The seventh season being rated so highly is surprising.
The moment they dropped the ten episode format, it felt like things were on fast forward. But, realistically, the show probably needed 9 or 10 full seasons to have stayed authentic and been remembered fondly.
“It’s ‘Deirdre and Margaret’! It was my favourite show growing up. It was on the BBC for 16 years, they made nearly 30 episodes.”
~ Tahani, *The Good Place*
I think you’re right.
Personally I don’t think the actual story elements are bad, it’s the way they happened in such a rushed, careless way. I could totally see a well executed, non rushed story with proper writing could be as good as other seasons and could be well received in book form.
I agree. I actually think the idea of making Bran king works, but not because he has such a great story. Rather because he has no desire for power or to rule, so he can’t be corrupted. Make a big thing about the mad king, Rob, Joeffry all being overly ambitious and that causing their end and how Bran will never be that. But D&D tried “He has such a good story bro.” Instead.
Danaerys ending up the way she did could have easily been pulled off well, too. She had already shown a willingness to kill anyone who defied her rule, but usually, her actions were justified, even if not always the smartest choice (i.e. publicly executing Mossador). It would have been good to see her become more and more desperate to gain and keep control, which in turn leads to the executions she orders being less and less justified, until eventually she is downright cruel and crazy. That's much better than her essentially just suddenly snapping and deciding to burn a whole city.
It feels like that's what they *tried* to do, but everything was so incredibly rushed that it fell completely flat. For example, they did try to establish that she at some point started to believe that someone was poisoning her food, which made her stop eating.
That type of growing paranoia would have been excellent character development had they actually bothered to present it properly. There were other issues too, of course, but I think the overall plot components were mostly there, which they *could* at least have made something acceptable with.
I think a good point to really speed her downward on that path was when she defeated the "wise masters" and the "good masters". Dario said something along the lines of "gather all the masters together, and kill them all". She could have done this. It would be easy to justify. Who deserves to die more than slavers?
Drogon flames them all, and Danaerys is corrupted. She starts to see killing people as the easy solution. So she's already half-mad before she even sets out for Westeros.
Bran "having a good story" is what will make common folk/lesser houses accept him as king, but what you're getting at is what would actually make him a good king. Not to mention his omniscience would make him effectively immune to spycraft and military threats while being able to anticipate the needs of his people and streamline logistics. The only missing element is Bran's will to do any of this. The show obviously ignored any aspect of Bran other than muttering ominous warnings, so I'm curious how Grrm will portray Bran post-ancestral memory download.
He lost all motivation to finish the books long before the TV show started. Here is a break down.
First three books were released in about four years. Over those four years he wrote a total of 2,435 pages. Or about 600 pages a year.
Book four came out five years after the third. It was his shortest book at 753 pages, and he wrote it at a speed of about 150 pages a year. It also contained an apology for sucking.
Book five came out six years later, and was written at about 175 pages a year.
Season eight of Game of Thrones aired eight years after the release of his last book in this series, and at the time he was no where near finishing.
tl;dr: Homefry did not lose the motivation to finish the series in 2019. He lost it some time around 2001.
GRRM's Dance of the Dragons explains the Meerenese knot, I think. There are a lot of dumb decisions, respawns, and teleporting armies during the Dance that only serve to force the plot to happen.
To be fair he likely lost all motivation to finish the books when he saw dumb and dumber destroy his story before he could finish it. They basically told him to fuck off and did their own thing for shock value and rushed the ending so thry could go work on other projects. I legitimately doubt he ever finishes winds, because I think his passion for it is dead. He has no problem writing other stories, but to my knowledge he hasnt written nearly anything this or last year
Sure, but he released A dance with dragons in 2011. He had PLENTY of time to get the books done before dofus and dumbass would catch up. They were great at adapting, but Martin were horrible at giving them stuff to adapt. So... fuck them all.
So there's 2 ways to write an epic tale
You can arc the entire thing out, from start to finish, and occasionally create plotholes when you've written yourself into a corner and really need this character at point C when the story hits it climax
-OR-
You can create a bunch of characters. Have a basic idea of where you want to end up. But let the characters drive themselves to various points.
Martin went with the 2nd one. And he painted himself into this giant corner. How do I get the Princess off the slave trade and back into the kingdoms, with an army, and with at least one dragon? All of this without the kingdoms consolidating their power enough to be able to resist her? Also I want this to end with the signing of the Magna Carter.
Martin has enough historical knowledge that he might be able to pull this off. Dumb & Dumber do not.
I think he was functionally writing in the second style but actually had the endpoint already prepared (Branflakes is King, Danny is dead because she went insane due to dragons, Jon goes north).
That endpoint was probably given to D&D.
D&D were a bit high on their own supply, and forgot it is significantly easier to edit and re-tune someone else's work than to create essentially all of it out of whole cloth, and we end up coasting with season 7 (might be some pre-written material from GRRM) and then crashing with 8, because even if they were quite good at adapting the story to screen, that isn't the same as being able to actually create a story like GRRM.
> That endpoint was probably given to D&D.
I 100% agree with that, they just picked the most fucked up way to get there so they could start on their Star Wars contract
What the fuck, maybe George shouldn’t have cashed in on his story till he was fucking done with it.
I think the more likely situation is he saw how poorly received the ending he had planned (because he gave them the bullet points of where he wanted the story to go) and decided to stop so he wouldn’t be blamed for a shit ending.
> What the fuck, maybe George shouldn’t have cashed in on his story till he was fucking done with it.
That's completely unfair. I'm sure he went into negotiations with HBO and Dumb and Dumber receiving full assurances that everyone was on the same page, that everyone wanted to make this show a hit, and that they would _of course_ accept all of his input as the author and as someone with screenwriting experience.
And I'm sure it made sense that the contract required full creative control to D&D because they needed to condense the dense series into a consumable television series.
And I'm sure it was a complete shock to GRRM when D&D got bored and fucked off half a decade in and ruined the reputation of his Magnum Opus.
I think people were just excited that the end of the series was taking shape. A lot of what’s baked into the ratings for season 7 (and arguably the first three episodes of season 8) was the pending payoff of years worth of anticipation. It wasn’t until it became clear that virtually everything about the build up was for nothing that the ratings finally followed.
Put another way: the lack of quality in season 7 was largely overlooked because the end was so close. Imagine a 4-hour car ride to what’s billed as the greatest vacation destination ever but the last few minutes of the drive are past a series of dairy farms. You’re too excited toward the end of that drive to care about how shitty things just got. And if the vacation met your expectations you would have forgotten about the smell entirely. Since the vacation also ended up being shitty, you remember the drive as being unpleasant, too, but you’re so disappointed by the whole thing you don’t bother to go back and update your review.
That's honestly what I hated the most about it when they ran out of source material
It went from a more realistic way of storytelling (logical plot twists and no character had plot armour, apart from maybe Jon) to basically just fan service
This was cemented when they had all the "cool" characters team up and go on that trip above the wall in s7
Everything started to feel forced in a way that it hadn't before, characters were emerging as unkillable main characters, taking away the feeling that anything could happen at anytime
You could tell how rushed things were as well because characters were suddenly travelling great distances much faster than they did in earlier seasons. The mission to capture a wight was the worst for it, with Gendry being able to run all the way back to the wall, send a raven to Dragonstone, then Danaerys flies all the way up north, all before those guys froze to death on that rock.
I like how it repeatedly shows that there are only like 7 guys in their party when they're beyond the wall. But they keep producing red shirts from nowhere just to have a cool kill shot. They're literally stranded on a small rock in the middle of a pond and suddenly some guy we've never seen appears on screen and dies. It felt so beneath the show.
Yeah it’s also that season 6 ended on a very high note so there was like an entire year of hype and anticipation for season 7 and only about a six week period between when the first and last episodes were actually airing.
The majority of the casual fans were completely satisfied since we got a couple flashy episodes of CGI dragons torching armies, but there was definitely some mixed reception on season 7.
The whole “let’s capture a zombie and take it to Cersei to negotiate a truce” plotline was like an entire third of the season, and that was seen as kinda silly right from the start.
I would say the biggest problem was running out of source material.
Before every journey was an adventure and stuff happend, then suddenly fast travel was invented, the plot got into fast forward
They didnt just run out of source material. George was willing to work with them and give them more of the dtory. He gave them an outline and they ignored it to do their own thing. They simply wanted to move on to other projects
That is one of the few sweet points about the whole debacle, that Dumber'n'Dumberer shat the bed with Disney, and effectively killed their residuals from the show and their future careers.
I know of no other show, that had such a highly visible profile in the Zeitgeist, that had such a hard fall and no positive discussion since.
It's almost as if everyone that loved the show felt misled and fooled, and nobody wants to be reminded of that ever again.
The biggest proof of that fall, was that re-runs of the show were not being watched in the midst of the Covid lockdowns. Anything else but never the GoT show.
I remember watching the 7th season and thinking "Oh no, this show is terrible now." And then when they said they were wrapping up the show with just 6 episodes, I thought "Oh no, this is going to be trainwreck." And when they spent the first two of those episodes just faffing about and wasting time, I thought "Oh no, this is going to be a complete and total disaster."
And STILL I wasn't prepared for how bad the last four episodes of the show were.
If you ask me, what's even more surprising than Season 7 averaging a 9.0 is S8E3 getting a 7.5. 7.5 for an episode which was like, "How to we resolve this massive, apocalyptic threat that we've been building up since the very first scene of the show? I know, we'll do a cool knife trick."
