Only watched the final episode of this last night and had avoided this thread until now.
Unfortunately I see some of the same shit-posts that are in the LotR thread. The first thing I would say is that it isn’t a competition. I actually enjoyed both shows. HotD is the better quality show overall, but LotR is much better visually and that counts for something. But guess what, both these shows can and will co-exist.
My second gripe is with those saying this wasn’t as good as even latter stage GoT. I can’t really argue with that, on these forums you will also find people who enjoy Picard and Discovery and there’s no arguing with that kind of opinion. But for me HoT is better than at LEAST the final two seasons of GoT I’m sure because GRRM had more to do with the writing.
Another problem that GoT had to deal with throughout its run is that a large part of its cast, who got the jobs initially due to budgetary reasons and the fact it was an unknown and a risk, were actually bad actors. All of the Stark children for example, although Robb’s actor has become very good since then. The cast in HotD are uniformly brilliant. I would say Paddy Considine puts in the best performance playing the best role in all of the shows.
My final observations is that those who came away from the finale buzzing about the setup of a war of dragons in S2 - you haven’t really been paying attention have you? Wars are the afterthought in this world. There was only one war scene/episode of note in all of GoT and the most impactful ones were dealt with (correctly) off-screen. This is not Star Wars with dragons.
