AVAST! THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR A LOT OF SHOWS! SO, IF YOU ARE MAKING YOUR WAY THROUGH:
THEN RUN AWAY AND COME BACK ONCE YOU ARE DOWN WITH A LARGE BINGE SESSION
'If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention'- Ramsay Bolton to Theon Greyjoy, Season 6 Episode 3 ('The Climb') of
Game of Thrones, 5 May 2013
20 May was a special day. Excitement was at astronomical levels as the calendar crept towards this seemingly uninteresting period in the month of May. As the sun rose and the alarm loudly blared that it was time to get out of bed, it was as if it was Christmas. Springing into action, changing into exercise gear with a bright smile beaming in the early morning light. But there was plenty of caution to be taken. Instinctively, Jen the Samsung S8 is brought back to life every morning as she connects to the WiFi and starts to display notifications that came in overnight. Breakfast is the perfect time to check through whatever has come in, be it mentions on Facebook or how someone has checked out the LinkedIn profile, but this morning Jen had to be left face down. Today was 20 May 2019, and social media was now a minefield. Those mines were spoilers...
Game of Thrones spoilers... today was 20 May 2019, and
Game of Thrones was finally coming to an end.
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| The end was nigh (HBO) |
After 8 series of dragons, violence, boobs, intrigue, betrayal, heartbreak, penises and a fuckton of alcoholic consumption, the record-breaking series is over. It changed the face of TV with incredibly well-choreographed battle scenes that had a perfect blend of manpower and CGI, similar to how the
Lord of the Rings trilogy depicted their epic confrontations. New faces such as Kit Harrington and Sophie Turner have made an impact on the acting scene, portraying their characters alongside legends like Sean Bean and Charles Dance. We grew to detest the sadistic King Joffrey, fall in love with the witty Tyrion Lannister and chortle with delight when Ser Davos Seaworth corrected someone's grammar. Our hearts were broken as fan favourites fell, yet rejoiced when our heroes did something totally badass that would make us leap from our seats with no concern of how much of a disturbance it would create. All in all, it was a damn good show.
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| Look at how young and adorable they are! (HBO) |
Yet we have a problem- a big one. The last series has created a great deal of dissatisfaction among fans, which is quite an understatement. Furious rage emits like an erupting volcano as complaints emerge of poor writing, rushed stories and stray coffee cups which have apparently ruined the entire show. Promising a whole series of episodes that had a running time similar to a movie was an empty one as only four delivered on this, considering this would be a series that would tie up plot lines revolving around the struggle against the White Walkers and the fight for the Iron Throne. Series 8 was deemed an injustice for all the characters arcs that had been crafted from the very beginning as people cycled through every emotion in the book. The 'wheel' Dany was so determined to destroy now rolls on under the guise of an elective monarchy, the system utilised by the Holy Roman Empire (and we all know how smoothly that story ran *cough* Thirty Years' War *cough*), firmly attached to Bran the Broken's wheelchair. Story threads remain untied and unanswered; for example, 'the Prince that was Promised' hasn't been identified and remains a story element left to be answered by speculative fans. The gritty realism that made
Game of Thrones such an emotional roller coaster was nowhere to be found. 'Salt' levels among fans puts the Red Sea to shame.
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| Live picture of the fanbase (Dreamstime) |
'Neutral' seems to be the perfect way to describe how this humble blogger feels after watching the final episode. Love for this show has balanced what is slowly dawning to be a below par series of television. Describing it as 'OK' is apparently the most positive thing a co-worker has heard about the final episode, which doesn't seem surprising considering how brutal and critical both fans and critics have been. There is no denying that the final series of this incredible piece of television was afflicted with weak writing over the course of only six episodes. In the opinion of this humble blogger, this series could have been all about fending off those pesky ice zombies, leaving plenty of time for integral character development that would address the violent change in motives that so many of our favourites suffered from. Seeing Dany descend into that famous Targaryen madness would have been incredible to watch, and not just because Emilia Clarke is a damn good actress.
