Game Of Thrones : The Final Season - Was it any good?

Copyrights HBO, Game of Thrones

I think it's not an exaggeration, to count Game of Thrones among the best TV shows to ever exist.

The series amassed a huge fan-following for it's gripping story line and most certainly for the way it killed off main characters. So. obviously going into the final season the expectations were sky-high to say the least. But as is history by now, the much anticipated final season of Game of Thrones didn't live up to the expectations of many of the series' fans who had been following the series ever since it premiered on HBO in 2011.

In this article I am going to breakdown the reasons the final season was a total disappointment.

With the Night King breaching the not so breakable "Wall" in the final scenes of Season 7 Episode 8, we were excited to finally get the confrontation between the surviving characters and the antagonist that the series had been building up to in it's 7 season long run. First of all, let me get it out of the way that the ending does make sense!!

Before you start posting comments against it or proceed to leave the article, hear me out..

The Ending is not bad! Just flawed.

Game of Thrones became a pop-culture phenomenon because of the incredible source material it was drawing from - George R.R Martin's books "A song of Ice and Fire" whose last parts are yet to be released. You can feel things become a little not so Game of Throne-ish with the 7th season. Imo, season 7 was great with Bran and Arya finally returning to Winterfell, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targareyn who in my eyes were the main protagonists of the show finally meeting in the 3rd episode of this season, to top it all off Daenerys meeting Cersi and the Night King breaching the wall were perfect set ups for a great final season. And as the title of this section suggests, the ending is good. Just good.... not great.

GOT has an history of subverting expectations and I'm glad that Dany or Jon didn't become the ruler of the seven kingdoms and there was no Iron Throne left for anyone to actually sit on. The previous seasons of GOT were so good that the final season being just good wasn't enough to bring proper closure to this epic series.

Arya killing the Night King:

Positive: In an earlier season where Melisandre meets Arya she tells her that she will shut Brown, Blue and Green eyes. She repeated it in the middle of the chaos of the Battle of Winterfell as a call back to her aforementioned dialogue which gave Arya as well as us the viewers an hint that Arya was the one who would kill the Night King.

Negative: We clearly see a band of Wights surround Bran as some of the last people protecting him fall and Bran assures Theon that he is a good man, before Theon idiotically yet redemptively finally makes a move that is not showing his cowardice, charging towards the Night King and gets killed (what else were you expecting?). So, for Arya to just jump out of nothingness and suddenly appear in the sky with a dagger to kill the Night King is STUPID! How did she get passed all those Wights? Her assasin like abilities don't ensure that she somehow crept between all those Wights and not one of them tried stopping her. (BTW dual battle of Bran trying to defend the Night King's Attack while Arya was fighting some Wights would have been a fantastic way to build more tension). It would have made more sense for her to use her "A girl is no one" skills here. Use the face of Beric who earlier died protecting her and who also became a Wight when the Night King rose the dead. She could have come among them as a Wight, thus explaining her being able to somehow pass through all of them.

Bran being the MVP of the battle against the Night King:

Positive: I think Bran was one of the least favorite characters for many of the series' viewers. (Sorry Bran fans). But to have him return becoming the three-eyed-raven, which I'm certain no one understands what that actually means, but is somewhat cool nonetheless. Having him be the collection of the memories or stories of humanity gave new light to his awkward powers of peering into the past/future. Thus making him the main target of the Night King, I don't mind that, as the Night King had marked Bran in one of his visions earlier.

Negative: Maybe we should have spent more time with Bran, if he was this important in the battle against the Night King, but still good for making him do something or be of some importance to the overall plot except for just letting us know who Jon's mother was.

Dany being possessive about the throne, burning KingsLanding and her death at the hands of Jon Snow:

Positive: It's not out of character for Dany to be possessive of the throne, especially when she comes to know that Jon is actually the last true heir to the throne as he is Aegon Targareyn. She loves him hence she won't kill him ( at least that is what we were led to believe, her love was stopping her from causing harm to the only obstacle between her and the throne after the defeat of Cersei). She had acquired such power and following that she felt she was destined and sure will sit on the throne, so to be possessive is not out of her character.

It was always somewhat evident that Dany indeed was still her father, the way she crucified hundreds of nobles in Meeren and later burnt the Mormonts for not bending the knee. Though I would have loved to see her be good and rule the seven kingdoms, there are factors that support her actions during the Battle at Kingslanding. She lost one of her dragons (Viserion, I believe) in S6, one while on her way to the final war after winning the great war, then she lost Missandei at the hands of Cersei, who showed no mercy; she was also probably disturbed by the fact that Jon, her love was Aegon Targareyn i.e, a competitor for the throne.

Negative: Unlike Dany who I took a liking to very early on in the series, Jon was gradually becoming one of my most favorite GOT characters. By the time Dany met Jon in S7E3, they were my two favorite characters. So when they met, opposing thoughts, want to do good, finally discussing and talking to each other....... I was smiling like an idiot. But I feel Dany was no longer who we (or I) loved as a character after she met Jon. She started acting out of character at some moments, learning Jon's true heritage and her reaction to that being one of them. It would have made more sense for her actions i,e. telling Jon not to tell Sansa for obvious reasons that he was Aegon Targareyn; if Dany was given even more time as a character to develop these insecurities.

The same applies for her action of burning Kingslanding, it was just rushed, as was Cersei's actions to kill Missandei, how could she risk doing something like that knowing that she had a child to protect, Jamie was not with her and the person whom she was killing was close to a person whose father was called The Mad King.

Perhaps, people of the internet were right in telling that Dany meeting Jon was her downfall, as in the final scenes of S6 Dany was the most powerful competitor for the Iron throne , with 3 fully grown dragons, an Iron Fleet and the army of the unsullied!

