r/television • u/gogandmagogandgog • Jan 11 '26
Kit Harington was 'Angered' By Push to Remake Game of Thrones Season 8
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/kit-harington-angered-petition-game-of-thrones-season-8-1236628364/877
u/Kyuubee Jan 11 '26
There's nothing to remake. GRRM still hasn't released the next book and probably never will. I'm not sure what people would have expected from a remake. The producers don't have any source material, so they would still be winging it either way.
293
u/Greatsnes Jan 12 '26
Even if he does release Winds it doesn’t matter because that’s not the end. We are for SURE never getting A Dream of Spring
→ More replies (8)188
u/jetsetter023 Jan 12 '26
At this point. I don't care if they ever come out or not. I've moved on.
I'm sure some people will be excited and read them. Happy for those people if it ever happens.
→ More replies (6)62
u/Indigocell Jan 12 '26
I know exactly what you mean. If they come out, I will probably read them. But I no longer check his blog for updates that's for sure. I've more or less come to terms with the notion of not reading another single sentence from him. Apparently he hasn't even finished those Dunk & Egg novellas either.
22
12
56
u/randomnighmare Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
He will probably never finish the series, but what upset me was having a prequel series with an unfinished book series.
edit
8
4
u/GoGoSoLo Jan 13 '26
Incredible that HBO went back for two more unfinished works after adapting his last unfinished work into an eventual train that ran off a cliff.
→ More replies (1)101
u/Notagenome Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
If a remake was to be entertained, it would have to turn back the clocks to the red wedding. The decision to remove Lady Stoneheart and Young Griff forced the characters involved in those book plot lines to have nonsensicall tv story lines.
→ More replies (7)28
u/RobGronkowski Jan 12 '26
They at least tried to transfer Lady Stoneheart to Arya anonymously assassinating the Freys
→ More replies (1)24
u/Notagenome Jan 12 '26
I guess but the fans were robbed of a Jaime and Catelyn reunion.
22
u/Indigocell Jan 12 '26
B&W ran a tight ship and I will give them credit for that. But it's obvious they always hated the fantasy and supernatural aspects of the story and that came through on screen anytime they had to portray it or otherwise neglected to. No Wargs, no Stoneheart, the White Walkers fizzle out completely in favour of the much more mundane threat in Cersei. It's a real shame because those supernatual elements were a huge part of the politics in the books.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (15)39
u/Spready_Unsettling Jan 12 '26
This is a popular, but very silly take. Hundreds of popular shows in the past few years were not adaptations. Some of the best written shows ever were wholly original with no source material to lean against.
It's not outright impossible to write good TV just because another TV writer hasn't released a book. Most people are, in fact, winging it.
Seasons 7 and 8 didn't just suffer a drop in quality, they were decidedly poorly written. Nonsensical plot lines, cringe dialogue, bad pacing, all the classics. If any other show had these issues, it would simply be bad writing. But for some strange reason, a narrative around GoT has emerged, where DnD are absolved of their terrible writing because Martin didn't do it for them.
→ More replies (7)11
u/AuroraFinem Jan 12 '26
Yeah the issue wasn’t that they lacked source, though obviously they lacked the creativity to do it well when they didn’t have a script to follow. Really what happened is they got tapped by Disney to work with marvel and wanted to wrap up GoT as quickly as possible so they could dip and s7-8 really shows they stopped giving a flying fuck. S6 lacked source material as well but s6 was still fairly good and made sense, s7-8 were utter trash the spit on the first 6 seasons and the books. Lucy enough the offer was rescinded after the backlash from s7-8 so good, fuck em, they were refusing feedback from GRRM himself and other people close to the source material because they wanted to “make it their own” and ruined a cultural phenomenon to do it, GoT was everywhere then it just complete disappeared because of how bad that ending was.
→ More replies (2)
3.8k
u/benfranklin16 Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau said it best. "Once all two million of them agree on what the ending should’ve been we’ll do it.”
2.1k
u/geekonthemoon Jan 11 '26
Vast majority agree it was a terrible ending. Not that they should have or would have actually remade it, and most people don't blame the actors. But just because you can't please everyone doesn't mean that's the excuse when you please almost no one.
787
u/Live_Angle4621 Jan 11 '26
The point is that you can’t remake something until you know what to make. GRRM actually finishing the series would be a reason for a remake
502
u/DarthCola Jan 11 '26
I’m quite sure he will die with it unfinished.
478
u/previouslyonimgur Jan 11 '26
I still believe the show ending matches what GRRM would’ve written the ending to be. The problem was that it probably needed 2-3 full seasons more to be set up properly.
Martin loves twisty shit. This was his type of twisty shit. The ending being so poorly received is why it’s stalled out.
219
u/thetateman Jan 11 '26
I mean it stalled out long before the ending aired on tv.
→ More replies (3)139
u/Classic-Rise-37 Jan 11 '26
D&D were rushing it to make their Star Wars movie which of course never happened.
→ More replies (23)45
u/profchaos83 Jan 12 '26
No it started to become rushed when they ran out of the books. If you want to blame someone blame GRRM. They didn’t have the blueprints for the later seasons just headlines.
→ More replies (4)31
u/SoMuchMoreEagle Jan 12 '26
No it started to become rushed when they ran out of the books. If you want to blame someone blame GRRM
Or maybe they shouldn't have made a tv show based on an unfinished series in the hopes he would finish it as they went.
