AGAINST THE GRAIN: IN
DEFENSE OF GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8
By
James Champagne
PREAMBLE
Warning:
there are many spoilers for both the book and TV series in the following
article.
The
spring of 2019 saw the premiere of the eighth and final season of HBO’s wildly
popular Game of Thrones TV show, and to
say that this denouement was divisive would be putting things very mildly
indeed. One thing I noted with interest as the season unfolded was watching how both the mainstream media and a large portion of the fandom turned on the show with
an almost breathless and emotionally deranged passion that at times displayed
both a grotesque sense of hysterical entitlement and solipsistic
self-importance (though it could be argued that this critical rebellion was
slowly building up over the last few seasons). In some cases, it seemed as if nitpicky
criticisms that book fans had directed at the show over the years finally got
adopted into the mainstream discourse, who embraced them as orthodoxy. In
others, it seemed as if some people saw the finale as a betrayal of whatever
their political ideology might be (for example, the fans who felt the show
would end on a feminist note, with women ruling Westeros; incidentally, someone
at the Is Winter Coming? Forums identified as Onrack once joked that “I feel
like D&D are the only writers who get simultaneously accused of being ‘SJW
feminazis’ and MRA right wing misogynists with regularity”). Whatever the
reason may be (and in truth it can probably be chalked up to a number of
reasons), a narrative emerged where it was maintained that the general consensus was
this: that the final season of Game of
Thrones was a spectacular failure on almost all levels that nobody really
enjoyed, and very few people seemed willing to challenge this narrative,
perhaps for fears of going against the grain (what with human nature in general
being predisposed to conformism and following the popular opinion, which is not
to say that in many cases their negative reaction to the show was insincere).
But what about the opinions of those who did
enjoy the final season, and who felt that the haters “doth protest too
much?” It often seemed as if their voices and thoughts on the subject were
drowned out by the Voice of the Many (to make an allusion to System Shock 2).
The
main reason I’ve decided to write this extremely informal and not very
scholarly article (and I should stress that these are simply my opinions on the
matter, and that I don’t consider these opinions gospel truth) is to take a
closer look at some of the more common complaints/critiques concerning the
final season of Game of Thrones, and see if they stand up to scrutiny. My
qualifications for writing such a thing are modest: naturally I’ve seen every
episode of the TV show and have also read the five books that currently make up
the A Song of Ice and Fire series
(though I have not read any of the Dunk & Egg stories, or Fire and Blood for that matter), and for
many years now I’ve closely been following discussions and debates about the
book and TV series on sites such as the Westeros forums, the Is Winter Coming?
forums, the Watchers on the Wall website, and the ASOIAF Reddit page (among others), along with reading the coverage
and reviews of the show from the more mainstream news media outlets. Finally,
speaking as someone who has read a great many books (and has had a few of his
own published as well), I’m very aware of the conventions of narrative and
storytelling, and the ways in which such conventions can be both utilized and
also subverted for artistic effect.
Before
I begin, I would like to briefly go into the backstory of how I discovered the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire franchise. In 2004, I began working as a
bookseller at Barnes & Noble, and very quickly became familiar with the
various sections of the store, especially the fantasy and science fiction
section. Although these days it’s not uncommon to walk into such a bookstore
and see a whole bookcase (or more) devoted to George R.R. Martin’s books, back
around 2004-2010 he barely occupied half a shelf at the B&N I work at, and
we only had 1-2 copies at most of his books (and only the A Song of Ice and Fire books at that). But I remember how, around
2006 or 2007 or thereabouts, we always had customers coming in and asking when
the next book (A Dance with Dragons)
was going to be released. I thought to myself, this series must be pretty good if all of these people keep coming in
and asking me when the next one is coming out. Of course, as we all know,
it was finally published in July of 2011. The B&N I work at got our copies
a number of days before the actual publication date, but because it was a
“strict on sale” title legally we were forbidden to display it on the sales
floor until the actual date of publication. One of my co-workers (who was a big
fan of the series) would actually hang around in the receiving room after his
shift was done just so he could read the book before anyone else he knew, and
even though his final verdict was lukewarm (“It wasn’t worth it”), I found
myself intrigued, and began doing some research on why the series was taking so
long to finish. In early 2013 (shortly before season 3 of the TV show began
airing) I picked up a DVD copy of the first season on a whim, watched it, and
quickly became obsessed with the show and everything related to it. I read the
first book of the series not long thereafter, then spent much of the rest of
2013 alternating between reading the books and catching up on the TV show
(which I mainly watched as the DVDs were released, though around the time
season 5 began I finally broke down and signed up for HBO so I could watch them
as they aired in real-time).
