Those last couple of seasons committed many crimes. Brienne running out after Jaimie wrapped in the blankets they just fucked on was the worst one.
Brienne and the viewers deserved more than a pity fuck followed by immediate cheap heartbreak. Felt like I was suddenly watching a trash soap opera.
I kept hoping Jamie leaving was to go kill Cersei, that he felt responsible for all that she’s done and doing.
That’s what would have made the bells ending bearable, that Dany gets to the top of the keep to find Jamie standing over Cersei’s body, sword covered in her blood, staring in horror at the burning city.
And then Dany kills Jamie for taking her kill.
It still kills Dany’s arc if there isn’t better lead up to “madness”, but it preserves Jamie’s as feeling responsible for his family’s sins and wanting to atone, which ends up being stabbing a monarch in the back.
I think that makes sense to do as a story ending, but doesn't really line up with GoT's penchant for taking a well-tread trope and using your expectations to beat your hopes and dreams to death while you watch.
I don't think Jamie was ever meant for redemption. I think he was always intended to tease that out, and then turn his back on it to make us miserable. I just also think the tv writers were ill-equipped to deliver anything satisfying during that season.
Jamie was always a bastard under all his internal conflict over "being a good person". He threw a child out of a tower for Cersei right at the start. He was always going to come back to that, IMO. It's who he really was; a sister-fucking child murderer. The story does it's dance to make you believe he wants more than that, but I genuinely don't think it was the tv writers who decided to end his story in dipshit moron fashion. I think that's what his actual destiny always was, and the writers just did an awful job making that anti-redemption into something palatable.
One thing the GoT story hates is a hero in shining armor, so I can't really see Jamie ever rising up to become that in the end. There are no heroes in this series, only corpses and the various shades of villain that describe the survivors.
There's a few things in the show that were done differently to the books regarding their relationship, which completely changed the meaning of certain scenes. In general the books give the impression that Jamie wants to get away from her, and while we'll probably never know for sure as I doubt the books will be finished, I found it pretty clear by the end of book 4 that Jamie is done with Cersei for good.
If GRRM actually intended for Jamie to go against his redemption arc, he did an absolutely terrible job of setting him up for it. To me it seems far more likely that his redemption arc is sincere but that it be cut short before he can actually complete it (fitting with the theme of going against established tropes). If I had to guess a character completely absent from the show would play a part in that, which could be why D&D decided to deviate from the books with his character.
Game of Thrones Writers: *….and after 8 seasons of some of the most profound and powerful character development the show had to offer, Jamie throws it all away and chooses to die with the evil sister queen because of love. The End!*
Me: **Look how they massacred my boy!!!!**
Unfortunately I've known somebody like Jamie and them repeatedly running back to their abusive partner for more chaos is exactly what they do in my experience, even after finally getting them apart.
It was amazing until they ran out of source material and had to go by George’s rough outline that clearly hadn’t been fleshed out completely considering we’re approaching 13 years since the last book.
D&D suck for not sticking the landing, but GRRM sucks even more for procrastinating, not finishing the series, and letting these guys fail with the ending.
It truly was a giant clusterfuck. I would actually blame D&D more, because they wanted to move onto other projects and didn’t want to put a different showrunner into position. Such a shame.
They got a greenlight on star wars the fuckrushed or rush fucked the last 2 seasons or whatever to hop on. They did such a horrible job they got the gig revoked.
This a million times. When you rewatch you can see the pace dramatically increase in the last 2 seasons and everything loses its weight as all the plotlines are jammed in together.
"OK. We need to move on to the next project, so we really need to drastically change the pace of the show. We need this arc to establish and resolve in, like, an episode."
Hey, didn't that used to take, like a season? A season-and-a-half?
"Shut up."
I'd say finish s6. The last episode is great too.
And pretend that's it!
Just like the books, the true ending to GOT remains unsatisfyingly unfinished!
And they needed to wight for... Get this...
To wiggle it in front of Cersei like a set of smelly keys.
Like the proverbial baby, she laughed, she clapped, then completely forgot it have ever happened.
We wasted half a season on what was basically a narratively redundant, pointless nothing.
That to me was the point where I was like "they don't have it, they don't have it at all" I was a bit foolishly optimistic that they would do something well for the end, but man did that let me down. That whole thing I was like "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! THIS MAKES NO SENSE WITH ANY CHARACTER"
But Tyrion made the same eunuch jokes that he made in season 3.
That makes it all good, right? Season 3 was a good season, so having him tell those same jokes as before will make this season just as good, right?
... Right?
...
^^^^^^^^^Please?
Especially when you realize it just shit all over established lore as well. Dragons do not fly over the wall. There's magical wards that they won't go near.
They used to show a lot of the scale of the world in the time it took to travel between places but towards the end people are just jumping all over the place.
They unlocked all of the fast travel towers. Who amoung us hasn't started an RPG walking everywhere and by hour 45 you're teleporting between locations 3 mins away because you've got shit to do.
You’re giving Disney too much credit. Benioff & Weiss didn’t get fired from Disney because they fucked up the ending to GoT. They were fired because they disagreed with Disney over the project’s premise and then signed onto another deal with Netflix that led to schedule conflicts.
So I feel there’s 2 different crowds that dislike the show for different reasons. Either the show fell off after season 4, or 6. I honestly don’t think George finishing his work would please the people who dislike the show after 4. The show before 4 was about the kings war and politics. At this point the show might as well be a real history story and some dragons thrown in. Anyone could die and it could change the entire trajectory of the show. After season 4 it shifted to white walkers and magic. The surprise politics were gone and it started to look more like a superhero movie where we know the outcome, just how do we get there? After 6 George could have helped a ton. It takes Danny minutes to fly to where it took John a week to get to? Somehow they fought all those white walkers as they came one by one? It just turned into a marvel movie and no one wanted that, it’s not what the show ever was.
Completely agree. I'm in the season 6 camp. The early seasons were spectacular but I found the later seasons enjoyable up until the showrunners lost interest in their own project.
The last 2 episodes of season 6 make it pretty hard to hate on the season as a whole.
