I’ve been very patient with Game of Thrones this season. The hurried pacing, the strange character turns, the seemingly haphazard way that the grand story has been careening into the median and bar ditch all season. I’ve been patient and waited until it was all over before passing judgement.
And this is where they’ve ended it.
To say I’m disappointed is a tad bit of an understatement. Even with the story finished, it doesn’t feel finished, at least not in a satisfactory way. I don’t mean that I wanted a happy ending because only an idiot would have expected Game of Thrones, a series that took pleasure in torturing its audience, to leave that same audience with a happy ending.
I was expecting an ending with a bit of satisfaction. That I did not get. While the episode did have some emotional high beats to it, among them Tyrion’s discovery of his brother and sister’s bodies and Jon and Dany’s final moments together, the rest of the episode felt surprisingly sterile and matter of fact as if it was just hitting story beats and not anything deeper.
On a technical level, the episode was superb… all of the episodes this season have been superb, but I cannot shake the feeling that the show-runners suffered from fatigue and stopped caring on a level they should have been caring. It seems like to me, they didn’t really care if it was done well, they just wanted it done.
The finale was a blizzard of contradictions. Tyrion who was told that he wouldn’t be allowed to speak gives a huge and eloquent speech right there in front of the guy who said he wouldn’t be allowed to. The Unsullied are given their own kingdom to start their own nation with their own lineage… but they can’t start a lineage on account that they’re missing a vital part of their anatomy. Bran who expressly said that he could never be Lord of Winterfell or lord of anything, is now king. Although, it is kind of funny that Game of Thrones turned into a game of musical chairs and the guy that won was sitting the entire time. I mean, come on… he sat down the entire game and was still named MVP.
Still, given all the contradictions, you have to wonder if the show-runners have been… you know… watching the show. All in all, this episode did not save the season, it merely confirmed what a directionless season it’s been for such an iconic and otherwise well-written and rich television series. For it to end on such an underwhelming note is a level of disappointment I didn’t think I would live to see.
I guess I should be thankful that no one faked their death and became a lumberjack.
At least Ghost finally got his pettings.
Jason Gaston 