One
additional note: although I generally consider myself more a fan of the TV show
than the book series (as I pretty much discovered it through the former), I
think both mediums have their own pros and cons, and that some of them do
things better than the other (and vice-versa: to give just one example, I
thought the Red Wedding was done better in the TV show, but the TV version of
Daenerys’ experiences at the House of the Undying were better executed in the
books). I remain somewhat ambivalent about how I feel about Mr. Martin as a
writer (though I should stress again that when it comes to his books I’ve only read
the five A Song of Ice and Fire books);
while I think he’s very good at creating interesting characters and obviously
has some skill at world building (though some have taken the time to point out
that Mr. Martin’s acclaimed world building skills often break down under closer
examination: see Lyman Stone’s 2016 article ‘Westeros is Poorly Designed’ for
an example of this: https://medium.com/migration-issues/westeros-is-poorly-designed-3b01cf5cdcaf),
I feel his plotting leaves much to be desired (which might explain why it has
taken him so long to finish his series), and I don’t think he’s much of a prose
stylist (certainly in regards to that latter issue I would rank him below, say,
Stephen R. Donaldson, who is one of my favorite prose writers: speaking of
which, seeing as how Mr. Martin has admitted to being a fan of Mr. Donaldson’s
work in the past, I’ve long wondered if his utilization of naming each chapter
from the POV character was inspired by Mr. Donaldson’s use of the same
technique in The Gap Cycle, which I
feel is probably one of the most underrated and sadly under-read science fiction
series of recent memory). Having said that, my interest in the book series was
more than casual: I read them very closely and even took the time to note how
many pages every character appeared in, two pages of which I've included below (for example, I can tell you that after
5 books a character like, say, Grey Worm, has thus far appeared in 24 total
pages: 8 pages in A Storm of Swords and
16 pages in A Dance with Dragons). My
issues with Mr. Martin’s writing notwithstanding, I’ll still be one of the
first people in line when (or should I say if) The Winds of Winter ever comes out, and I’m very curious to see how
the book series will both dovetail and diverge from the last few seasons of the
TV series.
The
nine issues I’ve decided to focus on are pacing issues (and the whole “they
rushed the ending” claims), trope subversion (specifically, the decision to
have Arya defeat the Night King rather than Jon Snow), Jaime Lannister’s
character arc, the accusations of “plot armor,” fast travel, the anti-climax of
the White Walkers storyline (and also the show’s approach to magic in general),
dialogue, and Euron Greyjoy (who seemed to be one of the most divisive
characters of all). For various reasons I’ve chosen not to focus on some of the
other common complaints (namely, “The Long Night episode was too dark,” Weiss
& Benioff’s “forgot about the Iron Fleet” comment, and the coffee cup
gaffe), mainly because I see those as being mostly minor quibbles. I also don’t
feel like dwelling too deeply into the controversial Austin panel of late
October 2019, mainly because I think that many of the showrunners’ comments during
it were twisted around and taken out of context, and that many media outlets
and cultural commentators jumped on this story using secondhand sources rather
than try to actually verify the facts, which just made them end up looking
foolish: I would suggest the curious consult the following post published at
the Watchers on the Wall website on October 30th, 2019 for more
information on this matter: http://watchersonthewall.com/benioff-weiss-reflect-decade-game-thrones-austin-film-festival/#more-177125.
The one BIG issue I won’t get into was whether or not Daenerys’ descent into
madness/burning of King’s Landing was properly set-up. There seem to be two
schools of thought on this matter, one being that it was improperly
foreshadowed, the other that it had been properly foreshadowed for a very long
time. Simply put, I fall into the latter camp and had no real issues with it.
Perhaps in the future I’ll elaborate on this matter, but this article is
already long enough as it is, and for space reasons I think it would be better
to not go into further detail on it for the time being. So, without further
ado:
Issue
#1: "The season was too short"/pacing issues
When
David Benioff and Dan Weiss (for brevity’s sake I’ll simply refer to them as
D&D for the rest of this essay) first conceived of the idea of adapting
George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and
Fire series (which I'll abbreviate to ASOIAF
for the remainder of these entries), they envisioned a 7 season series of 10
episodes each, totaling 70 episodes, though after season 6 they decided they
needed 13 more episodes to wrap everything up. Then for various reasons they
decided to split the final season into two parts, with 7 episodes for season 7
and 6 episodes for season 8, bringing the series to 73 episodes (which, remember,
was 3 more than originally intended). Many people complained about the
shortened final season, saying that it seemed as if the show was just in a rush
to finish. But what they often fail to take into account was that a number of
those episodes in the show's final season were dramatically longer than in prior seasons. The final
season of Game of Thrones (which I
will abbreviate to GOT for the rest
of these entries) comes to around 7 hours and 12 minutes, which is not only
close to around the same running time as season 7 (which had one more episode
than it, remember), but only 2 hours less than, say, season 2, which came to 9
hours and 9 minutes (and was a 10 episode season, in contrast to season 8's 6
episodes). So you could essentially argue that the last season was really only
around 2 hours shorter than a typical 10 episode GOT season, which, all things
considered, isn't THAT drastic of a gap, especially if you view season 7 and 8
as one big season that got split in
half for various logistical reasons (as I tend to do).
I
think part of the reason why there was such a complaint about pacing was the
long span of time that came about between the end of season 7 and the start of
season 8. My opinion (untested, mind you) is that the narrative of these 13 final
episodes will flow much better when watched consecutively once the DVDs are
out, without that long gap of waiting in the middle; ideally I almost wish that
they had just filmed the final 13 shows in one go without splitting them into 2
shortened seasons, but I can see why they might have had to (again, for sheer
logistical reasons). Anyway, when viewed as one big season, here you would have
the Long Night battle taking place on the 10th episode (of a 13 episode
season), as opposed to halfway through a 6 episode season, which I think people
would have had less of a problem with. But even looking at season 8 as an individual
season on its own merit, I don't think it was as rushed as people would have
you believe. The first episode was a typical and fairly sedate “set-up-the-pieces/get
everything in place” episode, the second show was a very slow-moving (in a good
way) and intimate one of just characters mostly talking/interacting with each
other (a bone seemingly tossed to the fans who complained there was too much
spectacle the previous season), the third show was devoted entirely to the
Winterfell battle, the fifth concerned itself solely with the battle at King's
Landing, and the last one wrapped things up. I think the only episode where you
COULD conceivably argue that the pacing was iffy was the 4th episode, where a
lot of things happened in a brief span of time (such as Jaime trying to start a
relationship with Brienne at the start of the episode and changing his mind and
deciding to go back to Cersei at the end of it). In an ideal world maybe there
should have been 2 episodes between the Winterfell battle and the King's
Landing battle, but I'm not going to get too worked up about this.
(For
the curious, I got the season run times from a chart that originally appeared
on the Watchers on the Wall website on March 15th, 2019, which I
reproduce below):
Issue
#2: Trope Subversion
When
I first began looking into the ASOIAF/GOT phenomenon, one thing I quickly
noticed was that one of the things a lot of people liked about it was that the
series seemed to avoid a lot of the standard fantasy clichés, or how it
subverted the typical fantasy tropes. Around the time of season 7, I began to
notice many of the show’s haters (and even some of the casual fans) complain
about how the show was becoming a typical cliché fantasy story about a Chosen
One (Jon Snow) involved in a battle against a supernatural evil force (the
White Walkers). Yet many of these same people were complaining in season 8 when
Arya was the one to end the White Walker threat, as they felt denied that Jon
Snow wasn’t the one to do it; incidentally, the very notion of Jon Snow
battling the Night King with the future of humanity at stake was quite possibly
the biggest fantasy cliché the show
could have possibly done, so you would think that those people who gave ASOIF/GOT props for subverting tropes and avoiding clichés would have
appreciated that D&D decided to take an unexpected path on this matter! But
such was not the case. Would it have been more emotionally satisfying to have
seen Jon Snow battle the Night King, especially given their established history together (even if that history consisted mainly of silent stare-downs)?