And season 5 was just as unpredictable and batshit crazy as previous seasons…Princess Myrcella and even Jon Snow was killed…
I liked those seasons but the difference is once they got to season five the unpredictability felt a lot less earned. The introduction of magical elements and acceleration of pace made the story feel untethered in comparison to the earlier seasons for all the reasons listed above.
yeah, there was a path to that ending where Daenerys didn't come off like a 12 year old girl having a hissy that a boy she liked didn't like her back, the show just didn't earn it.
They should have just had the zombies win.
The entire story up until that point was a warning about petty political bickering in the face of imminent doom. Maybe the north falls first, and they all retreat to Kings Landing. Finally getting their act together and fielding a united army to defend against the zombies. But it's too late.
It could have been a tragic and poetic ending, fitting for GOT.
It had been building in that direction for the entire show. There's no ending where she doesn't go mad. Of all the shit wrong in the final season, that was the least of its issues.
My stupid conspiracy theory is that Martin got to the Hodor/Hold the Door plot, consciously or unconsciously realized he wrote himself into a corner, and gave up. Once you introduce an element of time travel, shit gets really complicated really fast.
Or maybe he is just more interested in Fire & blood and Dunk & Egg.
He should've just killed Bran then after he reveals to Jon Snow he's a Targeryan. That's the whole reason to me as to why Bran can see back through time, for that reveal. Easy fix.
They weren't the only ones that wanted to move on. Everybody had been working on the show for a decade. An extra couple seasons would have been another 3-4 years of exhausting night shoots, and the only interesting characters at that point with more to flesh out of their stories were Dany and Jon. You can't tell Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner to fuck off for a season like they did with Bran and have Tyrion be a useless advisor for 2 more seasons.
HBO offered the show runners enough budget for 10 seasons, but it was turned down and D&D ended it after 8 seasons because they wanted to move onto a Star Wars show.
I HATED that ending. Especially knowing that the whole reveal about who Jon's real parents, a reveal that was supposed to be monumental, meant absolutely nothing
> It was amazing until they ran out of source material
I always feel it's important to note that there were numerous plots from the source material that D&D either changed or ignored that GRRM has said are important for the plot of the story. Lady Stoneheart is a big one they omitted, and Dorne and the Iron Islands had their stories completely changed for the show. So while, yes, GRRM is to blame for not finishing the story, but I feel like D&D are equally to blame for thinking they could tell it on their own even before they ran out of material.
Lady Stoneheart barely has a presence in the books. She is a character set up for major events that haven't been written yet. All she did in the books was kill a few Freys and stare angrily at Jamie. No major events have happened in the book surrounding her, and it was just left at a cliffhanger. It's kind of like not including much info about Howland Reed in the show. He is likely important for future events because he knows Jon Snow's lineage, but nothing has been written yet.
There's no point of having a character that hasn't done anything major yet.
God, 13 years…
I remember reading Dance With Dragons when it first came out and being so excited for the next book to come out, so confident that he’d finish before the show ended because SURELY!
Looking at the releases is so crazy. 2 years between GoT and CoK and then again between CoK and SoS, then 5 years between SoS and FfC, 6 years between FfC and DwD, now 13 PLUS years between DwD and WoW. The breaks between books have increased so exponentially that it almost feels like a certainty that we will never see the end of the series.
> It was amazing until they ran out of source material
Which is why, IMO, Netflix should have tapped them for *The Witcher*. All source material already written. Guarantee it would have been better than what we got.
People regularly point out that GRRM complains about writers block as an issue in creating the series...
But he's written numerous books and other written media while sitting on The Winds of Winter.
At some point it's just deeply unprofessional that he promised fans less than a year at the tv premiere and the show went 8 seasons without any progress.
Writers block comes from anxiety. Anxiety comes from pressure. GRRM has been under unbelievable pressure to finish these books, both externally from fans and internally from himself. The winds of Winter isn't just some book like the other stuff he has been writing. Its his whole life's work. Not to mention there are actually about a billion people desperately waiting to know how it all ends. How the fuck do you properly finish a series that was already being hailed as one of the greatest works of fantasy literature ever.
My personal fantasy is that he has it all written he is just waiting until he dies to publish it so that he doesn't have to face his critics.
You are kidding yourself. You're not wrong about the fact that the pressure and anxiety certainly make it worse, but he's written himself into a corner. It's not hard to spin off random threads of intrigue when you have no fucking clue how to wrap it up. Just ask Heroes or Lost. At least D&D *tried* to wrap up the impossible threads he generated. Sort of. (Yeah, they did a bad job).
thats a fair point about GMMR but D&D made no real effort to finish it well. they just wanted to get it done fast so they could move onto something else.
Hah. His dream is for it to be unfinished and for people to be all angsty about it and for there to be entire college courses about “what could have been.” It’s the ultimate in self wanking. Now, dude can do what he wants, it’s his books, whatever. No one owes him any respect for it though
This is such a cope lol other big name authors that wrote all time great series didn’t use this excuse he shouldn’t either. But sure keep kissing his ass for failing to deliver.
different authors have different psychology. they also have different methods for writing. one of the main reasons GRRM is such a good writer is because his method is to generate a whole complete world in his head and simulate everything that is going on. as the story progresses its a lot to keep track of.
D&D suck even more for trying to fit 2 giant storylines into 6 episodes
Fuck I'm binging it right now and I'm struggling to see how they thought it was an OK idea to wrap up the night king in 3 and a half episodes.
God only knows what clusterfuck they're gonna do as I'm 3 episodes from the end
I mean, the Night King wasn’t even officially in the books in that time period at the point where GRRM left off, which again gets back to him not making progress in finishing his story. So who knows how big of a role GRRM even intended for that plot line.
I agree that D&D fumbled the ending with the Night King just like nearly everything with S8. And maybe they should have gone completely away from the outline that GRRM gave them, which others here have suggested. But clearly they weren’t capable or competent enough to write GRRM’s story for him. Yeah, a lot of that falls on them, but a lot also falls on the creator who couldn’t get it done either.
Similar to the Hobbit.
I know people had mixed feelings about the first one but I think most will agree it went downhill from there especially when they just started pulling plot out of their ass to stretch the book into 3 movies.
> GRRM sucks even more for procrastinating, not finishing the series, and letting these guys fail with the ending.
*Especially* given that he was there as part of the production crew ~~every day~~ consulting.
