After the final episode of Game of Thrones the fans kept a silence more terrifying than the arrival of the white walkers to Winterfell.
The eagerly awaited end of the most important television series of the last decade was nothing more than the culmination of a disappointing eighth season.
Too perfect can be Dangerous?
We’re not the only ones who believe this.
The outcome of the characters we vibrated with during the nine years the series lasted was, for many, outrageous, to the point that a million followers signed a petition for the last season to be re-recorded.
We could say that the ending was unfair, but not with the characters or the fans, but with the story itself.
And possibly, GoT fans became too demanding and it wasn’t our fault, but that of an impeccable script, a production that each season gave us a well-structured plot and increasingly complex characters.
George R.R. Martin’s separation from the television script marked a turning point, as his story told in Song of Ice and Fire was overtaken by the one played on television.
Martin distanced himself from the series in order to finish his saga with a book worthy of the story, and in turn, made GoT’s final script fall into the hands of David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.
The narrative was practically reduced to the same ashes Daenerys left in King’s Landing when she went from “The Chain Breaker” to “Mad Queen”, and her dragons, from indestructible beings to vulnerable pets.
The Slavoj Žižek point of view
On this point, Slavoj Žižek writes in The Independent that the role of women in the series could not give that blow of authority, and characters like Arya, Sansa, Cersei and Dany herself, ended up giving the male characters the positions achieved in the previous seven seasons.
Let’s think about it that way: Arya went from the heroine who turned the King of the Night into ice cubes, to a young woman who is only looking for a way to survive Drogon’s overwhelming fire.
Sansa gave in her fight for the throne and settled for the idea of being the Queen, but only of the North.
Cersei’s vileness had its punishment in the ruthless death of her children, but not in the gentle way she leaves the series.
Zizek also analyzes the similarities between today’s decision makers and what happens in the series, because in the end, it is white Nordic men who decide who will be the new king, while those who sought new opportunities for all are relegated.
That is, in the end, everything returns to normal, and the hero and sacrificed is a man who decides to “liberate” a woman from herself.
“Love is the death of duty”
Maester Aemon
Now, imagine spending $15 million on a single chapter. There are productions with a similar budget per season. But GoT was different from the beginning. The locations, costumes, characters, makeup, effects… everything was plausible, but neither the Lannister money nor the Golden Company army would have helped the producers to satisfy their fans.
Bran The Broken
In the end we stayed with Bran “The Broken”, an improvised King who didn’t fight a battle and who always depended on others to survive, but significantly, he was first chosen by men and women (of his family) and not by conquest.
That was Game of Thrones, an achievement of unexpected episodes, unsuspected deaths and unpredictable betrayals.
If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.
Ramsay Bolton
Although the ending divided the audience, we must recognize that the series gave us one of the best productions in the history of television.