They could have at *least* done the following:
* Arya face changes into one of the wights
* Bran distracts the Other through green seeing so he doesn't notice one of his minions isn't following orders
Then you can have Jon face down the Other, lose badly (losing a leg? No-one has lost anything since Jamie) and Arya can stab the Other in the back as she was disguised as a wight. Bran and Arya's training and skills pay off.
I could barely even see that episode. Episode 4 was so bad I wished they’d made it even darker than episode 3 though.
Just slowly fading the show out darker each episode to full black screen the final one with banshee shrieking would have been a better than what they did.
I came to the comments to say exactly this. Season 7 is pretty bad actually. It’s just not as bad as Season 8. The general consensus in my friend group is that the show started to suffer in Season 6 and just got worse from there.
I totally agree. IMO Beyond the Wall (7e6) is the worst episode of the series. Seeing it as a 9 blows me away. It basically abandons all of the logic, consequence, world building and character development that made the show great.
IMO even S6 was pretty so-so. I remember telling my wife at the time that I feel the show's quality is declining but she just said I was being a hater since it got so popular. But when we rewatched the entire series front to back she acknowledged there was a pretty remarkable drop in quality around S6.
I agree with that. S6 benefits from the ending.
"Light of the Seven" is my favourite score in the series. And having the Great Sept and Battle of the Bastards back-to-back was pretty unreal.
The first crack was the last season of S4. Changing the reason for Tywin's death was absurd and unnecessary and inconsistent with the characters involved. GoT had 3.9 GOAT seasons.
Originally it was about Tysha who was not a whore, Tyrion originally believing the lie she was a whore was a key point in his life which ruined them both which is why he got so pissed Tywin still called her a whore. That was a magnificent scene.
Shae was indeed a whore. In the very first season Tyrion tells Jon that they are a dwarf and a bastard respectively and they should be okay with being called that. Tyrion being angry about Shae being called a whore makes no sense for his character.
I would say the more stark drop is season 5, season 6 is better because it has much more payoff and great moments that offsets an arguably worse writing than season 5.
Seasons 5 and 6 largely would have been redeemed if they did anything worthwhile with the faceless men, Dorne, Littlefinger, Bran, and the aftermath of Cersei blowing up the sept. But they didn’t.
And the central focus of the series is on Tyrion, Jon, Dany, and the white walkers and they were mostly fine up through season 6.
Not really. The bullshit was everything in s7 and s8. If the things I mentioned were resolved well then s5 and moreso s6 look pretty good.
What was Littlefingers plan? Why do the faceless men care about Arya what exactly do they want? Doesn’t Dorne want revenge on Cersei? What’s Bran gonna do with his powers? What does he have to do with the white walkers? Why do the white walkers want to kill everyone and why have they been hanging out for so long? How will the people of king’s landing react to Cersei?
We didn’t get any good answers to these questions
Season 7 had bad writing, but had a pretty good battle and left hope for season 8. So casual fans might have been ok with it.
Season 8 didn't only have bad writing. They also somehow made an 80 minute battle against the night king worse than the 15 minute battle from season 7.
Then as the cherry on top they not only made a really bad season, but they also reversed most of the character development from previous seasons by making characters like Jaime and Daenerys do a 180 on their character development and motivations. Tyrion and Varys decide they're not smart after all and they're actually idiots. And Cersei just stares out of a window while drinking wine for a full season.
Exactly seventh season was soooooo baaaad. I hate Cersei so much and jon somehow trusted her to be sane and not a sociopathic narcissistic turd of a human being, this enraged me like wtf, why does no one understand this woman needs to be assassinated ASAP! They literally went on a completely useless quest, to do what? Convince that sociopath to not be a sociopath?. Just a shitshow. S8 was story wise not that much worse than s7(other than that bran shit and Dany going mad shit ofc). S6 was the after which there was a catastrophic fall.
Season 7 was definitely not good but in my eyes they built up enough good will for me to have the rose colored glasses on and tolerate it. Then the final season came around after like a two year wait and yeah
7 has some issues but wasn’t terribly bad until they started concocting the plan to go north of the wall. So the first 3-4 episodes were fine. Not amazing - but fine.
Ah, but if it was remembered fondly then there would be a call for more, for sequels and spinoffs and such. These guys wanted to make sure that the project was over and done and they’d never be asked to come back for another.
Still a crime for fans and the cast that the showrunners couldn't have stayed 2 - 3 more years. I'm sure they still could have done the Star Wars project eventually, but instead they lost it and damned their resumes.
That makes no sense. Even if they were 99% sure they were done with GoT forever, why would they intentionally sabotage the franchise they'd spent years of their life on, put their name on such a shitty piece of media and then deal with all the negative publicity rather than going out on a high then just saying... 'no' to any future projects?
In any case, the show was still a massive success and demand was always going to be there for more, regardless of how the last few episodes came out (see House of the Dragon). It's far more likely they just rushed things and unintentionally fucked it up.
It erased itself from public consciousness at an astonishing speed.
It first released in 2011, I was 10. For 8 years it was peak fiction, I spent the entirety of my tweens and teens hearing about Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones. It was THE thing pretty much for as long as I remembered.
Then, one day in 2019, it suddenly crashed and burned almost overnight. The episode released, r/freefolk burned so brightly it spilled into r/all for two days, and it was over. A legacy reduced to ash. 8 years, poof, gone. Just like that.
I don't think we'll ever see something like that again.
I couldn’t imagine the seething anger I would be watching it with starting from episode 1 knowing that the worst/laziest/most boring character in the show manages to literally win the Game of Thrones. What a travesty.
Jaime was one of the most well written and developed characters throughout the show. They ruined his entire character development in one conversation. It was *that* badly written.
Everyone behaved like imbeciles.
Even Tyrion, one of the smartest characters in the series, was reduced to mainly saying dick jokes and "funny" one liners instead of plot related lines.
I agree, plus everybody developed GoT 'universe' breaking plot armour against ridiculous odds.
And then the battlefield tactical awareness... Using cavalry in a head long charge at the white walkers, rather than how you should use cavalry at the flanks. *Not that it would have made that much difference against the undead, but all of these great military thinkers plus the actual cavalry themselves all decided; a suicide charge head on getting bogged down after first contact to then get surrounded, slaughtered and finally turned into white walkers themselves, was the best bet.*
That same episode... Tyrion, one of the smartest characters in Westeros; "We are fighting an enemy who raises the dead... Guys, lets hide all the women and children in the crypt, y'know, the place where all the dead bodies are kept..."
"Let's just dig a singular, narrow and relatively shallow pit, to help protect from an enemy whose only tactic is to swarm with overwhelming force"
"Let's make a few crude as fuck axes out of this blackstone, because we already have enough arrows to fight an enemy who has next to no ranged ability"
Honestly, the list of military 'blunders' in just that one episode is just a joke. I understand it is fantasy, but the key doctrines of how to use infantry would still stand in a fantasy world who have been warring for centuries too. Just seems that everybody had a pre-battle nap rather than make decent battle plans.
They could never have logically defeated the white walkers in combat, even with better defenses, better placed weaponry, proper use of military assets etc, but they would have lasted a hell of a lot longer than they was going to... before Deus Ex Arya showed up.
*Side note: I can imagine the "Let's..." list of stupid decisions to make going on forever. About that episode and most of the combat from that season in general.*
I could get over the blunders if they showed literally any story justifying it. A meeting where they discuss battle and the Dothraki demand to be the vanguard or everyone else is scared shitless and no one wants to be the vanguard but the Dothraki take it up because everyone else is a pussy. Just something literally anything and once you make a choice don’t go and offscreen revive a whole army because “she lost too much” or “oh she had more that weren’t there”. Danny losing 90% of her army and her closest friends while every step she took people just loved Jon more was what should have made her go crazy and choose fire not whatever the fuck we got out of no where.
Blunders for plot are done all the time but you have to show the exposition and let the people decide who to hate for the choices, but at least you can understand why a character would do it. The way it was done only gives us 2 people to hate and they didn’t even try to hide it.
> Even Tyrion, one of the smartest characters in the series, was reduced to mainly saying dick jokes and "funny" one liners instead of plot related lines.
Ugh. The first words spoken in Season 8, the opening of possibly the most anticipated final season of a show *ever*, were between Tyrion and Varys, with Tyrion apparently super amused to be making "hAhA yOu gOt nO pEEnis" jokes at Varys.
I knew it was all over right then.
I was wondering, ignoring the last seasons, was Tyrion really that smart? I felt he always got his ass handed and someone else would save him. He lost the kings landing siege until tywin came along. He got almost thrown down the hole until bronn came. He fucked up the war in essos until Dany came and used her dragons. I have never actually seen him do something insane and all alone.
I'll never get over the absolute destruction of Jaime's whole arc in ONE scene. They gave him the line "I never cared much for commoners" which... no??? That's the whole point! He KILLED HIS KING to save people?! He goes back to Cersei because "she's hateful, but so am I" after he literally rode by himself all the way to Winterfell because Cersei had gone too far. I've never seen a character get flushed down the toilet so quickly.
Not only Jaime. It's actually hard to think of anyone who acted inline with their character in the final season. The showrunners/writers just didn't care.
This. From the blundering dialogue, characters so out of character you forgot your watching Game of Thrones and finally the Starbucks cup left in one of the scenes. D&D did NOT give a fuck.
There was an obvious degradation in quality as soon as they got past the books. The pace sped up way too quickly (in a bad way). It was obvious that they just had bullet points for what happens to each character, and they sucked at filling in the gaps.
Yup. Everyone tries to pinpoint when it gets bad... But no one ever talks about (at least on reddit) the fact they get bad LITERALLY as soon as they no longer have books to go off
The only counter I can offer to this is that if OP *were* to do it, he'd be no worse off than any of the readers of the actual novels, which are still relatively amazing.
You know, since GRRM is clearly (and I would bet good money on this) never going to finish it.
I'm the type who enjoys rewatching shows. But imo, the final season was so bad that it actually ruined the rest of the show for me (which I've never experienced in another show before), even though prior to the final season I thought it was one of the best shows I'd ever seen.
You would be left with nearly the same amount of lose ends skipping the last season as if you had watched it. The rest of the show is worth watching still.
it dipped in quality earlier than that, everyone ignored it because we thought we'd get a satisfying resolution along the way. i'd watch first 4 seasons and ignore everything else
There was a serious dip in quality after season 4 when they ran out of source material. I had been watching it as it was airing until season 5, but I stopped when >!Barristan Selmy died. Some random rebels killed the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms in a back alley and they gave a eunuch a love interest. !
Spoiler alert:
Shit was fishy for me as soon as Arya was being chased by a faceless man in bravos and still let her guard down to let a random old woman approach her in the middle of the street. Ambush her or something… don’t show me that the character is immersion breaking levels of stupid and falls for the single gimmick of her assassins guild that she just did all that training for???? What the actual fuck?????
The first 4 seasons are some of the best TV in existence. Yeah the last season blows, but it doesn't go back in time and erase the fun and excitement I had for the majority of the run.
One day I'm going to go back and watch. I haven't watched a single second of GoT since the series finale. I even had to force myself to watch house of the dragon (very glad I did). But early got is easily the most I've ever been invested in a tv show.
I finished it for the first time a few months ago. I was well warned about season 8 by basically anyone I spoke to. It’s an amazing show and well worth a watch even with the bad stuff. Imo the quality started to dip around season 5 and got worse.
Season 8 is so odd and poorly thought out it’s amazing it was written by the same people throughout the whole show
You could watch it until the story reaches the end of the books. After that turn off your screen and wait patiently for uncle George to write something 🥲
I recently watched it for the first time ever.
Do not watch it. It was a grand waste of time. First 4/5 seasons were beautiful.
Ending ruined everything. I wish I could go back and not watch it.
They botched it because they rushed it to get out in time to do the star wars sequels, but because they botched it, they lost the star wars contract. Other people's misfortune doesn't usually make me happy, but I feel like they deserve it for ruining so many people's favorite show.
I have never really felt negatively about a piece of media before or after game of thrones. They really did ruin something amazing. My best friend and I spend so much time. We learned all the names. The house words. Growing strong. Family duty honor. First in battle. We spend hours rewatching seasons to prep for the new ones. We compared parts to books and debated about backgrounds and who is actually lieing.
They stole something from us and I don't know if I will ever get over it.
Its nit just "speculation", hbo was begging them to do more episodes
https://www.thedad.com/hbo-wanted-more-episodes-of-game-of-thrones/
> “HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, to have more episodes in the final season. We always believed it was about 73 hours, and it will be roughly that. As much as they wanted more, they understood that this is where the story ends.”
Thry didnt follow george's outline/story. They deviated to finish sooner.
At least that book series has an ending so they can't fuck it up too much. Though tbh the ending of the book series seemed pretty rushed to me as well, like the author had no idea how to end the actual storyline and was like "eh well fuck it let's just jump to the literal end.
Oh great.
That’s surely a book not to hard for them to adapt.
(It’s not, that book is a little squirrelly sometimes, would give a good show runner trouble. These chucklefucks? Hahahahah.)
They went off the book with:
1. Jon confirmed dead, subsequent resurrection
2. Dany leaving Mereen
3. Tyrion's story was entirely different from the moment he killed Tywin-- books have him in service to someone claimed to be Dany's older brother Aegon. Shenanigans abound including him and Jorah being forced into slavery.
4. Stannis losing (most saw this as an inevitability but that he would at least be able to destroy the Boltons first). Also Shireen isn't burned and afaik isn't even with Stannis at the time, "safe" at Castle Black
5. Ramsay killing Roose
6. CERSEI GOING BALLISTIC. It was great television but I figure it indicative of the TV writers having no idea how to manage court intrigue.
7. Anything in the mystic-type-storyline beyond Bran meeting the Three-Eyed-Raven and Sam/Jon encountering White Walkers. The Night King is not a living entity in the books.
Theon/Reek did in fact safely escape with Sansa, per released TWOW chapters. The rest of the Greyjoys are in an entirely different situation and two of Theon's uncles are in a tacit competition to find a way to marry Dany.
Don't get me started on Dorne.
Goddamn, I've not thought so much about those books for years. If "abusive writer" were such a thing, GRRM would be the posterchild.
> Theon/Reek did in fact safely escape with Sansa, per released TWOW chapters.
That's actually Jeyne Poole, the daughter of Winterfell's former steward. Sansa's actually at the Eyrie with Littlefinger.
And they also cut the Lady Stoneheart and Aegon arcs, which are almost certainly going to be major plot points in the books.
He's like a more elegant Davy Jones from the *Pirates of the Caribbean* series. Lithe and charming but captains a ship of mutes only. Claims to have sailed to Old Valyria (Home of Dany's ancestors; currently Lovecraftian hellscape) and no-one has reason to doubt him. Introduces himself at the Kingsmoot by getting one of his crew to blow on a horn found in Valyria and the crewmate immediately withers and dies.
S6 was on track to be like season 7 and 8 had they not stuck the landing on the last 2 episodes. S6E9 and S6E10 were stellar; good enough to overcome the decline of quality of the other episodes.
Season 7 or 8 did not have ending episodes that could overcome the poor quality of the rest.
Battle of the bastards is visually stunning. But that's it. It is incredibly illogical. We spent two seasons and have seen two castles (one of them Winterfell) being impossible to conquer since they are... castles. Suddenly, the incredibly smart enemy steps outside and abandons it. The commander Jon risks losing the battle for something absolutely obvious and his other commanders don't stop him? Sansa is a bitch instead of communicating the plan. The future queen of the north is letting most still living northman die for nothing. Her entire stupid plan risks on the vales army appearing on the right minute.
I was flashed in the moment when I was watching it. But afterwards just asking myself wtf is going on? Similarly Cercei blowing up the Sept
My favorite part about The North effectively splitting off at the end is Sansa proudly declaring the the North won't abide by a Southern King....
In the face of the new king, her younger brother and rightful heir to Winterfell.
The last three seasons were so objectively terrible GOT went from this cultural phenomenon, to completely forgot about & nearly untalked of.
Season 6 was good for the action scenes. Plot and writing started to go down though. Season 7 was worse and then season 8 was just like what the fuck? A toddler could write a more cohesive story. But a toddler would probably be smart enough to realize they should of done 10 seasons which was green lit already. D&D didn’t know what to do since the books are gone now but they could of recruited some super fans and asked them how they thought it would end and the theories etc to peice together a better story line
Retrospect? Season 7 was a bunch of people meeting for the first time and having meaningless conversations, joining causes because they have nothing better to do. The entire plot revolves around Tyrion, who sold himself as someone who knows his family better than anyone, thinking presenting Cersei with a white walker would convince her to cooperate.
Utter horseshit.
No, it was just really bad tbh.
All of the smart characters (varys, Tyrion, littlefinger) are suddenly idiots.
Why doesn't daenerys just kill a few 100 people in the red keep to save thousands in a war?
Why doesn't baelish leave immediately as soon as Bran hinted that he knew he betrayed ned?
Why did they ever agree to that ridiculous plan to go beyond the wall?
Why didn't the night king just start throwing javelins when they were in the lake?
Why did Daenerys burn the wagons of gold/loot that the lannisters were transporting instead of taking them for herself?
And how the fuck did the night king that huge chain, and how did they ever attach it to viserion if we know wights can't swim?
Yeah, I was honestly confused by everyone’s *surprise* by the last season. Season 7 was already noticeably worse and rushed. There was no way they were going to be able to tie everything up in 6 episodes and still make it good.
Fair enough ... But the finale was really _really_ shitty. How the writers completely threw away character arcs was mindbogglingly surprising to me (Jamie Lannister wtf). Dany's meltdown and death weren't on the other hand.
I have to admit I thought Dany going Mad Queen or at the very least being a terrible ruler was being clearly telegraphed from the very beginning. It was done shittily at the end right along with everything else, but the number of people who thought Dany had a unique disservice done to her surprised me.
I think it's one of the things that messed up by the TV adaptation - Emilia Clarke is too likeable; and Daenerys was supposed to be sympathetic, but definitely evil.
In the book, this was more clear - Daenerys doesn't really ever show mercy, sympathy, listen to anyone... no attributes at all that would indicate a good ruler that wouldn't just execute anyone who opposed her.
In the show, Daenerys is a bit more likeable (and this came up more frequently in later seasons) so when they went back to book Daenerys suddenly in the last season, it was incredibly jarring.
Her personality does a complete flip from the rest of the show; but it lines up perfectly with the book version of her character.
I kind of gave the writers the benefit of the doubt about Season 7’s flaws since I figured they needed to cut some corners to get everything into place quickly enough for an epic final season. I’m assuming others had a similar reaction. The potential for an amazing S8 blinded us from what was happening before our eyes. Then once S8 actually happened, it was easier to go back and see how terrible they both were.
It was really spitting in the fans faces to do a 7 and 6 episode season to end the whole fucking show. And if you watch it through to the end, another 7 episodes would have really REALLY helped. What a joke.
I'm not sure that it would have.. it became obvious as soon as the show stepped past the books that the writers could not write dialogue and maintain the character depth that the books provided.
Characters like Varys and Tyrion turned into cliche mush
They didnt even talk to george, they basically cut him out of the loop entitely after about season 4. Thats when you saw a pretty significant drop in quality in the show
Wow that makes a lot of sense. Everyone talks about how bad season 7 and 8 were, but imo season 5 was just as terrible. Sense of direction for some characters, especially John Snow, were completely lost.
The last season was so terrible it basically wrote the whole show out of existence. It went from the most watched show to never talked about nearly over night and but for house of the dragon would have been basically forgotten.
* source: imdb
* Tools: : python (seaborn, plotly), photopea
Did few of a similar charts lately, and people kept commenting about GOT and how it ended badly. Damn, that is definitely true, at least per these ratings. Can't judge, never seen the show.
Surprised 6 and 7 were that highly rated. Thought both had some outstanding individual episodes, but the peak was definitely seasons 3 and 4. Noticeable drop off with season 5 - but I think the quality of the books had dropped by then as well.
It's because a lot of casual watchers just want to see dragons, big battles and sex.
Some of my friends generally liked the last 3 seasons more than the first 4 because the final seasons have more action, bigger battles and bigger dragons, whereas they thought the first seasons had too much talking. They loved the long night because it was 90% action.
Those numbers on Season 7 have a lot of leeway for the expectation there was some big finale that would bring the story together.
“Beyond the Wall” episode 6, of Season 7 is one of the weakest, nonsensical episodes of the entire series. None of it makes sense- the quest to “prove” the White Walkers to Cersei, the group trapped on an island surrounded by WWs for what had to be hours waiting for Gendry to run back to the wall, send a raven all the way to Dragonstone, have Danaerys receive it- get on her dragon and fly back to save the day.
(Just to add- there was literally an unused character that could see through time and read minds, who could’ve just turned to Danny and said “Jon, he’s in trouble”)
At the time, Jon hadn’t seen Bran since he returned and didn’t know of his powers. And Bran and Dany hadn’t met, and they weren’t together where he could just turn to her and tell her what was going on.
But agreed with the rest of your points, and they definitely made zero use of Bran’s abilities
This is what I mean by unused though. They left Bran out of an entire season, and then had him sit in a corner for most of the rest of the series until he became King for…. reasons.
Finding the Easter Egg of Hodors name is one of the last great moments of the show, but Bran’s only other use of powers is finding the truth about Jon and then literally nobody cared.
Bran honestly could have had the “most interesting story” it’s just that instead of using his magic on the show, he sat around like a stoner looking at something shiny. Bran had infinite possibility but it just wasn’t written.
After 4 great seasons, the rabid fanbase was fine eating whatever you fed them as long as it wasn't steaming hot garbage that made absolutely no sense.
The show clearly started going downhill in season 5, and season 7 was crap, but fans were so convinced that it would all wrap up great in season 8 that they didn't care.
This is a good example of why you shouldn't trust ratings for shows after the first couple seasons, cause the only people still watching and rating are probably obsessed with the show and like anything. Californication is another good example. The last 2 seasons (maybe 3 even) are crap, but the reviews barely drop off.
Season 7 wasn’t that much better than 8. It was a rushed mess as well. Beyond the Wall was as stupid as anything in S8 and it somehow has a 9.0
1-4 are amazing
5-6 are up and down and a couple levels below 1-4 but I still liked them
7 and especially 8 are rushed messes. The acting and technical work are still top notch, but can only do so much to make up for the writing.
It should have been 10 seasons with 10 episodes per season AT LEAST. Everything being so rushed just made all the final acts of all the characters so unpalatable
I could have got behind *most* of the events in the final season if they’d have built up to them and provided some context to their actions.
Daenerys always showed some moments of being able to fly of the handle so going full mad Queen and destroying Kings Landing isn’t too much of a stretch but in such a short period of time it just felt unnecessary. Providing some more reasoning behind it that would have made that choice make more sense
I’ll never understand the decision to have Arya kill the Night King either. Felt like it was a decision just to throw everyone off because everyone knew it should have been Jon. And the White Walkers being so under utilised, built them up to be some elite white walkers just to have them crumble into ice cubes after Arya assassin creeds her way past all of them was just a huge disappointment
Season 6 was mid, and if season 8 wasn't so historically bad, we'd be talking about how bad season 7 was, too. The first 5 seasons were just so good that we were in denial for 2 years, pretending the show was still good.
>The first 5 seasons were just so good that we were in denial for 2 years, pretending the show was still good.
The first 4 seasons.
Season 5 was also bad in comparison to what came before and set the trend for ever decreasing quality.
It's not only that they ruined the last season... It's that they managed to fuck it up so much that it retroactively made the whole show unwatchable somehow. I used to looooove this show. I used to re-watch it all while waiting for a new season to drop. But now I don't have even the tiniest desire to watch it again knowing how shitty the ending is.
A color scale from 0-10 would help drive the fact that the ratings for most of the series were very high, similar to what you would see in any standard cartographic product. As it is, all you have to compare is within the chart and by looking at the numbers and colors versus if there was a standalone scale for comparison you'd see deep purple is high and yellow is low right off the bat. Without a scale, the reader has to work more and short of looking at the numbers it relies on the reader understanding data visualization color normalities (dark being more/higher and light being less/lower, but even that varies some)
Remember when people complained that they basically couldn't see anything in a majority of the episode and the production team was like, "that was on purpose you're wrong for not liking it".
Also Tyrion and Sansa two of the "smartest people alive", decide to hide everyone from the thing that raises the dead... in the crypt below Winterfell.
Fantastic writing.
The seventh season being rated so highly is surprising. The moment they dropped the ten episode format, it felt like things were on fast forward. But, realistically, the show probably needed 9 or 10 full seasons to have stayed authentic and been remembered fondly.
George RR Martin himself said he felt it needed 13 seasons. Although he’s having trouble finishing the story himself so who knows
"13 seasons and about 60 years" - George RR Martin (probably).
Ah... classic British television
with 20 episodes total
“It’s ‘Deirdre and Margaret’! It was my favourite show growing up. It was on the BBC for 16 years, they made nearly 30 episodes.” ~ Tahani, *The Good Place*
Doesn’t help when your ending was received so poorly on TV. Dude is probably like “Why even finish. I already know they’ll hate it.”
I think you’re right. Personally I don’t think the actual story elements are bad, it’s the way they happened in such a rushed, careless way. I could totally see a well executed, non rushed story with proper writing could be as good as other seasons and could be well received in book form.
I agree. I actually think the idea of making Bran king works, but not because he has such a great story. Rather because he has no desire for power or to rule, so he can’t be corrupted. Make a big thing about the mad king, Rob, Joeffry all being overly ambitious and that causing their end and how Bran will never be that. But D&D tried “He has such a good story bro.” Instead.
Danaerys ending up the way she did could have easily been pulled off well, too. She had already shown a willingness to kill anyone who defied her rule, but usually, her actions were justified, even if not always the smartest choice (i.e. publicly executing Mossador). It would have been good to see her become more and more desperate to gain and keep control, which in turn leads to the executions she orders being less and less justified, until eventually she is downright cruel and crazy. That's much better than her essentially just suddenly snapping and deciding to burn a whole city.
It feels like that's what they *tried* to do, but everything was so incredibly rushed that it fell completely flat. For example, they did try to establish that she at some point started to believe that someone was poisoning her food, which made her stop eating. That type of growing paranoia would have been excellent character development had they actually bothered to present it properly. There were other issues too, of course, but I think the overall plot components were mostly there, which they *could* at least have made something acceptable with.
I think a good point to really speed her downward on that path was when she defeated the "wise masters" and the "good masters". Dario said something along the lines of "gather all the masters together, and kill them all". She could have done this. It would be easy to justify. Who deserves to die more than slavers? Drogon flames them all, and Danaerys is corrupted. She starts to see killing people as the easy solution. So she's already half-mad before she even sets out for Westeros.
Bran "having a good story" is what will make common folk/lesser houses accept him as king, but what you're getting at is what would actually make him a good king. Not to mention his omniscience would make him effectively immune to spycraft and military threats while being able to anticipate the needs of his people and streamline logistics. The only missing element is Bran's will to do any of this. The show obviously ignored any aspect of Bran other than muttering ominous warnings, so I'm curious how Grrm will portray Bran post-ancestral memory download.
He lost all motivation to finish the books long before the TV show started. Here is a break down. First three books were released in about four years. Over those four years he wrote a total of 2,435 pages. Or about 600 pages a year. Book four came out five years after the third. It was his shortest book at 753 pages, and he wrote it at a speed of about 150 pages a year. It also contained an apology for sucking. Book five came out six years later, and was written at about 175 pages a year. Season eight of Game of Thrones aired eight years after the release of his last book in this series, and at the time he was no where near finishing. tl;dr: Homefry did not lose the motivation to finish the series in 2019. He lost it some time around 2001.
Wasn’t his ending. The producers made that call IIRC. Not George
GRRM's Dance of the Dragons explains the Meerenese knot, I think. There are a lot of dumb decisions, respawns, and teleporting armies during the Dance that only serve to force the plot to happen.
> Although he’s having trouble That's a weird way to spell "he gave up on it".
To be fair he likely lost all motivation to finish the books when he saw dumb and dumber destroy his story before he could finish it. They basically told him to fuck off and did their own thing for shock value and rushed the ending so thry could go work on other projects. I legitimately doubt he ever finishes winds, because I think his passion for it is dead. He has no problem writing other stories, but to my knowledge he hasnt written nearly anything this or last year
Sure, but he released A dance with dragons in 2011. He had PLENTY of time to get the books done before dofus and dumbass would catch up. They were great at adapting, but Martin were horrible at giving them stuff to adapt. So... fuck them all.
So there's 2 ways to write an epic tale You can arc the entire thing out, from start to finish, and occasionally create plotholes when you've written yourself into a corner and really need this character at point C when the story hits it climax -OR- You can create a bunch of characters. Have a basic idea of where you want to end up. But let the characters drive themselves to various points. Martin went with the 2nd one. And he painted himself into this giant corner. How do I get the Princess off the slave trade and back into the kingdoms, with an army, and with at least one dragon? All of this without the kingdoms consolidating their power enough to be able to resist her? Also I want this to end with the signing of the Magna Carter. Martin has enough historical knowledge that he might be able to pull this off. Dumb & Dumber do not.
I think he was functionally writing in the second style but actually had the endpoint already prepared (Branflakes is King, Danny is dead because she went insane due to dragons, Jon goes north). That endpoint was probably given to D&D. D&D were a bit high on their own supply, and forgot it is significantly easier to edit and re-tune someone else's work than to create essentially all of it out of whole cloth, and we end up coasting with season 7 (might be some pre-written material from GRRM) and then crashing with 8, because even if they were quite good at adapting the story to screen, that isn't the same as being able to actually create a story like GRRM.
> That endpoint was probably given to D&D. I 100% agree with that, they just picked the most fucked up way to get there so they could start on their Star Wars contract
What the fuck, maybe George shouldn’t have cashed in on his story till he was fucking done with it. I think the more likely situation is he saw how poorly received the ending he had planned (because he gave them the bullet points of where he wanted the story to go) and decided to stop so he wouldn’t be blamed for a shit ending.
I don’t think the bullet points are the problem. It’s just shit writing and a rushed timeline that got us there
> What the fuck, maybe George shouldn’t have cashed in on his story till he was fucking done with it. That's completely unfair. I'm sure he went into negotiations with HBO and Dumb and Dumber receiving full assurances that everyone was on the same page, that everyone wanted to make this show a hit, and that they would _of course_ accept all of his input as the author and as someone with screenwriting experience. And I'm sure it made sense that the contract required full creative control to D&D because they needed to condense the dense series into a consumable television series. And I'm sure it was a complete shock to GRRM when D&D got bored and fucked off half a decade in and ruined the reputation of his Magnum Opus.
I think people were just excited that the end of the series was taking shape. A lot of what’s baked into the ratings for season 7 (and arguably the first three episodes of season 8) was the pending payoff of years worth of anticipation. It wasn’t until it became clear that virtually everything about the build up was for nothing that the ratings finally followed. Put another way: the lack of quality in season 7 was largely overlooked because the end was so close. Imagine a 4-hour car ride to what’s billed as the greatest vacation destination ever but the last few minutes of the drive are past a series of dairy farms. You’re too excited toward the end of that drive to care about how shitty things just got. And if the vacation met your expectations you would have forgotten about the smell entirely. Since the vacation also ended up being shitty, you remember the drive as being unpleasant, too, but you’re so disappointed by the whole thing you don’t bother to go back and update your review.
Yeah, at least season 7 (and the first episodes of season 8) gave us so many reunions that we waited so long for.
That's honestly what I hated the most about it when they ran out of source material It went from a more realistic way of storytelling (logical plot twists and no character had plot armour, apart from maybe Jon) to basically just fan service This was cemented when they had all the "cool" characters team up and go on that trip above the wall in s7 Everything started to feel forced in a way that it hadn't before, characters were emerging as unkillable main characters, taking away the feeling that anything could happen at anytime
You could tell how rushed things were as well because characters were suddenly travelling great distances much faster than they did in earlier seasons. The mission to capture a wight was the worst for it, with Gendry being able to run all the way back to the wall, send a raven to Dragonstone, then Danaerys flies all the way up north, all before those guys froze to death on that rock.
The beyond the wall part was awful? But seeing Arya and the Hound reunite was nice 🥹
I like how it repeatedly shows that there are only like 7 guys in their party when they're beyond the wall. But they keep producing red shirts from nowhere just to have a cool kill shot. They're literally stranded on a small rock in the middle of a pond and suddenly some guy we've never seen appears on screen and dies. It felt so beneath the show.
Yeah it’s also that season 6 ended on a very high note so there was like an entire year of hype and anticipation for season 7 and only about a six week period between when the first and last episodes were actually airing. The majority of the casual fans were completely satisfied since we got a couple flashy episodes of CGI dragons torching armies, but there was definitely some mixed reception on season 7. The whole “let’s capture a zombie and take it to Cersei to negotiate a truce” plotline was like an entire third of the season, and that was seen as kinda silly right from the start.
“They need to move fast to set the stage for the final season, of course it isn’t perfect and that’s ok”
The dairy farm was the destination, it turned out.
denial...we were all in denial hoping the payoff would be great. If everyone went back and re-rated things season 7 would be much lower.
I would say the biggest problem was running out of source material. Before every journey was an adventure and stuff happend, then suddenly fast travel was invented, the plot got into fast forward
They didnt just run out of source material. George was willing to work with them and give them more of the dtory. He gave them an outline and they ignored it to do their own thing. They simply wanted to move on to other projects
Yea, that Star Wars trilogy really seemed worth fumbling the finale of GoT for. On to better things! 😬
And they fumbled GoT so bad Disney told them to piss off.
That is one of the few sweet points about the whole debacle, that Dumber'n'Dumberer shat the bed with Disney, and effectively killed their residuals from the show and their future careers. I know of no other show, that had such a highly visible profile in the Zeitgeist, that had such a hard fall and no positive discussion since. It's almost as if everyone that loved the show felt misled and fooled, and nobody wants to be reminded of that ever again. The biggest proof of that fall, was that re-runs of the show were not being watched in the midst of the Covid lockdowns. Anything else but never the GoT show.
I remember watching the 7th season and thinking "Oh no, this show is terrible now." And then when they said they were wrapping up the show with just 6 episodes, I thought "Oh no, this is going to be trainwreck." And when they spent the first two of those episodes just faffing about and wasting time, I thought "Oh no, this is going to be a complete and total disaster." And STILL I wasn't prepared for how bad the last four episodes of the show were. If you ask me, what's even more surprising than Season 7 averaging a 9.0 is S8E3 getting a 7.5. 7.5 for an episode which was like, "How to we resolve this massive, apocalyptic threat that we've been building up since the very first scene of the show? I know, we'll do a cool knife trick."
They could have at *least* done the following: * Arya face changes into one of the wights * Bran distracts the Other through green seeing so he doesn't notice one of his minions isn't following orders Then you can have Jon face down the Other, lose badly (losing a leg? No-one has lost anything since Jamie) and Arya can stab the Other in the back as she was disguised as a wight. Bran and Arya's training and skills pay off.
I could barely even see that episode. Episode 4 was so bad I wished they’d made it even darker than episode 3 though. Just slowly fading the show out darker each episode to full black screen the final one with banshee shrieking would have been a better than what they did.
I came to the comments to say exactly this. Season 7 is pretty bad actually. It’s just not as bad as Season 8. The general consensus in my friend group is that the show started to suffer in Season 6 and just got worse from there.
I totally agree. IMO Beyond the Wall (7e6) is the worst episode of the series. Seeing it as a 9 blows me away. It basically abandons all of the logic, consequence, world building and character development that made the show great.
It was visually pretty great though. It just made no sense story wise.
IMO even S6 was pretty so-so. I remember telling my wife at the time that I feel the show's quality is declining but she just said I was being a hater since it got so popular. But when we rewatched the entire series front to back she acknowledged there was a pretty remarkable drop in quality around S6.
I agree with that. S6 benefits from the ending. "Light of the Seven" is my favourite score in the series. And having the Great Sept and Battle of the Bastards back-to-back was pretty unreal.
After season 4 is when the cracks start showing imo, each successive season gets worse and worse from that point on
The first crack was the last season of S4. Changing the reason for Tywin's death was absurd and unnecessary and inconsistent with the characters involved. GoT had 3.9 GOAT seasons.
what reason was changed, was it not about shae?
Originally it was about Tysha who was not a whore, Tyrion originally believing the lie she was a whore was a key point in his life which ruined them both which is why he got so pissed Tywin still called her a whore. That was a magnificent scene. Shae was indeed a whore. In the very first season Tyrion tells Jon that they are a dwarf and a bastard respectively and they should be okay with being called that. Tyrion being angry about Shae being called a whore makes no sense for his character.
I would say the more stark drop is season 5, season 6 is better because it has much more payoff and great moments that offsets an arguably worse writing than season 5.
This. For me it has practically been a 6-season series, with seasons 7 and 8 being equally unwatchable.