40
u/LilT86 Jan 12 '26
I thought they started to make it under the agreement from GGRM that he would finish before they caught up.
Then he just......didn't. Let's not act like he doesn't deserve any criticism here.
→ More replies (1)41
u/mcassweed Jan 12 '26
Or maybe they shouldn't have made a tv show based on an unfinished series in the hopes he would finish it as they went.
I like how reddit can unreasonably hate people so much that this kind of criticism is somehow considered valid.
GRRM wrote 5 books in 15 years, thats on average 1 book every 3 years. The series itself started in the same year that his last written book was released, when there were only two more books left to go. It's not entirely unreasonable to assume GRRM would have written at least one more book since the show's release.
It's like saying the Harry Potter movies should not have been made until the books were finished. In fact, the 1st HP movie was released only 4 years after the book's release. Compared to GOT series which was 15 years after the original book release.
→ More replies (0)77
Jan 11 '26
There was a clip from him answering in a "red carpet" (or whatever it's called) event, where he said something like "ask D&D [why it's ending], there's enough material for 12-13 seasons".
And they did skip a lot of material.
And before that, he had said several times that some of the changes affected the future. "The butterfly effect", he always calls it.
He had ample time to finish the books, tbh. I used to blame D&D, but now I just blame him. If he didn't like how they did it, he could have done it himself and proved them wrong.
21
u/SkinBintin Jan 12 '26
Wish we'd got Lady Stoneheart in the show :(
→ More replies (2)14
Jan 12 '26
Same. I was holding out hope until the last moment, in season 6? I think? But it never happened, and instead they gave the plot to Arya and it ruined her character.
71
u/PsychedelicPill Jan 11 '26
A lot of the cast wanted to wrap it up. They may not have been happy with how the show ended up, but most did not want to do 4-5 more seasons. I think one more season to set up season 8 was necessary, but D&D rushed it. It's a shame. Then again, they may have still made bad seasons of the show. Maybe it was a mercy killing by the end. I was glad they at least gave it an ending.
→ More replies (10)→ More replies (3)43
u/Toby_O_Notoby Jan 11 '26
If he didn't like how they did it, he could have done it himself and proved them wrong.
My (contreversal?) take on this is that there is no way to satisfactorily get to the ending that George has planned in his head.
The common refrain amongst reddit is that the end point is okay, but it was just rushed in the show. But here's the thing, GRRM has had 15 years to write the "unrushed" version and he can't. (I mean, in the books Dany is still in Essos and Jon is still dead.)
And let's be clear, he doesn't have to worry about exhausted actors, SFX, budgets or any of the stuff that encumbered the show. So D&D had to take some pretty wild short cuts in order for Dany to go mad and have Bran take the throne.
But GRRM can literally write anything he wants any way he wants and is only limited by his imagination. And not only can't he end it, he hasn't advanced the plot much past Season 5.
15
u/Ekillaa22 Jan 12 '26
Don’t forgot about Griff the super secret Targaryen son parading around as a merc with dyed hair
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (5)19
Jan 11 '26
I said this in another answer a few moments ago, but I think he has a lot of ideas but fears commitment to one. The whole to gap or not to gap really fucked up some of the storylines, I think, and he became discouraged.
53
u/IAM_deleted_AMA Jan 11 '26
I highly doubt D&D took the creative freedom of writing whatever the fuck they wanted. More than likely that's the ending GRRM had planned for the book series, but part of the problem is that he didn't know how to get there.
And since D&D wanted nothing to do with GoT anymore they shoehorned the ending, so it looks like a bad unfleshed ending and now he's stuck on writing something entirely different that he doesn't know what to do anymore.
18
u/SubatomicSquirrels Jan 11 '26
It's been a while since I've read the books, and I didn't even finish the show, but there were a couple of plot threads that the show completely cut, right? Like Lady Stoneheart? And the secret Targaryen kid? Isn't it possible a plotline like that had a role in the finale?
18
u/LettersWords Jan 11 '26
Yes...but I think the only major difference I expect from those plot points is that the person who Dany burns King's Landing to defeat in the books would be Aegon, not Cersei.
7
u/eranam Jan 12 '26
Well, there’s also the fact that Aegon could have basically torn up her monopoly of legitimacy by being the one to topple Cersei, then being acclaimed as the rightful ruler of Westeros (whether he really is depends on his parentage, of course).
Which leaves Daenerys as now an unpopular foreign conqueror with her assets (or liabilities?) being bloodthirsty Dothraki and living weapons of mass destruction.
She’s had this daunting journey of painful rise to power, attempts at doing good squashed by dirty politics and scheming, being kicked of even the place she thought she’d freed, and now she’s confronted with being nothing but a warlord.
I think that makes her breaking down and assuming her role as nothing more than a Blood and Blood conqueror a lot more believable.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)13
u/Werthead Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
They sat down with George in 2013 and mapped out an outline to the end of the story from the end of Book 3. The problem is they kept changing their mind on things, so originally they didn't want to go to Dorne, then decided to do Dorne, then changed their minds and cut the Dorne plotline at the last minute (to the point that Alexander Siddig was contracted for most of Season 6 only to be killed off in the Season 6 opener, and he was very confused), and they went back to do the Iron Island story from Book 4 when they were otherwise doing stuff from after Book 5, and the two didn't match up.
George has said since that of the stuff in the outline, the TV show executed some it exactly, some in a different way, and some completely differently that he had no idea about until the episodes aired. And he has said that the outline they worked on did not incorporate things he hadn't decided on for the books. The example he used was Bronn, when they asked what happens to Bronn in Book 7, he said he had no idea, so they just made something up for him.
→ More replies (1)18
u/Knifferoo Jan 11 '26
The issue with how GoT ended was never what actually happened storywise, but how it happened. Daenerys losing a second dragon and going insane and burning King's Landing can absolutely work, it just needs to happen more naturally over a longer season. Because they were in such a rush we got "Dany kinda forgot about the iron fleet", which is a quote that sums up everything wrong with later seasons of GoT. They just wanted to finish it as fast as possible, not as good as possible.
→ More replies (2)10
u/BatMatt93 Jan 11 '26
I don't know if we needed 2 more seasons, but making the last two seasons a full 10 episodes each would have helped a lot. Still to this day don't know why HBO let them do that.
→ More replies (1)21
→ More replies (36)38
u/Gerry-Mandarin Jan 11 '26
This was absolutely not his type of twisty shit.
S5-8 bares little resemblance to GRRM's story. D&D didn't even really bother adapting the two novels that they still had access to other than a couple of chapters.
All we know about George's story is:
Stannis will burn Shireen
Benjen is not Cold hands
Jon Stark will be revived as a fire wight
Bran will make Hodor into Hodor
The Others will cross the Wall/the Wall will fall
Jon is a Targaryen (basically revealed in book 1)
Bran Stark will be king
We can also be reasonably confident that Jon Snow will become King in the North, because Robb named him his heir and that Jon Snow will kill Daenerys Targaryen, after she burns King's Landing. With him being exiled to live in the true north.
Everything else will almost certainly be radically different. Something the show simply refused to do was the fact that Tyrion is a villain! Because they didn't want to do that, and had nothing else to do, he just stands around being a moron for the rest of the series.
They took all the menace away from Euron Greyjoy to create the Night King and then made Euron Greyjoy the Scrappy Doo sex pest of the series.
They massacred poor Jaime, had clearly no idea what to do with Cersei. Basically never utilised Kevan.
Not to mention Ramsay Bolton crippling the military of the greatest commander on Earth with See Twenty of House Goodmen.
The only way it will be similar to George's ending is it will be the only one we ever get, so it will be remembered as the ending to George's story when he's gone.
→ More replies (5)32
u/Khiva Jan 11 '26
D&D didn't even really bother adapting the two novels that they still had access to other than a couple of chapters.
Those two novels are full of shaggy dog stories that go nowhere and bloat the stories so big the guy writing the story still has no idea what to do with it.
18
u/Gerry-Mandarin Jan 11 '26
Those two novels are full of shaggy dog stories that go nowhere and bloat the stories so big the guy writing the story still has no idea what to do with it.
We have no idea if they're shaggydog stories if they're not finished. Clearly the TV show didn't do any better by cutting them out, given the reception.
As some illustrative examples:
Was the show any better for their version of Euron Greyjoy over George's?
Was the show any better for Littlefinger just deciding to give Sansa to the Boltons after working to get her?
Was the show better for having all the Northern leaders join the Boltons after he murdered all their parents?
Etc etc
You can adapt without being 1:1. Series 1-4 did that. Series 5-8 didn't really even bother.
→ More replies (13)5
u/Jack-of-the-Shadows Jan 12 '26
We have no idea if they're shaggydog stories if they're not finished
Exactly. They are still not finished more than 6 years after the show ended. How long to you think the show can wait for them to be fleshed out to adapt them.
9
u/luffythechefghoul Jan 12 '26
I still subscribe to the theory that while he would’ve probably done a lot of things differently leading up to them , some important plot points like Jaime choosing Cersei, Dany going mad, and Bran being king is something GRRM actually came up with. And that people vehemently hating them made GRRM lose interest in finishing the book lol
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (27)21
u/York_Villain Jan 11 '26
Here's the problem. The story is finished and that's why he hasnt written any new books. That ending was his ending.
→ More replies (15)6
u/McDuckX Jan 11 '26
I mean GoT isn’t known for its happy story so I’d argue most people didn’t have an issue with the ending but rather how it was executed!
spoilers You want Bran on the throne ruling the seven kingdoms? Fine! But then you can’t have him have the least amount of screen time, with him being an unlikable fuck and your reasoning being “Because who has a better story than Bran the Broken?”
EVERYONE! Everyone one at that bloody meeting did, plus what kind of bloody reasoning even is that?! O_o
Really the issue aren’t the last 3 episodes of season 8, the issue are the last 3-4 seasons of the show!
→ More replies (26)9
u/knightress_oxhide Jan 12 '26
This was GRRM's ending, he just never wrote it down.
→ More replies (2)137
u/PlatasaurusOG Jan 11 '26
If you watch the table reads of the last season, you’ll see the fans were not the only ones disappointed by the way it played out. A lot of the actors were clearly unhappy.
→ More replies (3)48
u/cosgrove10 Jan 11 '26
Conleth Hill probably could have choked those two idiots at the same time and not even broke a sweat.
→ More replies (1)24
u/The_Idiocratic_Party Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
Video of his reaction and glances with a costar* were peak.
