Mad Max Fury Road. They defeat the tyrant, and get the control of the water valves. Then they open the valves and seemingly keep them open. One problem, how long is the water reservoir gonna last now?
Logan’s Run. The city dwellers are freed from the computer’s iron-fisted rule, and Carrousel. But their city is in ruins, and thinks to the computer providing everything. They don’t know how to live without it. The city dwellers are going to start dying off real fast.
“Who has a better story than Bran the Broken? Let’s make him king!”
Okay, not happy in the moment, but it was supposed to be. I’m still mad about it. Of all the shows I’ve re-marathoned, I’ve never even been tempted to redo GoT. It was like S8 was so bad it went back in time and ruined the entire rest of the show. I can’t even entertain watching any spinoffs.
I may buy the rest of the series as novels (ha) but even then it will be with trepidation.
Thinking back on that series, I’m still kind of amazed at what we witnessed with S8. Not the season itself, obviously, but the phenomenon of it.
GoT was a huge fandom. Everybody was talking about it, for years. People were fuckin’ naming their kids after those characters.
And then S8 happened and the whole thing was just gone. That entire enormous fandom erased more or less overnight. A moment of confused outage and then… silence.
I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.
Well they went off piste! Until then they had been in or close to the track that George RR Martin had laid out.
It’s called …ahem… subverting expectations.
So, working backwards, thirdly, the books are excellent. The first three are by far the best and cover up to season 3/4ish. The next two are good, but also different. The show also really starts to diverge so kinda up to season 6, but only in the broadest sense.
In either case if you’re going to read the books, read them all for full background. If course we’re still waiting on at least 2 more new books, sooooooo you might be waiting a while/forever.
Second. The House of the Dragon TV series. I was also hesitant to watch it, but it really is great. It’s not perfect, but if all we ever got was this one good season, I’d be happy. If season two ends up sucking, bummer, but at least we had one good one.
And firstly. King Bran. The biggest issue with Season 8 is that it just rushes to the ending. Bran has the best story? He is a weird raven character now. What does that mean? Who understands what that means? What did he actually do? What about Meera?
But what if we knew more about this three eyed raven character? What if we understood their goals? What if they foresaw the events of the series? What if they caused, or guided them? Hodor’s purpose was to eventually save Bran. To do that Bran would have to make Hodor, Hodor. What if he helped ensure other events also took place? What if Bran being “King” was a setup from the beginning?
If all that is properly explained, I don’t really have an issue with King Bran.
Of course that only explains it for the viewer. To King’s Landing Bran is just some weird kid.
So let’s change Bran’s role slightly. The White Walkers are going to attack. The only way to win is with a united Seven Kingdoms. By the time Dany arrives the kingdom is largely united. However Dany has dragons. Can Bran convince Dany to give everything up and focus on the White Walkers? We see hints of this in the show. If the White Walker threat isn’t fixed in one episode, what happens?
There are multiple seasons of story, and that’s just Bran.
They key points of the show can still work (some of them at least), but they need time. Think of the Red Wedding. Arya’s seasons long journey is nearly at an end. Caitlyn and her negotiating is paying off. Robb is about to achieve victory. Three seasons of setup, executed perfectly.
Realistically, looking back, season 8 was never going to be able to wrap things up. Even less so with a reduced last season.
The show runners fucked up and they fucked up big time.
Excellent analysis!
I did read the books on the original series. I have but haven’t yet read some of the others (I have at least one audiobook that was free at the time). I absolutely loved them, after sitting in shock as one “main character” after another was killed in a horrible and tragic way. I had gone in cold, and did not realize that GRRM took the authorial advice to “kill your darlings” quite so literally.”
I didn’t get into them until the pentology was finished, and I remember wondering to myself “Who the hell does he finish this? He’s introduced a major new plot line on the third book (maybe it was the Dorne subplot) and new, major characters kept popping up. I had no idea how he was going to start tying everything together, because even the last book had not started winding things down quite - the tensions were still building. It felt like he was painting himself into a corner while doing the floor like the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Given the pace of subsequent development, I think I may have been just a bit right on that. I’ve done it to myself and recognize the symptoms.
