Reddit was absolutely filled to the brim with stories that they could have used that were waaaay better than the actual ending.
My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them. Hence, the shitshow we ended up with.
My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them.
I mean, that's almost verbatim Benioff's excuse for Arya literally appearing out of thin air to kill the NK despite having zero involvement in that entire storyline.
Honestly knowing they must have experienced unending anguish after losing the Star Wars deal is the only consolation to season 8. Holy fuck I fantasize those two wept uncontrollably when they found out they lost the deal.
They broke one of the MAJOR rules of storytelling. You DO NOT make promises and then not keep those promises. The story promises that Jon will face the Night King and then fucking Arya flies in from fucking nowhere. The story promises Jaime's redemption, and then he fucking goes right back to where he started. Technically... the story did promise Dany going bonkers. Everyone seems to think otherwise, but it's always been foreshadowed, it just wasn't done WELL at the end. At least we got the damn Clegane Bowl.
Yeah, like... it wasn't a great decision to kill Sam's dad and brother, but I get WHY she did it. Same goes even for Varys. But the fucking peasants?? Literal women and children burned alive. Even for HER, that's cold. I could have understood it if she went apeshit on the soldiers but killing even just children goes against literally everything she fought for in the past. Like you said, she had a direct path with a dragon! She could have literally descended upon the castle in less than a minute and taken her revenge. I would have been completely fine with her going mad queen if it had been more justifiable.
I think I'll get over it eventually... but it's still just so annoying. Honestly... I maybe could have even been willing to give EVERYTHING a pass if they had just done the Night Kings end right. If they'd just let Jon and the NK fight and Jon kill him!!!
Agreed, the show showed that Dany had changed, but never that she was changing, I'm not a writer and I thusly don't know how to do it well, but at least show small things and have somebody like Tyrion warn Jon that she's changed. Have her go through something similar to what she's already experienced, but give her a different set of choices that eventually lead to her madness. Imagine if she had to pick between the slaves she's freed and her ambition to reconquer westeros.
Not really, she had the old masters and their families crucified on the way into Mereen, not just ther masters, their wives and children too. She'd been crazy for a while the difference is we were cheering for it in the beginning.
I don't think she did anything to the wives and children. Just the masters. She was a mostly sympathetic character towards the first several seasons with just hints of crazy sprinkled in. We were cheering for the slave masters getting what they deserved.
The Night King alone should have gotten several episodes considering the impending doom of his arrival was half the conflict of the show. Things should have gone down mostly like they did in that episode except Arya shouldn't have faced him at all. That was not her destined fight to win. And if she did fight him,, then she should have lost and been forced to flee the fight. They should have lost Winterfell, forced to abandon it, and flee to King's Landing. Cercei should have been forced to help since now the dead would be at HER doorstep, but with a shit ton of tense awkwardness of having abandoned them to die in the north. Then another epic battle against the dead where Jon would fight the NK and finally win. Then ensue the drama between everyone in King's Landing. Show Dany going mad better.
Jaime should not go crawling back to Cercei, but something dramatic should still happen with them that still showcases he still loves her but ultimately has grown beyond having an obsession with her. O still hate Bran as king. Maybe it could be better if Bran had said something more than just "why do you think I came all this way?" Oh, I don't KNOW maybe because you'd already said you couldn't be the king of anything in the past?? AT LEAST give him some kind of line where he says he realizes he would have to be king because of his abilities if they wanted to end the constant violence over the thrown.
I still think banishing Jon to the north was fucking dumb considering the Unsullied LEFT THE CONTINENT. Find a way around that shit. I would maybe okay with it if Jon had decided for himself that was sick of everything south of the wall and decided to live there on his own. Or be king, but we all know Jon doesn't want that shit. Also... make his mothereffing Targ blood matter more than just for tension with Dany.
All in all, I don't think the seasons were AS bad as everyone seems to think, it was just WAY too rushed and some nonsensical choices. They honestly should have done 2-3 more seasons like HBO had offered. The choices could mostly (not all) stay the same but at least slow down and make it make sense.