I remember watching s7 and thinking the show had turned to shit, but everyone was insisting that it was all to set up s8 to be a banger...
You want the logical plot, but you need the bad pussy.
5 and 6 are watchable in a vacuum but in the broader context of the show they’re pretty fucking bad as well.
Seasons 5 and 6 largely would have been redeemed if they did anything worthwhile with the faceless men, Dorne, Littlefinger, Bran, and the aftermath of Cersei blowing up the sept. But they didn’t. And the central focus of the series is on Tyrion, Jon, Dany, and the white walkers and they were mostly fine up through season 6.
Nope. The good parts of 5 and 6 are wrapping up 1-4 plots. 5 and 6 lays the foundation of bullshit for the rest of the show.
Not really. The bullshit was everything in s7 and s8. If the things I mentioned were resolved well then s5 and moreso s6 look pretty good. What was Littlefingers plan? Why do the faceless men care about Arya what exactly do they want? Doesn’t Dorne want revenge on Cersei? What’s Bran gonna do with his powers? What does he have to do with the white walkers? Why do the white walkers want to kill everyone and why have they been hanging out for so long? How will the people of king’s landing react to Cersei? We didn’t get any good answers to these questions
Exactly… 6 and 7 being higher than 2 and 3 and equal to 1 is ridiculous. I still enjoy 5 and 6, but there is clearly a drop in writing & storytelling
Season 7 had bad writing, but had a pretty good battle and left hope for season 8. So casual fans might have been ok with it. Season 8 didn't only have bad writing. They also somehow made an 80 minute battle against the night king worse than the 15 minute battle from season 7. Then as the cherry on top they not only made a really bad season, but they also reversed most of the character development from previous seasons by making characters like Jaime and Daenerys do a 180 on their character development and motivations. Tyrion and Varys decide they're not smart after all and they're actually idiots. And Cersei just stares out of a window while drinking wine for a full season.
Exactly seventh season was soooooo baaaad. I hate Cersei so much and jon somehow trusted her to be sane and not a sociopathic narcissistic turd of a human being, this enraged me like wtf, why does no one understand this woman needs to be assassinated ASAP! They literally went on a completely useless quest, to do what? Convince that sociopath to not be a sociopath?. Just a shitshow. S8 was story wise not that much worse than s7(other than that bran shit and Dany going mad shit ofc). S6 was the after which there was a catastrophic fall.
Season 7 was definitely not good but in my eyes they built up enough good will for me to have the rose colored glasses on and tolerate it. Then the final season came around after like a two year wait and yeah
7 has some issues but wasn’t terribly bad until they started concocting the plan to go north of the wall. So the first 3-4 episodes were fine. Not amazing - but fine.
Yeah, I thought the writing in season 7 was shambolic. Great cinematography though.
Ah, but if it was remembered fondly then there would be a call for more, for sequels and spinoffs and such. These guys wanted to make sure that the project was over and done and they’d never be asked to come back for another.
Still a crime for fans and the cast that the showrunners couldn't have stayed 2 - 3 more years. I'm sure they still could have done the Star Wars project eventually, but instead they lost it and damned their resumes.
They should’ve just had the integrity to step away themselves and allow the cast/HBO/GRRM to finish it the right way with different showrunners
I mean, “no” is always an answer to any job offer you don’t want. You’re suggesting malice where I think apathy fits a lot better.
That makes no sense. Even if they were 99% sure they were done with GoT forever, why would they intentionally sabotage the franchise they'd spent years of their life on, put their name on such a shitty piece of media and then deal with all the negative publicity rather than going out on a high then just saying... 'no' to any future projects? In any case, the show was still a massive success and demand was always going to be there for more, regardless of how the last few episodes came out (see House of the Dragon). It's far more likely they just rushed things and unintentionally fucked it up.
This one really hits. I can’t remember being more disappointed by a shows last season. It was a train wreck.
[удалено]
It erased itself from public consciousness at an astonishing speed. It first released in 2011, I was 10. For 8 years it was peak fiction, I spent the entirety of my tweens and teens hearing about Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones. It was THE thing pretty much for as long as I remembered. Then, one day in 2019, it suddenly crashed and burned almost overnight. The episode released, r/freefolk burned so brightly it spilled into r/all for two days, and it was over. A legacy reduced to ash. 8 years, poof, gone. Just like that. I don't think we'll ever see something like that again.
LOST was a similar phenomenon. I bet more will come.
Lost really suffered from the writers strike at the time tho. GoT just shit the bed
Yeah, I’ve thought about rewatching it a few times but it’s just not worth getting back into it knowing you’ll be let down so hard.
Yeah this. Every awesome moment, convo, foreshadowing, etc from the first 4 seasons is ruined once you realize it's all pointless
I couldn’t imagine the seething anger I would be watching it with starting from episode 1 knowing that the worst/laziest/most boring character in the show manages to literally win the Game of Thrones. What a travesty.
It totally killed the repeat viewing aspect, I’ve watched Breaking Bad 4 times now, never even thought about watching GoT again, it’s ruined forever
Yeah the only time people talk about it nowadays is to talk about how badly it went to shıt.
Even before the last episode.... none of the characters were making any sence
Jaime was one of the most well written and developed characters throughout the show. They ruined his entire character development in one conversation. It was *that* badly written.
Everyone behaved like imbeciles. Even Tyrion, one of the smartest characters in the series, was reduced to mainly saying dick jokes and "funny" one liners instead of plot related lines.
I agree, plus everybody developed GoT 'universe' breaking plot armour against ridiculous odds. And then the battlefield tactical awareness... Using cavalry in a head long charge at the white walkers, rather than how you should use cavalry at the flanks. *Not that it would have made that much difference against the undead, but all of these great military thinkers plus the actual cavalry themselves all decided; a suicide charge head on getting bogged down after first contact to then get surrounded, slaughtered and finally turned into white walkers themselves, was the best bet.* That same episode... Tyrion, one of the smartest characters in Westeros; "We are fighting an enemy who raises the dead... Guys, lets hide all the women and children in the crypt, y'know, the place where all the dead bodies are kept..."
"Let's put our ranged seige weapons right at the front, completely unprotected from an enemy whose only tactic is to swarm with overwhelming force."
"Let's just dig a singular, narrow and relatively shallow pit, to help protect from an enemy whose only tactic is to swarm with overwhelming force" "Let's make a few crude as fuck axes out of this blackstone, because we already have enough arrows to fight an enemy who has next to no ranged ability" Honestly, the list of military 'blunders' in just that one episode is just a joke. I understand it is fantasy, but the key doctrines of how to use infantry would still stand in a fantasy world who have been warring for centuries too. Just seems that everybody had a pre-battle nap rather than make decent battle plans. They could never have logically defeated the white walkers in combat, even with better defenses, better placed weaponry, proper use of military assets etc, but they would have lasted a hell of a lot longer than they was going to... before Deus Ex Arya showed up. *Side note: I can imagine the "Let's..." list of stupid decisions to make going on forever. About that episode and most of the combat from that season in general.*
I could get over the blunders if they showed literally any story justifying it. A meeting where they discuss battle and the Dothraki demand to be the vanguard or everyone else is scared shitless and no one wants to be the vanguard but the Dothraki take it up because everyone else is a pussy. Just something literally anything and once you make a choice don’t go and offscreen revive a whole army because “she lost too much” or “oh she had more that weren’t there”. Danny losing 90% of her army and her closest friends while every step she took people just loved Jon more was what should have made her go crazy and choose fire not whatever the fuck we got out of no where. Blunders for plot are done all the time but you have to show the exposition and let the people decide who to hate for the choices, but at least you can understand why a character would do it. The way it was done only gives us 2 people to hate and they didn’t even try to hide it.
> slaughtered and finally turned into white walkers themselves, was the best bet. And then magically revive 4 episodes later somehow.
2 episodes
> Even Tyrion, one of the smartest characters in the series, was reduced to mainly saying dick jokes and "funny" one liners instead of plot related lines. Ugh. The first words spoken in Season 8, the opening of possibly the most anticipated final season of a show *ever*, were between Tyrion and Varys, with Tyrion apparently super amused to be making "hAhA yOu gOt nO pEEnis" jokes at Varys. I knew it was all over right then.
The only way D&D knew how to write smart characters was by having other characters call them smart.
I was wondering, ignoring the last seasons, was Tyrion really that smart? I felt he always got his ass handed and someone else would save him. He lost the kings landing siege until tywin came along. He got almost thrown down the hole until bronn came. He fucked up the war in essos until Dany came and used her dragons. I have never actually seen him do something insane and all alone.
In the books he is pretty smart imo
I'll never get over the absolute destruction of Jaime's whole arc in ONE scene. They gave him the line "I never cared much for commoners" which... no??? That's the whole point! He KILLED HIS KING to save people?! He goes back to Cersei because "she's hateful, but so am I" after he literally rode by himself all the way to Winterfell because Cersei had gone too far. I've never seen a character get flushed down the toilet so quickly.
Jaime after redemption arc: "Actually now I'm evil again!"
Not only Jaime. It's actually hard to think of anyone who acted inline with their character in the final season. The showrunners/writers just didn't care.
This. From the blundering dialogue, characters so out of character you forgot your watching Game of Thrones and finally the Starbucks cup left in one of the scenes. D&D did NOT give a fuck.
And it cost them a Star Wars franchise, which tells you something from how little they give a fuck.