I appreciate House of the Dragon being good. The problem is that S1 was also good. The problem is in the prequel-ness itself. I know that it all ends with Dany going inexplicably insane and Jamie’s arc goes from scoundrel to hero to … whatever the hell that was. I know the complex plot lines they’re setting up will never be closed. If GRRM ever finishes the book (I’m certainly not expecting two) and winds things down properly, I might again feel invested enough in the universe to try the other stories set in it, but right now it might have just ended with “and then Ned woke up and realized it was all a dream.”
Lastly, you raise a good point and that would have at least maybe delivered some interest. I can’t see anything but civil war with Bran as the bored and incapable god-emperor facing a Stark-Lannister alliance or something. The problem is that the most central and intriguing plot lines were left hanging or ended in the fastest and worst way possible.
“Dany forgot about the Black Fleet?” A queen capable of bringing her people from the literal point of extinction to conquering the known world, with a team of advisors and tacticians forgetting about a major armed force whose betrayal and push for conquest was well known? That’s like “The President of the United States forgot they were at war with China who had dispatched their fleet to attack Washington.” And then to have a ballista, fired from the pitching deck of a sailing ship, and hitting not only a moving target but a flying one? No one in history has ever shot a ballista at a moving flying target, to my knowledge, then pull in the wind and the waves.
I really only picked on Bran in particular because that was the ending-ending. From top to bottom it was absolutely terrible with every authorial decision worse than the last.
Like I said, I think GRRM painted himself into a corner. I think he gets some of the blame, because the show runners are obviously nowhere in the league of GRRM when it comes to story creation, and I don’t know how involved he was at that point. I don’t know if he skimmed a paragraph and signed off or what. Honestly, I don’t think even George knows how to finish his story because he kept adding one more thing. He’s a mature writer and gifted author, but I don’t have a competing hypothesis right now.
I do blame the showrunners for deliberately turning out an absolute piece of crap just to finish the thing even after being offered additional seasons by HBO. It was the worst example of deus ex machina I’ve ever seen.
This. Exactly this.
If you watch, binge, all seasons se08 becomes more logical. There are small markers all over the series predicting it all. I didn’t pickup those at first (weekly) watch.
I say more logical, not logical.
Se01-se06 are still TV magic. Se07 (dany’s attack on the lannister convoy comes to mind) still is good and se08 just speed runs everything.
I still think that was their only true mistake: speed running the season. It gave us everything we wanted. But in such a way nobody could enjoy it all. Jaime finally becoming true good only to return to his true love? (some very powerful acting there) Check. The long night? Check. End of the night king? Check. Ice dragon? Check. Arya voyage finally given meaning? Check. Jorahs redemption? Check. Cleganebowl? Check. Cersei dies? Check. Return of the mad
kingqueen? Check. Theon’s redemption? Check. Destruction of kings landing? Check. Etc etc etc. It ticks all the boxes and more you didn’t even know they existed. It’s just that it ticks them in such an insane speed which results in gaps in the storytelling. Gaps of which some are filled if you binge it all but most will not.Se08 had to be 2 seasons. Season 8, ending with the long night, se09, the fall of the red keep.
Yes, the 2nd dragon had to die for the sake of the story. Missandei had to die to cement Cersei being the baddest cruel removed and complete dany’s arc to insanity. But like this? That was stuff for an entire episode. Not the final three minutes of one.
You listed a lot of things that were foreshadowed largely in the books. I felt that the dialogue just about immediately fell off as soon as they ran out of book. Everyone felt very much on their own “tracks” and did not veer past that starting immediately with how they dealt with Jon just…coming back at the start of the season. Characters started teleporting wherever they needed to be, and episodes started feeling a lot more like a poor combination of big budget action scenes and desperate attempts to connect those by having two characters talk at each other alone in a room.
I feel like Jaime’s failed redemption arc was missing something (maybe a couple books worth of further development and foreshadowing?) and the whole Bran debacle felt like it was really supposed to be something and they just “kind of forgot” to ever actually set it up.
I think there are some good reasons GRRM has had such trouble finishing the series and the show runners just never even noticed and steamrolled straight to the end.
It’s a beast to wrap up and hit all those notes and do it before the heat death of the universe. That’s why we haven’t gotten a book in a decade, and likely never will again.
The hubris to think you can do it in eight episodes of television? Unimaginable.
Yea I heard that was the crazy plan… then D&d said, we can do it in 6, cuz we gotta hurry up and get over to this little project called star wars