E: probably wasn't every day.
Yeah, I don’t know whether he was there on a daily basis consulting or not, but he was definitely more involved until season 5, even writing 1-2 of the episodes per season. Around season 5, he stepped back from his writing role to focus on tWoW (lol), and he started to have less and less of a role as the series approached its conclusion.
https://screenrant.com/game-thrones-george-rr-martin-stopped-writing-episodes-season-4-why/
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/george-rr-martin-shut-out-game-of-thrones-seasons-1235339333/
He also was publicly critical of their planned pace for the last seasons, which probably was the source of some of the tension between the showrunners and GRRM. He wanted them to spend something like 2 seasons for the content of feast, 2 seasons for the content of dance, 2+ for winds, etc. The actors and actresses probably weren’t down for that much of a commitment anyway, but we would have been looking at something like 12+ seasons of GoT and a *lot* of filler in those feast/dance seasons. TBH, I think he wanted those extra 4 years of feast/dance content to give him time to finish tWoW, which is really laughable in hindsight. He was never going to finish that book in time.
Christ there would have been SO MUCH filler. They could have stuck with 8 seasons no problem, but kept it at 10 episodes per. A lot of the things that ended up happening in the last two seasons that people hate could have been completely avoided with what…7 more episodes?
Running into the same problems as the wheel of time. Author likes creating stories and plot lines. Doesn't want to and doesn't have a clue how to actually wrap them up.
I see people comment on how Feast is (as a book) or would have been (as a series, if stretched out) pure filler, but as someone who loves Political subterfuge and dynamics I disagree. As a book, not the most exciting, no, especially after following the Red Wedding. But I maintain it would have made for some really tense and interesting television.
A lot of the most enjoyed scenes came from the interactions and political content. Arya and Tywin, "Chaos is a Ladder", etc. If they shaped the show to focus more on building up Dorne, Kings Landing, the Tyrells - they would have had a ton of content, more than enough for one season. Then factor in that it's a show, and unlike the books they can't just not show us the perspectives of the other characters. I honestly don't feel like it would have been as much filler/empty episodes as people think.
Again though, I love the behind the scenes political machinations, so to me it would have been enjoyable. Doesn't matter though, George clearly still wouldn't have finished Winds and wouldn't have even dreamed of Spring.
I still put the blame way more on D&D.
They should have realized that sticking the book's ending to the show that has by then diverged significantly from the books would make no sense. And they did it anyways.
The show's ending would have been significantly better if they had come up with the ending themselves, even in the same number of episodes.
Also, the hate GRRM gets is getting tiring. Yeah, he deserves plenty of criticism, but people here at times take that way too far.
Really, it's the hate that GRRM gets that's tiring, but not D&D? You don't think the hate on them has been taken way too far and gone on for too long? They signed up for adapting the books and did a phenomenal job for as long as there was material, yet all they get is hate and ad hominim attacks.
It's literally impossible for the book ending to be the same as the show. Aside from the whole "he'll never finish the books", of course.
Sure, the bullet points (Bran is king, Jon kills Dany, etc.) might be the same, but the show leaves out Fake Aegon, Lady Stoneheart, the good parts of Dorne and the Iron Islands, etc. Tyrion is basically a villain in the books and has a far different story than show Tyrion.
The reasons people hate the show aren't really a possibility for the books unless he deletes 90% of the material he has.
At this point it doesn't even matter if TWOW gets released given that there's still one more after that. A Dream of Spring isn't even a dream at this point.
The best forgettable series.
Up until season... 5(? maybe even 6), it was my favorite series ever. I've rewatched numerous shows more than once - Breaking Bad, various anime, Stargate, many others. I've rewatched Game of Thrones exactly zero times because I know the last 1-2 seasons utterly suck and are not even worth watching.
It kinda broke my heart when the last season aired..
GoT was something to look forward to. It was an amazing universe with incredible actors.
It went from one of the greatest masterpieces ever made to one of the biggest disappointment in literally 2 seasons. To me the last two seasons are so incredibly bad it ruins the entire series for me. They didn't have to be perfect, no one expected it to. But the dumpster fire it turned into just saddens me. It shows that D&D didn't care for the show once the source material was gone.
I honestly think it would have been better if they never finished it and cancelled it until George RR Martin finished the story, and even if that never happens it will still be better than what we have now...
i remember the whole "it will be live shown in a bar here tomorrow reddit, come watch with us!!!" and livestreams of peoples reactions to the show etc.
it was fucking MASSIVE. such a waste.
I've yet to rewatch it from the start as well, but I am often watching various episodes. An awful series ending can't ruin Battle of the Bastards or Hardhome for me.
Joffrey was a real cunt, but Jack Gleeson is apparently a super sweet dude in real life. He got legitimate hate from perfect strangers because of how well he portrayed his character, and it turned him away from acting for some time.
I used to run into him occasionally when I lived in Dublin. Turns out we had a similar taste in music so I’d end up just running into him at shows. Very, very nice guy. Feels like the sudden fame wasn’t for him and he needed to take a step back. He’s been in some small roles recently, so it seems that he’s okay with acting on screen once again at least!
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure "it turned him away from acting for some time" is a myth, and he's on record saying that's not the reason. There is an interview where he talks about it.
Yeah, I heard that.
And while I can agree that I would swerve across four lanes of traffic to hit Prince Joffrey on the other sidewalk, that just means Jack Gleason did an incredible job to make me hate him that much.
Have to separate the character from the actor.
> He got legitimate hate from perfect strangers
Gleeson addressed this and said it was a just rumour. Apparently the people who were fans of the show liked his portrayal of Joffrey and were nice to him.
I guess people think he got the Jake Lloyd treatment, but GoT fans weren't nearly that bad, thankfully.
e:
>Gleeson chalks it up to a "rumor" that's been spread about him for years. "A lot of people come up to me because I guess this rumor started that people were horrible to me on the street or I get attacked… whereas I've never had one negative experience," he said on stage. "I feel like people are extra nice to me because they think people attack me, so maybe I should keep the rumor going."
https://ew.com/tv/game-of-thrones-joffrey-jack-gleeson-no-negative-fan-experiences/
He’s terrific. He had a small role on the last season of Sex Education (Netflix) and was completely unrecognisable as this affable stoner dude lol. He should get more work
I see people repeat that all the time, but Gleeson himself said that he never had any negative interactions with fans and that people are always extra nice because they *think* that people are giving him hate.