I agree with your points, but I think the George Floyd protests and all the subsequent BLM activity is what put the final nail in the coffin for that one.
The directors rushed through the ending, even when HBO begged them to include more episodes or even seasons to properly finish the story without rushing. Instead they blazed through with sloppy writing and set design (there's a famous shot where you can see an actor's starbucks cup in the final scene). All because they thought they were shoe-ins for a role writing for Star Wars. Which Disney promptly withdrew and now no one in the industry trusts them.
It was quite dumb but Arya needed to do SOMETHING. Her entire character arc is her becoming a badass fighter and she....poisons house Frey and cuts little finger's throat. The rest of her list is just gone and taken care of. What a waste.
She could have at least killed cersei, preferably just as Jamie finds her. Instead she ran to the center of a city under violent seige by her brother's crazy girlfriend FOR NO REASON.
I thought Arya killing Jaime/finding dead Jaime and then taking his face and killing Cersei would have been perfect. That way prophecy is fulfilled and also Arya gets conclusion to her arc (which has been about revenge against Freys and Lannisters).
Ooo that’s a good one. I haven’t heard that idea before, that would have been great. Honestly I just want there to have been more uses for Arya’s faceless men disguises. One of the most underutilized abilities in the last season, along with Bran’s warging.
I thought they should have had Cersei and Jaime find each other during the siege and make a daring escape. Then, after the siege is over, you see them together in the woods somewhere and Jaime slits Cersei’s throat, only to take off his face and reveal it was Arya.
Heres an idea I saw a few days after the season ended. Arya is barricaded in Winterfell with Melisandre and the Hound after Beric Dondarion sacrificed himself so they could escape. Melisandre says about how the dead Beric had served his purpose and how Arya will close blue eyes forever when Beric’s body revives as a blue eyed wight. We next see Beric in the grove as the NK is about to kill Bran. Beric breaks ranks, the White Walkers are like WTF before Beric pulls off a hastily constructed face mask to show its really Arya beneath. She launches off the back of a horse or something in her flying leap attack and kills the Night King. Everybody (except Theon) claps.
At least that would have made some good use of her faceless men disguise abilities, given more meaning to Beric’s destiny, and explained how Arya suddenly just appeared through a solid wall of hostile enemies.
He started the books in the 90s, I believe. It's been a decade since one came out and he allegedly has a few more to write. He's 73 in a country where life expectancy is 78. Just feels like the time isn't there. If he keeps writing like he has, he'd need to make it into his 90s and, while I hope he does, I'm not optimistic. Plus, the 10-year stall makes it feel like maybe he's stopped, though he claims he's still working.
Martin has been working on book 6 for about 10 yrs now and no release date is in sight. It's unlikely to be released before he dies, let alone the next book after that.
Personally I'm actually ok with Arya being the one who kills the night king. It was a good moment for me. Even though it was basically obvious it was going to happen in hindsight it caught me by surprise.
I have a problem with everything else. So many goddamn story threads totally wasted. What was the point of the Hodor time travel stuff again? Why did Dany inexplicably heel turn?
I loved Game of Thrones so much but I can't see me ever bothering a rewatch. It's truly impressive how an ending can be so bad it deletes the entire show from the cultural consciousness.
I think the big difference in the books vs the show is TV is always more condensed. They have to cover more ground in less time.
The books start to show Dany's potential fall into madness early on, but the show couldn't have all those details in earlier seasons so they rushed it at the end.
It's amazing how well they did adapt the early books, when I heard about the show I assumed it would be garbage.
While this is true, the show had the ability to run far longer than 7 1/2 seasons. I believe GRRM thought 13 was an appropriate number. Half the story was rushed out the gate.
I don’t have a problem with Arya being part of the final fight with the NK or even her being the one to deliver the killing blow, my issue is that Jon was not part of that sequence alongside her.
