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ericdeggans · 5 years

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Why All the Grousing About the Game of Thrones Finale Is Wrong (and what the critics get right)

(Let’s be honest; it you’re reading a Game of Thrones analysis column now and not expecting to find spoilers, you’re just fooling yourself. Right?)

There is no fury like a fan disappointed. That’s a sad truth the producers of Game of Thrones are learning the hard way this year.

To be fair, HBO helped bring this on itself, by changing the original plan to give Game of Thrones a 13-episode final season. Instead, they broke the last go round in half, and let nearly two years pass between the first seven episodes and the final six.

No wonder people can’t wrap their heads around a sequence of events that was probably, originally intended to be the ever-accelerating payoff to a more evenly paced final season. There have been loads of Twitter messages and exquisitely-argued columns complaining about characters behaving out of character and drama unearned.

Some of this, I’d argue, is the result of HBO trying to pass off the end of a season as an ENTIRE season. The show’s usual pace -- deliberative drama, punctuated by jolts of action -- has been overturned and sped up, like starting an Avengers movie two thirds of the way through.

In this new, truncated series of episodes, there isn’t enough time to remind viewers how brutal Daenerys Targaryn could be, especially when she’s challenged or traumatized (although I’d argue her execution of Varys earlier in last week’s episode was exactly that). There isn’t enough time to let viewers see how the execution of her longtime translator Missandei and the murder of one of her dragons really impacted her feelings about everyone in King’s Landing.

Without those scenes, her decision to respond to an obvious surrender by incinerating the city may have seemed capricious or opportunistic – creating a jarringly brutal, epic scene of destruction at the expense of her character. But I don’t agree.

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The impact of that choice on the show’s overall treatment of its female characters is another question. Game of Thrones is also haunted by earlier seasons which often gave short shrift to female characters, and used sexual violence to titillate viewers while telling them things they needed to know about the plot (whomever first coined the term “sexposition” to describe this terrible storytelling technique deserves their own Pulitzer).

With that history in mind, I don’t blame critics and fans for looking skeptically on a story which has turned Daenerys into a power mad killer and warrior Brienne into a weepy, jilted one night stand. But Sansa is still a powerful, perceptive ruler in the north, and Arya is the ultimate survivor – killing the Night King on her own while the men were stymied by the power of his undead army.

My biggest criticism of this final season’s storytelling is that moments which should have been bigger, simply weren’t. Cool as it was to see Arya take out the Night King, ending an epic battle with a single knife thrust – with almost no characters of major consequence lost in battle – felt a bit like a head fake.

Ending a battle the series has been preparing for over many years of storytelling in that manner couldn’t help but feel anticlimactic.

Similarly, Cersei’s death in the last episode – assuming she is dead, of course – impacted like a subversion of show’s prophecies and another anticlimactic finish. Buried under her crumbling castle stronghold with brother/lover Jamie, she didn’t even really get a final speech.

As several people noted on Twitter, star Lena Headey earned an astronomical amount of money to mostly stand around, sip wine and look disappointed while playing Cersei this season. (Fox News calculated she was paid about $48,000 for each of her 25 minutes of screen time this season; resist the urge to respond with a cry of “fake news,” please.)

There’s also the show’s disappearance of non-white characters. Even in a fictional kingdom, it seems, people of color are mostly slaves and servants – disposable characters used to serve white characters and move the story along.

Sure, the fanboys might have freaked out if the Targaryens or Lannisters were played by non-white actors. But it would have created even richer storytelling choices. As it is, Game of Thrones also serves as a reminder that, even in our big budget TV dreams, people of color are marginalized and overlooked, with little negative consequence.

Ultimately, I think much of the disappointment in this season boils down to how we feel about the ideas of heroes and villains in this story.

HBO’s Game of Thrones began in closer concert with the George R.R. Martin books that inspired it, by creating a fictional world based on a much more realistic vision of sword and sorcery stories. This world came much closer to what life during Medieval times in Europe and England was really like, refusing to turn away from the brutality and unfairness of life in that era.

But this kind of storytelling also subverted what heroism means. Early in the series, heroes were beaten, broken and killed – outmaneuvered by sharp, amoral characters who saw heroic values as weaknesses to be exploited. The execution of Sean Bean’s virtuous Ned Stark -- who blundered into knowledge of scandals that would threaten the royal family and lost his head over it -- was a mission statement of sorts in the show’s very first season.

That dynamic has turned in more recent seasons. Jon Snow, the ultimate hard headed hero killed for sticking to his values, was resurrected. Daenerys Targaryen was positioned as the great savior of oppressed peoples. And cynical, overlooked Tyrion Lannister was the small man with big ideas, outthinking everyone around him while pushing for a more just kingdom.

These lofty ideals seem left in shambles by the final season. Daenerys seems to have become the villain – a ruthless ruler whose reign will stand on the burned bodies of thousands of innocents. Tyrion has constantly guessed wrong, placing his faith in his lying sister Cersei before revealing a plot to undermine Daenerys, costing his friend Varys his life and paving the way for his queen to burn down the Red Keep and Kings Landing.

Once again, the story seems to be saying that heroism doesn’t get the job done. And that’s a tough message for fans who ultimately wanted to see the characters we love finally, unambiguously, win one already.

For me, it’s that tension between heroism and pragmatism that Game of Thrones has struggled to reconcile in recent seasons. And how they handle that balance in the last episode Sunday, will determine whether the entire series feels like an epic journey or a disappointing detour.

The obvious ending at this point would be for Jon to kill Dany for becoming a murderous tyrant and then abdicate the throne in despair (I’ve been calling him Emo Jon for years, so at least THAT move would be in character). Jon leaves the throne to Tyrion who marries Sansa – with her agreement, this time – to unite the north with the other kingdoms under one, benevolent ruling couple.

Other rumors include someone picking up Varys’ plan to poison Daenerys – perhaps a disappointed Tyrion? – leaving the path clear for Jon to take the Iron Throne alone, pouting all the way.

But producers have worked hard to avoid the predictable. So I’ll be perched on the edge of my seat with the rest of GOT Nation Sunday night, hoping for a surprise that will validate all this time I’ve spent following the biggest epic in television history.

Regardless of how it ends, we’ll have to admit, it’s been quite a ride.

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