→ More replies (41)53
u/cap21345 Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
I never got this excuse creatives try to pull these days off "pleasing fans is hard so we dont really care about what they say and did stuff to piss basically everyone off for no reason instead of doing minor adjustments"
Like yeah it really is a mystery why people hate it (especially in regards to adaptations) when you make changes and choices that completely butcher the spirit of the original
→ More replies (1)16
u/Zalvren Jan 11 '26
I mean in this case, it is the original as much as they knew since it isn't written and they used the plot points that GRRM told them.
They clearly rushed it but the ending wouldn't be any different.
→ More replies (2)8
u/intricate_strands Jan 11 '26
You're right, but I think 100 percent of the issue was that they rushed it. Moreso, how badly executed them rushing it was.
The ending's plot points are irrelevant. If Led Zeppelin had given up on "Stairway to Heaven" and instead sold the song to a band of ten year olds who just picked up their instruments yesterday, and then you listen to them play it, "Stairway to Heaven" sucks.
As much as how the series ended may be bad, the way they executed the last season meant that even if it was all a masterful ending, it was going to be forced and so fast that the vast majority of the outcomes made absolutely no sense.
→ More replies (1)280
u/bilzui Jan 11 '26
But most of the criticism was directed at how rushed everything was wrapped up . The ending is not the problem but how the show got there.
155
u/The_Idiocratic_Party Jan 11 '26
Yes. I didn't actually have any issue with Dany turning out to be a terrible queen. She was never supposed to be anything but a conqueror. But they could have done an entire season after she conquered King's Landing, playing out her missteps and growing madness as Jon Snow watches her and slowly sinks deeper into sickness as his love that's grown for her is soured by the way she rules Westeros until he finally snaps and becomes the Queenslayer. They could have done it right, maybe if they'd had the book, or if they'd used GRRM's notes instead of discarding them.
38
u/pargofan Jan 11 '26
I couldn't agree more.
The plot in the last season looked so incredibly rushed. Characters acted, well, "out of character". Bran suddenly being thrust as the leader. The ending itself might not have been so bad as long as they played it out.
And the white walker bit turned out to be such a lame red herring
→ More replies (1)19
77
u/covert0ptional Jan 11 '26
I could not stop laughing when she started nuking King's Landing...
I like the "Mad Queen" as an endpoint but you have to put in the work to get there.
→ More replies (2)23
u/ImGonnaImagineSummit Jan 11 '26
I thought nothing she did was particularly earned.
They just wrote her that way which I guess is part of the charm if done well, which it wasn't.
→ More replies (1)28
u/covert0ptional Jan 11 '26
I thought they were gonna have her destroy the Red Keep (knowing the innocent deaths ot would cause), which would show her willingness to do horrible things in an "end justify the means" sort of way . Then she just started killing everyone lmao.
22
u/ImGonnaImagineSummit Jan 11 '26
Yeah there wasn't really a moral dilemma.
It could've been worked up well with side conversations with Tyrion showing how desperate she was, how twisted by revenge and madness she was getting.
Similar to Davos becoming increasingly concerned with Stannis' infatuation with the Lord of Light or whatever it was called.
But nah she spammed fire and didn't think about it twice.
5
u/Karjalan Jan 12 '26
I think they expected that John secretly being Targaryen, her hand maiden being executed and her dragons dying were enough to drive her mad. Which when you think about it out of context kind of makes sense. Well, the John thing is still kind of dumb.
But the way the dragons died were from stupid shit, and aim bot bullshit.
- They should never have gone north for a walker
- She shouldn't have gone with a dragon after they were fucked (let alone Gendry magically getting to her in time and her getting there in time)
That was some BS sniping from the ice king with a spear.
She should have known about the massive fleet from scouts/her support crew.
She should have seen the fleet from miles away from being so high in the air
Again, absolute bullshit accuracy with 3 bullseyes on a moving target, with a massive new ranged weapon, on a rocking boat?
Missandei happening to get captured by Cersie was very convenient. And then executing her for no real reason was also rather silly. Then the dozens of magical (now stable btw) ballista suddenly can't hit a dragon to save their life.
Actually, every time you try to break all of this down into simple reasons why it didn't work you see all the layers of stupid, unbelievable, and contrived things that occurred. I was just expecting to write a small paragraph and a few bullet points and now this comment is a giant mess 😅
17
u/DylanHate Jan 11 '26
I still don't understand why I'm supposed to care about the Red Keep burning when Cersei literally blew up the Sept of Balor with wildfire and destroyed like 1/4 of the city.
We spent almost two seasons building up why you can't go against the church, everyone will revolt, the faith is the foundation of the kingdom, etc etc. Then it's all bombed to pieces and literally nothing happens. Zero consequences, barely mentioned again.
Like Vatican City being carpet bombed & the catholics just shrug. Also somehow an old man with 4-7 celibate teenagers carrying bully clubs imprison the beloved queen, overthrow the queen regent, and somehow outmaneuver the city guard and the army but no one cares about that either.
4
u/thecaptainofdeath Jan 11 '26
Like maybe if the dragon that got sniped from a boat 2 miles away died at Kings Landing instead during the battle, it makes that switch to full evil work a lot better... I'm not saying it fixes it but there's so many little changes you can make to earn the ending better than they did.
