Response To Final Season & Finale.

Published May 22, 2019 · Updated July 6, 2022

Gents,

First off, thanks for all the amazing content. You’ve provided hours upon hours of entertainment for me during my commutes and downtime at work, I thank you for that! I can’t wait for more Shat the Movies and the Westworld coverage in 2020.

Secondly, while I won’t be submitting how I’d write the final season, I’m not the best writer… you’re soon to find out. But if D&D knew for a while that the final season was going to be 6 episodes they would have been best served by having the “long night/battle of Winterfell” to be the season 7 finale. That would have addressed the concerns many had with both season 7, but specifically season 8. 6 Episodes would have been plenty to cover the battle of kings landing and the aftermath.

Now I’d like to dive into just a few things that truly bothered me about this final season, and some of it may have been talked about in other episodes, so feel free to pick and choose anything you want to use below, if anything at all. But here we go…

• Bran did NOT set this in motion, and if he did, the execution of it was as lazy and botched as you possibly could have done. Many people out there, and I think Big D hinted at it, believe Bran set everything up to go this way in the finale. The entire comment to Jon of “you are where you were meant to be” as some sort of “wink-wink nod- nod” look I did this. The “why do you think I came all this way.” That’s crap, and here is why.

• If this were to be some intentional master play by Bran, something would have been shown as to how he was LITERALLY influencing the path with his powers. Not saying we needed a full play-by-play, but a Hodor like a scene that showed him influencing the trajectory of the future story would HAVE to have been shown. Outside of his vague comments, there is nothing to support this assumption. The Jon parents stuff doesn’t apply, that’s low hanging fruit to use. This show has been smarter and more intelligent than this to simply use that as the “play.” You simply don’t leave a brilliant stroke like this if intentional, to the minds of the viewers.

• Jon Snow a prisoner… Did someone see? Did he confess? How did this happen, why were we not given this as viewers? Sure we can surmise that Jon being the “honorable/noble” man he is would have confessed, but no one was there to witness. It’s made pretty clear that the ONLY people in the throne room or around it are Dany, Jon, and Drogon outside. Considering the evidence is gone, Drogon is gone, Jon could simply waltz out of there with zero culpability. So unless the unsullied have some sort of CSI level DNA testing and technology, they really ruined an incredibly meaningful and important scene. The fact Dany had NO GUARDS with her is absurd btw, absolutely insane.

• Greyworm… Friggin Greyworm is given an opinion/voice in Jon’s fate? What a laughable thing to have in your finale. So ultimately Jon’s ending hinged entirely on Greyworm’s loyalty to Dany and her as a ruler. So the R+L=J just becomes worthless because greyworm is a man of duty and swore to Dany and is getting his vengeance on her behalf.

• The rules changed, and not for the better. What this show has done best was it didn’t follow your common gimmicks many other movies or stories generally have done. In the last two seasons alone there have been far too many “key character saves,” or as I’d like to call them “Glenn’s Dumpster Dive.” Things done to conveniently set things up down the road.

• Jamie at the battle of the loot train, come on. Yeah just ride head on to Dany and Drogon, only for Bronn to save him at the last moment and they swam in armor hundreds of feet away in plated armor.

• The entire Long Night battle and how we were expecting a character bloodbath, we only saw 1 KEY character actually die, Jorah! We were teased for seasons the power and ability of the night king, only for him to be taken down by a FAN FAVORITE character who only has been training for a couple seasons. Not even a cool kill, showing off her faceless man ability, just that little knife flip/drop… Oh cool you surprised Brienne with that trick, not sure how she pulled anything off on a supernatural power who can hurl ice spears a couple hundred yards to deliver a kill shot to a dragon. Not many shots, SIMPLY ONE. But no, Ayra jumping and dropping the dagger was too much for him to handle!

• Euron/Jamie fight. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

• The red keep that crumbled on Jamie/Cersei just happened to fall on them at the absolute wrong spot. Virtually everywhere else in that basement level was fine. So much of this last minute, timely save stuff ruined expectations. In fact, it caused this show to make this final season entirely predictable. There have been FAR too many “convenient things” to happen to allow a story to be moved along.

The vast skills and abilities shown by our “key players” throughout this series were tabled the entire final season. We were left to simply imagine, Arya used some sort of faceless man trick/ability to put herself in position to strike the NK. We are simply left to imagine Bran using his abilities to change this, move this here, do that, to become king. While I love this series, and with everything considered I enjoyed the season. It’s just the weakest ending you could have done for a series that has pretty much been great since day 1.

At the time, I thought the Sopranos ending being one of the biggest let downs ever, and that was because I was so emotionally invested in the characters/show. After all these years, upon rewatch I find that ending to be perfect and absolutely fitting for that show. I do not see this GOT ending being something that grows into the lore of how good the show was, I see it as quite the opposite.

My overall rating… Seasons 1-6: 9.5/10. Season 7: 8.0, Season 8: 6.0. I can’t even give an aggregate on this, the final two seasons felt like an entirely different show and experience from the first 6.

Sorry for the ramble and poor writing, I’m a talker!

Stevie Alf

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