I Re-Watched ‘Game of Thrones’ in its Entirety for the First Time Since it Concluded
The most popular show of the 2010s concluded more than five years ago with a very divisive ending. I re-watched the show from start to finish for the first time since then and came back with conclusions.
I’ll start at the end — Game of Thrones was and remained my favorite TV series of all time. Many people had issues with the ending of the show, but as reflected in my other articles, I always found the ending to be very fitting and even a brilliant conclusion to such an epic story. But re-watching the show only strengthened that feeling, as seeing the story full from start to finish made me appreciate the mastery of the storytelling of the show even more.
Knowing how things end up, watching the show becomes arguably even more fun than watching it the first few times. Many details in the ending are directly connected to things from the early seasons, and watching all the foreshadowing and all the buildup to the conclusion of the story is very satisfying, and makes you appreciate the ending even more. We have to keep in mind that showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss had 5 complete books from the A Song of Ice and Fire series to base the early seasons of the show around and also were provided a detailed outline of the remainder of the show by author George R. R. Martin, so the entire story was compiled in their heads from the get-go, hence they had the ability to plan everything ahead and construct the story aimed at the planned conclusion, and it really shows when watching the show from start to finish knowing how things end up.
When watching the show as a whole, you learn to appreciate the story as a whole, and not to separate it into “This season covers books x through y” etc. The show gets plenty of criticism for its deviations from the source material from season 5 and onwards, but if you just think how enormous this story is, it’s pretty easy to realise a lot needed to be altered to fit the TV medium, and Benioff & Weiss managed to do so while preserving the original essence of Martin’s creation, keeping the story well constructed and coherent, and keeping dozens of millions of viewers satisfied, and not only a handful of hard-core followers that wanted it to be a page-to-page adaptation of the novels. Would a 4-season page-to-page adaptation of Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons really work on the TV medium, for millions of viewers? While I enjoyed all the books and didn’t agree with some of the changes Benioff & Weiss made for the show as well, I can see why a lot had to be cut, since things don’t work the same in books as in television. Can you imagine Feast or Dance being closely adapted? I think the show would have witnessed more audience departures than The Walking Dead did during the later seasons. Considering they knew the ending from the start and the huge amount of details you have to alter just from omitting one storyline if you want to reach the same final goal as the books, I believe it was overall for the best, and indeed the story didn’t collapse under their hands, and they managed to race it to a meaningful conclusion.
The fact that the show is consisting of so many different characters in different locations, with different story arcs that all eventually intertwine with each other only adds to the re-watchability factor of the show as a whole. You have so many different types of plots, sometimes in different overall genres and such a large variety of types of characters that it’s hard to get bored like you get sometimes if you watch the same linear story over and over again. The show became famous for the habit of pulling the rug underneath our feet, and even if you know what’s coming when you watch the show again, sometimes it’s even more fun to anticipate these huge turning points and to pay attention to everything that leads there.
The internet and social media for sure played an integral part in the whole hate-bandwagon that was generated around the show’s final season. The expectations from the season were impossible to meet to begin with, and as every good writer would have done, Benioff & Weiss decided to stay true to their vision and the story and made unconventional choices regarding the plot — choices that met with disdain by some of the viewers later on. George R. R. Martin’s silence didn’t help either, while a lot of the divisive plot points of the ending presumably came from his original plan, yet he let the writers take all the blame without any attempt to calm the waters.
To be honest, I find it amazing that a show of this kind became as popular as it did in the first place. I guess it was due to the incredible production values, the articulate writing, the amazing acting by the cast, and the constant shocking moments the show provided along the way. Also, the fact that the show consists of so many well-written characters, in a way that everyone can find someone to relate to or to be a fan of, while hating or simply being indifferent to the rest. For another person, it could be exactly the opposite. But for me, it feels like this type of story was never meant to be as popular as it ended up being. When looking at the story of the show from start to finish, I think this type of subversive storytelling that goes against all possible tropes and challenges the viewer at every turn, especially at the ending, is not something the general audience would usually be attracted to. This comes to a demonstration in the reaction to the final season, that many people deemed as “irrational” and “going against the true nature of the characters”. I see this type of claim as a lack of attention to detail, or simply the result of following a complicated story like that on a 10-weeks-per-year basis instead of diving into the complexities of it rigorously. Or alternatively, just surrendering to your own head-canons or giving up to simple theory baiting.
