Current Events > Why was wrong with Game of Thrones season 8?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've never watched Game of Thrones so I don't understand why it's hated.

I asked a friend the same question and the way he framed it the issue was rushed character choices to the point of being OoC, particularly the dragon girl Danaerys who apparently goes crazy due to her bloodline despite the show previously establishing she was safe from that

When was wrong with Game of Thrones Season 8?

Rushed character arcs
Abandoned plot lines
Terrible writing

Showrunners thought Martin would have more for them to pull from but only gave them notes/ideas, compared to the first bunch of seasons where they just adapted novels.

Also, a LOT of people are really bad at noticing a certain character's actions for the past five seasons and didn't realize they were clearly telegraphing what would come.

Plus some plot stuff that was legit not great.

imo people waaaay overreacted to something they should have seen coming.

• general weak writing, i havent watched season 8 since it aired but i remember a lot of eyeroll moments
• major characters have their personalities shifted pretty dramatically as you can tell the writers are rushing to get stuff done
• Various major plotlines are completely abandoned (big one i remember jon snow being a targaryn going nowhere, nothing happening with melisandre, arya not doing anything with the faceless man training that took like a whole season, etc)
• the entire show there is this buildup to this big war, and a major plotline for the entire show is ppl trying to get the various warring nations to take this big war seriously. in season 8 the big war finally happens. it's resolved in one episode and basically no major characters died
• the last episode is especially weird, i remember reading the leaks for it and i thought it was a joke because the resolution is so odd

personally i started noticing the cracks in the show around like season 6, but 8 took it to a whole new level. i think the finale might be the worst episode of tv ive ever seen

masterpug53 posted...

When was wrong with Game of Thrones Season 8?

Where was wrong with Game of Thrones Season 8?

But seriously, For me it felt contrived. There was a thousand ways they could have handled the various situations that the fans took issue with, but the writers chose the path of least resistance.

MagnusX posted...

Showrunners thought Martin would have more for them to pull from but only gave them notes/ideas, compared to the first bunch of seasons where they just adapted novels.

Nah, don't blame Martin. The last two books in the series were only barely adapted, they quit using the source material long before they ran out of it.

And to be honest, that's one big issue with the last season, TC. Starting in season four, they begin making small changes in various storylines. Using a different character here, having one character do something different here, cutting out one apparently superfluous plotline for a more focused plot and it all worked fine. For a while. Eventually those tiny changes cause major issues. Multiple characters have nothing to do because they removed the plotline they were supposed to be involved with. Other characters are unceremoniously killed off because the set-up for their send off was removed. That kind of thing.

The main issue, though, is that the writing is just lazy. That's an egregious sin for a show once praised for its well-thought-out writing. It's commonly believed that the showrunners were sick of doing the show and wanted out because they had a job lined up to do work on Star Wars. I don't know how true that is, but it's certainly believable. So instead of having characters and plotlines develop to their climax, they crammed it all climaxes together into the season and skipped the development.

Just to give you an example of the laziness, "kind of forgot" is a bit of a meme about the show. It comes from an episode where Daenarys, the blond haired girl you've probably seen, is sailing south with her fleet with her two dragons flying overhead, one of which she's riding. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the one she's not riding is shot out of the sky and killed. The camera reveals a force of Iron Island enemy ships that ambush her forces. She's forced to fly off with her remaining dragon and the Islanders destroy her entire fleet.

The scene is extremely stupid. The Islanders are behind a mountainous island that should completely block their shot. They're in no way hidden, there's just a dozen battleships on the open ocean. Even if we ignore that a wartime fleet would have scout ships ahead of its main force, Daenarys was two hundred feet in the air and would have seen them. The islanders have pinpoint accuracy with medieval siege weapons on a rocking boat behind a mountain when killing one dragon, but can't land a single hit on the one that's carrying a main character. It had previously been established that the weapons are extremely slow to reload, but they do it quickly enough to chase Daenarys away. And despite the entire fleet being destroyed, naturally none of the main characters are injured or captured or killed. The cherry on top is that the character in charge of the Islanders is one of the most garbage ones in the entire show. His entire and sole motivation is that he wants to fuck the queen.

In the after-show commentary, one of the showrunners said, "Well, Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet, but they certainly haven't forgotten about her." This despite the fact that she was sailing south explicitly to fight them and the multiple, multiple instances of her talking about them.

Just to give you an idea of the writing that pissed people off.

Fast travel.

How many fucking times do I need to watch a character get stabbed in the back by some other dude who is offscreen that he should obviously see coming

What was brans last line? Where do you think I was going? Or something like that

so fuckin stupid

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I mean, ot was less her bloodline and more her personality.

Let'sbe honest: she never had any foreign policy beyond "I have dragons." Even across the sea , that was her default: nuke the enemy, full stop. For all the good she did for the common folk, she never looked at Westeros the same way. She rallied the enslaved and the unsullied for at least partial humanitarian reasons, and to build allies, but she only EVER looked at westeros through the lens of "this is my divine right." She never gave a damn about anyone there, certainly not in the same way. So whatever she was in Essos, she was always just another despot when it came to westeros. A despot with full access to, and inclination toward, the in-universe nuclear option.

Her heel turn was always coming, and well deserved. People just didn't want it.

I'm of the opinion that we've had more than enough time at this point to determine that Daenerys is not on the "mad queen" side of the Targaryen coin flip. Of course the books will never be finished, but if they were, my guess is that Aegon would be the one who goes mad, and Daenerys would die fighting him.