Game of Frowns

The last season of Game of Thrones has been getting a Dothraki hoard of complaints about it from fans and critics alike, even spawning a petition to have the season remade that's gathering number like the Night King's army. So what are the issues hounding the series, or are people making the Mountain out of a mole hill?

I started my Game of Thrones journey with the very first episode on the day it launched, having seen lots of hype for it before it aired. After the first few episodes, I bought and read the books and I was as devout a follower as Melisandre with the Lord of Light. I watched every episode as it screened to say, "Not today" to the inevitable spoilers online and looked forward and loved watching and discussing every episode—but some things changed. The last few episodes have left me feeling as detached as Bran Stark watching a breakfast history of everything, so what's going on?

You can certainly say there have been less awesome episodes in previous seasons, obviously they needed to fill in between action and expand on stories and journeys, and those episode were going to feel lesser to the set pieces of each season. Yes, they were slightly less action-packed or dramatic, and they didn't leave you with the same fulfilled and excited feeling after watching, but not like the last couple of episodes of season eight had. Watching episode three, four, and five should have been everything you've waited for and speculated over seven seasons and nearly 10 years to see—and well, to be honest, it didn't exactly leave you feeling the same love, awe, or even sense of satisfaction and anticipation to green-see what happened next.

The night is dark, and full of... something... it's hard to tell, it's like REALLY, REALLY dark.

A lot of people were unhappy about how some of the episodes were filmed, and granted, we are all giving Melisandre some serious love for shedding some light on the Battle of Winterfell, but I'm onboard with the whole direction of that battle. It was meant to be absolute night and bring a sense of terror, and it worked for me—plus, it produced that brilliant scene of the Dothraki charge and the lights quickly blinking out of existence. I get why they went down that route and didn't see it as anything other than the obvious route to take. (Honestly, it would have looked terrible as one of those brightly lit "night battles" where it looks fake as anything.) So it wasn't that I didn't like how the episodes looked, I get what they were aiming for and how they did it (I studied film and TV production at university), so I'm fine with the "look" of all the episodes.

People were also annoyed at the direction and decisions some of the characters took in these episodes, lots proclaiming, "It's not where the character arc was going" or "He/she would never do that" (generally about characters that have consistently done exactly that from the start), but everyone thought they were improving their moral compass recently. I will admit, I was a bit surprised they actually went down some of the routes they did, but I'm not disappointed. I put my surprise down to my following perceived and expected traditional "character arc resolution," rather than remembering it's a series that is never as obvious as everything being black and white (even when they have a house called exactly that). We all forget that it's been a series that killed heroes from the get go, turned "villains" into characters we understood and cheered for, made the "good guys" capable of truly terrible moral choices, and people changing "sides" depending on what day of the week it is. So I didn't mind the character actions throughout the episodes; it's a book series that has always claimed to not be aiming for good outcomes from the start.

"If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention."—Ramsey Bolton

I think that line was meant for the audience much more than poor Theon Greyjoy (though he didn't exactly get a happy ending, at least he got a thanks from Bran). I'm not naive enough to think everything that was going to happen was exactly what I "wanted" to happen, and I personally prefer when TV takes me in different directions to the expected route. I can spot the murderer on detective programs straight away, just from program format and direction style, and it gets boring very quickly so again this wasn't what was off for me.

Some Giant (Slaying) Performances

The performances from the actors were as brilliant as it's been from the start. The acting in these episodes has been spot on, with some amazing performances from all the actors (even the CGI dragons). Even when the actors publicly have said they don't like the story arc they've been given, they've not shown anything other than 100 percent (or 150 percent in Bella Ramsey's/Lyanna Mormont's case). Quite a few "big" characters and one small yet epic character have met their ends in the last few episodes. Whilst we knew not everyone was getting out of all these battles alive, most have felt like they were expected—the majority were pretty well handled and beautifully shot, but yes, some of the onscreen deaths felt like they were missing something when it was done. But again, it's not a fantasy story with happy endings (including for us), so some big character deaths didn't feel like the death we expected or they deserved—but that's much more realistic. There isn't usually a big showdown between a character with monologues and pithy putdowns in real life, it's often just fast, gritty, and nondescript and crushing to our hopes like an undead giant's hand (I'm still not over that). I understand people want justice for characters' terrible actions and want a showdown between their favourite "hero" and villain, but there's been some poetic justice in some of the characters' deaths. Let's be honest, we're all talking about Cersei Lannister's death here. From the offset, she's been the number one villain of the piece; she's manipulated and murdered her way through eight seasons and we all wanted her dead in some epic or karma-pleasing method, but we got a nice cuddle being crushed by rubble. I felt like it was my hopes for that story resolution that had millions of tonnes of bricks dropped on it, this was not the payoff for a decade of faithful watching. This combined with Daenerys's turn to troubled fire-starter and mass murderer felt like a serious betrayal. I felt like the young Sandor Clegane—I had just wanted to enjoy something, and instead, got my face shoved into burning coals.