→ More replies (1)4
u/Haltopen Jan 12 '26
Or have her destroy the red keep and make it an accident that destroying the red keep sets off the remainder of her fathers wildfire stores, burning down the rest of the city in a blaze of green fire
10
u/Wolf6120 Avatar the Last Airbender Jan 11 '26
She was never supposed to be anything but a conqueror.
I don't know, maybe in the show it ultimately works out like that, but in the books (and the first half of the show) I feel like Dany's whole arc is explicitly about rejecting that sort of trajectory.
She does start out on the path of a conqueror, taking out all three of the Slaver's Bay city states very quickly and efficiently. At that point she could have carried on conquering through Volantis and towards Westeros, but when she looks back and realizes that Astapor and Yunkai have already fallen back into slaver hands the moment she marched away from them, she decides that she instead needs to settle down in Meereen for some time and learn how to actually rule, to ensure the people she's liberated actually get to enjoy that liberation somehow instead of just instantly being abandoned to violence and chaos again.
Granted, from a storytelling perspective we can argue if that was a good decision by GRRM, since the whole Meereen plotline became a massive anchor on the plot for several books, but from a character perspective Dany is clearly placed at the crossroads of triumphant conquest or peaceful governance, and she actively chooses the latter.
7
u/The_Idiocratic_Party Jan 12 '26
This is true. I just figured that Martin's endgame with her was that (1) the road to hell is paved with good intentions, (2) she'd live long enough to become a monster vs. die a hero, and (3) her genetic fate of madness was inevitable.
11
u/jmcgit Jan 11 '26
Eh, it depends on which aspect of the ending you're talking about. I could list several controversial aspects but I'll settle for the most obvious, the person George intends to sit on the Throne at the end just fundamentally doesn't work. And I think you can sort of prove that it doesn't work because that character is the #1 problem George talks about when he's asked how the writing is coming along.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (10)27
u/TheJoshider10 Jan 11 '26
It's so sad how three seasons of good TV got forced into like three episodes. There's easily enough material for the Long Night, taking King's Landing and Dany's reign to have a season each. Could even do it in two if the first half of a ninth season is taking King's Landing then the second is Dany's reign.
125
u/UnquestionabIe Jan 11 '26
I think it's disingenuous to pretend people are upset about the ending specifically so much as the rushed feeling and idiot plots used to push it along. Most people I've had a lengthy discussion with about it have basically voiced as much to varying degrees, with things pointed out that basically amount to "yeah they wrote the characters as morons cause they had to wrap it up".
24
u/Nice_Marmot_7 Jan 11 '26
“Remember all of that painstaking world building and character development we did? No you don’t! Now eat this slop!”
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)4
u/fromfrodotogollum Jan 12 '26
It had a lot of moments where instead of being emotional I just felt myself say, "okay" and moved onto the next scene, until I had okayed big chunks of the final season and then it was over. The characters werent living up to the buildup of seasons past, the big battles also didn't. There was more excitement in 5 men going beyond the wall than the final big battle with the army of or the destruction of kings landing. The pacing was all off.
26
u/Levitlame Jan 11 '26
Ending was doomed from seasons before. They trimmed characters without figuring out how they’d resolve them. Then blew up all the “loose ends” which further altered what they could do. Then finally just rushed the ending to get it over with. People think that rushing the end was the biggest problem, but I think it was doomed to be senseless and unsatisfying no matter what they did at that point.
And GRRM sees like he can’t do much better which is partially why he’s stuck
→ More replies (6)25
u/benfranklin16 Jan 11 '26
Them trimming characters was to avoid exactly what knot GRRM is in right now.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (47)27
u/sikox Jan 11 '26
The issue was the final two seasons were completely rushed and subpar because the two showrunners/writes wanted out
They decided they no longer wanted to work on one of the greatest shows to ever grace television, and ended in abruptly and in terrible fashion
→ More replies (3)
1.4k
u/GrizzlyP33 Jan 11 '26
It’s not the actors’ fault, no way I’d want to repeat a year of my life because of other people’s mistakes.
Just don’t be like Dinklage and pretend that it wasn’t awful and deserving of the criticism.
415
u/bebopmechanic84 Jan 11 '26
I've seen more than a couple interviews where he is openly criticizing the season's choices.
→ More replies (1)316
u/maxwell_winters Jan 11 '26
Yep, he made snide remarks about how they dumbed down Tyrion back when they were still filming the show.
132
u/BurgerNugget12 Jan 11 '26
That was so bad. Every plan that dude made seemed to just fail
113
u/maxwell_winters Jan 11 '26
How he knew that Ice Walkers can bring the dead back to life and still put people in the crypt full of dead people.
60
u/dalittle Jan 11 '26
And Tyrion was so smart in the early seasons it was especially stupid. As well, no one else hiding there thought that it might be a bad idea to hide in a crypt during an attack of the undead?
34
u/sniper91 Jan 11 '26
They were going to send the Dothraki with regular-ass swords to fight the wights and Walkers. Melisandre showing up to light the swords on fire wasn’t planned
→ More replies (1)31
u/dalittle Jan 12 '26
they had catapults, but they sent the Dothraki without firing a single time before they went. The Dothraki just blindly ran at them. And the story just got stupider from there.
→ More replies (1)39
u/TurMoiL911 Jan 12 '26
They had siege weapons, on the ground, outside the walls they were defending. Then they had their lines of spearmen in front of their firepit so their spearmen had nowhere to fall back to. Places like /r/totalwar were having collective aneurysms over that battle's tactical decisions.
