Let’s Talk About ‘Game of Thrones’

Spoiler Alert!

There are massive spoilers for season eight of “Game of Thrones” ahead!

Deep down, I’m a huge fantasy and science fiction geek. I love “Lord of the Rings,” “Star Wars,” Marvel movies, comic books, and anything to do with imagination. HBO’s “Game of Thrones” (or GOT) series was no exception.

I remember seeing trailers for the show before it came out and made sure I caught the first episode the night it aired. From the moment where the White Walkers killed some Wildlings in the opening minutes of the first episode, I was hooked. It wasn’t until season 3 when I realized the show was based on a series of books, and I immediately went out and bought the whole “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. I knocked out those five massive books before season 3 was over.

Now that it’s been a few months since the series finale, I think it’s time to talk about this epic show. If you haven’t finished the last season of “GOT” yet, or you’ve been waiting until the series finished to binge-watch it all and don’t want to know how it ends, this is your warning to stop reading.

The Short Version

I love it, and its my favorite show of all time. The end.

The Long Version

It’s disappointing that the greatest TV show of all time will be remembered for its colossal failure of an ending.

The beauty of “GOT” as a show, and the books it’s based on, is how deep the story goes. There’s so much depth to each character and their arcs. Every character or plot is given time to develop. But once the show caught up to the books in season five, it became clear the showrunners, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, didn’t know how to handle the story.

There were tons of story lines viewers spent seven seasons looking forward to that never got a satisfying conclusion. I really wanted to get the backstory on the Night King and the White Walkers. How is their community structured? Why are they attacking? What’s their big plan? So many things they alluded to were never paid off!

The lackluster White Walkers were nothing compared to how badly the heroes were treated. First, there’s Bran, with his incredible power to see everything that is, was, or will be. He’s basically the Google of Westeros, and he spends the whole season sitting in a chair and creepily staring into the distance. Then there’s Daenerys’ sudden flip to being the “Mad Queen” and torching millions of people for no reason. And it all ends with Jon Snow killing Dany, the dragon burning the Iron Throne, and Bran becoming king in a single episode.