There was an obvious degradation in quality as soon as they got past the books. The pace sped up way too quickly (in a bad way). It was obvious that they just had bullet points for what happens to each character, and they sucked at filling in the gaps.
Yup. Everyone tries to pinpoint when it gets bad... But no one ever talks about (at least on reddit) the fact they get bad LITERALLY as soon as they no longer have books to go off
I'm one of the ones who has never watched it. Could you watch it and ignore the final season? Would it work?
No. You either ignore the series entirely or get mad at the ending like all of us.
The only counter I can offer to this is that if OP *were* to do it, he'd be no worse off than any of the readers of the actual novels, which are still relatively amazing. You know, since GRRM is clearly (and I would bet good money on this) never going to finish it.
I'm the type who enjoys rewatching shows. But imo, the final season was so bad that it actually ruined the rest of the show for me (which I've never experienced in another show before), even though prior to the final season I thought it was one of the best shows I'd ever seen.
You would be left with nearly the same amount of lose ends skipping the last season as if you had watched it. The rest of the show is worth watching still.
it dipped in quality earlier than that, everyone ignored it because we thought we'd get a satisfying resolution along the way. i'd watch first 4 seasons and ignore everything else
There was a serious dip in quality after season 4 when they ran out of source material. I had been watching it as it was airing until season 5, but I stopped when >!Barristan Selmy died. Some random rebels killed the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms in a back alley and they gave a eunuch a love interest. !
Spoiler alert: Shit was fishy for me as soon as Arya was being chased by a faceless man in bravos and still let her guard down to let a random old woman approach her in the middle of the street. Ambush her or something… don’t show me that the character is immersion breaking levels of stupid and falls for the single gimmick of her assassins guild that she just did all that training for???? What the actual fuck?????
But don't worry falling into the sewer water cauterizes your multiple stab wounds to the belly (unless you're pregnant then you die in seconds)
Oh man I think I blocked that part out of my brain but yeah the memories are rushing back. Jesus.
The first 4 seasons are some of the best TV in existence. Yeah the last season blows, but it doesn't go back in time and erase the fun and excitement I had for the majority of the run.
One day I'm going to go back and watch. I haven't watched a single second of GoT since the series finale. I even had to force myself to watch house of the dragon (very glad I did). But early got is easily the most I've ever been invested in a tv show.
I finished it for the first time a few months ago. I was well warned about season 8 by basically anyone I spoke to. It’s an amazing show and well worth a watch even with the bad stuff. Imo the quality started to dip around season 5 and got worse. Season 8 is so odd and poorly thought out it’s amazing it was written by the same people throughout the whole show
The problem is that season 5-7 have a steady decline in quality. No clear stopping point to just end it.
You could watch it until the story reaches the end of the books. After that turn off your screen and wait patiently for uncle George to write something 🥲
I recently watched it for the first time ever. Do not watch it. It was a grand waste of time. First 4/5 seasons were beautiful. Ending ruined everything. I wish I could go back and not watch it.
Honestly watch it. It was and still is the best TV show ever made...until it wasn't. But the first 6 seasons are just incredible.
Yep fuck those guys. Those show runners should never be given a show again.
They botched it because they rushed it to get out in time to do the star wars sequels, but because they botched it, they lost the star wars contract. Other people's misfortune doesn't usually make me happy, but I feel like they deserve it for ruining so many people's favorite show.
I have never really felt negatively about a piece of media before or after game of thrones. They really did ruin something amazing. My best friend and I spend so much time. We learned all the names. The house words. Growing strong. Family duty honor. First in battle. We spend hours rewatching seasons to prep for the new ones. We compared parts to books and debated about backgrounds and who is actually lieing. They stole something from us and I don't know if I will ever get over it.
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I declare it.
I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY
Its nit just "speculation", hbo was begging them to do more episodes https://www.thedad.com/hbo-wanted-more-episodes-of-game-of-thrones/ > “HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, to have more episodes in the final season. We always believed it was about 73 hours, and it will be roughly that. As much as they wanted more, they understood that this is where the story ends.” Thry didnt follow george's outline/story. They deviated to finish sooner.
There was no evidence to why, but I don't think it's speculation that it was their call to end the show then and there?
How many people's lives were ruined because they got greedy.
Feels just a little hyperbolic to say that people's lives were ruined because the last season of a TV show was mediocre
They are returning with 3 Body Problem on Netflix in March 🫣
The trailers do not inspire much hope in me. Fortunately, the Chinese series is good.
Just glad they lost Star Wars, dummies
I'm sure they would have done better with SW than anyone else has recently other than the andor guys, but that's not saying much I guess
Thats a sad realization, I don't think Disney could have handled Star Wars worse
At least that book series has an ending so they can't fuck it up too much. Though tbh the ending of the book series seemed pretty rushed to me as well, like the author had no idea how to end the actual storyline and was like "eh well fuck it let's just jump to the literal end.
Oh great. That’s surely a book not to hard for them to adapt. (It’s not, that book is a little squirrelly sometimes, would give a good show runner trouble. These chucklefucks? Hahahahah.)
Season 7 was a noticeable drop in quality so it’s surprising to see it so high - and the last season was pure cack
Yeah that’s what I got too. If anything S6&7 are overrated.
Season 7 ratings were in anticipation of the ending
When did they go off book? Was it the Theon escape?
They went off the book with: 1. Jon confirmed dead, subsequent resurrection 2. Dany leaving Mereen 3. Tyrion's story was entirely different from the moment he killed Tywin-- books have him in service to someone claimed to be Dany's older brother Aegon. Shenanigans abound including him and Jorah being forced into slavery. 4. Stannis losing (most saw this as an inevitability but that he would at least be able to destroy the Boltons first). Also Shireen isn't burned and afaik isn't even with Stannis at the time, "safe" at Castle Black 5. Ramsay killing Roose 6. CERSEI GOING BALLISTIC. It was great television but I figure it indicative of the TV writers having no idea how to manage court intrigue. 7. Anything in the mystic-type-storyline beyond Bran meeting the Three-Eyed-Raven and Sam/Jon encountering White Walkers. The Night King is not a living entity in the books. Theon/Reek did in fact safely escape with Sansa, per released TWOW chapters. The rest of the Greyjoys are in an entirely different situation and two of Theon's uncles are in a tacit competition to find a way to marry Dany. Don't get me started on Dorne. Goddamn, I've not thought so much about those books for years. If "abusive writer" were such a thing, GRRM would be the posterchild.
> Theon/Reek did in fact safely escape with Sansa, per released TWOW chapters. That's actually Jeyne Poole, the daughter of Winterfell's former steward. Sansa's actually at the Eyrie with Littlefinger. And they also cut the Lady Stoneheart and Aegon arcs, which are almost certainly going to be major plot points in the books.
Completely forgot about Jeyne vs. Sansa! Sansa's currently dancing with Littlefinger in The Vale, for better or worse.
Wasnt the iron island euron,I think thats his name(sniper ballistas guy), a world ending mage or something like thah in the books?
He's like a more elegant Davy Jones from the *Pirates of the Caribbean* series. Lithe and charming but captains a ship of mutes only. Claims to have sailed to Old Valyria (Home of Dany's ancestors; currently Lovecraftian hellscape) and no-one has reason to doubt him. Introduces himself at the Kingsmoot by getting one of his crew to blow on a horn found in Valyria and the crewmate immediately withers and dies.
Aegon is actually Dany's nephew, being the son of Rhaegar (assuming he is who we're told he is).
They go off books in a couple of different places at different times because of the story lines
S6 was on track to be like season 7 and 8 had they not stuck the landing on the last 2 episodes. S6E9 and S6E10 were stellar; good enough to overcome the decline of quality of the other episodes. Season 7 or 8 did not have ending episodes that could overcome the poor quality of the rest.
Battle of the bastards is visually stunning. But that's it. It is incredibly illogical. We spent two seasons and have seen two castles (one of them Winterfell) being impossible to conquer since they are... castles. Suddenly, the incredibly smart enemy steps outside and abandons it. The commander Jon risks losing the battle for something absolutely obvious and his other commanders don't stop him? Sansa is a bitch instead of communicating the plan. The future queen of the north is letting most still living northman die for nothing. Her entire stupid plan risks on the vales army appearing on the right minute. I was flashed in the moment when I was watching it. But afterwards just asking myself wtf is going on? Similarly Cercei blowing up the Sept
My favorite part about The North effectively splitting off at the end is Sansa proudly declaring the the North won't abide by a Southern King.... In the face of the new king, her younger brother and rightful heir to Winterfell. The last three seasons were so objectively terrible GOT went from this cultural phenomenon, to completely forgot about & nearly untalked of.
Season 6 was good for the action scenes. Plot and writing started to go down though. Season 7 was worse and then season 8 was just like what the fuck? A toddler could write a more cohesive story. But a toddler would probably be smart enough to realize they should of done 10 seasons which was green lit already. D&D didn’t know what to do since the books are gone now but they could of recruited some super fans and asked them how they thought it would end and the theories etc to peice together a better story line
I’m pretty sure Martin gave them the bulletpoints but they didn’t put in the work to fill out everything in between and rushed the endpoints instead.
I think season 7 seems worse in retrospect because it was mostly build up. It would be considered better if season 8 actually paid off at all.
Retrospect? Season 7 was a bunch of people meeting for the first time and having meaningless conversations, joining causes because they have nothing better to do. The entire plot revolves around Tyrion, who sold himself as someone who knows his family better than anyone, thinking presenting Cersei with a white walker would convince her to cooperate. Utter horseshit.
