Ending a television show as monumental as Game of Thrones after 9 years of world building isn’t easy. In its early years it took on a life of its own, drawing in a surprisingly large audience despite its complex plotlines and dwindling interest in the fantasy genre. The story often felt brutally random at times, killing off main characters in the blink of an eye and letting each plot thread weave in and around others until a web of subplots were formed. We knew at some point this web would need to eventually coalesce into a single unit, and its sheer magnitude would have to at least equal the sum of its parts. This isn’t an easy task for any writer, but it would be particularly difficult for writers who might decide to impose unnecessary restrictions on themselves – in this case, choosing to wrap up the final season in 6 episodes rather than the traditional 10.
Before I get any further into negative criticism of season 8, it’s important to say that I enjoyed it on the whole. There was a lot to like about it after all – the acting, the cinematography, the editing, and the production design just to name a few. Every positive can be attributed to a separate production department. But when it comes down to the shortcomings of season 8, their roots can mostly be traced back to a single, inescapable flaw. The six-episode run was not nearly enough to tie up a story with such a grand scale, and as a result most plotlines were dropped, rushed, or condensed.
The other issue that may or may not be related to the rushed writing is the continued separation of the show’s two biggest parallel plots – the fight for the Iron Throne, and the battle against the army of the dead. Before this season began I was sure we would be seeing these stories collide in unexpected ways, but what we got was essentially two plot threads that barely intertwined, and ended completely separate from each other. Though I’m fairly content with the individual endpoints for both of these stories, I can’t help but question the point of the White Walkers if they barely ended up having an impact on the broader political situation.
Another way to look at Game of Thrones is as a chess match. The opening and middlegame are always the most exciting, because these are when risks are taken and strategies unfold. When we finally get to the endgame, we pretty much know which way it’s going to go. It’s still satisfying to see how everything has built to this point, but the tension is mostly gone – we pretty much know how things are going to end up. This doesn’t excuse Benioff and Weiss for substandard writing, but it is important to understand that the chances of getting an ending that both surprises us and meets our expectations was always incredibly low.
Writing aside, almost everything else about this season was pretty spectacular. The direction in episodes like ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’, ‘The Long Night’ and ‘The Bells’ stood out as some of the best in recent years, with perfectly paced editing adding extra layers of meaning and suspense to several scenes. Cleganebowl is a great example of this, as we see what could have been a simple fight between two brothers turn into an allegory for the city of King’s Landing being torn apart by red-hot anger and a desire for vengeance. In the end neither wins, and all that is achieved is the mutual destruction of two equally corrupt forces.
The unrelenting animosity that has been directed at Game of Thrones this year is unfortunate, but not at all surprising given the uprisings in certain fan bases these past few years. Even though Benioff and Weiss delivered a consistently good adaptation of the A Song of Ice and Fire series in earlier seasons, this seems to be forgotten by those who protest their involvement in future Star Wars projects. I would hate for my best creative accomplishments be forgotten while my worst is remembered as an indicator of my capabilities, so I am sympathetic to both writers who have suffered an unnecessary amount of vitriol. Game of Thrones season 8 wasn’t the ending that a lot of people were hoping for, but that’s okay. Just because it didn’t meet our expectations doesn’t mean it’s the worst thing ever. It is entirely possible for something to be both disappointing and a decent piece of television, and for me this season of Game of Thrones is exactly that.