Take Jon Snow for example. According to a lot of viewers, Jon was well positioned to become the King of the Seven Kingdoms after his reveal as Aegon Targaryen, the Song of Ice and Fire, and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. But ultimately, Jon being a Targaryen was a curse. It ruined his relationship with Daenerys and pushed her to the dark side, which led to the destruction of King’s Landing, the Iron Throne, and the Targaryen dynasty. In other more conventional fantasy stories, a secret identity such as this would bring a character new powers or glory, ultimately resulting in a cathartic triumph in the end. Here, it ruined this character’s life. In my opinion, it’s completely in line with Martin’s subversive style. At the beginning of the story, Jon always felt cursed by being a bastard and wanted to know who his mother was. When he finally finds out about his mother and that he is not really a bastard — it ruins his life. In addition to that, in the end, after rescuing the Seven Kingdoms from total annihilation and an endless night, Jon was not given the crown or the glory he might have been given in a more conventional fantasy story. Instead of being cheered at as a hero for all he has done for the realm, his slaying of the Queen will forever tarnish his name, and he was ingloriously banished to exile in the Real North, going against usual tropes of a “main hero” of a story.
Meanwhile, in choosing Bran as the one ruling the Six Kingdoms, replacing the centuries-long Iron Throne monarchy, the characters of the show try to truly break the wheel, once and for all. Heritage and war bravery will no longer determine who will rule over the people — but someone of their own kind, a story they could connect to. Bran was a perfect choice for this status since he can serve as a myth — a boy who got crippled at a young age and wasn’t held to as high expectations as his siblings ever since. He knows the history of everyone and everything, and he overcame his disability in the best way that he could — ascending to the very top. Surely a story that could inspire younger generations in Westeros, and make them connect or even believe in their ruler, rather than just accept him for being a part of the right family. Or a war hero.
Arya Stark’s story, as another example, has always evolved around the subject of vengeance and death. But the most pivotal part of her arc came in the penultimate episode of the show, where she and the Hound came to King’s Landing, each one of them to enact their revenge. Arya saw how vengeance consumed Sandor during his entire life, which later on got him killed fighting his brother. As Sandor pleaded with her, she chose not to pursue vengeance anymore and retreated back from the Red Keep, shifting her mission from killing to trying to save as many people as she could during the carnage in the streets. I’m sure many viewers would have loved to see her completing her list, killing Cersei and everyone else that was left, but that would have seriously defeated the purpose of what her arc intended to be. Instead, she chose the more peaceful approach, realised she’s not just fighting for herself anymore, and went to explore what’s west of Westeros.
It seems like for a lot of viewers, Jon was “destined” to slay the Night King himself and end the Long Night. But what the show offered was a much more logical conclusion, that stayed true to the nature of the characters and made sense in the grand scheme of things. In fact, Jon did end the Great War. Yeah, Arya gave the final blow. But Jon united the North and the Wildlings, gathered Daenerys’ Dragons and armies to join the Free Folk, arranged the entire defence of the North, and led the battle, right until the big victory. In the meantime, eventually, all of Arya’s training back from season 1 accumulated during that battle with the Army of the Dead. Who is a better option to slay the Night King than someone who was trained to be a Faceless Assassin? Arya managed to stealthily make her way through the Army of the Dead, sneak through the White Walkers’ officers, and get close enough to the Night King in order to kill him. Since she caught him off-guard, the rest was rather easy, and even a fight was not necessary.