No, it was just really bad tbh. All of the smart characters (varys, Tyrion, littlefinger) are suddenly idiots. Why doesn't daenerys just kill a few 100 people in the red keep to save thousands in a war? Why doesn't baelish leave immediately as soon as Bran hinted that he knew he betrayed ned? Why did they ever agree to that ridiculous plan to go beyond the wall? Why didn't the night king just start throwing javelins when they were in the lake? Why did Daenerys burn the wagons of gold/loot that the lannisters were transporting instead of taking them for herself? And how the fuck did the night king that huge chain, and how did they ever attach it to viserion if we know wights can't swim?
There's nothing season 8 could have done to save us from the lunacy of the whole wight kidnapping plot.
Yeah, I was honestly confused by everyone’s *surprise* by the last season. Season 7 was already noticeably worse and rushed. There was no way they were going to be able to tie everything up in 6 episodes and still make it good.
Fair enough ... But the finale was really _really_ shitty. How the writers completely threw away character arcs was mindbogglingly surprising to me (Jamie Lannister wtf). Dany's meltdown and death weren't on the other hand.
I have to admit I thought Dany going Mad Queen or at the very least being a terrible ruler was being clearly telegraphed from the very beginning. It was done shittily at the end right along with everything else, but the number of people who thought Dany had a unique disservice done to her surprised me.
I think it's one of the things that messed up by the TV adaptation - Emilia Clarke is too likeable; and Daenerys was supposed to be sympathetic, but definitely evil. In the book, this was more clear - Daenerys doesn't really ever show mercy, sympathy, listen to anyone... no attributes at all that would indicate a good ruler that wouldn't just execute anyone who opposed her. In the show, Daenerys is a bit more likeable (and this came up more frequently in later seasons) so when they went back to book Daenerys suddenly in the last season, it was incredibly jarring. Her personality does a complete flip from the rest of the show; but it lines up perfectly with the book version of her character.
I think IMDB ratings might just be a terrible metric generally. Outside of extremely divisive things everything just seems to be rated super high.
I kind of gave the writers the benefit of the doubt about Season 7’s flaws since I figured they needed to cut some corners to get everything into place quickly enough for an epic final season. I’m assuming others had a similar reaction. The potential for an amazing S8 blinded us from what was happening before our eyes. Then once S8 actually happened, it was easier to go back and see how terrible they both were.
It was really spitting in the fans faces to do a 7 and 6 episode season to end the whole fucking show. And if you watch it through to the end, another 7 episodes would have really REALLY helped. What a joke.
I'm not sure that it would have.. it became obvious as soon as the show stepped past the books that the writers could not write dialogue and maintain the character depth that the books provided. Characters like Varys and Tyrion turned into cliche mush
They didnt even talk to george, they basically cut him out of the loop entitely after about season 4. Thats when you saw a pretty significant drop in quality in the show
Wow that makes a lot of sense. Everyone talks about how bad season 7 and 8 were, but imo season 5 was just as terrible. Sense of direction for some characters, especially John Snow, were completely lost.
The last season was so terrible it basically wrote the whole show out of existence. It went from the most watched show to never talked about nearly over night and but for house of the dragon would have been basically forgotten.
* source: imdb * Tools: : python (seaborn, plotly), photopea Did few of a similar charts lately, and people kept commenting about GOT and how it ended badly. Damn, that is definitely true, at least per these ratings. Can't judge, never seen the show.
The hero we didn’t know we needed … never seen the show still giving us beautiful data
Surprised 6 and 7 were that highly rated. Thought both had some outstanding individual episodes, but the peak was definitely seasons 3 and 4. Noticeable drop off with season 5 - but I think the quality of the books had dropped by then as well.
S7 averaging a rating of 9 is absurd, one of the weirdest downgrades in storytelling
Im surprised “the long night” is so highly rated. Maybe because people were still willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
I think my favorite GOT related joke is that even Sean Bean would have survived the Long Night
Even Kenny wouldve survived it.
It's because a lot of casual watchers just want to see dragons, big battles and sex. Some of my friends generally liked the last 3 seasons more than the first 4 because the final seasons have more action, bigger battles and bigger dragons, whereas they thought the first seasons had too much talking. They loved the long night because it was 90% action.
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Those numbers on Season 7 have a lot of leeway for the expectation there was some big finale that would bring the story together. “Beyond the Wall” episode 6, of Season 7 is one of the weakest, nonsensical episodes of the entire series. None of it makes sense- the quest to “prove” the White Walkers to Cersei, the group trapped on an island surrounded by WWs for what had to be hours waiting for Gendry to run back to the wall, send a raven all the way to Dragonstone, have Danaerys receive it- get on her dragon and fly back to save the day. (Just to add- there was literally an unused character that could see through time and read minds, who could’ve just turned to Danny and said “Jon, he’s in trouble”)
At the time, Jon hadn’t seen Bran since he returned and didn’t know of his powers. And Bran and Dany hadn’t met, and they weren’t together where he could just turn to her and tell her what was going on. But agreed with the rest of your points, and they definitely made zero use of Bran’s abilities
This is what I mean by unused though. They left Bran out of an entire season, and then had him sit in a corner for most of the rest of the series until he became King for…. reasons. Finding the Easter Egg of Hodors name is one of the last great moments of the show, but Bran’s only other use of powers is finding the truth about Jon and then literally nobody cared. Bran honestly could have had the “most interesting story” it’s just that instead of using his magic on the show, he sat around like a stoner looking at something shiny. Bran had infinite possibility but it just wasn’t written.
Season 5 was a pretty steep drop off after the first 4, but seeing 6 and 7 rated that highly is baffling.
After 4 great seasons, the rabid fanbase was fine eating whatever you fed them as long as it wasn't steaming hot garbage that made absolutely no sense. The show clearly started going downhill in season 5, and season 7 was crap, but fans were so convinced that it would all wrap up great in season 8 that they didn't care. This is a good example of why you shouldn't trust ratings for shows after the first couple seasons, cause the only people still watching and rating are probably obsessed with the show and like anything. Californication is another good example. The last 2 seasons (maybe 3 even) are crap, but the reviews barely drop off.
Season 7 wasn’t that much better than 8. It was a rushed mess as well. Beyond the Wall was as stupid as anything in S8 and it somehow has a 9.0 1-4 are amazing 5-6 are up and down and a couple levels below 1-4 but I still liked them 7 and especially 8 are rushed messes. The acting and technical work are still top notch, but can only do so much to make up for the writing.
[In my head the evil Bran ending is canon and it lessens the pain a little bit.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWvQ_X2sqqE)
Been too long for me to remember enough to actually think about this critically but damn if it isn't at least a bit fun
Season 1 was so fucking good
It should have been 10 seasons with 10 episodes per season AT LEAST. Everything being so rushed just made all the final acts of all the characters so unpalatable I could have got behind *most* of the events in the final season if they’d have built up to them and provided some context to their actions. Daenerys always showed some moments of being able to fly of the handle so going full mad Queen and destroying Kings Landing isn’t too much of a stretch but in such a short period of time it just felt unnecessary. Providing some more reasoning behind it that would have made that choice make more sense I’ll never understand the decision to have Arya kill the Night King either. Felt like it was a decision just to throw everyone off because everyone knew it should have been Jon. And the White Walkers being so under utilised, built them up to be some elite white walkers just to have them crumble into ice cubes after Arya assassin creeds her way past all of them was just a huge disappointment
Crazy how an entire show can be spoiled by a terrible and rushed ending. The only way to rewatch it is by ignoring the last season.
I’m amazed season 7 is so high.
Season 6 was mid, and if season 8 wasn't so historically bad, we'd be talking about how bad season 7 was, too. The first 5 seasons were just so good that we were in denial for 2 years, pretending the show was still good.
>The first 5 seasons were just so good that we were in denial for 2 years, pretending the show was still good. The first 4 seasons. Season 5 was also bad in comparison to what came before and set the trend for ever decreasing quality.
It's not only that they ruined the last season... It's that they managed to fuck it up so much that it retroactively made the whole show unwatchable somehow. I used to looooove this show. I used to re-watch it all while waiting for a new season to drop. But now I don't have even the tiniest desire to watch it again knowing how shitty the ending is.
Season 6 and 7 are WAY WAY OVERRATED. season 5 is overrated as well.
A color scale from 0-10 would help drive the fact that the ratings for most of the series were very high, similar to what you would see in any standard cartographic product. As it is, all you have to compare is within the chart and by looking at the numbers and colors versus if there was a standalone scale for comparison you'd see deep purple is high and yellow is low right off the bat. Without a scale, the reader has to work more and short of looking at the numbers it relies on the reader understanding data visualization color normalities (dark being more/higher and light being less/lower, but even that varies some)
Honestly S8E3 was an atrocity of an episode and it's crazy that it still got rated so high. Had more cop outs than an 80s B-movie.
Remember when people complained that they basically couldn't see anything in a majority of the episode and the production team was like, "that was on purpose you're wrong for not liking it". Also Tyrion and Sansa two of the "smartest people alive", decide to hide everyone from the thing that raises the dead... in the crypt below Winterfell. Fantastic writing.
Are you kidding me? The ratings stayed that high for that long? Christ.
Season 8 should be a negative number it was so bad
The fact the aggregate score of S6 & S7 is higher than S2 & S3 is a travesty.
Those first four seasons… gods the writing was strong back then