Spoilers Follow
So, Game of Thrones, that cultural moment when so many joined the geek community and discussed dragon, zombies, magic, and noble houses has reached it conclusion and many are left — well not the way that they thought they would be left.
As a viewer/consumer of the series I have feelings and as a writer I have feelings and those two identities don’t always agree on how things need to go down. I started the series about the time it began airing. A friend brought over a recording of the pilot episode and I was intrigued but certainly not completely sold and for the first few season that’s how it went. He would record bring over a disc and my sweetie-wife and I would enjoy, once HBO Now launched we got our own subscription stayed up to date on our own.
Over all I enjoyed the series, the shocking turns with Eddard’s Stark’s demise, followed by the Red Wedding, and a rich tapestry of political and social forces that constrained the character made for compelling storylines. (Side note: I speak only of the series, I never read any of the books. In general I read more SF than fantasy.) However once the show outpaced the novels the stories seemed simplified. Great houses fell and the positions seemed vacant, prizes to be awarded without any pesky ‘Bannermen’ seeing their shot and moving in for an increase in station. Winterfell seemed to burn down and rebuild with alarming speed and the vast distance that occupied entire episodes compressed to ‘down the block’ trips. Ravens carried news with the speed of the Internet and rescue missions from Dragon Stone to beyond the wall hardly earned a mention. Now we have come to the end, the final resolution to all this blood, fire, toil, and death and how do we feel?
Eh.
It was okay but hardly a great ending. For me endings are very special things, it is often in the ending that I feel we see the real point of the story Personally I cannot write a short story or novel unless I know how it ends, that is my north star, the reason for setting out on the journey to begin with and what did we end up with at the end of GoT? A decent person sits on the Throne, but that itself a somewhat inconsistent characterization. A season ago Bran was so disconnected from the rest of humanity he was unable to see the emotional trauma he left in his wake, dismissing people who had borne great sacrifices without even a thank you and now he’s a wise and compassionate rule? This is an ending that has been hammered into place and not one that grew organically from the characters and the theme. I never fell into the Daenerys is a hero camp. She never actually seemed to care about the people she ‘liberated’ and instead they only seemed to server her ego and inflating her reputation as a breaker of chains when in actuality she simply broke and re-forged them to herself. Her cruelty laid the groundwork for her eventual turn, but as with the vast distances of Westeros it was compressed beyond any sensible recognition. Arya I liked much more but in the end her story was also cut short and badly constructed. Her deep motivation was seeming abandoned by one ‘special episode’ chat and that broke with season of suffering and drive that had brought her to this place and time. It could have worked had they taken a little more time and performed the emotional transformation as a consequence of the final battle at Winterfell when Arya truly seemed to meet the god of Death and learned that when we say ‘not today’ we mean not just for ourselves but for those we do not kill today. She then could have left Cersi to others ready to find something other than death to live for. Jon’s ending seemed under paid. If Daenerys was the love his life and yet his duty compelled him to kill her he needed to pay a far higher cost than exile. Peter Sagal, host of NR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, had an alternative ending for Jon that worked wonderfully. Basically after killing his love Jon would sit on the throne and order Drogon to melt it and kill him. Sansa had the best and most character arc satisfying ending, she learned from everyone who tormented her and became a powerful figure of the north.
Still, I have seen worse endings and overall I enjoyed the ride but I will view D & D future project with some suspicion as it seems clear that best elements of the show came from Martin and not their minds.