Well, yes. But would that also have been the most cliché stereotypical fantasy thing they
could have done? Again, yes. Having said that, since way back in season 1 the
show had begun establishing Arya’s own rivalry with the “God of Death” (even if
the decision to have Arya be the one to defeat the Night King wasn’t made until
around season 6 or thereabouts), so to have her be the one to destroy the
show’s personification of death incarnate is, in a way, also somewhat
satisfying, if on a less visceral (and more abstract/intellectual) level.
Issue
#3: Character Arcs and Redemption
One
of the more controversial aspects of the final season of GOT was what many saw as the ruination of Jaime Lannister’s
character arc. Specifically, a point of annoyance is that, while Jaime has
tried to redeem himself often over the last few seasons, he also had frequent
relapses. Now, as many of my friends know, as a Christian (of an unorthodox
stripe) I’m a sucker for a good redemption story. But I actually think there
was something a touch realistic about Jaime’s on again, off again attempts at
redemption. Because redemption is rarely a straight line: it has peaks and
valleys, like anything else, and while some succeed, just as many fail. Try as
hard as some people can, not everyone gets there in the end. By GOT’s end, we had already seen Theon get
redeemed (and, to some extent, Sandor Clegane: his passion for revenge proves
to be his undoing, but at least he’s able to steer Arya off the path that he
himself was on). I wonder if maybe a 3rd redemption arc would have been
one redemption arc too many? I think it’s fairly obvious now that Jaime is less a
redemptive character and more a tragic one: a man who wants others to see him
as honorable but is ultimately incapable of seeing the good in himself.
With
ASOIAF/GOT I see an attempt to portray a messy reality, and the trade-off
with that is that not everyone’s arc ends on a note that is satisfying (much
like real life, in that respect).
Issue
#4: Plot Armor
And
yet, while fiction may strive to emulate real-life, it is at best still an
artificial simulation of the real thing, one that must often follow the
caprices of the plot/story. In some ways I think that the “plot armor” charge
is, by far, one of the laziest critiques I’ve seen directed towards the GOT TV show, and it seems very strange
to me that that franchise seems to face that charge more than almost any other
popular franchise I can think of. In part this is most likely due to the reputation
that the book series has for its characters never being safe, and it must be
said even the TV show played up this angle in the beginning (see Arya’s line in
the second season about how “Anyone can die”). In fact, I think in some ways
the greatest sleight of hand that Mr. Martin has pulled with the books is the
notion that the major characters can die at any time, which I think is drastically
overstated. I mean, not counting the prologue/epilogue chapters, how many
prominent POV characters have actually been killed at this point? Ned, Catelyn,
Quentyn (though I'm loath to call him a major character), Jon... and in two of
those cases one (Catelyn) has already been brought back to life and the other
(Jon) will probably follow in book 6 (yes, I left Arys out of that list,
because let's be honest, he barely even qualifies). The majority of book characters who are
killed tend to run on the minor side: sometimes a prominent minor character
will be killed off (Robb Stark and Tywin come to mind), but for the most part,
in my opinion, after 5 books in the series most of the major characters are
still alive, and have faced death numerous times (Tyrion especially) yet keep
surviving. If anything (and even Mr. Martin has admitted this) the show was
much more efficient at reducing headcount.
A
brief tangent: I know this goes against conventional opinion, but I’m very glad that D&D made the decision
to cut Lady Stoneheart entirely. I felt that Mr. Martin bringing her back to
life just cheapened her death scene at the Red Wedding (even if in the process
she changed enormously in terms of personality), and found Beric Dondarrion a
far more interesting character, so I was very happy the show decided to keep
him around and develop him further. I could see the deletion of Lady Stoneheart
being a major issue had she done a lot in the story, but so far, aside from one
page at the very end of A Storm of Swords
and 5 pages in A Feast for Crows,
she’s only appeared in six pages total, and doesn’t seem to merit the massive
amount of hype that some of the fandom have bestowed upon her (though my opinion on this matter might change depending on how much or little she does in Winds). But I feel
myself getting sidetracked here so that’s all I’ll add to that topic for now.
