By Robert Bouffard
Warning: Spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8 abound below.
After Star Wars: The Last Jedigave a bunch of answers that didn’t satisfy me, I gave up on trying to theorize about what would happen in my favorite television shows and movies. I think that attitude shift is largely what helped me to love the ending of Game of Thrones. Sure, I had my theories and things that I wanted to happen, but I wasn’t going to be disappointed if the show decided to go in a direction other than what I was expecting (except, of course, if it didn’t make narrative sense).
When Arya killed the Night King when all hope seemed to be lost, when Jamie decided to go back to Cersei, when Daenerys destroyed all of King’s Landing and its people, and when Bran was crowned the new king of the Six Kingdoms, I sat and enjoyed seeing these long-running storylines wrapped up. Much of it wasn’t as I expected, but that wasn’t the point. No one knows these characters better than the people who wrote them, and they took them in the direction that they saw as fitting, and delivered an overwhelmingly satisfying ending.
Yes, I would have loved it if the last two seasons of the show were 10 episodes each. But I’m also sure David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would have loved it if George Martin had finished his A Song of Ice and Fireseries. When the books were still being adapted and the political and social intrigue was at its highest, that’s when the show was at its best. It was obvious that the showrunners loved the source material and wanted to do right by it. Unfortunately, by the end they only had bullet points to base their story off of, instead of thousand-page tomes.
This is a part of the metanarrative surrounding the show. Viewers came to expect a certain level of quality – one that was darn near perfection much of the time – throughout the first six seasons. Once the books ran out, though, it was unfair to expect the same level of quality to be seen on screen. That’s why the storytelling and the writing seemed to take so many shortcuts. They opted to make the show more visually stunning, tense, and surprising, and I can’t personally fault them for it.
Watching the show finish off its legendary run through this different lens allowed me to enjoy it more than most did, I think. I didn’t mind missing all of the little details that contributed to Daenerys’ turn to the dark side, for example. There was enough foreshadowing and enough evidence on the screen that I was able to connect the dots on how she made it from Point A to Point B. Was it a little annoying to be missing those pieces that almost certainly would have been there had Martin finished his books? Yes, but I understood that the creative minds behind this show were not as engaged or invested as they were when they had the books.
Even through all of this, I found this last season to be genuinely good.
I thought Arya killing the Night King was awesome because of what it meant for her character and her arc – that once she realized fighting for life was more fulfilling than fighting for death, she was able to take down that which would bring death and pain to millions of people.
I hated seeing Jamie go back to Cersei because I wanted him to be better than that, but I thought the theme of him never being able to get past his biggest weakness was heartbreakingly poignant and devastatingly beautiful.
I surprisingly fully bought into Daenerys’ turn. It could be interesting to go back and rewatch the show and view her as a villain, instead of a savior. She had those tendencies from the very beginning, and seeing them come to fruition was narratively satisfying, even if we hated seeing such a positive figure become officially corrupted.
I was even completely behind Bran becoming king. It just added to the metanarrative around the show – stories are powerful and should be in the most prominent position. Seeing Bran and his ability to remember taking the top spot was actually incredible.
If you ask a Game of Thrones fan how they thought the show ended 10 years from now, I think their reaction will largely be different from what it is now. Just like with a show like Lost, it will take time for people to garner their actual thoughts on this show. At the moment, there are many emotional reactions and people clamoring for answers that the show probably never intended to give. Admittedly, though, this is the best case scenario in my head.
Personally, I loved the end, if that wasn’t already apparent. It did so much to close storylines and conclude character arcs that it doesn’t bother me to not have all of the lore questions answered. I don’t think that was ever the point of this whole story. It always came down to the characters, and the way it ended just showed that the origin of the White Walkers and the Prince that was Promised didn’t matter as much as character did. This is extremely satisfying to me, even though I would love to have those questions answered (and these spinoff shows might just answer them anyway). Characters and themes will always win in my book.
But for now, the negativity will probably win out, which is unfortunate. This show gave me way too many great characters, storylines, and moments for me to ever completely turn my back on it. Fortunately, I enjoyed this season enough that the thought never crossed my mind. I’m just sad that it did for others. Even though this last season was only a shadow of what this show once was (albeit a good shadow, like the kind that helps you cool off on a hot day), it still delivered a closing emotional punch better than I could have ever expected or imagined on my own. It gave me closure for characters I loved, cared about, and worried about for eight seasons and I’ll forever be grateful for it.