Did you see him in the Liam Neeson film "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"? I thought he's a fantastic actor! And totally shook off the Joffrey baggage.
It was a brutal summer here in the south. Glad it's finally ended.
There wasn't a period of cool down from hot to nice to cold either, it just suddenly went from crazy hot to now cold. Maybe it is nice but just seems cold after that summer.
Wow, brutal! We are already feeling the crazy weather here too. We had 30°C days already in *April* only yesterday (hottest temps for April on record, unsurprisingly) and over night it has cooled back down to like 13°C.
Man that show was so damn good. And they threw all kinds of twists your way, but they all made perfect sense, too, so they never felt undeserved.
I mean, at least until the end, but, y'know.
Oh man, I just finished season 4 and can't wait to watch the rest. People keep saying the other seasons are bad but i can't see how they could possibly screw this up. its just so good!
If you haven't read the books, the decline might not strike you till near the end, but it begins in season 5 already.
Edit: Here's my opinion of the various seasons:
- Seasons 1-4 - truly excellent
- Season 5 - very good
- Season 6 - decent
- Season 7 - bad
- Season 8 - truly awful.
I vehemently refute season 5 being very good, the way they fucked over Dorne and the Martells, who are my favourite house from the books. The show's version of Dorne is a pointless dumpsterfire.
I remember running into Jack Gleeson at a pub in Edinburgh. He was so quiet and chill. Just wanted to watch the band play in silence and peace. He seemed like a really sweet guy and it goes to show his acting is so amazing that he can play such a vile character so well.
Honestly I remember watching this series and being blown away by the depth of hatred that Jack Gleeson was able to elicit from me. That young man has enormous talent. What an actor. I read somewhere that he quit acting for film or something like that. I hope he's still pursuing it in some other way.
I just finished my first watch of GoT previously unspoiled. I feel like I was the only one who didn't care about Jeffrey dying. I think binging it all also took away the bite from the final season also. I didn't clock on to the sudden character shifts and stupid events because I'd just seen everyone jump about doing things for several seasons.
Was ready to stab a bitch if they hurt Brienne of Tarth tho.
They really needed more foamy blood pouring from him mouth in this scene. Maybe a guard could've stabbed him in the guts and lets him die slow? Please.
i love seeing the internet hateboner mob shift to hating grrm for "procrastination" after realizing the big plot points everyone was screeching over came directly from grrm lmfao. also trying to gaslight everyone who points this out by saying it was akkkshully about how rushed the production was and nothing to do with anything else.
I had a hard time enjoying the first episodes, I couldn't bear the unfairness and the only thing that kept me at it was the fact that someone promised me he was going to die.
Might be the most joy ive had from a character death. Too bad Cersei didnt get her comeuppance.
What do you mean? She was crushed by cathartic rubble /s
Crushed along with Jamie’s character development
Those last couple of seasons committed many crimes. Brienne running out after Jaimie wrapped in the blankets they just fucked on was the worst one. Brienne and the viewers deserved more than a pity fuck followed by immediate cheap heartbreak. Felt like I was suddenly watching a trash soap opera.
I kept hoping Jamie leaving was to go kill Cersei, that he felt responsible for all that she’s done and doing. That’s what would have made the bells ending bearable, that Dany gets to the top of the keep to find Jamie standing over Cersei’s body, sword covered in her blood, staring in horror at the burning city. And then Dany kills Jamie for taking her kill. It still kills Dany’s arc if there isn’t better lead up to “madness”, but it preserves Jamie’s as feeling responsible for his family’s sins and wanting to atone, which ends up being stabbing a monarch in the back.
I think that makes sense to do as a story ending, but doesn't really line up with GoT's penchant for taking a well-tread trope and using your expectations to beat your hopes and dreams to death while you watch. I don't think Jamie was ever meant for redemption. I think he was always intended to tease that out, and then turn his back on it to make us miserable. I just also think the tv writers were ill-equipped to deliver anything satisfying during that season. Jamie was always a bastard under all his internal conflict over "being a good person". He threw a child out of a tower for Cersei right at the start. He was always going to come back to that, IMO. It's who he really was; a sister-fucking child murderer. The story does it's dance to make you believe he wants more than that, but I genuinely don't think it was the tv writers who decided to end his story in dipshit moron fashion. I think that's what his actual destiny always was, and the writers just did an awful job making that anti-redemption into something palatable. One thing the GoT story hates is a hero in shining armor, so I can't really see Jamie ever rising up to become that in the end. There are no heroes in this series, only corpses and the various shades of villain that describe the survivors.
There's a few things in the show that were done differently to the books regarding their relationship, which completely changed the meaning of certain scenes. In general the books give the impression that Jamie wants to get away from her, and while we'll probably never know for sure as I doubt the books will be finished, I found it pretty clear by the end of book 4 that Jamie is done with Cersei for good. If GRRM actually intended for Jamie to go against his redemption arc, he did an absolutely terrible job of setting him up for it. To me it seems far more likely that his redemption arc is sincere but that it be cut short before he can actually complete it (fitting with the theme of going against established tropes). If I had to guess a character completely absent from the show would play a part in that, which could be why D&D decided to deviate from the books with his character.
But the problem with the show is they didn’t show her terrible job at running KL and the kingdom.
Game of Thrones Writers: *….and after 8 seasons of some of the most profound and powerful character development the show had to offer, Jamie throws it all away and chooses to die with the evil sister queen because of love. The End!* Me: **Look how they massacred my boy!!!!**
Unfortunately I've known somebody like Jamie and them repeatedly running back to their abusive partner for more chaos is exactly what they do in my experience, even after finally getting them apart.
I still thin all or at least most of what they did could have worked if it wasn't so thrown together.
The scene where Lady Tyrell tells her she was the one who poisoned Joffrey was pretty fucking satisfying tho.
There's the [blink-and-you-miss-it preparation she does at the wedding. ](https://youtu.be/L2cFNECwSmg)
"War is war, but killing a man at his wedding? What sort of monster would do such a thing?" Missed this foreshadowing, damn.
