Game of Thrones' Final Season: The Verdict

by Douglas James

Game of Thrones Season 8 has finally finished, rounding off the epic fantasy series that has gained both a cult following and a strong public audience since Season 1 in 2011. And it’s the most controversial season yet, with the lowest score on IMDb for every episode than any other season. So… what did I think about it?

Episode 1 opened with a march towards Winterfell by the Queen, mirroring the arrival of Robert Baratheon in the first episode of season 1. This time, there was a colder, more rushed tone, demonstrating the lack of respect that the North has for Dany, building up for her later breakdown in episodes 4 and 5. Anyway, this isn’t an analysis. The first episode of the season was certainly nothing special. The moment where Jon rode the dragon seemed to fall a little flat at first, probably because of the less awesome tone in comparison to Dany’s first dragon ride - although the subsequent sequence and soundtrack to accompany kept it up as a relatively satisfying moment. The episode was designed to introduce the audience to the season and set up the conflicts ahead - which it certainly did well, especially with the reveal at the end of the episode in which Sam tells Jon who he really is; this was very well executed, with both actors and characters getting a chance to shine.

Episode 2 was my favourite non-action episode in the season, and maybe in the series as a whole. The introduction of Jaime to many of our other characters, backed up by Brienne, was a wonderful character moment to start it off. But throughout the rest of the episode, aside from a bit of drama surrounding Dany, the character moments that writer Bryan Cogman produced were beautiful. It perfectly set up the battle to come and you could really sense that all these characters really believed it could be their last night. The balance between incredibly tense inevitability and these wonderful moments for our characters was beautiful; it was brilliantly well done from all corners: the writing, acting, cinematography, soundtrack… I could go on.

Episode 3. To have 90 minutes of pure battle, and to keep that interesting throughout is a real challenge for the cast and crew - and I think this episode rose to the challenge amazingly. Miguel Sapochnik, a man who sounds suspiciously like Kit Harrington, was brought back to direct this episode and Episode 5 after his superb direction of Hardhome, The Battle of the Bastards and the season 6 finale The Winds of Winter. I think the first ten minutes of this episode were my favourite: the amazing moments as the castle and army tense up to fight the army of the dead, Melisandre returning to bring the Lord of Light’s champion to victory and to light the arakhs of the Dothraki, all of it. There were some amazing moments within the episode too, both action-focused and character- focused, and the last ten minutes were beyond what I could have hoped for in the realm of soundtrack - a piece to top Light of the Seven. The Night King is a beautiful piece and I strongly recommend all who haven’t already listened to it on its own to do so. I feel like I do have to talk about the death of the Night King, though. Arya certainly has been hinted at in the last couple of seasons, and D&D were able to ret-con a couple of the earlier seasons to fit her being the one to end the darkness. However, as much as I don’t like the expected, I think Jon should have been the one to kill the Night King. Now, I hate it when I hear people talking about how much they would have preferred this ending or this death for this character, as it’s not their show. But Jon’s character story has seemingly led up to this from season 1, and to build up all of that, with all the stare-offs between him and the Night King, and to not have him deal the finishing blow was a tad unsatisfying, and seems to neglect significant parts of the Azor Ahai prophecy. However, like I said, it’s not my show and I thought it was well executed anyway. I think this episode was my favourite of the season, as it was so incredibly intense throughout and some of the soundtrack pieces to come out of it were magnificent. Anyway, moving on.

Episode 4 started off very strong, the celebrations that followed the Battle of Winterfell containing yet more awesome character moments. The funeral scene was beautiful, as we saw what many of our characters had lost during the battle. The feast afterwards was equally well done - filming that kind of scene with that many shots driven from just glances between characters is ridiculously tricky. The rest of the episode, I thought, was relatively OK. Bronn’s complete lack of emotion towards Jaime and Tyrion seemed to be out of character, but, hey, D&D were forced to make him a larger part of the storyline because he’s such a popular character (networks do that sometimes) so I suppose, with that in mind, it’s not too bad. The main ‘conflict’ parts of the episode however, were the deaths of Rhaegal and Missandei. The elephant in the room here is, of course, the ability of Euron Greyjoy to shoot a dragon with not one, not two, but three scorpion bolts (which is ridiculous within itself) and then never hit anything ever again. And yes, while it did allow this moment to be, probably, the most shocking in the season, it would have been more consistent to land the dragon first before shooting it. As for Dany’s quick descent into madness, I felt it was handled relatively well throughout the episode, triggered by the death of Jorah and the escalating feeling of loneliness; Jon is probably the only person she has left. Grey Worm’s loyal to her for sure, but she’s never been really friends with him. The fear of being alone, and that terrible, horrible feeling that flows alongside, was, to me, a completely believable motivator to let loose.