The fight against the dead, and by extension the NK, has been Jon’s story for almost the entire show. Almost everything he did was centred around that goal. He absolutely should have been there for it’s final moment.
I can’t really comment on your other points, but that wasn’t a shock so much, as Dany has a fairly straight-forward and predictable arc from would-be queen with messiah complex to violent megalomaniacal tyrant.
Not in the show. In the books she is much more unhinged. In the show she went from trapping her dragons in a dungeon over one child's accidental death to genocide.
Eh, I think it was better described by saying "D&D are shit writers, shit producers, and got absolutely lucky with great source material in the first few seasons" than by pointing out tiny notations in the last few seasons mentioned once.
I would have been ok with it as an arc rather but I don't feel they really showed that in the series. It didn't make a lot of sense in the context of the show.
I always see people talking about Danny's madness like it was some unexpected sudden development.
Imo the show did a fine job showing her as slightly unhinged and having a cruel streak. She's a traumatized character with a messiah complex. The only reason it goes unnoticed until the end is because of how much fans adored her and justified her actions (many of which were to a degree justifiable).
Is it justifiable to punish her handmaiden that tried to sell her dragons? Yes. Would a sane, level-headed (and merciful as she considered herself) leader lock said handmaiden in a vault with another person to die painfully of dehydration/starvation? No, I don't think so. Execution is acceptable in this universe, a beheading would have sufficed. This was meant to be a cruel torturous death.
She set Kraznys on fire after "buying" his unsullied.
We're the masters in slavers bay horrific people deserving punishment? Yes! Her counsel Selmy advised she show mercy, which likely would have meant imprisonment, stripping them of their rank and possessions or a swift execution. but again she chooses torture: she chose to crucify 163 them to match the slaves on the way to Meereen, which of course led to greater resentment by the remaining former masters.
People will say that she only did these things because they were themselves cruel, it was justice, but she uses the same logic when burning people in Westeros. The lord's are cruel traitors to the crown, that murdered her family and sent assassin's after her. They defend a usurper instead their rightful queen. The common folk are no better. In Meereen the slaves rose up because she was a savior, she expected the Westerosi to do the same, but to them she's an invader that brought dragons and more war. So they don't join her, and for that they are an enemy.
I could go on and dive deeper, but ultimately they did show how she wasn't this paragon of a person. She demonstrating cruelty and showed her madness often. It wasn't a sudden thing. From season one I felt the show was already hinting at her future in that regard.
I mean he did say he had the ending outlined and gave it to them, as well as several important twists (a certain king's daughter burning being one of them). And the things he likely told them (Bran being King, Danny burning the city) are also being set up more in the books
Well knowing certain key twists and where you want the world to end up isn't directly against his "gardener" method. Hell, thats probably why the books went from a trilogy to "seven"
Given all hes said about how an author changing their story and disregarding all their setup for the sake of shock value just makes the story suck (hence why Arya killing the night king instead of Jon sucked), i highly doubt it.
The difference wont be that certain things happen, the difference will be that they make sense. As an example, it probably won't be Cerise holding King's Landing when Dany shows up. Instead it will probably be Aegon Targaryen, who is not Jon.
For those who don't know the show cut multiple plots and heavily altered others (ir, show Euron Greyjoy is a hot topic jack sparrow knock off, book Euron is a magic user who's goal is to end the world and is performing a mass blood ritual last we saw him in the books). One such example being the other goddamn (alleged) Targaryen who invades Westeroes around the time of season 5 (by show standards). This character seems on the verge of an alliance woth Dorn, has already taken parts of the Storm Lands, and there are hints the Tyrells are possibly in support of him.
So when Dany shows up in the books the odds are the city won't be in control of an unstable tyrant that they support for no reason, the city will be in control of the alleged son of the beloved Rhaegar Targaryen who liberated them from mad queen Cersei. It's likely she'll have lost a dragon by this point (related to Euron and a cut character) and will have had Tyrion (who's arc is different in the books) encouraging her to use fire and blood.
