequel show? Our characters' journeys are not over. But the ending does have a tidyness I don't think felt entirely earned. Once again, I think taking more time would have helped. For instance, the idea of Arya sailing off to parts unknown feels less like a natural next step in her journey and more an image conjured up by the producers because they wanted to end her story on an uplifting note. Maybe it would feel different if it had been built to more carefully.
So has the Game of Thrones ending stood the test of time? Apparently, the consensus is that there is no consensus. See you at the 10-year-mark.
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