No: ‘The final season was just a Michael Bay movie about people who don’t know how to wash’
Of all the shows available to watch or rewatch in quarantine, Game of Thrones seems pretty perfect. It’s long and dense, and it tells a huge story on the grandest possible canvas. Except you won’t rewatch it, will you? Even under lockdown, your life is too short.
For much of its run, I was convinced that I’d end up watching Game of Thrones all over again. This isn’t because I liked it – it’s because I barely got to see any of it.
The first two seasons, as far as I’m able to tell, are single-handedly made up of scenes where 3,000 identical-looking men with identical names growl at each other about all the different things that every single one of their of identically named ancestors did over the past 10,000 years. If you had read the books, this was all probably very satisfying. If you hadn’t, it was impossible to keep up.
And so I spent the first couple of years with only half an eye on the television, while I frantically tore through Wikipedia trying in vain to find any sort of clue about what was actually happening. By the end of it, I had transformed into Carrie from the first season of Homeland; drunk and hysterical and gesturing wildly at an incomprehensible wall of string. Wouldn’t it be good, I thought, to go back and watch Game of Thrones from the start and enjoy it with all the knowledge that the readers had?
Obviously that was before the final season. Now, all things considered, I would rather feed my legs to a dog than watch Game of Thrones again.
Listen, I know that it’s silly to write off an entire television series just because it beefed the finale. I’ve seen Lost all the way through three times now, for crying out loud, and I would even give Dexter another go (up to a point; I’m not a monster). But there was something so monumentally dispiriting about GoT’s final season. It entirely drained my enthusiasm for the series. And, in truth, it has probably drained yours, too.
Which was the worst bit? The moment when [redacted] – set up from the very first scene of the very first episode to be the show’s terrifyingly allegorical Big Bad – got offed as an afterthought to give us more of [redacted] working through his mummy issues with his sexy aunt? The episode that was exclusively comprised of a series of incomprehensible brown sludges scraping up against each other? The finale, where [redacted] turned into Hitler, then died, then [redacted] of all people took over, and [redacted] popped in at the end to say: “I’ve written this book, called [redacted] of [redacted]” and nobody punched him?
Who am I kidding, it’s all of them. It’s all indicative of the showrunners’ panicky rush to gallop to the end once the source material ran out, trading all the meticulous character work of the previous seasons for the empty calories of bloated spectacle. The final season of Game of Thrones was nothing more than a Michael Bay movie about people who don’t know how to wash properly. I’ll never be able to build the mental momentum to sit through it again.
Maybe I’ll just read the books instead. Maybe we all should. At least the final instalment of those won’t be a disappointment, because it’s never going to be written. Stuart Heritage
Yes: ‘There are still hours of stunning TV here to enjoy’
For a start, we can’t take lessons on rewatching from someone who has managed to get through the dour middle seasons and horrific final episode of Lost three times.
But, that aside, Game of Thrones deserves respect on its own terms. While the finale was certainly more hated than loved, perhaps better remembered for ill-placed coffee cups than the fates of its main characters, there are still hours of stunning TV to enjoy by visiting, or revisiting, Westeros.
Those early seasons, so confusing at the time, are now rich with meaning and foreshadowing when watching with the knowledge of what’s to come. The many shocking twists and turns – whether it be the fate of Sean Bean’s Ned Stark or the brutal climax to the fight between the Mountain and the Red Viper – still pack a punch. The Red Wedding is even harder to watch the second time through, the uncompromising brutality no easier when you can prepare for it.
There’s a reason GoT was one of the most talked about, most successful shows of the past decade – and it wasn’t all to do with the mysteries being unspooled. There is great writing among all the “tits and dragons”, great performances from Stephen Dillane, Michelle Fairley and many others, and a plot rich in detail. Set pieces such as the battles of Blackwater and the Bastards are some of the most dynamic ever shown on the small screen – with the latter managing a terrifyingly real meditation on the horrors of war despite its fantasy setting.
If the latter seasons disappointed, it was only because what had come before was so good – there are few long-running shows that manage to maintain that sort of form. The West Wing, The Wire, even Buffy – all of these shows dipped towards the end to a lesser or greater extent. But they’re all worthy of another viewing. GoT is no different.
And then there’s that ending. Making [redacted] ruler of the seven kingdoms seemed like a bolt from the blue, but on a rewatch it feels more justified. And while the turn to fascism displayed by [redacted] annoyed many a fan, there was no other logical conclusion to that particular arc. If you’re still angry about it, I’d urge a rewatch even more so; if you thought it seemed out of character, the truth is that it was something that the writers had seeded almost from the very beginning. Those final scenes were undoubtedly rushed – and that’s a great shame – but they were earned.
So go on, revel in the early years, binge on all the sexposition, and you might just find your ire about how it all ended tempered. Toby Moses
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion