Game of Thrones's Final Season Was Bad And Should Feel Bad

I've been disappointed with television shows before. I stuck with Heroes all the way through the revival a few years ago, and it never rose above mediocrity after the first season. I was there when Lost revealed that the island was built around a Hellmouth, and they never bothered calling in Buffy to deal with it. House of Cards, initially one of the best shows I had ever seen, was slowly degenerating even before Kevin Spacey tried to deflect from underage rape accusations by coming out as gay. I've been disappointed before. But, until Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 5, I'd never been outright angry.

Of course, there has been a ludicrous amount of analysis and thought devoted to Danaerys' sudden turn from self-righteous crusader to genocidal maniac, and much of it is far better than what I could offer. Honestly, though, it wasn't Dany's actions after the bell rang that infuriated me. I'd been watching with clenched fists and narrowed eyes since Drogon dove out of the sky and destroyed the entire Iron Fleet with dragonbreath inexplicably upgraded to deal massive concussive force. The sudden power-up would have been bad on its own, but combined with the entire structure of the season thus far... well, let me explain.

In both the books and the HBO show, the first thing we ever see is an attack by mysterious creatures from the far North, beyond the Wall. Throughout the entire story, while wars are waged and kings are made and then murdered, Jon Snow had been at the Wall, reminding us over and over that all of that Southron drama only mattered insofar as determining how much help the Night's Watch would have in protecting the Seven Kingdoms from the dead. The White Walkers were the looming threat, advancing ominously closer, and Westeros was not prepared to even recognize the threat, let alone resist it.

So, when we left our heroes and villains at the end of Season 7, I had predictions and expectations. I figured that Cercei's refusal to support the coalition against the dead would come back to haunt her; that without her support, Winterfell could not possibly be held. Jon, Dany, and a fraction of their forces would escape to the south, and the final battle against the Night King would position the handful of survivors to duke it out for the Iron Throne. Episode 3 would be the Battle of Winterfell, Episode 4 would be the retreat south and the preparations for the rematch, Episode 5 would be the final struggle, and the finale would be politicking and maneuvering and murdering among whoever survived to seize power.

And mind, I wasn't completely attached to this idea. I wasn't about to demand my way or the highway. Sure, Seasons 6 and 7 had dipped in quality, but with two years to produce the final series of episodes, I figured that whatever happened would make for a satisfying conclusion to this dense, complex drama of intrigue and valor and betrayal and love.

"Hey, great job lighting the trench, Melisandre! Wish
there was some way I could have helped."

And then the Battle of Winterfell actually happened. And it was dumb. Incredibly dumb. Again, others have done better work analyzing it than I possibly could. But the biggest, dumbest thing, in my eyes, was that the Night King was killed and the Army of the Dead destroyed.

Now, before anyone stops me: I liked the surprise twist of Arya being the one to kill him. It subverted expectations well. All the speculation about heroic narratives and the Azhor Azhai prophecy led to a lot of predictions about who (if anyone) would actually defeat the Night King, but, as far as I know, not a one of the series' community of intellectuals predicted it would be Arya. And that's cool. Subverting our expectations in service to one of the big themes of the story--that prophecy and destiny are bullshit--is exactly the sort of move that made events like Ned's execution and the Red Wedding such important moments in television history.

The problem was... it happened in Episode 3.

We still had three episodes to go. And who was left to challenge Team Danaerys? Just Cercei. Cercei and her mercenaries who couldn't even be bothered to bring their elephants. Cercei and her mad scientist and zombie bodyguard and the lamest Jack Sparrow impersonator in existence. Cercei, who, compared to the Army of the Dead, was about as threatening as chihuahua barking at you from behind a six-foot fence.

We seemed to be headed for an anticlimax. But then, in Episode 4, we saw Euron and his teleporting viking pirate fleet kill Rhaegal, one of Dany's two remaining dragons. Efficiently and brutally. Sure, it was bullshit that no one saw him. It was bullshit that the scorpions could launch their bolts with almost enough force to reach orbit. But hey, for all the episode's other problems, it did the job of convincing us--or, at least, me--that the writers really wanted us to take Cercei seriously. That they wanted us to believe she had a chance.

Not that she actually did, logically speaking, but that the writers wanted us to think she did.

It seems like a subtle difference, and I feel like I need to try and dig deeper to explain. The writing on Game of Thrones, at least since leaving the books behind, was not particularly concerned with concrete, logistical thinking or storytelling. People started being able to cross the continent easily and almost instantaneously. Stannis, a veteran commander, lost to Ramsay Bolton, and then Jon Snow won despite blundering headfirst into a cavalry charge and somehow getting flanked by heavy phalanx infantry. A team of adventurers formed to travel north of the Wall to capture a wight, got stranded on a frozen lake, somehow survived there for at least a week while Gendry ran to get help (or, people teleported like crazy; those are the only two explanations), fought a big battle in which only one of them died, Jon fell into the lake, was inexplicably rescued by his undead Uncle Benjen with no explanation for what Benjen was or why he was there, and then rode all the way south to the Wall through freezing temperatures while, again, soaked from falling into frigid water.

Logic, in other words, had long since been abandoned in the name of spectacle and surprise twists that would make M. Night Shyamalan roll his eyes. So, hell. If the writers wanted to make Cercei a serious threat, even though there was no logical way for her to be one, then I was prepared to sigh and go along with it. At least there'd be another cool battle, right?