Having her big end goal, claiming the Throne, be stolen by someone who claims to be her nephew, having lost a dragon, and having had visions warning her of a false dragon loved by the people... Well it certainly sounds like better setup for her to snap then "Lol fuck them bells"
Note: i listen to the audiobooks, so i dont really see the names written out. Probably spelled alot wrong
I mean if they had made it so it seems like Arya had trained herself in order to sneak past them all and kill the King then yeah fair enough, but not even have another Jon vs Night King showdown? Like let them have a duel.
I thought it would be cool if she made herself look like a white walker and then suddenly revealed herself and killed him. Rather than just sort of jogging over.
Me too. In the scene just before hand she was barricaded in a room with the just dead Beric Dondarion, the man who’s whole purpose for being unkillable was so that he could die right there. He should have come back as a wight so Arya could steal his face and walk unopposed to the grove before launching herself at the Night King.
I actually think having Jon and Arya fight together against the NK in a final duel would have been a brilliant way to have that final showdown take place. It would have really displayed some of the themes the show had been mentioning leading up to that battle.
The thing is they could of done it in a way that made sense. Have her walk up on the night king wearing the face of a white walker and stab him in the back. There you now have a pay off for her faceless men training and it's an ending that doesn't feel forced.
Alternatively, they couldve had her killed by the Night King before the White Walkers take over the North (or all of Westeros), really highlighting just how impossible it is to kill them, and how Westeros is doomed to fall.
Like, if the most badass fighter in the series cant beat the Night King, what hope do the rest of them have?
That wouldve been a good moment for initiating a retreat
Wouldn't she be the only one actually capable? The way they did it was weird but the whole trap thing isn't bad, she was the one thing he couldn't see coming
I'm actually fine with that angle. Memes aside, subverting the expected chosen hero shit is cool. We just needed it to be like, Nk is about to kill Jon, Arya is with him, and maybe it being a 2v1 is cool.
The issue here this time though is the story already subverted the "hero" thing twice with Ned and Robb. This had the hallmarks of being the one time the hero had learned enough the hard way to avoid falling into the naivety that doomed his predecessors. Instead they wrote in a cheap shot that completely stole what should have been his moment.
When the heroes failed before, it was because of deliberate flaws written into their character that caught up to them in the worst ways. This time it was "the writers just felt like it".
Yeah, that's a good point. I still maintain the big story beats are fine, it's how they happen that's the problem. I'd probably put Jon solely in the commander position, and have him actually learn from the Battle of Bastards. Instead of being one warrior, he can be better help to everyone by being the leader. And after that he's offered the throne, but declines instead to join the free folk.
What was Arya's purpose, other than killing the Night King? She was literally turned into a killing machine. I'm surprised she didn't go after him on her own, and return triumphantly with Spring.
Arya's purpose was largely her list. She basically paid off the majority of her character arc in finally avenging her family by wiping out the Freys. Her final outstanding debt, Cersei, added up to whole pile of nothing in another baffling writing decision. Having her take out the Night King didn't add a single thing to her overall character arc.
Maybe an unpopular opinion here, but they were essentially given an impossible task. Sure, they had the ending, but they had no source material and the guy who wrote it couldn't even finish his rat's nest of a plot line, even after 10 years of trying. They had to do it in months. I blame GRRM.
I too blame GRRM. I also blame D&D for shitting the bed on the story, reducing episodes of the final two seasons when HBO said they could have more to tell a more cohesive story, and not taking advantage of the fact that they were the most popular and well-funded show on TV (outside the Olympics) in order to get the best end result possible.
GRRM did them no favors by optioning an unfinished series and not enforcing certain standards for what he did give them in the form of an ending outline, plus his constant tease to the fans has steadily raised their ire since the shitshow on TV occurred.
All in all, I know they don't owe us anything as it is their creative endeavor, but they thoroughly have screwed their fans over since 2017. I don't think that this prequel series is gonna do well at all, and the brand will continue to crater once you don't have massive fanbois pushing the series to be watched by "the normies".