That might be a little disappointing, spectacle-wise, for a lot of viewers. I also wanted to see some White Walkers action during the Long Night, and a 1v1 battle between Jon and the Night King would be the ultimate fan service. But strategy-wise — why would they ever allow that to happen? The way the Walkers’ and the Night King’s demise happened in the show is, at least in my opinion, the most logical way possible, and yet it even managed to be unexpected. Like in many scenarios before, the show opted to go with the more reasonable and realistic approach, rather than giving the audience what they wanted to see. In my view, it was a brilliant way to subvert the viewers’ expectations while still keeping everything logical and being respectful to all the background stories of the involved characters.
Daenerys is another good example. Dany’s end put the audience in the role of the accomplice. It told us that maybe this world is broken, but we are not just naive and good-hearted bystanders; we are those who made this world broken, by ignoring flaws in the leaders we follow, by blindly supporting those who maybe don’t always deserve that support, because we make excuses for bad acts when it’s convenient. In the final episode of the show, she said that she will make a good world because she knows what is good. And the others? “They don’t get to choose”. The key point is that her arbitrary judgement allows her to completely decide on a group being good or evil without appropriate justification, and perhaps even decide they are worthy of death without said justification. The central tension within Dany has always been between her instinct and her better judgement. Her instinct is to act swiftly and without mercy against those who question her authority and those who betray her. The more tempered and reasoned alternative often comes from her advisors who remind her that it is in her own best interest to hold at bay and try to build bridges, even with her enemies. When she has lost everything, and with everything that happened during the final episodes happening so quickly and overwhelmingly, this temperament was diluted, and all that remained was her twisted sense of judgement — and a lot of viewers found that hard to buy into after they were rooting for her for so long.
One last example would be Jaime & Cersei, and how their story ended . A common complaint was that Jaime returning to Cersei in the penultimate episode of the show broke his character’s “redemption arc”, and that was not in line with what his character became in the later seasons of the show. While by the end of the show Jaime is certainly not the man he was at the very beginning, and he managed to mostly redeem his dishonorable image he gained during his career as a warrior and Kingslayer, I do believe Jaime’s care for the innocents or otherwise is getting a little bit exaggerated by his fans and general viewers alike. “We are the only ones that matter”, he used to tell Cersei repeatedly throughout the show. While by the end of the story on a general basis he wouldn’t go on doing horrible things to innocent people, like some might think he would do back as Season 1 Jaime, and despite the fact he did fight for the greater good when it didn’t contradict his other principles, when it comes to his family he would do whatever it takes to protect them and be with them.
“She is hateful, and so am I”, he says regarding Cersei in a declaration of self-loathing in one of the final episodes, understanding that no matter how badly he will try, he will never get over Cersei and will never leave her toxic grasp. He loves Cersei and always loved her, and thinking he will abandon her and their unborn child and leave them to die just because he became a “better person” never really set right with me. The penultimate episode of the show features the tragic ending to Cersei’s and Jaime’s love story, as their empire crumbles on top of their heads. Their death scene presented one additional way the final season sucker-punched the viewers with feelings they never expected to have. I’m sure many bloodthirsty viewers were fantasizing about Cersei dying in some horrible way, but the writers somehow managed to make her death scene rather sympathetic, perhaps even sad — while on the other hand, one episode later, a hero like Daenerys Targaryen dies so ingloriously.
One of the main things the final season did was to make us look back at things we thought we knew about all the characters we’ve been following for years and look at them in an entirely new context and perspective. It is actually mighty impressive how much foreshadowing we got in the earlier seasons — things that were right in front of our eyes but we preferred to interpret in a way that was more comfortable for us back then. That’s exactly one of the reasons re-watching the show is so enjoyable. You see how every small detail in the story ultimately had a role to play in the endgame. It was all there! But when the norm is to opt for the “bad writing” argument, I imagine it is much easier for people to face the several unconventional decisions the writers made in the final season with that state of mind instead of inspecting how differently we should have interpreted everything in the first place.
It seems like in order to satisfy the general audience, the writers were needed to opt for the familiar and conventionally satisfying tropes. The conclusion Benioff & Weiss chose for the show is a one that might have worked better for a smaller-scaled-audience show where said audience keeps attention to detail and over-analyses every single scene and every single line of dialogue (shows like Better Call Saul or Succession spring to mind). But once the show became the most popular phenomenon of the 2010s, it seems you can’t really aim for the approach that requires a really high level of attention to detail, awareness, memory of past events, and comprehension of every single piece of the puzzle of the story, without upsetting a huge chunk of the audience.
