It's been a year
since it ended.
Have any feelings changed about the final season?
No. D&D have killed the interest dead with that season for me, not only in the seasons that came before but potential spin offs. Obviously hindsight has shown how important it was to get that finale right for the sake of the whole series.
I agree with some of the other suggestions...they should have had one season focus on Cersei first, and then deal with the Night King, or they could have overlapped, as long as the NK doesn't come second.
Yup; GOT was not like other shows were each season was sort of stand alone. GOT was a series that the whole time was building toward the ending. It was essential to get the ending right to some degree. But they were about as far away from getting it right as they could be.
If I'm being generous to D&D I would say it's an extremely difficult series to wrap up and try and please everybody with. The show does indeed build up to the finale from the beginning, which makes it difficult to get right, and there are a lot of characters to deal with. There is more structurally going on than in Breaking Bad for example, and to be honest I think most people would have guessed that the way that was going to end was that Walter would be caught or it would end badly for him in some way. The ending to Game of Thrones was unknown territory. Nobody could have really predicted which direction it would go from early on. It's not grounded in reality like BB is and it quickly established that any character was expendable to move the plot on.
What can't be excused on the part of D&D is the rushing to get to the end. This is where, comparative to BB, that show got things right and GOT didn't. What GOT did was kill Gus Fring, have Walter get discovered by the DEA, and have him die, all in the space of a few episodes. They got the timing right on that show and ordered it correctly in my opinion. Cersei would have been more akin to Gus Fring, and being found out by the DEA would have been more akin to the threat of the Night King and the WW, a fear that has been there for Walter from near the start. Of course, they did that the other way round on GOT.
I agree it was a tough show to wrap up. That is why I think rather than trying to conjure up a bunch of nonsensical twists and turns that were only possible by making a majority of the characters act stupid, mindless or completely out of character; they should have just ended the show a bit more generically, things like Jon kills the night king or does something to end the white walkers, Arya kills Cersei or somehow gets killed by the Faceless men coming for her, and either end it with dissolving the seven kingdoms and no one gets the throne or end it with either Dany, Jon or even Gendry on the throne, or shit if it had to be a Stark that ended up on the throne let it be Sansa (Bran is arguably the worse and most nonsensical choice, but they did it because 'subvert expectations' or some shit). I hate this modern trend of everyone trying to 'subvert expectation' when most writers can't tell the difference between what subverts expectations and what undermines them.
I think the show was so good and successfully subverted so many times in the first 5 seasons there was no need to keep subverting it. That is why a more generic 'happy' ending would have been better, IMO. As corny as this sounds I would have preferred Jon and Dany on the throne or they both die but they have a child that lives and ends up on the throne. but then anything would have been better then what we go' I would have preferred the night king just killing the entire world compared to the season 8 we got.
I agree with you in general, particularly the part where you said that the rushing ended up killing all the detailed character development and intertwining plot lines that made the show so good you could pick at the scripts for hours of harmless fun and find no slipups. Trying to subvert expectations, or go for the quick shock, was the last nail in the show's coffin.
I won't repeat my rant on KING FUCKING WHO, as I have that much decency. It's a few posts up.
Yeah; the twists in the earlier seasons worked because they took the time to set up the character flaws or mistakes that made the twists feel possible. It gives this feeling from the audience perspective that we should have seen it coming. That is a good twist; a good way to subvert expectations. But it takes time to flesh out.
Bad subversion comes in the form of the writers going out of their way to do something specifically because they think the audience won't expect it. Arya killing the NK; Bran on the throne. The show runners literally said they did this because no one was expecting it. YES, no one was expecting it BECAUSE IT WAS NOT SET UP. those freaking idiots. It was done as a gimmick and it ruined the series and any franchise future.
Was it in this post or a different one? I don't recall seeing it: can you share the link to the page? Or maybe I can't see it because you put it in a discussion with someone that I have on my ignore list so I can't see it.