Saved by the bell—Westeros edition.

So that battle plan went swimmingly: Blow up everything with the dragon, kill all the guys in the way of the army, open the gates, and accept the city's surrender—what could go wrong?

So shockingly Dany went a bit Targaryen on King's Landing, deciding to remodel EVERYTHING and barbecue pretty much anyone and everyone. Cue thousands of shocked faces (see above for example) and a firestorm of complaints online. "Dany wouldn't do this," "it's lazy writing," "OMG I named my daughter after her," etc. But let's be honest, whilst I probably looked like this too (who wouldn't after basically an hour of explosions and burning women and children running around?), I wasn't too surprised or disappointed. Since the start of the whole series, it's been her answer to most things: "If I don't like it, I burn it." Since the first time someone pissed her off, or got in her way, she killed them with fire (I think it was the witch that "cured" Khal Drogo, but you could argue it was her own brother first). She has consistently claimed she will take the Throne back with whatever means she needed.

“I will take what is mine, with fire and blood I will take it.”—Season Two: “The Old Gods and the New”

And we saw her stand in the ruined throne room covered in ash in a vision back in season two, so what were we really expecting to happen? We wanted a story resolution that wasn't consistent with the theme of the series, we wanted a happy ending, and that's not what this is about. So it's our own failings to see what the series was doing, and once you embrace that, then it starts to make sense.

Happy with the unhappy ending.

I think I finally figured out what the point was of all this. I know why I felt like I was going through the motions, watching the episodes rather than enjoying them like I used to. I forgot that I was watching a series that was written by a man with a fixation on death—who has constantly told us to not look for happy endings, but always mentions endings. I was overlaying the traditional storytelling methodology over a story that consistently showed me that wasn't what was happening, and yet, I felt they were letting ME down when they kept doing it. I got emotionally invested in these characters and wanted things to workout for them rather than focusing on the way they lived and, more importantly, the way they died. Throughout the series, he has killed characters in manners that reflected their lives and how they had conducted themselves—bad people, good people, it made no difference, they all died and often these deaths reflected their personalities. From the first "big" death of Ned Stark through all the characters until the latest Jamie and Cersei Lannister, they have died in a manner befitting their lives. Ned Stark died silently and stoically holding his honour and keeping a secret till he was executed in the way he had led his life. He had previously said:

"You think my life is some precious thing to me? That I would trade my honour for a few more years of... of what?! You grew up with actors, you learned their craft, and you learnt it well. But I grew up with soldiers. I learned how to die a long time ago," and he held true to that shortly later.

Similarly, Jamie and Cersei died in a manner befitting them: Jamie died holding his sister, and throughout the series he has claimed he cares about nothing but her, so it's fitting he would die holding her till the end. Cersei has sat back and manipulated circumstances, ordered death through her "power," and destroyed entire buildings to keep herself on the Throne, so it's karma that she dies crushed by the building she fought so long to control, powerless to stop her own death (her last words were "please don't let me die"). When you look at it that way, it all makes sense, there are no happy endings, just endings.

So is that what it is I should be looking for? The beautiful deaths (see the online series of images if you haven't already), it certainly wouldn't be the first time a creator has focused more on the Dance of Death leading to the death rather than the death itself, and Martin has always shown he has no issues telling us that.

Maybe it's been staring us all in the face all along, so many lines have told us what is going to happen and maybe we've not been paying attention. "There is only one god and his name is death," "If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention," and Deanerys's line, "I'm not going to stop the wheel, I'm going to break it," all seem to suggest we shouldn't be applying the expected story arc to this all along. Even as far back as the first season there have been lines that informed us it was not going to go the way we expected.

Perhaps we've forgotten all this like one of old Nan's stories:

Old Nan: "I know a story about a crow."Bran Stark: "I hate your stories."Old Nan: "I know a story about a boy who hated stories."

Perhaps George Martin is the boy who hated stories, or at least hated traditional storytelling; now he's going to break the wheel and give us a new way to tell stories.

With all this new thinking, perhaps I've been watching these episodes all wrong. It's us that needs to change how we think about the story—we need to kill the boy/girl and become the man/woman (or whatever you want to be if you're a warg) and look at it from an older, wiser, and less naive manner. Maybe the show runners have been doing it right and we need to look over these episodes again in the few days before the last episodes air, and perhaps, we'll see something in the flames (there were plenty of those in episode five). Then we'll be in the right mindset for the grand finale. It's a tall order, maybe even giant-sized, but maybe try to not watch it as a "sweet summer child" and remember these words.