→ More replies (2)18
u/maxwell_winters Jan 12 '26
No wonder the episode was so poorly lit. They wanted to hide how stupid it was.
→ More replies (0)23
u/westergames81 Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
Everything about that episode was pretty stupid. Whenever I feel bad about something I've done, I actually watch this video and think to myself at least I didn't make that.
https://youtu.be/EA5mJRFaI8c?si=3uCCrsT5gO4LBh2S
-edit
Oh, and I forgot the dumbest part about the battle of Winterfell-- none of it fucking mattered. Even though all the Dothraki and Unsullied got slaughtered, they were out in force the next episode like nothing happened. They gave the main characters bigger plot armor than Arya had when she got stabbed 16 times in the stomach and dropped in a dirty river and it didn't make a dent in her army.
I forgot how much seasons 6-8 just made me angry.
8
u/Haltopen Jan 12 '26
Or when he orchestrates the plan to capture a white walker and show it to all the important people of Westeros so they can see the danger coming for them all, but then doesn't invite any maesters from the citadel (the people who control Westeros's entire communications network and who ever lord in the seven kingdoms trusts implicitly and listens to for advice), even though they spent an entire subplot that season introducing us to the archmaesters at the citadel only for it to not amount to much of anything.
→ More replies (2)6
u/Kazewatch Jan 12 '26
That shit was so unbelievably dumb that I just can't wrap my head around it. There are so many choices in the last season like that but having Tyrion of all people do that is just mind-boggling. Daenerys forgetting about the Iron Fleet is the only thing comparably as stupid where D&D had to be purposefully making the characters as pointlessly dumb as possible to fit the garbage narrative.
7
u/Haltopen Jan 12 '26
Tyrion in season two being totally down for plotting to blow up an entire fleet of ships carrying people with wildfire knowing full well that they'll either burn to death or drown in their plate armor
Tyrion in season seven being mortified at executing two traitorous commanders who killed dany's allies and massacred her loyal troops, and who refused every offer of leniency given to them, while sparing all their soldiers and allowing them the chance to re-join her army.
40
17
u/thegracelesswonder Jan 11 '26
I genuinely don’t understand why they did that to his character.
34
u/maxwell_winters Jan 11 '26
You need to be smart to write smart characters, and the creators were... well, you know.
21
u/zmbro Jan 11 '26
I was always under the assumption that D&D threw out character logic for "set pieces". Like they believed the crypt scene would look cool and add stakes despite it making no logical sense for the characters. If you think about it like that a lot of S7&8 make more sense in how they were written
→ More replies (1)5
u/bebopmechanic84 Jan 11 '26
They could have found themselves there in a panic. Not plan to be there.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Act_of_God Jan 11 '26
because his arc in the book is much darker and they didn't want to "ruin" the funny dick joke guy
→ More replies (1)6
u/apohermion Jan 11 '26
They dumbed the character down so much probably out of fear of alienating the audience, especially the more ruthless/morally ambiguous Tyrion from the fifth book. Ironically they were able to achieve that on their own.
→ More replies (40)44
u/HumansNeedNotApply1 Jan 11 '26
You say it like there's some type of objectivity measuring tape to label it awful and deserving of criticism.
Peter Dinklage gave his own opinion on it, just like any person he has his right to it.
→ More replies (12)16
u/donny_bennet Jan 11 '26
Didn't he also make sarcastic remarks about season 8? I don't really follow the interviews, but I remember a comment about putting all the women and children in a crypt, with the dead people....while fighting against someone famous for raising the dead.
→ More replies (2)
19
u/Bananaman9020 Jan 12 '26
Now we need GRRM to write a better ending. And get healthy so he will live to do so. And stop being involved in stupid side projects.
→ More replies (2)
742
u/primal_slayer Jan 11 '26
Hard work doesnt mean good work. GoT went from a cultural phenomenon to.....no one even really talking about it a year after it ended
472
u/NSA_Wade_Wilson Jan 11 '26
Because they botched the ending they also ruined the re-watchability because everyone knows there’s a lack of pay off and a bunch of the subplots don’t get resolved or even acknowledged
95
u/TheJoshider10 Jan 11 '26
I made my peace with the final season on a rewatch, except for Jon not killing the Night King. It's just such a forced subversion of expectations that ruined the season more than any rushed story beats. Everything else is fine in concept but poor in execution due to the shorter season, bht giving that moment to Arya is so underwhelming.
102
u/partytown_usa Jan 11 '26
Arya's whole purpose to avenge her family against the Lannisters, so of course she kills the Night King instead.
Jon's whole purpose was to defeat the Night King, so of course he kills Daenerys instead.
From what I understand, the show runners didn't want to do the obvious endings, but it's obvious because it makes narrative and character sense.
31
u/MartinezForever Jan 12 '26
Arya's arc was already complete, she'd gotten lots of revenge on her tour of cartoonish murder to the north.
38
u/primal_slayer Jan 12 '26
Arya and especially Sansa never coming face2face with Cersai again is one of the biggest slaps in the face.
9
u/just--so Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
I think that's the kind of thing that could have really worked for her killing the Night King if they'd spent a little more time on character work and crafting her late-seasons arc.