Episode 5 was promised as an epic battle between Dany and Cersei, Targaryen and Lannister, a chance for the Starks to finally avenge the evils committed against their House since Season 1. Instead, with a (nearly) fully-grown dragon on the field, it was a slaughter - even before the systematic extermination of King’s Landing had begun. And that’s fair enough. Like I said earlier, having Rhaegal die while on the ground would have made his death more believable; having him die here to really trigger Dany’s rampage maybe would have been the better decision. But a dragon is supposed to be a basic win for the side that has it; the only wars since Aegon’s Conquest which were an even fight were either those where both sides or neither side had a dragon - or the Dornish Wars where they just hid in caves. And, purely from a visual perspective, it was certainly satisfying to see the damage a dragon could do on a city. As for the big moment of the episode… well it cannot be said (although many have) that this hasn’t been building up. All the way back in Season 1 we can see Dany eerily watch as her brother and only real companion for her entire life dies screaming as molten gold is poured over his head. To burn a city to the ground is the most characteristic thing for her to do in this situation and something that she has explicitly threatened to do previously. Just one example is from Season 6, where she says she will burn Yunkai and Astapor to the ground only to be desperately counseled into restraint by Tyrion, whom she still listens to at that point. My favourite part of this episode was probably the completion of Arya’s arc. Many were disappointed by the fact that she didn’t kill Dany in the next episode, but I feel like this arc was the best Arya could have hoped for, ending it with Sandor, a character to whom she’d been linked since she put him on her list; her revenge quest was put to rest in a satisfying way. Sandor was right when he said that, if she completed her goal, she would be a wrecked character for the rest of her life; by rejecting that outcome and by mounting a the pale horse (symbolising death), Arya finally rids herself of her revenge quest. It was a beautiful character moment for both.

Episode 6, the final episode of Game of Thrones, had a lot to do. It had to find some way of getting rid of Dany; having her on the throne (even ignoring the fact she was justifying to herself murdering a city) would create too many divisions throughout Westeros to be a satisfying ending. It either had to find a way to make Jon king or justify a way for him not to be. It had to find a new monarch or a new way of ruling Westeros. And on top of that, it had to make sure we knew where our characters ended up - most importantly the Starks of course. I think it achieved this relatively well. Dany’s death was all right, but it was Drogon’s reaction and the accompanying soundtrack which made it one of the most emotional moments of the season. Jon obviously couldn’t be chosen as king, as he was the reason everyone was so divided, and the Starks all had their desired endings. The choosing of Bran as king makes the most sense for a number of reasons - Tyrion explained some of them relatively well and the rest are obvious. I am slightly disappointed by Jon’s ending, but only from a very subjective, personal point of view, as he was my favourite character and I wanted him to be a god. Even with the peaceful resolutions, one can still imagine that Westeros will not be the most peaceful place forever, as the lords electing a king is a ridiculous change from before, and will probably lead to chaos at some point. It was of course nice to see Jon pat Ghost after the sad (and pat-less) farewell in episode 4 which D&D probably knew would foster the amount of complaints that it did, particularly from readers of George RR Martin's books.

My verdict

I can’t really summarise the season as a whole without addressing the controversy that has surrounded it. David Benioff and Dan Weiss (or D&D as I’ve been calling them) have been targeted by much of the irritated fanbase; I’ve seen so much hate directed at them it’s been rather appalling. Instead of giving any proper criticism, many have simply launched a torrent of personal abuse at them, dismissing their writing skill and calling them lazy or greedy (and those are the nicest things I’ve seen). It’s similar to the abuse received by Kelly Marie Tran and Rian Johnson after Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I won’t go any more into this, although I could probably write an article double this length detailing the immorality of this kind of behaviour towards the two people who brought fans what 'used to be’ their favourite TV show.

So what about actual criticism - as opposed to nonsensical abuse? It seems, to me, that people complaining about Dany's character have chosen to forget that, throughout all eight series, she has always acted emotionally, whether that was a good or bad thing. To me, Tyrion’s constant mistake-making, in this final series, was a little frustrating at times, however; as Peter Dinklage has said, you would have thought that he, of all people, would have noticed they were hiding from the Dead in a place surrounded by dead people (the Stark vault). Another issue was the the surprising number of character-survivals in Episode 3. I’m totally fine with them surviving - many die later on in more character important moments, but perhaps don’t put them in such an unsurvivable situation.

However, in the great scheme of things, these are tiny complains in all seriousness - and I could make bigger ones about earlier seasons, if I was being picky. Oh, and I almost forgot - the coffee cup. An admittedly embarrassing situation, for sure, but accidents do happen unfortunately. This did, of course, add more fire to the blaze, giving people new reasons to hate Season 8. And there was also a screenshot of a water bottle next to Sam in the Bran-is-chosen-as-king scene, but I’ve looked through footage and I believe this is fake. Which is annoying as so many news sites have reported it as true. There’s also the complaint that I’ve seen too much of - that they reused footage for Jon petting Ghost at the end of the final episode, but this too is fake. News sites again latched onto this without bothering to check themselves. Disappointing, but not unpredictable.