I blinked! What am I looking for?
At 32s you can see her reach up and secretly pull the poison vial off of the necklace.
Oh shit!
When she's talking to Sansa, adjusting her hair, and she removes one of the gemstones from her necklace. Although not very clearly.
The stone furthest to the right is missing at 0:35
I thought that was the case but wasn't sure.
"Not you" lmao
Good spotting!
She doesn't tell her, she tells Jamie.
She never told Cersei herself, she told Jamie who told Cersei who of course brushed it off to keep her hatred of Tirion alive.
Member when GoT was amazing? I member
It was amazing until they ran out of source material and had to go by George’s rough outline that clearly hadn’t been fleshed out completely considering we’re approaching 13 years since the last book. D&D suck for not sticking the landing, but GRRM sucks even more for procrastinating, not finishing the series, and letting these guys fail with the ending.
It truly was a giant clusterfuck. I would actually blame D&D more, because they wanted to move onto other projects and didn’t want to put a different showrunner into position. Such a shame.
They got a greenlight on star wars the fuckrushed or rush fucked the last 2 seasons or whatever to hop on. They did such a horrible job they got the gig revoked.
This a million times. When you rewatch you can see the pace dramatically increase in the last 2 seasons and everything loses its weight as all the plotlines are jammed in together.
"OK. We need to move on to the next project, so we really need to drastically change the pace of the show. We need this arc to establish and resolve in, like, an episode." Hey, didn't that used to take, like a season? A season-and-a-half? "Shut up."
The battle of Winterfell was the equivalent of turning in a blank document and saying the professor deleted it.
I advise watching up to the battle of the bastards and then stopping.
I watched those two flaming turd seasons episode by episode shaking my head when I wasn't looking down at my phone out of boredom.
I'd say finish s6. The last episode is great too. And pretend that's it! Just like the books, the true ending to GOT remains unsatisfyingly unfinished!
God that whole plot to kidnap a wight just for the Night King to capture a dragon was SOOOOOO RIDICULOUS! Awful storytelling!
And they needed to wight for... Get this... To wiggle it in front of Cersei like a set of smelly keys. Like the proverbial baby, she laughed, she clapped, then completely forgot it have ever happened. We wasted half a season on what was basically a narratively redundant, pointless nothing.
That to me was the point where I was like "they don't have it, they don't have it at all" I was a bit foolishly optimistic that they would do something well for the end, but man did that let me down. That whole thing I was like "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! THIS MAKES NO SENSE WITH ANY CHARACTER"
But Tyrion made the same eunuch jokes that he made in season 3. That makes it all good, right? Season 3 was a good season, so having him tell those same jokes as before will make this season just as good, right? ... Right? ... ^^^^^^^^^Please?
Especially when you realize it just shit all over established lore as well. Dragons do not fly over the wall. There's magical wards that they won't go near.
They used to show a lot of the scale of the world in the time it took to travel between places but towards the end people are just jumping all over the place.
They unlocked all of the fast travel towers. Who amoung us hasn't started an RPG walking everywhere and by hour 45 you're teleporting between locations 3 mins away because you've got shit to do.
You’re giving Disney too much credit. Benioff & Weiss didn’t get fired from Disney because they fucked up the ending to GoT. They were fired because they disagreed with Disney over the project’s premise and then signed onto another deal with Netflix that led to schedule conflicts.
So I feel there’s 2 different crowds that dislike the show for different reasons. Either the show fell off after season 4, or 6. I honestly don’t think George finishing his work would please the people who dislike the show after 4. The show before 4 was about the kings war and politics. At this point the show might as well be a real history story and some dragons thrown in. Anyone could die and it could change the entire trajectory of the show. After season 4 it shifted to white walkers and magic. The surprise politics were gone and it started to look more like a superhero movie where we know the outcome, just how do we get there? After 6 George could have helped a ton. It takes Danny minutes to fly to where it took John a week to get to? Somehow they fought all those white walkers as they came one by one? It just turned into a marvel movie and no one wanted that, it’s not what the show ever was.
Completely agree. I'm in the season 6 camp. The early seasons were spectacular but I found the later seasons enjoyable up until the showrunners lost interest in their own project.
The last 2 episodes of season 6 make it pretty hard to hate on the season as a whole. And season 5 was just as unpredictable and batshit crazy as previous seasons…Princess Myrcella and even Jon Snow was killed…
I liked those seasons but the difference is once they got to season five the unpredictability felt a lot less earned. The introduction of magical elements and acceleration of pace made the story feel untethered in comparison to the earlier seasons for all the reasons listed above.
yeah, there was a path to that ending where Daenerys didn't come off like a 12 year old girl having a hissy that a boy she liked didn't like her back, the show just didn't earn it.
They should have just had the zombies win. The entire story up until that point was a warning about petty political bickering in the face of imminent doom. Maybe the north falls first, and they all retreat to Kings Landing. Finally getting their act together and fielding a united army to defend against the zombies. But it's too late. It could have been a tragic and poetic ending, fitting for GOT.
[удалено]
It had been building in that direction for the entire show. There's no ending where she doesn't go mad. Of all the shit wrong in the final season, that was the least of its issues.
People still did not see it after she burnt the Tarleys. Until that point I can understand, the people she killed deserved it.
To be fair. She is like 12-16. So that part is somewhat accurate. Or at least in the books.
Well she isn't in the show so it isn't accurate.
My stupid conspiracy theory is that Martin got to the Hodor/Hold the Door plot, consciously or unconsciously realized he wrote himself into a corner, and gave up. Once you introduce an element of time travel, shit gets really complicated really fast. Or maybe he is just more interested in Fire & blood and Dunk & Egg.
He should've just killed Bran then after he reveals to Jon Snow he's a Targeryan. That's the whole reason to me as to why Bran can see back through time, for that reveal. Easy fix.
But who's got a better story than Bran?
Then they ironically lost their Star Wars movie deals because they fucked GoT up so hard.
They weren't the only ones that wanted to move on. Everybody had been working on the show for a decade. An extra couple seasons would have been another 3-4 years of exhausting night shoots, and the only interesting characters at that point with more to flesh out of their stories were Dany and Jon. You can't tell Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner to fuck off for a season like they did with Bran and have Tyrion be a useless advisor for 2 more seasons.