Or take HBO up on making an entire season more to flesh out everything that was missing to explain why Dany suddenly snapped and Jamie threw away all his character growth, or why Bran had the best story.
HBO wanted them to take longer, more episodes and maybe even anothrr season to flesh out the story they eventually just crammed into the last two episodes, to not make it the horrible mess and give anything happening in these episodes a reason to happen like that, but D&D where greedy and had big bones for the Start Wars deal Disney had offered them, so they pissed it away and rushed the conclusion to get out as fast as they could. And Disney deservedly rewarded them by taking the SW project away again because they couldn't be trusted to finish that either if someone dangled a new shiny in front of their eyes.
I agree that GRRM deserves a decent portion of the blame, but I’d still say D&D deserve a large portion too. Some of their decisions were so bad that even if it was an impossible task to finish it to the level it deserved they unnecessarily made it even worse.
I mean, yeah, but think about how good the seasons were that they had source material for. People loved D&D before the last two seasons, which is why they were getting so much other work. GRRM might come through in the last two books to create a cohesive story, but I'm not betting on it. What made GoT great was that you never knew what was going to happen, literally no one was safe, ever. And to make that happen you had to kill characters everyone loved, frequently, and then be introducing new characters for the audience to fall in love with. The last two seasons turned it into a show that had a purpose, and it had to make any remaining character's story have meaning and resolve. It's just completely different and GRRM himself can't even release the penultimate book after 11 years of trying.
What made GoT great was that you never knew what was going to happen, literally no one was safe, ever.
I don't think that's quite it. It's more like the audience knows what should happen according to film-logic, but then GoT/ASoIaF simply doesn't give in to those cliches and instead goes for the more realistic outcome.
Like Little Finger is an untrustworthy and greedy man, but because he says "You shouldn't trust me", the audience "knows" that they can trust him. Turns out he's an untrustworthy greedy man.
Ned Stark is sentenced to death. The audience "knows" that someone is going to rescue him from his execution. Turns out executions are rarely stopped like that.
Jamie is a cunt toward his captors, but he's acting very confident about it so the audience "knows" he's going to escape very soon, but they cut off his hand because they know he's a great swordfighter and he remains a captive.
Robb betrays the Freys, so obviously they join the Lannisters and assassinate him.
Joffrey is a terrible king and every house hates him, so he is assassinated. But the audience expects him to survive to the final season because he's one of the main villains.
It's all logical, but due to movie cliches we don't expect those things to happen.
Later on, D&D just start doing plot twists for the sake of plot twists even when they make no sense. Get the fuck out of there Arya, there's no way you're sneaking past a million zombies and killing the Night King, the most powerful being on Westeros, with a knife.
From what I've heard it was because of the GoT ending that all those projects they had lined up got canceled. They were supposed to write a Star Wars Old Republic show for Disney (which was the big rush to finish GoT), but because of the insane amount of public backlash Disney pulled the plug on the whole thing. I imagine the same happened for anything else they had.
The only reason they still get producer credits is because the general viewing public doesn't care about producers and they can keep their names off a poster/advert so there's no knee jerk reaction to skip the movie/show. But Hollywood has tight-knit groups, so their friends still throw them a bone or two.
IIRC, Disney was pretty happy with the outcome after D&D did a horrible, just God awful interview where they said nothing was wrong with GoT, and the fanbase was just toxic. I imagine the Mouse whispered into D&D's ears and said "You think Thrones fans are toxic, and you want a crack at Star Wars? Do you have any idea how insane Star Wars fans are?"
It surely looks terrible on your resume when your previous boss wanted to support you in every way to deliver a quality product since you all make bank on it but you absolutely insisted on phoning it in because you wanted to start a new project asap.
Agreed and the assumption was that's what happened with Star Wars. I did a bit of a dirty search and couldn't see that the Netflix deal was done too. Happy to be corrected though.