FUS RO DAH MOTHERFUCKERS

And that brings us back to Episode 5 of the season, "The Bells," and why I was angry at it well before the titular bells started ringing. Because, after all the contrived bullshit the writers had pulled to move the story to this point, they abruptly felt compelled to contrive even more bullshit (Drogon's super breath) to get back to where they'd have been if they hadn't tried so hard to yank our chains in the first place.

Then Dany goes mad, I guess. She decides to start murdering civilians. Sure, she'd always avoided doing that. Sure, she chained her dragons up that one time when they might have cooked and eaten a little girl. Sure, her source of anger was Cercei and the Red Keep, not the general populace of King's Landing who had already surrendered. But she kept a poker face while watching her brother's brain cook, so she was always crazy, I guess.

The finale happens. Jon stabs Danaerys. He's sad. Drogon doesn't kill him for some reason. The Unsullied, who were just executing prisoners of war in the streets, don't kill him for some reason. Tyrion puts together a council of electors and convinces them that the creepy wizard kid should be king now. Jon gets to live with the wildlings. Sansa gets to rule an independent North. Arya doesn't really have an end goal anymore, so they just stick her on a boat and send her away. Tyrion gets to hang out with his friends. Yay, happy endings.

The finale was bland and boring and the only good things about it were Peter Dinklage's acting, Drogon's imitation of Simba, and Ghost finally getting scritches. But it's just as dumb as the rest of the season. Why?

• The Dothraki are still in Westeros. The pillaging, raping, brutal barbarian Dothraki who were loyal only to Danaerys. They've probably taken over the Westerlands, since the Lannisters' entire military strength was wiped out, and Tyrion's too busy running things in the ruins of King's Landing to see to his ancestral holdings.
• Bran will die someday. Don't believe that "oh, the Three-Eyed Raven lives for hundreds of years and/or can transfer his consciousness" crap. Bloodraven, the previous guy, was plugged into a weirwood hidden deep in the North to survive, and he was only about 30 years older than Maester Aemon. The South doesn't have weirwoods, outside of a few small castles. And even if Bran trains up a new Raven and transfers his collective memories to him, so what? The council of lords will elect the next king, and it won't be long before people decide they'd rather have a pliable, human king who they can manipulate rather than an all-seeing tree god.
• What that means is that, when Bran dies, there will be a new king... one who probably won't have any real ties to the North, and who might want to rule the Seven Kingdoms, not the Six. Sansa is now Queen of the North, meaning she rules the poorest and most sparsely populated region of Westeros, most of the leadership of which has been wiped out in one of the several wars that have been waged there over the last decade. The minute Bran dies, she or her heirs better start calling the banners and hoping they answer.
• Most of the Unsullied are going to die, badly. There isn't a lot of canonical information about Nath, but from The World of Ice and Fire, we know two things: the people there are pacifists, and they can afford to be pacifists because the butterflies that infest the island carry a deadly plague that kills anyone who hasn't already developed an immunity to it. Given what a dick Grey Worm became at the end, maybe it's karmic justice. Or maybe the writers couldn't keep track of the literally two things there are to know about Nath. Or maybe they didn't care, and wanted Grey Worm to have a bittersweet ending, worldbuilding and continuity be damned.
• Bronn, the mercenary who rose to become Lord Paramount of the Reach, the richest and most populace land in Westeros and one of least affected by the war, at least in terms of manpower, is going to be expected to fund the costs of the Six Kingdom's rebuilding largely from his own treasury? Yeah, that is going to end badly. Either he's going to use his position as Master of Coin to seize massive amounts of power and influence, or he's going to make himself ludicrously rich through some kind of pyramid scheme that leaves Westeros' economy absolutely devastated.
• Actually, Bronn probably won't have the chance. When the Gardeners were wiped out by Aegon the Conqueror, it took the Tyrells more than a century to solidify power over the Reach. Most folks considered them upjumped peasants; the only reason they became the Lords of Highgarden was that they surrendered the castle to Aegon when he arrived. Back then, the Tyrells had the backing of a king with three dragons. Bronn has the backing of a king with some birds. The Tarlys are gone, except for Sam, but the Hightowers of Oldtown might have something to say about this cocky mercenary dude suddenly being their boss. Especially when he doesn't have any heirs yet.
• Arya's probably going to die. None of her Faceless Man skills have prepared her to survive at sea. If a big storm hits, being able to steal someone's face isn't going to save her from drowning. Or dying of thirst or starvation if the winds calm while she's hundreds of miles from the nearest shore. She'll probably be able to handle a mutiny, at least, but then... who's gonna sail the ship when half the crew's stabbed?

Ya did it, buddy.

I'm sure there are more terrible consequences to be considered, as well. In fact, Gendry is probably the only character getting to settle into a stable and comfortable life, providing he doesn't screw anything up too badly. All the other Baratheons are dead, and, even if he was legitimized by someone who was only really Queen for about two hours, he's big and swings a hammer and can fight, which is about all the Storm Lords really need in a Lord Paramount. Good for you, Gendry! Sucks that your lady friend is going off to die at sea, but you're officially the only person in Westeros to get an actually happy ending.

Thanks for sticking with this long, long rant. It feels good to get this out of my brain and onto digital paper. I might do some more writing on the subject, like how I would have done the final season (or certain story arcs throughout the last few seasons) differently. But first, I needed to get my gripes organized and put out there for the world to see.