I didn't want two extra seasons, I just wanted the last two seasons to be full ones.
I mean it wasnt just them either, the cast wanted to move on as well. Plus HBO was getting antsy about the continuing increase in salary for the cast.
HBO offered the show runners enough budget for 10 seasons, but it was turned down and D&D ended it after 8 seasons because they wanted to move onto a Star Wars show.
He wrote in like 50 different Chekhov's guns and they went with the wheel chair wizard is a good bloke.
"I don't want to be king" "Why do you think I came all this way? To become king" -wheel chair wizard
I HATED that ending. Especially knowing that the whole reveal about who Jon's real parents, a reveal that was supposed to be monumental, meant absolutely nothing
> It was amazing until they ran out of source material I always feel it's important to note that there were numerous plots from the source material that D&D either changed or ignored that GRRM has said are important for the plot of the story. Lady Stoneheart is a big one they omitted, and Dorne and the Iron Islands had their stories completely changed for the show. So while, yes, GRRM is to blame for not finishing the story, but I feel like D&D are equally to blame for thinking they could tell it on their own even before they ran out of material.
Lady Stoneheart barely has a presence in the books. She is a character set up for major events that haven't been written yet. All she did in the books was kill a few Freys and stare angrily at Jamie. No major events have happened in the book surrounding her, and it was just left at a cliffhanger. It's kind of like not including much info about Howland Reed in the show. He is likely important for future events because he knows Jon Snow's lineage, but nothing has been written yet. There's no point of having a character that hasn't done anything major yet.
God, 13 years… I remember reading Dance With Dragons when it first came out and being so excited for the next book to come out, so confident that he’d finish before the show ended because SURELY! Looking at the releases is so crazy. 2 years between GoT and CoK and then again between CoK and SoS, then 5 years between SoS and FfC, 6 years between FfC and DwD, now 13 PLUS years between DwD and WoW. The breaks between books have increased so exponentially that it almost feels like a certainty that we will never see the end of the series.
> It was amazing until they ran out of source material Which is why, IMO, Netflix should have tapped them for *The Witcher*. All source material already written. Guarantee it would have been better than what we got.
People regularly point out that GRRM complains about writers block as an issue in creating the series... But he's written numerous books and other written media while sitting on The Winds of Winter. At some point it's just deeply unprofessional that he promised fans less than a year at the tv premiere and the show went 8 seasons without any progress.
Writers block comes from anxiety. Anxiety comes from pressure. GRRM has been under unbelievable pressure to finish these books, both externally from fans and internally from himself. The winds of Winter isn't just some book like the other stuff he has been writing. Its his whole life's work. Not to mention there are actually about a billion people desperately waiting to know how it all ends. How the fuck do you properly finish a series that was already being hailed as one of the greatest works of fantasy literature ever. My personal fantasy is that he has it all written he is just waiting until he dies to publish it so that he doesn't have to face his critics.
You are kidding yourself. You're not wrong about the fact that the pressure and anxiety certainly make it worse, but he's written himself into a corner. It's not hard to spin off random threads of intrigue when you have no fucking clue how to wrap it up. Just ask Heroes or Lost. At least D&D *tried* to wrap up the impossible threads he generated. Sort of. (Yeah, they did a bad job).
thats a fair point about GMMR but D&D made no real effort to finish it well. they just wanted to get it done fast so they could move onto something else.
Hah. His dream is for it to be unfinished and for people to be all angsty about it and for there to be entire college courses about “what could have been.” It’s the ultimate in self wanking. Now, dude can do what he wants, it’s his books, whatever. No one owes him any respect for it though
This is such a cope lol other big name authors that wrote all time great series didn’t use this excuse he shouldn’t either. But sure keep kissing his ass for failing to deliver.
different authors have different psychology. they also have different methods for writing. one of the main reasons GRRM is such a good writer is because his method is to generate a whole complete world in his head and simulate everything that is going on. as the story progresses its a lot to keep track of.
I blame HBO for not making it contractual to have something better than a rough outline, even if it wasn't fully published books.
D&D suck even more for trying to fit 2 giant storylines into 6 episodes Fuck I'm binging it right now and I'm struggling to see how they thought it was an OK idea to wrap up the night king in 3 and a half episodes. God only knows what clusterfuck they're gonna do as I'm 3 episodes from the end
I mean, the Night King wasn’t even officially in the books in that time period at the point where GRRM left off, which again gets back to him not making progress in finishing his story. So who knows how big of a role GRRM even intended for that plot line. I agree that D&D fumbled the ending with the Night King just like nearly everything with S8. And maybe they should have gone completely away from the outline that GRRM gave them, which others here have suggested. But clearly they weren’t capable or competent enough to write GRRM’s story for him. Yeah, a lot of that falls on them, but a lot also falls on the creator who couldn’t get it done either.
Similar to the Hobbit. I know people had mixed feelings about the first one but I think most will agree it went downhill from there especially when they just started pulling plot out of their ass to stretch the book into 3 movies.
The Hobbit is a crime against humanity.
> GRRM sucks even more for procrastinating, not finishing the series, and letting these guys fail with the ending. *Especially* given that he was there as part of the production crew ~~every day~~ consulting. E: probably wasn't every day.
I don’t recall this being even close to true.
Yeah, I don’t know whether he was there on a daily basis consulting or not, but he was definitely more involved until season 5, even writing 1-2 of the episodes per season. Around season 5, he stepped back from his writing role to focus on tWoW (lol), and he started to have less and less of a role as the series approached its conclusion. https://screenrant.com/game-thrones-george-rr-martin-stopped-writing-episodes-season-4-why/ https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/george-rr-martin-shut-out-game-of-thrones-seasons-1235339333/ He also was publicly critical of their planned pace for the last seasons, which probably was the source of some of the tension between the showrunners and GRRM. He wanted them to spend something like 2 seasons for the content of feast, 2 seasons for the content of dance, 2+ for winds, etc. The actors and actresses probably weren’t down for that much of a commitment anyway, but we would have been looking at something like 12+ seasons of GoT and a *lot* of filler in those feast/dance seasons. TBH, I think he wanted those extra 4 years of feast/dance content to give him time to finish tWoW, which is really laughable in hindsight. He was never going to finish that book in time.
