HBO/Sky Atlantic/ YouTube
If you are one of the few people who are proud of not having seen Game of Thrones ever in your life then you must be having fun this time of the year. You get to hear everyone complain about how season 8 has been “nothing they wanted the show to be,” and how it took a turn for the worst. In fact, I was late to the party and have literally binged the entire eight seasons over the past twelve months, so my emotions have only been through the mill for the last little while, not the seven-plus years that die-hard fans have invested. It was quite the emotional journey, I can tell you. I am going to be talking to the people who have been having a hard time over the past few weeks particularly, just like I have. After all, we all need somewhere to complain, and with the most recent episode of season 8, it is best to start complaining now so we can get it all out by the finale, which will air on HBO/ Sky Atlantic over this coming weekend. This moaning process is a healthy process, I think since we all about to go through the many stages of grief over the next few days when those very last credits roll.
I am not going to talk about the betrayal to the character that was Daenery’s behaviour in episode 5, so don’t worry about spoilers (if by some chance you’ve not caught up yet). Neither am I going to talk about all of the plot armour around Arya or all of the other issues (for some) that were part of the show this past entire season. Other people have done enough talking about that, and will continue to do so for many months to come, I’m sure.
A lot of has been fired in the direction of the show’s writers, Benioff and Weiss. Unfairly so, in my opinion. After all, these are the guys who have produced some of the best writing on television, ever. They have changed the landscape (once again) for television, and the industry is so much better for it. As much as we want to talk about how this was only thanks to the fact that they had GRRM’s writing to base their own off, I still believe they had a lot of original writing to do. They were the ones that wrote the ‘Chaos is a Ladder’ dialogue, they were the ones to introduce a whole lot of other character arcs and stories into the show and a story that had not been there before. They continually kept writing some of the best episodes and best stories, and we all loved them. Well, most of us. They have now moved on to bigger projects, and their Star Wars trilogy will be the first of the new movies to hit after the conclusion of the Skywalker saga – another pop culture closure that comes to an end at the tail end of the year. It will be epic.
All of the plot armor around Arya or all of the other issues that were part of the show this past entire season have absolutely split audiences. We are now setting expectations for the finale.
Now that the final episode is coming, it is time we set our expectations straight. Although, what should our expectations even be? The last few episodes have caused ripples of distrust across the world. Viewers don’t trust the show to do the characters and the story of justice. Many don’t even want to make any predictions as to what is going to happen. Over the years, a popular thing to do with the show has been to create death pools, where viewers would predict the fates of the characters within the show. They would bet who would die, who would survive and how long the would manage to do so. But now, there has been nothing but chaos within the death pool predictions, with players and viewers not knowing what is going to happen. After all, this is the first time that the show has plot armor in it. There have been many who have compared participating in the Game of Thrones death pool to playing real pokies, just because it feels so damn random at this point.
Which is why it is important to start setting expectations. It doesn’t matter what you are expecting the show to do. It doesn’t matter whether you think the season finale is going to be amazing and full of epic endings where Daenery’s does some crazy stuff, and Jon does some cool stuff, or Arya shows up jumping through a portal in space to kill Dragons, or whatever (these are random predictions, and are by no means actual facts).
It is important to remember: anything can happen. So, good luck to all of us this weekend. Let’s bloody well enjoy it. And for those that come out of the weekend a little let down – which I personally don’t think will happen, there’s always the new book due for release in the near future. Maybe then you can actually enjoy a different ending.
Game Of Thrones airs on HBO in the U.S. and on Sky Atlantic in the UK.