Jon killing Dany also makes sense but what motivated him to kill her should have been more than just prep talks by Tyrion and Varys and her burning Kingslanding.

Jamie leaves Winterfell to be with Cersei and dies under a (for god's sake) a crumbling Red

Keep:

Positive: One thing I like about the Lannisters, no matter how much they hate each other, they care so much about their family name. Cersei had countless opportunities to kill Tyrion but always stepped back. So, given that Jamie was in some way always controlled by Cersei and his love for her, it was justifiable that he would eventually return to her after the great war was won.

Negative: I liked the character of Cersei, and I would like to believe we all did. So to see her just crumble under the Red Keep and die with Jamie was a serious let down for me. Instead, Jamie could have killed Cersei; thus finally freeing himself from her and as he loved her, he knew there was no way she was going to win after killing Missandei and putting at risk the life of all the civilians . He knew that her death was inevitable and would like to give it to her himself hence Cersei is never really defeated by her enemies, nor are the Lannisters, thereby upholding their family name in some capacity. The Mountain and others later execute Jamie for killing the Queen and the twins' blood mix together - " We came into this world together and we will leave it together"

Arya joins the Hound on his way to Kingslanding to kill Cersei:

Positive: Arya was anyways heading towards Kingslanding before Ed Sheran told her that the Stark's had reclaimed Winterfell. So, Arya resuming her journey to Kingslanding after the great war is justified.

Negative: First of all why did she consider going to Kingslanding knowing that Jon and Dany were already heading to Kingslanding? Why didn't the Hound advise Arya about revenge before reaching Kingslanding and waited till they entered the Red Keep. Just because the wriiters D&D wanted us to see the burning of Kingslanding through one of the audiences' favorite character's eyes, which actually was useless and did nothing to add to Arya's arc. Instead Arya could have actually tried killing Cersei, but be interrupted by Dany burning the Red Keep, then have the Mountain battle the Hound to protect Cersei, so you have a four way killing battle go on and have Arya's presence in Kingslanding be of some importance. (the aforementioned alternate scene is from a theory video)

The Long Night:

All season's had 8 episodes whereas the final season had just 6 but 90 minutes long. That in no way did justice to the story they were trying to tell. It should have been 8 episodes or 10!

The way the Night King was taken down in a single episode of the final season is disappointing. There is this good theory video I watched that I would like to mention here:

When Bran tells Theon, I need to go now and they show ravens flying across the Battle field; he should have gone to before the Mad King became Mad. He should have made the Mad King try to see this inevitable threat and how the Night King could possibly be defeated by fire and Dragon glass and in turn make the Mad King obsessed with the dragon fire, making him "The Mad King".

Later while the Night King is approaching Bran, Bran will try to go back to the time when the Night king was created and plead the children not to do whatever ritual they did to make him the Night King but he goes too deep and is lost, now the children do the ritual and Bran and The Night King are one because Bran's consciousness is in the Night King now, thus explaining why The Night King was able to see and mark Bran in one of Barn's earlier visions.

This would certainly take away any reason for the Night King to attack Bran if he was the Night King but would surely add more to Bran's character and would have made this final battle more tense.

The Long Night should have been longer. Maybe two episodes long to actually do it proper justice. I liked the episode but felt something lacked as i was watching the final three episodes, perhaps it would have been good if they managed to find a way to make the Great war (Battle of Winterfell) and the Final war (Battle of Kingslanding) coincide somehow into one great war against death and inner conflicts, maybe The Night King attacked Kingslanding somehow and Cersei had to support the Starks and others to defeat the NIght King but just as the Night King dies Cersei makes her move and another battle starts for the Iron Throne (that would have been insane!!)

When the Avengers assembled for the third act of Endgame, and Wanda dropped into the battle field distracting Thanos from Black Panther who now had the Nano-gauntlet and said "You took everything from me" and told Thanos that she would make him remember who she was, before taking the Avengers building debris that was around her and flying up in a heroic pose, I was overwhelmed with excitement the moment she dropped in because I knew something awesome was going to unfold. But when Daenerys was dropped off Drogon, I expected the same to happen that she would put up a fight, though she has never shown any fighting skills, at that moment I expected something awesome as she didn't have her dragons now but nothing of that sort happened. Sure, we are talking about two different genres in superhero action and fantasy epic but still expectations. The long night started off on an epic note of Melisandre lighting the Dotharaki weapons, but falls flat at many moments. Night King on Viserion vs Dany on Drogon and Jon was an epic scene above the clouds, Lyanna Mormont going up against the giant was also good. But many moments fell flat.

The Iron throne :

So, the ending is not bad, just flawed/rushed. In terms of the time they should have taken to actually write the final season and the time they should have devoted to build the characters motivations and story lines more. I like the final scenes where Drogon destroys the Iron Throne , the very symbol and main conflict of the entire series, and the very last scenes where Arya sails to explore what is west of Westeros, Sansa is crowned Queen in the North and Jon goes north of the Wall, with that amazing score by Ramin Djawadi. Truth be told, the score in the final season was not a let down like the closure to the epic series.

Conclusion :

But nonetheless, Game of Thrones managed to tell a compelling yet very complicated and well planned political, fantasy and mystery thriller in it's 7 seasons, which I think were some the best in television history.

To the Queen In The North and King Beyond The Wall.

#gameofthrones #got #asongoficeandfire #daenerystargreyn #jonsnow #aryastark #sansastark #brandonstark #jamielannister #cerseilannister #thenightking

I also make edits, check out my latest edit for Women's Day ft. female characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game Of Thrones , DC Extended Universe, StarWars among others