Game of Thrones Season 8 Review Part 1: Introduction

Warning: This series contains spoilers for the final season of Game of Thrones

Introduction

This is probably my most ambitious project since I started this blog- a look back on Game of Thrones' widely disliked final season. While widely considered the weakest season, some are willing to defend certain aspects of the season, so I will evaluate it and see whether the season is as bad as people remember.

The review will be divided into eight parts- an introduction, one entry for each of the six episodes- and a conclusion that summarizes it. Without further ado, let's get into the introduction- where the series stood at this point.

The Most Obvious Problem

Perhaps the best place to start is one of the most frequently cited problems with the final season, which achieves its status by virtue of being the most obvious- the episode count. The final season is much shorter than the previous seven, and is one episode shorter than the previous season.

This shortage of episodes wouldn't be such a problem if not for the fact that the show had to cover a lot of ground in those episodes, including, but not limited to:
  1. The war with the Night King.
  2. The war between Daenerys and Cersei.
  3. Deciding who would take the Iron Throne.
  4. Jon and Daenerys' romance.
  5. Jaime's redemption arc.
  6. Several other character plotlines.
As you can see, this is a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time, resulting in many plotlines being rushed if not dropped entirely. In writing, making use of how much screentime, pages, or words you are allotted, is a bit like working with a budget. It's rather easy to squander a large budget and there are times when small budgets work better, but those with large budgets will inevitably accomplish more than those with equal competence but smaller budgets.

Uncharted Territory

Another similarly obvious problem is the fact that at the time Game of Thrones started airing, George R.R. Martin had written only five books in the seven-book A Song of Ice and Fire series that was used to adapt the show. This situation hadn't gotten any better as of the time the final season began shooting- in fact, as of this writing, the sixth ASOIAF book, The Winds of Winter, still isn't out, a decade after the fifth book's publication.

In short, the showrunners had to write an ending to a show adapting a book series that hadn't ended yet, a problem that the creators of the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime also faced. As a result, the showrunners ended up having to remove some subplots from the original work, like Catelyn being resurrected as Lady Stoneheart, or Tyrion learning that his first wife Tysha was not a prostitute. Removing those parts of the story had an impact on the narrative, and I will touch on more in the episode reviews.

Character Arcs

A related problem is how the showrunners handled certain character arcs. In some cases, it's due to the showrunners no longer having the books to guide them, in other cases, it's due to changes made to the canon portions of the show catching up to them, and in still other cases, it's simply bad writing.

One of the most notable is Jaime Lannister, who's done terrible things out of his incestuous love for his sister Cersei, but also is surprisingly honorable. In the books, Jaime is last seen refusing to serve as Cersei's champion in a trial by combat (which, admittedly, would likely get him killed considering his loss of his dominant hand), but in the show, Jaime stays loyal to Cersei until she refuses to aid the North against the White Walkers, showing that the series struggles with his gradual redemption arc.

Jaime's brother Tyrion is another character who's difficult to write, especially since the aforementioned revelation that Tyshsa wasn't a prostitute, and thus Jaime had lied to him, never happens in the show. This results in Tyrion not swearing vengeance on the rest of his family(although he still kills Tywin and loathes Cersei), which is admittedly a controversial development among book readers, but to some, it comes off as the TV show whitewashing his actions, since it had previously made him more sympathetic than in the books. The show also had the formerly intelligent Tyrion demonstrate increased incompetence, resulting in the ill-fated attempt to capture a White Walker to get Cersei on their side, which resulted in Daenerys losing one of her dragons and failed in its intended purpose. One could argue that Tyrion is out of his depth, but this is a rather frustrating development.

And then there's Daenerys. She has good intentions, but can also be rather violent and ruthless, not to mention having an overly simplistic view of justice when it comes to dealing with those whom she sees as evil. Like in the books, the TV series focuses more on her heroic qualities and less on her negative ones, which is a controversial decision. There's also the separate question of whether the finale did a good job of showing her sudden shift, which I will touch on more when I get to that point.

In short, Game of Thrones often struggles to stick the landing with character arcs, and I will discuss where and how it went wrong.

The Weight of Expectations

Lastly, there's the question of whether the series will meet fans' expectations. The book series has been going since 1996, and the show started in 2011, so that's a long time to build up fans' expectations for a grand finale that is a payoff to years' worth of buildup.

While the showrunners made their share of avoidable mistakes in producing the final season, they were faced with a difficult task that was made more difficult due to some factors outside their control. Having evaluated the setup, I will now evaluate how well the final episodes were executed.

At the end of each episode's reviews, I will rate it on a scale of one to five melted Iron Thrones. In most cases, a score of one star out of five would be terrible and five out of five would be excellent, but the more thrones an episode gets, the worse it is. Here's a breakdown of the ratings.

  1. The episode is decent and has no major problems.
  2. The episode is poorer quality than usual, but not too bad.
  3. The episode has some serious problems with storytelling.
  4. The episode severely mishandles character arcs and ongoing plotlines
  5. This episode is so bad that it ruins the series.
For context, I can think of only a few episodes in the past seven seasons that qualify for three melted Iron Thrones, and none that qualify for four or five.

So is the final season of Game of Thrones as bad as most people say? Stay tuned and find out.

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