The most common complaint that I’ve seen agreed by many people is that Season 8, and to an extent Season 7, was rushed. They were shorter than the average season, and had a lot more to fit in, and some of the moments didn’t feel as built up to in as much narrative depth as before. A good example to use is The Long Night. Not just the episode, but the event itself, the invasion of the Night King. The last Long Night, thousands of years ago, lasted for years, but this one lasted… a maximum of a couple of weeks? It did seem such a quick finish to what has been an underlying storyline with so much importance in just one episode. I have to say, the episode was rather good though. The battle itself, and the build-up to it, let you really feel like this was a struggle to save the world, with the Dothraki horde and the Unsullied from Essos, Northmen, Knights of the Vale, a Lannister, dragons, Targaryens, a (future) Baratheon, the Night’s Watch, Wildlings, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and more, all coming together to defeat the Army of the Dead. Cinematically, as I have said before, the episode was amazing. In order to build the tension to its maximum, then, the living continued to lose right up until the last moment when Arya stabbed the Night King, leading to it being over within a couple of seconds. While it would have been cool to have a multi-episode battle, or for the White Walker conflict to have been prolonged (I admit I did want to see more White Walker duels between Valyrian steel sword wielders), there were only three more episodes left to settle what Game of Thrones has always been about - the human conflict. To end on the Night King would have been rather disappointing, as Thrones has always championed deep, human conflict, with heroes and villains on both sides of a war. But even that seemed rushed, leaving behind the grittily, slow paced, realistic Game of Thrones feel that we’ve all grown to love over previous series. It meant that some characters, perhaps most prominently Euron Greyjoy, weren’t really developed enough. I’ve seen lots of complaints about Euron being such a uninteresting character, but in reality I think he just wasn’t developed enough. We had a sizable chunk of a season just to work out who Ramsay was, and far, far more screen time to delve into the mind and character of this psychopath.

So I would agree that the ‘rushed’ nature of Season 8 is the most convincing point of criticism. It felt more shallow than other seasons, and I believe a 10-episode season would have been better, for both Seasons 7 and 8. Maybe even another season or two could have increased the quality. So, as people so often do, we have to find someone to blame - because, let’s be honest, no one is going to be happy until some poor bloke, or group of people, is strung up from Winterfell’s walls and flayed by Iwan Rheon. At first, it did indeed seem like the most likely candidates were David and Dan, that they had done a great job of writing the series but that they should have extended it out a bit further as George R.R. Martin asked, resulting in a series of higher quality. However, after watching the HBO documentary, The Last Watch, which detailed the production process of Season 8, I understood the real reason behind its shortened nature: Game of Thrones just got too big. It started to become abundantly clear that the production team could not carry on Game of Thrones and certainly could not make it any longer. The task they had was monumental: to make something of feature-film quality, and sometimes length, six times, and with a far, far smaller budget, and far, far shorter time frame, than your average Hollywood blockbuster. The fact that they accomplished what they did is honestly incredible - so much work goes on in production that you couldn’t possibly imagine without watching the behind-the-scenes footage. It’s a horrible truth - not least for those who really, really do want someone to blame. Season 8 in itself was a miracle, and there could be no more. All of the suggestions that I’ve seen for how it could have improved would have required more episode time (or cutting off other points - these people really don’t think their ideas through), which, as we now know, couldn’t have happened. Actually, most of the suggestions that I have seen are just plain stupid. When one person decides the screenwriter did a bad job, suddenly everyone’s a screenwriter. I would recommend The Last Watch, by the way, to those who haven’t seen it: it’s incredibly interesting and you get to see the emotions of the cast and crew at a high and truly realise what this meant to them.

So, yes, there were some improvements that could have been made in the writing to better respect the earlier seasons: Rhaegal maybe dying at King’s Landing, Jon killing the Night King instead of Dany (but let’s be honest he couldn’t have done both and it was more emotional that way). Maybe Emilia Clarke shouldn’t have taken her coffee on set so much. But I thoroughly enjoyed Season 8, and it was unarguably brilliant television. It just lacked the depth of previous Game of Thrones series at times, and, as we’ve found, the reasoning for that is basically unsolvable.

I’ve certainly enjoyed doing my articles on Game of Thrones in the magazine over the years, but I’ve enjoyed watching the show even more. There are so many aspects of the show that I could not fault at all, and, even though some of the more shocking moments were spoiled, I enjoyed watching them play out. Oberyn’s death wasn’t spoiled for me though. Jesus. That had me. Anyway, Thrones has genuinely had an impact on me; the quality of the writing and acting has inspired me to take on new tasks in the future, the questions it’s raised have been interesting to deal with, and it’s also increased my historical interest by making me research some of the inspirations for events and characters.

I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed writing for the Portsmouth Point blog, the magazine, and being on the Senior Editor team. I know it all sounds terribly cliche but it has been great fun. This will be last Portsmouth Point blog article, certainly as a student.

So, like everyone else who’s done anything related to Game of Thrones, now my watch has ended.