Issue
#5: Fast Travel
One
thing that many viewers of the show complained about (starting around season 5
or thereabouts) was how it seemed as if characters were zipping around Westeros
like nobody’s business and getting where they needed to be much faster than
they used to (pretty much the opposite of the book series, especially in the
later volumes where characters can wander around endlessly and still make no
headway, though Catelyn Stark’s story jumps all over the map in the first
volume: in fact in a span of around 200 pages she bounces from Winterfell to
King’s Landing to the Eyrie). But because the show is very cagey about not
being too clear about establishing how much time has passed in-between each
scene, I think it gives itself a bit of wriggle room. Really, I’m not sure how
to placate people who complain about this “fast travel” issue. Do they want to
have montage scenes of characters trekking through the wilderness? That would
mostly be a waste of time and money, I think. Do they want characters to
acknowledge in the dialogue how much time has passed by? That might come off as
a little artificial and overly expository in feel. Maybe the show should have
just gone the Indiana Jones route and showed a map with a line indicating route
of travel!
One
important thing to keep in mind is that in the early seasons, when you had
characters spread out all over the maps and storylines that sometimes were not
even featured in certain episodes, it naturally created the illusion in the viewer's mind that it
was taking characters a very long time to get from point A to point B. In later
seasons, when the characters and storylines began merging together and there
was less space in-between their scenes, this illusion just as naturally
vanished, which might have made it seem that characters were getting to where
they needed to be much faster than they actually were (and again, because very
rarely does the show actually say how much time has elapsed from scene to
scene, there’s plausible deniability). Some people have complained that in the
final season it almost seemed as if Westeros was reduced to Winterfell, King’s
Landing, and Dragonstone. Well, yeah, what do you expect? Those were the
locations that all of the main characters were currently occupying, and where
all of the main action was unfolding! In any case, I think the show was a
little more explicit about showing characters traveling from point A to point B
in the early seasons because they wanted to indicate the vast sizes of the
fantasy world they were portraying, but once that had been sufficiently
established it seemed (in my opinion) needless and unnecessary to keep continuing to do so.
Issue
#6: The White Walkers (and the series’ handling of magic in general)
Before
I begin going into this issue, I would like to briefly quote Mr. Martin
himself:
“Much
as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on
me, and his Lord of the Rings is the
mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of
modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord,
and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in
Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a
cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are
the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And
also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys.
It
is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think
the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts.
We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful
good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me,
that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve
said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure
paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as
someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that, and
that’s the interesting thing. In the case of war, that kind of situation, so I
think some of that is definitely what I’m aiming at.” – GRRM
One
thing that I think the show did much better than the books was establish the
White Walkers as a serious threat (whereas with the books you can almost
literally count on one hand the number of pages they actually appear in, pretty
much one scene at the very start of book one and another short scene in A Storm of Swords). Many viewers of the
final season of GOT found the
resolution of the White Walkers threat to be one big anti-climax (though the
absurdist in me kind of finds it funny that the White Walkers had thousands of
years to plan their conquest over all life and once they’re finally past the
Wall they’re essentially wiped out in a matter of days). I’m not actually
convinced that in the books they’ll be a greater threat (especially in light of
that GRRM quote posted at the start of this entry). I saw someone online
predict that the White Walker threat (or Others if you prefer) might even be
resolved in The Winds of Winter, and
I think that’s a real possibility: in any event I think odds are very good that
the White Walkers will meet their end at Winterfell in the books as well (other
people have noted the obvious symbolism of the name “Winterfell”), though the manner of
that defeat will obviously be quite different (especially seeing as how at this
stage the books have yet to even introduce a character equivalent to the show’s
Night King).
