Belated Game of Thrones thoughts

(Spoilers follow.)

The ending of Game of Thrones was pretty much the most disappointing finale I've ever watched.  (I've been underwhelmed by series finales before, but this one was especially unsatisfying.)

Much has been written about the series' unsatisfactory ending, but this video kind of sums everything up for me:

         

Aside from the fact that the ending of the series left so many questions unanswered, many of the plot "resolutions" delivered by the finale were difficult to believe.

Let's start with Bran becoming king. Maybe that was what George R. R. Martin envisioned, and perhaps his reasoning will be better explained in the books (if and when he ever gets around to completing them), where Bran's character is apparently more central to the story than it was in the TV series. But his character's story in the TV series, where he does little more than stare at people, warg into ravens and get Hodor killed (Bran didn't even appear at all in one of the series' seasons), simply doesn't suggest that he has any business becoming king of Westeros. It's hard for longtime fans to accept.

It's also hard to accept the way that Bran got to be king, which was the result of a decision by a council of Westerosi lords and ladies that miraculously convened outside of King's Landing after Daenerys's death. This council was, in a matter of minutes, able to resolve all of the struggles, wars and intrigue that Westeros had experienced over the previous several years by simply replacing the continent's hereditary monarchy with an elective one (those never work, by the way, and will probably just make things worse in the long run). They made this decision based on nothing more than an impassioned soliloquy by Tyrion (who was supposed at the council to be judged for his crime of disobeying Dany, rather than to chart a new political course for Westeros).*

And don't even get me started on Jon, who somehow is not summarily executed by Grey Worm, the rest of the Unsullied, or the remaining Dothraki** for murdering Daenerys, but is rather sentenced to be returned to the Night's Watch (which no longer has a reason for existing) for his crime. The huge plot reveal that he was the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen served no purpose after all.

The fact is, the entire final season (not just the finale) was pretty much a disaster. It was rushed and contrived, and the character development that had made the series so great over the years was simply tossed aside.

For example, I didn't have a problem with Daenerys's descent into villainy. It follows age-old themes regarding the corruptive nature of power or the idea that well-intentioned tyranny is still tyranny. I did have a problem with how it was manifested. Whether Dany's decision to turn King's Landing into Dresden was the result of emotionally-deranged genocidal madness or a ruthless calculation to destroy the seat of Westerosi power and send a message to the other lords of the continent, the writers simply did not justice to her character's turn. Jaime's decision to return to Cersei after his one-night-stand with Brienne (a regrettably unnecessary and gratuitous hookup, by the way) was similarly hollow. 

Perhaps it was inevitable that the series would degrade the further it got from George R. R. Martin's source material (a viral Twitter thread from a professor of philosophy at UConn explains this situation). And it was certainly a bad decision to shorten the last two seasons, as it gave the creators less "real estate" to work with. In the rush to bring everything to a close with as much spectacle as possible, the series forgot what it was all about.

The bottom line is that Game of Throne's creators, David Benihoff and Dan Weiss, spent the first six seasons painting a masterpiece of lavish character development, intriguing plot twists, and compelling storytelling. Then they spent the seventh season vandalizing it with spray paint, and spent the eight season shitting all over it. It's a very disappointing ending that will forever tarnish the legacy of what was once the best show on television.

* Also, when Sansa made the declaration that The North would opt out of the Bran-led kingdom, Yara Greyjoy should have done the same for the Iron Islands and Nameless Dornish Guy should have done the same for Dorne. Those three kingdoms were always culturally and structurally different from the core of Westeros (i.e. Westerlands, Crownlands, Stormlands, Riverlands, Vale and Reach) and seeing all three of them fall out would have reinforced the idea of a new political era for Westeros. This was a huge miss on the part of the writers.

** We were led to believe that almost all of the Dothraki died in the Battle of Winterfell, but apparently there were plenty of them left to overrun Kings Landing. This was one of the many continuity failures of the final season of the series.