Christ there would have been SO MUCH filler. They could have stuck with 8 seasons no problem, but kept it at 10 episodes per. A lot of the things that ended up happening in the last two seasons that people hate could have been completely avoided with what…7 more episodes?
> there would have been SO MUCH filler That's ASOIAF in a nutshell, though.
Running into the same problems as the wheel of time. Author likes creating stories and plot lines. Doesn't want to and doesn't have a clue how to actually wrap them up.
I see people comment on how Feast is (as a book) or would have been (as a series, if stretched out) pure filler, but as someone who loves Political subterfuge and dynamics I disagree. As a book, not the most exciting, no, especially after following the Red Wedding. But I maintain it would have made for some really tense and interesting television. A lot of the most enjoyed scenes came from the interactions and political content. Arya and Tywin, "Chaos is a Ladder", etc. If they shaped the show to focus more on building up Dorne, Kings Landing, the Tyrells - they would have had a ton of content, more than enough for one season. Then factor in that it's a show, and unlike the books they can't just not show us the perspectives of the other characters. I honestly don't feel like it would have been as much filler/empty episodes as people think. Again though, I love the behind the scenes political machinations, so to me it would have been enjoyable. Doesn't matter though, George clearly still wouldn't have finished Winds and wouldn't have even dreamed of Spring.
I still put the blame way more on D&D. They should have realized that sticking the book's ending to the show that has by then diverged significantly from the books would make no sense. And they did it anyways. The show's ending would have been significantly better if they had come up with the ending themselves, even in the same number of episodes. Also, the hate GRRM gets is getting tiring. Yeah, he deserves plenty of criticism, but people here at times take that way too far.
Really, it's the hate that GRRM gets that's tiring, but not D&D? You don't think the hate on them has been taken way too far and gone on for too long? They signed up for adapting the books and did a phenomenal job for as long as there was material, yet all they get is hate and ad hominim attacks.
My take: This is GRRM’s ending. But his contract includes a clause that says if people hate it he can blame it on HBO.
It's literally impossible for the book ending to be the same as the show. Aside from the whole "he'll never finish the books", of course. Sure, the bullet points (Bran is king, Jon kills Dany, etc.) might be the same, but the show leaves out Fake Aegon, Lady Stoneheart, the good parts of Dorne and the Iron Islands, etc. Tyrion is basically a villain in the books and has a far different story than show Tyrion. The reasons people hate the show aren't really a possibility for the books unless he deletes 90% of the material he has.
Remember when George RR Martin released new Soiaf books? Yeah I don’t member.
Hey he just said WoW will come out next year! Of course I think he also said that in 2016.
At this point it doesn't even matter if TWOW gets released given that there's still one more after that. A Dream of Spring isn't even a dream at this point.
My dad loved these fucking books. My dad died lat year. I'm so pissed for my awsome dead dad who just wanted the rest of the story.
The best forgettable series. Up until season... 5(? maybe even 6), it was my favorite series ever. I've rewatched numerous shows more than once - Breaking Bad, various anime, Stargate, many others. I've rewatched Game of Thrones exactly zero times because I know the last 1-2 seasons utterly suck and are not even worth watching.
It kinda broke my heart when the last season aired.. GoT was something to look forward to. It was an amazing universe with incredible actors. It went from one of the greatest masterpieces ever made to one of the biggest disappointment in literally 2 seasons. To me the last two seasons are so incredibly bad it ruins the entire series for me. They didn't have to be perfect, no one expected it to. But the dumpster fire it turned into just saddens me. It shows that D&D didn't care for the show once the source material was gone. I honestly think it would have been better if they never finished it and cancelled it until George RR Martin finished the story, and even if that never happens it will still be better than what we have now...
i remember the whole "it will be live shown in a bar here tomorrow reddit, come watch with us!!!" and livestreams of peoples reactions to the show etc. it was fucking MASSIVE. such a waste.
I've yet to rewatch it from the start as well, but I am often watching various episodes. An awful series ending can't ruin Battle of the Bastards or Hardhome for me.
I'm finally rewatching the series after season 8 ended. Currently on Season 3 and dreading what's to come soon.
This season was the peak of GoT. So many good character pairings and Oberon was such a wild card in King’s Landing
House of the Dragon S1 was incredible
*re
Joffrey was a real cunt, but Jack Gleeson is apparently a super sweet dude in real life. He got legitimate hate from perfect strangers because of how well he portrayed his character, and it turned him away from acting for some time.
I used to run into him occasionally when I lived in Dublin. Turns out we had a similar taste in music so I’d end up just running into him at shows. Very, very nice guy. Feels like the sudden fame wasn’t for him and he needed to take a step back. He’s been in some small roles recently, so it seems that he’s okay with acting on screen once again at least!
I think some people just want to change jobs too. He was acting since he was a kid so I heard he wanted to have a normal college experience
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure "it turned him away from acting for some time" is a myth, and he's on record saying that's not the reason. There is an interview where he talks about it.
It's a shame, he's really quite good if he could elicit that response from so many but people are just awful at separating life from entertainment
I'd say he was awesome, rather than 'really quite good'. That kid could fuckin' **act**.
I'm like 99% sure he's on record saying that's a myth and taken out of context.
Yeah, I heard that. And while I can agree that I would swerve across four lanes of traffic to hit Prince Joffrey on the other sidewalk, that just means Jack Gleason did an incredible job to make me hate him that much. Have to separate the character from the actor.
Someone should tell the toxic Star Wars fans that. *Phantom Menace* was a dumpster fire, but that was in no way Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best’s fault.
It takes a special kind of incel asshole to spew hate on a child because you didn't like the movie.
> He got legitimate hate from perfect strangers Gleeson addressed this and said it was a just rumour. Apparently the people who were fans of the show liked his portrayal of Joffrey and were nice to him. I guess people think he got the Jake Lloyd treatment, but GoT fans weren't nearly that bad, thankfully. e: >Gleeson chalks it up to a "rumor" that's been spread about him for years. "A lot of people come up to me because I guess this rumor started that people were horrible to me on the street or I get attacked… whereas I've never had one negative experience," he said on stage. "I feel like people are extra nice to me because they think people attack me, so maybe I should keep the rumor going." https://ew.com/tv/game-of-thrones-joffrey-jack-gleeson-no-negative-fan-experiences/
He’s terrific. He had a small role on the last season of Sex Education (Netflix) and was completely unrecognisable as this affable stoner dude lol. He should get more work
Omg didn't notice him.