Another
complaint in regards to the White Walkers is that a lot of people were
frustrated that their motivations were never elaborated upon (despite the fact
that in season 6 we clearly see that they’re nothing more than an artificial race created
by the Children of the Forest as a weapon to destroy humankind). But I think
this is partly because the prequel currently being developed by HBO will
possibly elaborate on this issue in greater detail (though seeing as this
prequel, entitled Bloodmoon, was
cancelled by HBO since I first typed the following sentence, this is no longer
an issue), but also possibly because maybe there just really isn’t all that
much depth to the White Walkers as some people may assume. And again, I’m not
convinced that the books will go into great detail about the origin/motivations
of the White Walkers either. I think this line of thought can even be extended
to the series treatment of magic in general. I know that some people found
D&D’s treatment of the magical elements of the series as vague and not very
fleshed out, but again I think this is keeping in line with the books, and it
might be useful to quote Mr. Martin on the subject again: “Fantasy needs magic
in it, but I try to control the magic very strictly. You can have too much
magic in fantasy very easily, and then it overwhelms everything and you lose
all sense of realism. And I try to keep the magic magical — something
mysterious and dark and dangerous, and something never completely understood. I
don’t want to go down the route of having magic schools and classes where, if
you say these six words, something will reliably happen. Magic doesn’t work
that way. Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. And
perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand. It should have
a sense of peril about it.”
Mr.
Martin obviously isn’t too stressed out about the nuts and bolts of how magic works in his world, and
most of his readers don’t bat an eye: yet D&D take the same approach and
people complain they’re too vague on the subject! It never fails to amaze me
that there is a certain category of fantasy fans who, despite constantly
reading/watching/consuming fictional constructs that take place in fantastical
worlds of mystery and magic and imagination, have an almost stolid obsession
with dreary reality: all dots must be connected, everything most make logical
sense, all things must be explained to death.
Issue
#7: Loose Ends
This is a quick one. I
know some people have complained about this as well, but I actually think that
having some loose ends can be a good thing. One of the reasons why the TV show Twin Peaks has enjoyed such longevity is
partly, I feel, because of the loose
ends, and how some of the storylines didn’t have much in the way of closure (or
providing answers). It gives people something to talk, speculate and theorize
about after the show’s long done, thus extending the show’s shelf life in a
way. When GOT ended there were still
a number of loose ends, mainly for some of the minor characters (Quaithe, Salladhor
Saan, Daario, Illyrio Mopatis, the Faceless Men, whatever happened to Howland
Reed, and so on), but what the hell, as stated above you want to leave the fans
some things to conjecture and theorize about (and let’s face it, if there’s one thing ASOIAF fans enjoy doing, it’s
conjecturing and theorizing).
Issue
#8: Dialogue
Many viewers/fans took issue with the writing of the show as it progressed,
especially in the last two seasons. And while I think they’re not entirely
wrong on this matter, at the same time I don’t view Mr. Martin himself as some sort of wizard
when it comes to writing good dialogue (I know book fans like to point to the “Broken
Men” speech in Feast for Crows, but I
personally feel the fandom overrates it: it’s not bad, but is mostly just a
flowery speech that can be reduced to “war is bad”). In an ideal world all of
Tyrion’s dialogue should have been specifically written by Richard Curtis and
Ben Elton (of Blackadder fame), but
of course, we hardly live in an ideal world. While I wouldn’t call D&D the
best writers, I hardly think they’re the terrible writers that some people in
the fandom have attempted to portray them as, and they have their moments; most
people like to point to that scene between Cersei and Robert Baratheon in
season 1(and with good reason), but I would also say that I really liked the
very long scene between Jon Snow and Tyrion that takes place in the series
finale, in which Tyrion tries to convince Jon Snow to kill Daenerys... in fact
I would even say that that scene probably ranks in my top ten as far as
favorite scenes in the series goes.
Issue
#9: Euron Greyjoy
The
portrayal of Euron Greyjoy on the show was divisive, to say the least. This is
one issue where I actually side with the complainers (for the most part). While
I think Book Euron is a little overrated thus far (he hasn’t done nearly enough
yet to justify the hype he receives: not counting that Winds of Winter sample chapter he’s only appeared in one book, and
in a mere 14 pages at that), speaking as a lover of all things Lovecraft I do
wish they had incorporated some of the mystical aspects of his character into
the show. I think the big problem with his character (in regards to the TV
show) was that he simply was written too late into the show to really make a
huge impact. He really should have been introduced in season 5 at the earliest:
I get the impression that when approaching season 5 D&D had the choice of
adapting either the Dorne or the Ironborn storylines for the show, with the
intention to ignore the one they didn’t pick, but after the poor reception of
the Dorne storyline in season 5 they seemed to decide to scrap it entirely at
the start of season 6 and shoehorn the Ironborn storyline in its place, which
was, to put things mildly, not very elegant. I don’t think that Show Euron is a
total failure (he does have some
elements of the “Magnificent Bastard” trope in his persona), and I found it
interesting how he tailored his personality to whomever he was interacting
with. I just wish they had introduced him sooner and given him a bit more
depth.