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| Swoon (HBO) |
Series 9 would be the ultimate showdown between the matriarchs of the Targaryen and Lannister houses, with a few odd skirmishes and underhand dealings building up to the siege of King's Landing. After all that development, Dany's fire-loving ways would be on show as the capital of Westeros was burnt to a crisp. Drogon would land on top of a crumbling Red Keep that was sheltering the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms that would now have no choice but to surrender. The opening scene of the series 8 finale would be the closing scene of the eighth episode, as the new ruler of Westeros proclaims of her desires to conquer all before her. Let Jon dispatch his aunt/ lover in episode 9, with the closing shot being Drogon incinerating the Iron Throne (which was odd- did Drogon think the pointy chair kill his mother?) and flying off with his deceased mother to an unknown location. THEN we can elect Bran king and bring this glorious saga to an end!
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| Happy days |
It seems quite cliched to declare 'this is what should have happened, praise me for fixing
Game of Thrones'. One can ramble on about how this is the obvious and only way for
Game of Thrones to have finished, but there is no point putting that to the test. There is not much time to spend on creating such an elaborate set of scripts as
there is a book to write, employment to participate in and so much more to do. Also, having a degree in history doesn't automatically grant you extraordinary writing abilities; all it gives you is debt, an unclear future and a sizeable knowledge on
pirates and Operation Barbarossa. But perhaps the biggest and most glaring obstacle that stands between Ben Goscomb and his destiny of 'saving'
Game of Thrones is that finales are tough to write. You will always have critics for whatever is created, usually because their ideal finale hasn't manifested itself. What makes the
Game of Thrones finale that much more frustrating is that this last series just wasn't as good as its predecessors. It pains one to say it, truly it does, but it could have been so much better.
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| When you wait a year for your favourite show to come back, get disappointed but try and stay positive (HBO) |
Yet fear not, for there are finales that are certainly far worse from shows that have been deemed as hallmarks of excellent television. Take
Seinfeld, for example. It is a show self-described as being 'about nothing', but the sitcom's finale was certainly about something. To cut a long story short, the four main characters are arrested for mocking a carjacking victim, chastised in court by all who had been wronged by them and sentenced to a year-long sentence in prison for being jerks. It was an hour-long clip show, which is always seen as a cop out for writing a proper episode, as Jerry Seinfeld and his band of loveable miscreants were deemed as individuals with little care for society. Fans were enraged at the time, but when you list off their actions you realise that perhaps a stint behind bars might just be what they deserved.
Seinfeld is on the watching list, and one looks forward to seeing the stories of how they mugged old people for bread or how they burned down a house.
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| Jerry Seinfeld, before he became a bee (Wikimedia Commons) |
Some finales are fresher in the minds of this generation, such as:
- Dexter, as our favourite serial killer (that seems really dark, come to think of it) put himself in exile after 8 series of murdering with no redemption or repercussions in sight
- Lost, which is hard enough to get your head round until they start making fans question if they were dead the whole time
Then there's
How I Met Your Mother. The sizeable task of binging through this show was achieved just in time to watch the last season in real-time, meaning that one could partake in the struggle of saying goodbye to this delightful sitcom with fellow fans. Ted was to finally meet 'The Mother', much to the relief of his very patient children, who was certainly a perfect match for the persistent 'nice guy' who had been unlucky in love for so long. Even though Ted is a douche, he would have his happy ending... then the finale happened. Turns out Tracy had died, and Ted was retelling this chronicle of how he and wife met just to convince his kids that he wanted to start dating Robin- again. Their romance was incompatible from the start, and Robin's marriage to Barney seemed perfect, but for some reason the creators thought 'fuck that, let's divorce them, kill off Tracy and give Ted and Robin another shot'. It was a let-down, and that's coming from someone who had only been watching for just under a year. For the fans that had waited 9 years to meet 'The Mother', their rage is beyond description.
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| Barney sums it up well |
But through the storm of underwhelming finales, there are bright lights that steer us to the safety of satisfaction.
Community was proud to continuously break the fourth wall and did so brilliantly by having Jeff and his Greendale buddies speculate on what a seventh season would look like. Julia Louis-Dreyfus managed to star in a decent finale (she was in
Seinfeld, by the way) as
Veep closed its last season by demonstrating just how low Selina Meyer would go on her way to becoming President of the United States. The
record-breaking viewership of
M*A*S*H's 'Goodbye, Farewell and Amen
' was well-deserved as the Korean War came to an end and the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital flew home to start their post-war lives. In 2004, the people of the world rejoiced as Rachel got off the plane and finally crushed that 'will they, won't they' story line that she had shared with Ross since the very start of the
Friends saga. One last example-
Parks and Recreation made the eyes of this humble blogger fill with tears of joy at such a beautiful ending. Of course Leslie became President! How could America not vote for her?!