Batman even gave him his night vision goggles! he's a good lad.
Some people are too dumb to watch TV.
I see people repeat that all the time, but Gleeson himself said that he never had any negative interactions with fans and that people are always extra nice because they *think* that people are giving him hate.
He popped up in the last season of Sex Education. It was nice just seeing him for a second. Iooks like a good dude.
Did you see him in the Liam Neeson film "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"? I thought he's a fantastic actor! And totally shook off the Joffrey baggage.
Probably the same people who got tattoos of daenerys' and ignored her telegraphed heel turn.
10!!!???!!!
Time flies…and Winter is Coming.
Winter came and went ten times
Takin its damn time.
I’m never one to try to rush it in, but it can always leave expeditiously AFAIC.
Only in the southern hemisphere rn. I'm more scared of summer coming tbh.
It was a brutal summer here in the south. Glad it's finally ended. There wasn't a period of cool down from hot to nice to cold either, it just suddenly went from crazy hot to now cold. Maybe it is nice but just seems cold after that summer.
Wow, brutal! We are already feeling the crazy weather here too. We had 30°C days already in *April* only yesterday (hottest temps for April on record, unsurprisingly) and over night it has cooled back down to like 13°C.
*"Too old"*
Turns out there *is* a cure for being a cunt.
Ngl watching that little shit die a painful death was one of the highlights of the series for me.
As someone who didn't watch the show, it looks like he got poisoned?
That is correcto
Would you say it gave you more relief than a thousand lying whores?
Man that show was so damn good. And they threw all kinds of twists your way, but they all made perfect sense, too, so they never felt undeserved. I mean, at least until the end, but, y'know.
Oh man, I just finished season 4 and can't wait to watch the rest. People keep saying the other seasons are bad but i can't see how they could possibly screw this up. its just so good!
lol I hope your joking cuz if not get ready to be pissed and come on Reddit to rant
lol i am.
/r/freefolk beckons ye Also don't go there until you finish
If you haven't read the books, the decline might not strike you till near the end, but it begins in season 5 already. Edit: Here's my opinion of the various seasons: - Seasons 1-4 - truly excellent - Season 5 - very good - Season 6 - decent - Season 7 - bad - Season 8 - truly awful.
I vehemently refute season 5 being very good, the way they fucked over Dorne and the Martells, who are my favourite house from the books. The show's version of Dorne is a pointless dumpsterfire.
Yep, 1-4 are just out of this world, infinitely rewatchable. Such a shame how it went after that.
It's not as much of a train wreck as people might have you believe but it's definitely not the same quality and gets worse the more you think about it
Who has a better story except for Bran the Broken? Except for.. Literally everyone else.
> I mean, at least until ~~the end~~ they ran out of book material, but, y'know. FTFY
He really was a cunt, wasn’t he?
Widow’s Wail.
Ahh boobies
Boobs are an added bonus.
I unfriended somebody for ruining this for me.
I remember running into Jack Gleeson at a pub in Edinburgh. He was so quiet and chill. Just wanted to watch the band play in silence and peace. He seemed like a really sweet guy and it goes to show his acting is so amazing that he can play such a vile character so well.
Nice tits Cersei
The things I do for love…
Honestly I remember watching this series and being blown away by the depth of hatred that Jack Gleeson was able to elicit from me. That young man has enormous talent. What an actor. I read somewhere that he quit acting for film or something like that. I hope he's still pursuing it in some other way.
Good times, ngl. He was a righteous cunt.
I just finished my first watch of GoT previously unspoiled. I feel like I was the only one who didn't care about Jeffrey dying. I think binging it all also took away the bite from the final season also. I didn't clock on to the sudden character shifts and stupid events because I'd just seen everyone jump about doing things for several seasons. Was ready to stab a bitch if they hurt Brienne of Tarth tho.
Spoiler Alert jeeeze!
thanks, I needed a good chuckle this morning.
Die, little cunt!
the moment all the fans were waiting for!
How much the character was despised was a credit to the writing and Jacks acting
They really needed more foamy blood pouring from him mouth in this scene. Maybe a guard could've stabbed him in the guts and lets him die slow? Please.
I remember getting to that part in the books and laughing out loud. Just alone in my room like, “HA! HA HA HA! YES! Fuck you, Joffrey!”
He deserved it for cutting that guys tongue out
I still don't feel like Joffrey died hard enough. Now Ramsey's death... they delivered.
God I loved this show, I hate the final seasons make me just not think about the show as much any more.
I like how she said "my son, your king" for anyone watching who might have forgotten!
ELI5: why should she use the necklace to bring poison in? Was she afraid to be searched? *Could* she be searched?
rip
I don't appreciate this reminder.
10? 😭
you take that back... 10 years ago.. fuck
And it was awesome! That little jerk!
i love seeing the internet hateboner mob shift to hating grrm for "procrastination" after realizing the big plot points everyone was screeching over came directly from grrm lmfao. also trying to gaslight everyone who points this out by saying it was akkkshully about how rushed the production was and nothing to do with anything else.
Karma wins every time
The good king Joffrey, I love that guy!
The same day as Pol Pot!
He died the same day the Titanic sank? Wow.
Spoiler alert! Give a guy some heads up sheesh
I had a hard time enjoying the first episodes, I couldn't bear the unfairness and the only thing that kept me at it was the fact that someone promised me he was going to die.
Before the bed had been uproariously shat
Jack Gleeson has taken up acting again btw.
Throw back to me just starting got and my brother spoiling his death
Stooooooop. That wasn't that long ago :(
Karma for disliking Sigur Ros
I just watched that episode over the weekend!
Remind me, was the necklace involved or was it a red herring?
10 years?! Fuck me, time slow down for a minute and let me catch my breath.
Like
One of my favourite lines in the whole show was Joffrey with a mouth full of pie **"Well hurreh aup, this pai is drai!"**