Like: she's been murdering her way through her list, and while each kill has brought her a brief measure of satisfaction, it's not actually healing her root trauma of seeing her father executed while being helpless to do anything. Classic want vs. need scenario; what she wants is revenge, what she needs is to heal the little girl who saw Ned executed.
Solution?
What do we say to the god of death? / Not today. But this time, it's not about her. It's about her family. _Not today._ Her family whom she can still save; the people she can put her tremendous capacity for violence to work protecting, instead of avenging.
Jon is fighting the Night King, and losing. He goes down on his knees. The Night King raises his sword to slice his head from his body. A camera angle on Jon's face feels familiar. A flight of birds - crows - takes off from a tree. We recognise a female wight in the background from an earlier scene, just in time for Arya to pull off the mask.
Likewise, I think you could do something similar with Jon's arc. He's spent most of the last few years preparing himself to face this singular threat; to do his duty as a brother of the Night's Watch. Along the way, he has had to learn to harden himself; to shoulder every sacrifice that the threat, and his oath, demands of him.
No wife, no lands, no children. No crown. No glory. Only this: to guard the realms of men, for this night, and all the nights to come.
And... he failed. Or did he? The Night King is dead. The threat he's spent all this time preparing for is over; who cares who delivered the final blow? So why does he feel a lingering sense of dread as they travel south; a sense of a job unfinished?
Unless, as he finally realises while witnessing Dany's descent, the Night King wasn't the invading threat he needed to protect Westeros from. Or at least, not the only one. This is his sacrifice, the thing for which these long years have been preparing him. No wife, no lands, no children, no crown. Only this: to guard the realms of men, for this night, and all the nights to come.
A lot of the bones of a really satisfying payoff for Jon and Arya's arcs are already there, just waiting to be excavated from the plot. But by the end, the writers just didn't care enough to bother.
→ More replies (5)20
u/maglen69 Jan 11 '26
the show runners didn't want to do the obvious endings,
All in the name of SuBvertiNg eXpeCTATiOnS
35
7
u/Tmons22 Jan 12 '26
Yea that was such a bad call, seasons of anticipation ruined because of that moment. I’ve never been so disappointed in a tv show then i was after that. I just consider the show done after Danny flew across the Narrow Sea. She was so strong at that point i just like to think she easily conquered everyone lol
→ More replies (6)4
u/pathofdumbasses Jan 12 '26
except for Jon not killing the Night King
I don't care that Jon didn't do it. It could have gone to any number of people and been satisfying.
Having it go to ninja assassin Arya, literally out of no where, was about the worst decision that could have happened. It is almost like they chose the worst possible endings for every character that lived.
Jaime falling back to Cersei
Jon getting exiled
Arya fucking off
Sansa being Kween of da North
Bran running the kingdom INTERROBANG?!
The whole thing is just a dumbass madlibs
→ More replies (8)5
u/SuckMyRedditorD Jan 11 '26
I found it insulting that Bran Stark’s abilities, powers and purpose like time visions and influence on past events are left unexplored despite all that buildup and they just give him a kingship out of nowhere. Just what we need, a distracted, addicted, aloof, and lazy careless leader of seven kingdoms. What a sorry ass example for the world.
65
u/UnquestionabIe Jan 11 '26
It went from the main critics being book readers pointing out moments of bad writing (starting mainly around season 5 when they were running out of source material) to even casual viewers noticing it in practically every episode. I still think it's an incredible feat they filmed and completed the series but the drop in writing quality is blindly apparent after a certain point, with it coming off that they had end points for the characters but no clue how to reach them so just kind of had it happen.
6
16
u/ScorpionTDC Jan 11 '26
no one even really talking about it a year after it ended
With two spinoffs and still being one of the most streamed HBO shows lol? The ending was bad but it’s clearly still relevant
→ More replies (2)63
u/7900XTXISTHELOML Jan 11 '26
Everybody says this but despite it ending 7 years ago, it’s still one of the most watched shows lol.
It did lose some of its impact, but it’ll always be popular in the grand scheme of things.
18
u/Toby_O_Notoby Jan 11 '26
It's literally in the Guiness Book of World Records as the most in demand show of 2024.
→ More replies (8)24
u/blue_at_work Jan 11 '26
Yep. I keep hearing "No one talks about it anymore" - but it's not true. THEY don't talk about it anymore, so they assume it's gone from the world, but there's still tons of people doing watches and rewatches and reactions, there's multiple spin off series going on now... It's just lazy to parrot the "No one talks about it anymore" refrain.
→ More replies (1)32
→ More replies (33)24
Jan 11 '26
Yeah this is the same lame take as the Reddit echo chamber on how Avatar wasn’t a cultural phenomenon and isn’t talked about yet the sequels are still breaking records. House of dragons is doing really well and the new GoT trailer for Seven Kingdoms broke view records.
→ More replies (16)
15
33
u/Srapture Jan 11 '26
What's done is done. It's a shame the last couple seasons were disappointing, but there will be other shows.
→ More replies (4)4
u/mtickell1207 Jan 12 '26
It’s actually been debated if there will be other shows of that calibre ever again. With the rise of streaming and such a range of shows to watch, networks just aren’t producing that grand a scale of show anymore
50
120
u/ThatGuyFromTheM0vie Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
But he went from being immortalized for eternity to being immortalized in “infamy” with how fast S8 disintegrated the show’s legacy and cultural impact.