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| The President we all deserve |
A bad ending to a show doesn't mean that its reputation is forever tainted. Yes, our last encounters with
Game of Thrones were not perfect, made worse by the agonisingly long wait we all had to endure between seasons 7 and 8. But once the show went beyond
A Song of Ice and Fire, it was up to David Benioff and D. B. Weiss to string something together to reach the conclusion George R. R. Martin wanted. Their creative vision would always be different to how Martin will write the books, especially as they had six episodes to work with and George said in a recent blog post that both
The Winds of Winter and
A Dream of Spring would 'fill 3000 manuscript pages between them'. Regardless of our rage on a rushed goodbye from our beloved show of war and boobs, it is worth reflecting on the best moments of the show that we should never forget:
- Weddings, whether red or purple, were game-changing moments as Robb Stark found out the hard way of breaking an oath and Joffrey Baratheon learnt that being a little shit just gets you poisoned
- The battles that got our hearts racing, and it's unfair to determine which was the best! Wildfire at the Battle of the Blackwater? The Night King smugly swelling his ranks after the Battle of Hardhome? THAT BLOODY GREAT SCYTHE THAT DISINTEGRATED WILDLING FORCES AT THE BATTLE OF CASTLE BLACK?!
- All those marvellous quotes ('What do we say to the God of Death?' 'Not today', 'Tell Cersei it was me', 'I'm gonna have to eat every fucking chicken in this room')
- Character development; look at Jaime Lannister- he went from Shover of Children to Heartthrob of Fans after that bath scene with Brienne of Tarth
- Those 'oh my God, why must this show hurt me so' scenes as Eddard Stark falls foul of the Lannisters, Ygritte dying in Jon's arms (Olly, you little shit) and The Mountain literally crushing Oberyn Martell's head as if it were a grape
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| It was a crushing moment, emotionally and literally (HBO) |
We could be here for days remembering the good yet highly emotional flashes in the
Game of Thrones story. For now, fans demand the heads of D&D on a platter for 'ruining' the arcs of characters like Dany and Jaime in a season full of sloppy writing. Petitions make the rounds on the Internet for the whole series to be thrown away and remade with a completely different writing staff that would 'do the show justice'. One understands the frustration, but it is a step too far to have all that hard work deemed to be worthless and make a series that satisfies the hordes of angry fans. Perhaps this disappointment will subside in the future and we can look back on the final season of
Game of Thrones with a clearer mind. If George ever gets around to writing those darn books (do need to read them actually) then we will be able to accurately compare how big a difference there was between page and screen. Season 8 could age horribly and, after a quick reminiscent trip back to Westeros many years in the future, that anger surfaces once more. Your children will ask why you are crying, and you will reply intermittently between sobs that it could have been so much better.
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| You deserved so much more |
Finales are hard, and hitting it out of the park is a description that only a handful of finales can claim to have. Once the show departed from the books, it was down to the writing staff to reach the conclusion George R.R. Martin has sat on for years. Indeed, there would always be criticism from the fanbase as theories would be proved false and the sudden departure of this major fixture of our lives would be met with that
daunting feeling of emptiness. The promise of spinoffs, prequels, sequels and more books could be enough to bring the fans of
Game of Thrones back on side, especially considering the vast amount of lore that future writers can work with. Yet as mentioned before, the Internet is rife with fury and outrage; even this humble blogger has made their feelings known. Yes, the last series was below the expectations we all had, but at least we can be thankful for having this titan of TV in our lives for so long. Farewell
Game of Thrones; sorry that your trousers ripped as you bowed off the stage.
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| Don't worry Jon, I still love you (HBO) |
Ben G 😁 xo
P.S. One last thought, promise. It all seemed like a fairy tale ending BUT THE STARKS WON! Can we at least be happy that the kids are now monarchs (Bran of the Six Kingdoms, Sansa in the North), explorers (Arya heading west) and Provider of Pats (Jon got his reunion with Ghost and Tormund)?
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| He certainly is |
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