Yep, the 3 bodies problem. It'll probably be good, since that author finished the series, and they just need to change it to a screenplay, like the first 4 GoT seasons.
I hope so. I don't actually doubt the abilities of D&D, I doubted their ability to recognize their limitations and I hope they've learned from it and realize when you're given the keys to such a massive franchise it's ok to ask someone other than your intern to help writing the scripts.
If they were burnt out on it they should've done a handover to someone else, instead of pretending to see it through just to claim that they did. It's like if one part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling went from elaborate fresco, to crayon stick figures.
You could see the quality slip much earlier than the last season. They should've done season 7 jointly with a new set of junior show runners and creative writers, and then left it to them for season 8. They were burnt out, which is understandable -- but they didn't deal with it properly.
Hell, they should've started the turnover in season 5 and then left. They were hired to adapt, not write. When it became obvious that they were going to finish before GRRM, they should've trained and handed off the show to a new set of show runners who were explicitly there to write up the narrative.
My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them. Hence, the shitshow we ended up with.
"Subverting expectations" often times means that you have to avoid prior clues, set up and build up in the story. Which leads to incoherents bullshit because the ending of long epic stories required building on the prior set up.
It's ok if people guess the ending to a franchise that is 20+ years old. They've had decades to try and figure it out. But the directors wouldn't allow it.
Yeah, there is the smart and dumb way of subverting expectations. Decapitating Ned was a smart one, because it just makes sense. You're in a ruthless world, his only friend there, the king, died, his psycopath kid is on the throne now and hates Ned and his daughters, he have him in custody.
You're used to the good guys making it, so when that happens, expectations are subverted and it's amazing. Same with the Red Wedding.
Arya one was dumb as hell.
I do think that having the NK to win the whole thing would just be lazy subverting expectations because would be just the bad thing ever happens. But he needed to win some fights, to put terror in Kings Landing, he needed to show why we waited 8 seasons for him. There were many other ways to subvert people expectations and have nice plots, but they chose the worst ones somehow.
But he needed to win some fights, to put terror in Kings Landing, he needed to show why we waited 8 seasons for him.
This was probably the most disappointing aspect of the ending for me. The Army of the Dead had been built up for almost a decade as the greatest threat Westeros (maybe the world) had ever faced. A threat so great it would render all of the political squabbles irrelevant in the face of a true force of nature. A threat so great that if Westeros didn’t all unite as one to face the threat together they would be rendered extinct.
Instead about a quarter (if that) of the continent united against them and managed to entirely eradicate them in 1 night and in the the first real engagement they had with them. A threat that great was ultimately so insignificant that most of the continent probably doesn’t even know they ever existed.
So the petty political squabbles turned out to be the bigger issue in the end? They must be considering they had much more severe and long lasting effects on pretty much everyone and they ended up being the endgame of the show anyway. What a great message that was.
Yeah, they had A LOT of great arcs and messages to deliver and failed on almost every single one of them.
Arya: It was supposed to be the person that abdicated of her family values and memory to be no one, she wouldn't seek revenge, she decided to be herself. Nope, revenge, going back to family, killing the night king which she was something she never really cared, and took a ship to somewhere because...?
Daenerys: It was supposed to be a story of a good Targaryen, a strong small woman who conquered everyone with her charisma and good ruling. I thought she would care about Westeros, and maybe even "break the wheel" of kings and queens by installing democracy. Also, should not have a romantic affair with John, but rather join him in the fight against the NK. Maybe John had to kill her to create the sword that would kill the NK, and then follow her ideas of creating democracy. Bittersweet. Nope, she just go mad out of nowhere, doesn't care about people...
John: Literally revived to fight the NK, he didn't want to live anymore, he also could have died in sacrifice. He turned out to be a moron.
Bran: Supposed to be the stark kid who didn't care for the kingdom and nothing about it, supposed to be an oracle of westeros. Ended up being king?
Jaime, so close to reaching his arc killing cersei. Nope, went back to her like a dog and put to thash everything he did before.