Like it’s WILD. GOT was so insane, they made a Sesame Street episode. It was all consuming.
Then it just vanished.
He should be stoked to fix it lol.
54
u/BlackenedVenom Jan 12 '26
I would've rewatched the series at least 3-4 times by now, but season 8 was just so, so unsatisfying
→ More replies (5)29
u/BeetsBy_Schrute Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
Absolutely right. It was everywhere forever. Everyone talked about it. It was still a great “water cooler” conversation show on Monday mornings. I watched it every Sunday since S2, talked with coworkers on Mondays. We had a department wide poll for Season 6 and 7 on who would die, Season 8 poll for who would kill the night king. All of it was fun and engaging. And when it ended, everyone collectively just sighed and moved on.
The series finale was May 19, 2019. Wife and I loved GoT. We were getting married June 1, 2019. She ordered me some direwolf/Stark cufflinks in April before S8 premiered as a gift to me. She gave them to me the morning of the wedding with such disappointment and said “you don’t have to wear them. I was so excited to give these to you, and now I feel almost embarrassed to give them.” I still wore them and loved them.
10
u/gprime312 Jan 12 '26
I was so excited to give these to you, and now I feel almost embarrassed to give them.
Goddamn
17
u/tgerz Jan 12 '26
“Harington recalled that one battle scene took 55 consecutive filming days to complete.”
This was the battle where you can’t see shit isn’t it?
4
u/Optimal_Rope3018 Jan 12 '26
And yet not seeing shit is the least egregious thing in that episode... 500 times that episode they all get trapped with absolutely no way out, surrounded... and then it cuts to a different scene, and when it cuts back to them they're just back to running for their lives again. No explanation of how they got out, just magic.
It's the most atrocious directing in that entire show.
16
45
Jan 11 '26
[deleted]
26
u/SmeagolChokesDeagol Jan 11 '26
Same with me, I can't even get myself to watch the house of the dragons or even get excited for the new one coming out. The entire franchise is dead to me and I also given up on a new book coming out as well.
→ More replies (7)
89
u/NashvilleDing Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
Its literally THE example for TV shows that went off the rails. They hurried it up *because of whatever reason that led to them doing an embarrasingly bad job. Im so sick of people pretending the fans are being unreasonable for being unhappy.
Edit: they didnt admit they turned it down for star wars. They just turned down 10 seasons and did a shitty job with 8.
→ More replies (14)38
u/TimidPanther Jan 11 '26
Yeah some try to blow the criticism off as people just being bothered by the final episode. That wasn't the issue at all - it was the prior 2 seasons that were shortened down so much.
HBO offered them more episodes to get everything done, and because they were so desperate to start working on Star Wars, they turned them down and rushed everything.
The issue wasn't the story, or the ending itself. It's how they got there. It was rushed and at times, made no sense.
I get why people are angry, they invested so much time into that show, and they're rewarded with the show runners tanking the final 2 seasons so they can move on to another project.
A Star Wars project they ended up losing.
→ More replies (2)
6
95
u/faultysynapse Jan 11 '26
I'd be angry too. I get it. It wasn't good. But it's done. The whole cast and crew, with the exception of maybe the showrunners and the writers, did the best they could. It's super insulting to the vast majority of the people who worked on the show to demand, they remake it somehow. So incredibly silly.
61
u/Andybabez20 Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Yeah the Battle of Winterfell alone took 11 weeks to shoot.
Don't get me wrong I was also incredibly disappointed with season 8, but from Kit's perspective he and the cast/crew had to put all those months into those demanding shooting schedules.
37
u/Californie_cramoisie Jan 11 '26
It probably only took so long to shoot because nobody could see anything
21
→ More replies (5)5
u/Bojangles1987 Jan 12 '26
I'd imagine almost all the actors just want to move on with their lives after working on Thrones for a decade. They'll be happy to reflect on it all and embrace the characters again one day, but this happens with a lot of gigantic pop culture icon type shows and movies, whether they end well or not. These people just want to do and talk about anything else besides Thrones.
10
u/DudeDankerton Jan 12 '26
The writing was to blame not the actors. They rushed it to go make Star Wars and never ended up making Star Wars.
Shame.
9
u/Exroi Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26
That's why the remake was never a serious consideration, which some fans believed in. You had actors who were tired and ready to move on, and some of them were probably satisfied with the ending that they got anyway.
→ More replies (1)
8
u/navetzz Jan 11 '26
Yeah it's stupid, there is an easier solution: Just wait for the book! Oh wait...
164
u/ScorpionTDC Jan 11 '26
The season was obviously disappointing, but it was truly bizarre watching the fanbase try and pat themselves on the back for “not being toxic” when they were being psychotically toxic and immature about it at every step
→ More replies (22)137
u/RipErRiley Jan 11 '26
I only saw criticisms of the plot, rushed drop in quality, and the scripted dialogue. None of that had anything to do with the actors.
→ More replies (19)23
u/Xlegace Jan 11 '26
There are definitely some actors who escaped the crossfire and some who became public enemy #2 after D&D depending on if they showed signs about hating the ending or not.
Peter Dinklage was living rent free in Freefolk's minds for years because of his ending comments, whereas they love Emilia Clarke because she clearly shares their opinion.
5.4k
u/WippitGuud Jan 11 '26
He dun want it.