It Is Now Clear Having Two Short ‘Game Of Thrones’ Final Seasons Was A Mistake
We are now marching toward the final episode of Game of Thrones ever, and while we don’t know exactly how it will end, the events of the past two seasons have taken us to a place where it seems…difficult to extract a worthwhile ending, to say the least.
Some of the problems are specific decisions the showrunners made, now free of the guiding light of Martin’s books, but the further we’ve gotten into these final seasons, it has become clear to almost everyone that a core problem with the ending of Game of Thrones is that the idea that the final two seasons should be 7 episodes, then a year break, then 6 episodes.
Sure, we may get to where we’re going and it could be a passable ending. But there is no benefit to arranging the show this way, instead of having a more standard ending with two or three seasons that were the traditional ten episodes in length. No benefit to anyone except the showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss who want to move on to other projects.
No one wanted this except them. HBO wanted more. Here’s an EW interview from 2015, back when the showrunners were threatening to end the series after seven seasons:
“This is the hard part of what we do,” sighs HBO programming president Michael Lombardo. “We started this journey with David and Dan. It’s their vision. Would I love the show to go 10 years as both a fan and a network executive? Absolutely…If they weren’t comfortable going beyond seven seasons, I trust them implicitly and trust that’s the right decision—as horrifying as that is to me.”
More recently, HBO offered the showrunners more money and time to at least add more episodes to the final season, after eight seasons, the last two being shortened, was concocted as a compromise.
"HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, to have more episodes in the final season," Benioff said. "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."
And then there’s George RR Martin, who has always thought the show was cutting too much from the books. A long time ago he said the 10 episode seasons should be more like 13, and more recently he’s said that the show could continue well, well beyond eight seasons. Here’s him at the Emmys last year:
"I don't know," Martin said. "Ask David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] when they come through. We could have gone to 11, 12, 13 seasons, but I guess they wanted a life.”
And finally there are fans, who have now seen the results of this spaced-out, shortened final pair of seasons, and most everyone believes that the show has felt painfully rushed as a result. How so? It’s tough to know where to even start.
The Jon and Daenerys relationship, what should be the most important one of the show, has been massively rushed, with the two not getting together until the finale of season seven, and yet Jon has become slavishly devoted to her in just a few episodes’ time, making their entire rollercoaster ride of a relationship (ending now with Dany going full Mad Queen) feel way, way too fast.
There are the bent-out-of-shape character arcs, which have flung these characters toward a specific end goal, ignoring that the path to get there does not make much sense. In episode 2 of season 8, Jaime is hanging out with all his new friends in Winterfell, knighting Brienne. In episode 5, he’s throwing away six years of an arc to run away to be with Cersei as she dies because nothing else matters but her. In episode 2 Dany and Jon are riding dragons in the snow like they’re in a Dreamworks movie. In two more episodes, Dany loses half her army, Jorah and Missandei, learns the truth about Jon and develops a taste for genocide. One complaint from last episode is not that these characters turns happened, it’s that not enough time was given to make them feel earned, hence why these two characters (among others) have had arcs that have given fans whiplash.
Then there’s the now infamous teleportation of the last few seasons. Game of Thrones has always been about these long, epic journeys from place to place, which is where a load of character development happens, and twists and turns derail characters along the way. But after six years of that, the show realized it was running out of time because of this self-imposed deadline, and suddenly everyone is warping all around the map instantly, erasing that entire part of the show that was a key aspect of it before. This results in some plot holes, but also a general sense of disorientation and like everything is moving at breakneck speed. And usually, this is done in service of just hammering us with battle after battle, with maybe one episode of downtime in between them. It’s felt exhausting, and like the show is trying to sprint its way through a marathon, losing steam far before it should.
It is easy to see how the last 13 episodes of the series could have been 20-30 episodes if the showrunners had decided to take their time, taking an unlimited budget from HBO, respecting the opinion of the series’ creator, and doing service to fans who would loyally show up for a decade or more if asked. Instead, they wanted to be done, and rather than leave and hand the show off to someone who actually wanted to be there, they’re just blasting through it, and clearly, it’s suffering as a result.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/05/14/it-is-now-clear-having-two-short-game-of-thrones-final-seasons-was-a-mistake/#5ede0120788a