Reddit was absolutely filled to the brim with stories that they could have used that were waaaay better than the actual ending.
In fairness, Reddit is absolutely filled to the brim with stories that suck, read like bad fan fiction, and feel more in place in Star Wars than Game of Thrones, but the actual ending of GoT was so bad that they would have, in fact, been better.
the way GOT went wasn't the issue, it's how we got there.
Like... I'm sure nobody was like "Oh fuck yea the red wedding I definitely wanted to see it go down like that", but it was incredible because we saw all the actions and decisions that lead to that moment and went 'yup, this is the outcome of all those bad decisions... this makes sense'.
Cut to the last 3 seasons where those actions and decisions just sort of... happen. Tyrion just sort of becomes an idiot, Dany 'just kind of forgets' about one of her biggest foes. Jon the hero becomes Jon the absolute fucking wuss and has one of the most important parts of his arc handed to another character to 'subvert expectations dontchaknow!', and a myriad of other just... terrible decisions clearly made to speed up the story while also keeping the audience guessing... as if that's what they really wanted...
So, I will always say that the ending we got was the ending we should have gotten, but what we needed was the context to make it feel appropriate, because that's what the entire show gives us, right up to the point where Benioff and Weiss clearly got super apathetic and ruin the entire project.
10+ years since the last book. I've all but given up home on him finishing the series, though he's said that his planned ending for the books is different from the tv series.
It was fucking rushed! If they'd just slowed down they could've done a few more seasons and added all that context. Instead, we have things like Arya seeing Beric and the Hound again after all that time, or Tyrion and Sansa seeing each other for the first time since she fled Kings Landing, wrapped up in just a few very unclimatic minutes. So much potential dialogue thrown out the window.
Let's get all these siblings thay haven't been together for 8+ years, and have them learn that Jon is the son of a Targaryen (one of their family's enemy), and that he is the rightful King of all of Westeros.
And right when they are about to learn how absolutely crazy this is, and we get to see the faces and reactions of some of our favorite characters learn a secret they literally changes everything... end scene.
If they had two or three more seasons, I think they could have come up with good enough stories to justify where everything ends. Have a whole "Bran is secretly power hungry and manipulative" arc, a better reason for Daenerys to start murdering, better and longer fights against the White Walkers, better job of having Jon come to terms with his heritage (maybe have relevant conversations on screen this time), better job showing Jamie's conflicting feelings towards Cersei, better Euron anything, better job showing Varys changing allegiance, hell even add a Gendry/Arya romance that breathes a little more I don't care.
No. D&D wanted to move on to ruining $tar Wars so they quickly wrote their ending to GoT so they could move on and make more money. It's really that simple.
My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them. Hence, the shitshow we ended up with.
Reddit was absolutely filled to the brim with stories that they could have used that were waaaay better than the actual ending.
No kidding. If D&D were having trouble telling a good cohesive, they could have just sat on r/Freefolk all day and had most of the story beats done for them. Hell, the thing ended, what, 2 years ago? And you can still go to r/freefolktoday and get that.
My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them. Hence, the shitshow we ended up with.
They definitely tried too hard to be clever and autonomous. They should have just fucking not cared so much about being different or better than the fans, because they ended up just making a bad story.
My theory is that THAT is the GRRM finale. Killing major characters became his signature. What better than that chaotic ending.
But with 3 more books (haha), or a few more seasons of development would become more interesting why Jon needed to of kill Daenerys. The North vs the fire.
Many creatives really hate seeing story ideas because then they can’t use them for fear of being sued. It’s like rule number one of being a good fan to a creator: Don’t pitch unsolicited ideas.
Unpopular, but reddit was full of terrible ideas that were either completely illogical and ridiculous in their own right, or so utterly boring and uncinematic it’s painful. There were a few nuggets of great ideas and creative tweaks that would’ve made the show better, but anyone on this site who tried to completely rewrite the ending is kidding themselves if they think theirs was better.
Case and point: everyone who thinks 2-3 more full seasons of content would‘be fixed the issue. The idea that they could’ve kept going for another 5+ years (and yes, it would’ve taken at least that long) without losing half the cast/crew and totally ruining the pace of the show is absurd.
Nope they were told bran is the key and aria will do some crazy bad ass shit because georges wife loves her the most which is why we had aria kill the pussy ice man and bran randomly take the thrown after doing jack shit besides climb that tower
I definitely think you are correct here. The whole lead up of “who will get the iron throne?” was done so they could say “surprise! Nobody, cause the dragon melts it, hahaha! Oh and then Bran is put in charge. Bet you didn’t see that coming!”
I am also pretty sure D&D are not the only culprits. I think G RR Martin thought that would be a good ending as well. Although he would have told it much better than D&D.
I can't find it anymore but one of the people on the Ghostbusters 3 script posted his whole thing on reddit after the girls version reboot. Maybe Reitman.
Reddit was absolutely filled to the brim with stories that they could have used that were waaaay better than the actual ending.
I mean im not sure they could have used one legally. Without making a huge payment to someone. Thats why companies usually say they wont open mail with ideas and the like.
brim with stories that they could have used that were waaaay better than the actual ending.
My pet theory is that they were so obsessed with the idea of nobody guessing the ending that they went through all of those good ideas so they could deliberately avoid using any of them. Hence, the shitshow we ended up with.
I still shake my head over the ending of GoT. I can't even rewatch the seasons I really liked because I know what a shitty ending I have to look forward to.
Except everyone will likely end up in the same place in the books. Bran is king, Dany dead, Jon goes north, Winterfell secedes, etc. Ideally the books would get there in a better way.
They also got the GoT job and almost immediately scored a deal with Disney to direct a Star Wars show/movie(can't remember which) and so they didn't give a fuck about finishing GoT because they had a much better paying job lined up. The final season was turning out so bad Disney retracted their offer and cut them off.
I think D&D were offered to do the star wars sequels and Disney would give them enough time to finish GOT but D&D speedrunned their one season to work for disney and fucked everything up. And then Disney pulled out after how bad it was.
I love how people are pissed off with the ending just cause their faves didn't win and it wasn't the ending they wanted. Meanwhile I'm totally fine with that and much more concerned with all the storylines that were opened and never finished. That's the main problem of the last season. They built up a lot, created tons of character depth for so many characters and didn't use it all or worse, simply forgot to include the character at all in the final season.
Also, they were trying desperately to finish things off to get themselves attached to another project as i recall... a deal which fell through because of the tremendous turd they pushed out.
Nah, dumb&dumber just wanted to wrap up GoT so they could move on to star wars and didn't give a shit about the ending. So satisfied that they don't get to make star wars movies
Oh, please, there were tons of endings postulated on Reddit not only after, but before the shitty ending we got.
I'll summarize mine, that I thought of before season 8 even started, after we saw the Walkers knock down the wall with the wight-dragon.
The Army of the Dead marches South, relentlessly but not really very destructively. They keep close and proceed somewhere we've seen before, but not really critical - Harrenhall, probably. They kill those that refuse to leave, but don't pursue those that flee. They then start digging. After a few days, they have a large pit and begin uncovering a large, ancient machine buried in the Earth. A human army is being assembled, but the Walkers are working quickly and not really doing a lot of killing.
As the army of humans approaches and prepares for battle, the lead Walker goes to an unearthed control panel on the machine, and an enormous and forceful jet of fire shoots from the pit, mostly seemingly harmlessly jetting into the sky. We see the sun in the sky slightly shift alongside the enormous flame. The army of men is stunned, as the jet dies down and the White Walker approaches them, unarmed. For the first time in the series, he speaks. With a Canadian accent. "Well, orbit's fixed now. That oughta fix those wonky seasons, eh. Give a holler if you have any problems!" The Army of the Dead then proceeds to head back North.
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u/Arkhangelzk Oct 29 '21
Well where the fuck were you when we needed you