Yeah, they really stopped trying, they thought the fans just wanted to be shocked, and forgot what it takes to make a really good episode-ending shocker. It has to be in character! You have to believe that those people really would do that! Jamie really would kill a child to protect his secret love, Walder Frey really would kill the Kinginthenorth to repay a broken promise and to get in good with the winning side, etc. But a council of nobles appointing a king who'd have zero popular appeal and whose powers they don't understand and can't control? Excuse me?
An abbreviated version of a KING FUCKING WHO rant is on this very thread, closer to the top. There are others. Of all the things that went wrong in season 8, this is one that could not have been done right*, if they'd taken the time to do a proper job of writing. It was just a stupid idea.
- - -
* The whole Mad Queen thing could totally have been awesome if they'd done it right, but they made a mess of it.
I think it was not so much not trying as they were in over their heads and had no idea or desire to try to wrap it all up without novels. This is why ever since they ran out of source material everything started to feel rushed. They were just incompetent. From what they sound like in their interviews they sound kind of retarded too.
"Of all the things that went wrong in season 8, this is one that could not have been done right*, if they'd taken the time to do a proper job of writing. It was just a stupid idea."
Agreed, King Bran is arguably the most nonsensical choice to make. Their is no indication that those with "good stories" make good rulers. Dany had a great story; so did Robert Baratheon. Shit even Adolf Hitler has an "interesting" story (would not call it good to cause confusion between a 'good' story about an evil person if that makes sense). But in Addition to that; Bran has almost inarguable the worst, most uninteresting, and blandest stories of anyone in the series. You know this is the case, because they were able to get away with removing the character from AN ENTIRE SEASON (season 5 Bran was not in at all). literaly anyone else or no one would have been a more sensible choice for King.
And it is insulting to the intellect that all the remaining Lords just go along with this suggestion; with the exception of the 'new king's ' own sister says 'nah, f that'. lol I mean either drugs or insanity went into the conceiving of this scene and decision. There is just no way to get to it through any reasonable thinking.
If they wanted someone with "A Story", how about Gendry? Nice honest blacksmith boy finds out he's a king's bastard, becomes a hero in the War Between the Living and the Dead, and is officially legitimized by Queen Danerys (after the fact, if necessary), and now he's your handsome young king! And the Lords would know what they're getting with him, a nice clueless guy with no education and not much brains, whom the public will like and who'll leave the ruling to the professionals. He'd be the ideal king, from their POV.
Now I do disagree that the show went downhill after they ran out of books, IMHO the show started to lose its edge when they had to work from books 4 and 5, which were weaker than the earlier ones to put it politely. At that point, there were problems with pacing and they had to be absolutely ruthless about editing the book material, but when the show really sarted to dip I don't think the lack of books was the problem. I mean they had an outline to work from, but that was the point where they started trying to pick up the pace, because God knows that was a problem with books 4 and 5!
I heard a rumor that D&D actually threw GRRM's outline out the window at the end, and that the story was supposed to end with Jon as king, and Jamie as Hand of the King. And that Jon had asked Jamie to take that office precisely because he'd killed an earlier king when he went gaga, and asked Jamie to do the same if he ever started to crack. I find myself wanting to believe that rumor, because it's both a more sensible ending than the one we got, and if true, it would confirm my opinion of D&D.
Agreed about Gendy; but then literally every other character had a more interesting story. Bran's story was actually one about him becoming something other than a person. He is not even really Bran or a character at the end. He is like a disconnected knowledge base; would google make a good king? Not the people running google, but google itself being in charge? That is basically what this is telling us.
That is true even when they had book material anytime they deviated from it even to try to correct pacing issues the ability to write instead of adapt for D&D was proved to be utter garbage. Someone at HBO should have seen this coming and hired and forced them to adapt material from a better writer. Someone that GRRM approved of that would take his outline and actually make a descent adaptation out o fit.
I am not sure how far off from the outline they could deviate. If they threw out Martin's outline and the end was going to be that different then my god did they screw up. But almost anything would have been better then what they did (or more accurately how they did what they did).