Conclusions
I’ll
be one of the first to state that the final season of GOT had its flaws (though I would most likely rank “The Bells” as
one of my top ten favorite episodes, and quite enjoyed the final episode as
well, which I found thematically satisfying), and there were certain issues and complaints I did have with it.
Certainly Cersei Lannister’s final fate was a bit of a disappointment, though
it could be argued that after 8 seasons of her doing horrible things, the
greatest punishment the show could deliver to her would be a boring and mundane death,
rather than honoring/rewarding her with a dramatic death befitting her stature.
Certainly Conleth Hill’s disappointment that not only was he not able to share
a final scene with Littlefinger, but also not even be shown responding to the
news of Littlefinger’s demise, is a complaint that has merit. And I do feel
that, post season 6, Bran Stark’s visions were vastly underused (I remember
being fascinated by the one tantalizing glimpse we received of the Mad King in
one of his visions back in season 6, and I was very much hoping that at some
point we would have gotten a longer vision featuring that character). There
were things that, if I had been writing the story, I would probably have done
differently. But that’s really not super-important, because at the end of the day
it wasn’t my story to tell, and I was just going along for the ride. I think
one of the problems that the TV show had (and the book series has even worse) is
that it suffered from an overload of theories. There has been a huge amount of
conjecturing and theorizing at work for both the book series and the TV show
over the years, and it seems some people became so obsessed with their own pet
theories that, when the story was all said and done and said pet theories were
not validated, this might explain some of the backlash. What’s not often stated
is that a LOT of these theories, IMO, are either laughably convoluted or not
nearly as clever as their primogenitors believe them to be (although I will
admit that I liked the show theory that Littlefinger faked his death and was
100% convinced this would bear fruit). My own theory about the last scene
(going into the last season) was that the show would end with Varys and
Littlefinger reuniting in Braavos, congratulating each other on a game well
played, followed by making plans to start a new game in motion. Obviously, this
did not come to pass!
In
all of the noise generated by the people who found a seemingly endless amount
of flaws in the last season, I feel it only fitting to end this piece with some
of the scenes and moments that I myself most enjoyed. There was the scene where
the last members of the Night's Watch came across the remains of Lord Umber at
Last Hearth, which was one of the more atmospheric and horrific moments in a
series that has had many such moments. That prostitute that flirts with Qyburn
(yeah, I’m a huge Qyburn fan). Jaime knighting Brienne in “A Knight of the
Seven Kingdoms” (also, the scene where Tyrion gives Podrick a conspiratorial
grin while filling his tankard with alcohol, and the face that Podrick makes in
response: I went into the last season 100% certain that Podrick would be
killed, and I barely even cared all that much, but after that scene listed
above I suddenly found myself desperately wanting him to make it). “The Long
Night” had some great bits: Melisandre using her magic to ignite the trench,
the aerial battle between the three dragons, Beric’s heroic sacrifice (steeped in faux-Christian symbolism), and, even more moving, Theon’s last
stand (my one regret is that he didn’t live long enough to see Arya save Bran
from the Night King). The mass funeral at the beginning of “The Last of the
Starks.” Varys’ execution at the start of “The Bells” (I especially loved the
shot of Drogon emerging from the darkness, and I think it’s probably the most
terrifying he ever comes across in the series). The epic battle between Sandor Clegane and
his brother. The iconic scene where Drogon destroys the Iron Throne. These are
just some of the scenes and images I emotionally responded to, and which I
suspect will stick with me for a long time to come...
One
last thing: speaking on behalf of all of the Bran Stark fans out there who
enjoyed seeing him crowned king, I would just like to say to all of the people
who dreamed of the show ending with Daenerys and Jon Snow ruling the Seven
Kingdoms, either individually or collectively as a married couple: nyah nyah nyah!
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