In the period of time of re-watching the show, I had a conversation with someone who gave me a new angle on the whole GoT vs. ASoIaF debacle. This person is not aware of any of the fandom drama taking place on social media, nor did he ever read the books or have any intention of reading them. Furthermore, he has not the slightest idea where the show departed from the books, which season is based on what book, and what is a show-original story arc, what came from the books, or what was dropped from the books. According to him, he views the show as one big story, beginning with Season 1 and ending with Season 8, telling the story of the War for the Throne and hadn’t noticed any change in quality during the show’s run, maybe besides even an improvement during the later seasons. This made me realize that many, if not most of the general audience, has no idea which seasons are based on the books (and therefore are “good” according to internet narrative) and which are not (hence they are “bad”). Most viewers just watch the show as any other show, telling a story from start to finish, without trying to pseudo-analyze what is good and what is not solely based on the fact it was based on Martin’s books or not.
After watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy lately, I realized this is exactly the type of ending most people wanted for GoT as well. A very tidy ending that wraps everything up perfectly (in terms of conventional storytelling). While it worked brilliantly in the context of the LotR story, I don’t see how something like that would have fitted the GoT franchise, as GoT established itself during its 8-season run as the antithesis of conventional storytelling. Shifting the story in the end to become such would have completely betrayed the nature of the story — which is one of the reasons I love the conclusion so much, especially after a re-watch.
So, how come the ending of the show is so consensually hated in pop culture? Well, I think I’ve said everything that needed to be said to answer that question. The show ended pretty much every single storyline in the most subversive way possible, against what most of the audience predicted, wanted, or wished for — and a lot of people don’t connect to this type of storytelling. And also, let’s not forget that the internet hate-bandwagon trend of “Season 8 bad” swept all social media like a storm, making it very fun to align with but additionally kind of ruins the fun for everyone watching the show and sinning by actually enjoying it.
In fact, I think Game of Thrones is one of the most complex and sophisticated works of fiction we have received in the last century. You can find many discussions of various subjects regarding the show in my other articles, but there are many things that I’m not very apt to put into words and that other people can do much better than me. When watching the show from start to finish, knowing how everything ended , it is really easy to understand why things wrapped up as they did, accepting that the show never intended to give the audience what they wanted, but give us the most realistic, original, and groundbreaking outcome, how it would have played out in reality and not on a Hollywood-ic fantasy epic. But assuming 90% of the audience watched an episode a week during 10 weeks a year and then just waited 42 weeks for the next season to drop, forgetting most of the finer details in the meantime, makes it very easy to see why the ending didn’t pass through smoothly to most of the audience and why it was so controversial. A binge watch might certainly help. I hope we can reach a time when people make mature analyses of the show just like they do for other masterpiece television such as Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Succession, and so on. Maybe one day.
I think the success of the show speaks for itself — the countless awards, high acclaim from casual viewers and critics alike, the major fan following, its influences on the television landscape and on culture in general, etc. etc. In my personal opinion, it’s the greatest television series ever made, but generally speaking, I think it’s safe to say this show will be remembered for a long time as one of the greatest cinematic works ever produced. I always loved the ending of Game of Thrones, but re-watching the show only made me appreciate the ending more and see how everything was foreshadowed all along. Every single nuance in the earlier seasons came to fruition in the end, and the story was well calculated every step of the way. Adapting A Song of Ice and Fire is not an easy task, especially when it is not finished, but Benioff & Weiss chose carefully what to include and what to drop and how to craft their story heading toward the planned ending. On additional viewing, Game of Thrones remains a cinematic masterpiece, a high literature piece of writing, and one of the greatest accomplishments in storytelling in the TV medium, and actually, in any medium available to enjoy. I will definitely return for another re-watch, even sooner rather than later.
And no matter what anyone says — the final scene will always make me teary-eyed. What a journey.
