We’ve witnessed some truly spectacular series finales over the past 10 years – Breaking Bad, Mad Men… Lost? – but few have divided opinion quite like Game of Thrones.
The HBO fantasy drama made the contentious decision to truncate its final two seasons, resulting in a total episode count of 13 – as opposed to the usual lot of 20 – to properly conclude one of the most ambitious TV shows of the modern era. And sure enough, if season 7 felt rushed, the eighth and final season whizzed past at breakneck speed.
Cities collapsed, dynasties fell, and beloved characters were brushed aside in favor of the core storyline. And yet, according to Isaac Hempstead-Wright, it was nigh on certain that Game of Thrones season 8 would split its viewers right down the middle.
Not everyone will be happy. It’s so difficult to finish a series as popular as this without pissing some people off. I don’t think anybody will think it’s predictable and that’s as much as you can hope for. People are going to be angry. There’s going to be a lot of broken hearts. It’s ‘bittersweet,’ exactly as [saga author] George R.R. Martin intended. It’s a fitting conclusion to this epic saga.
Perhaps it’s really what George R.R. Martin would have wanted? The celebrated author is not one to mollycoddle his characters; if anything, he revels in their despair, and the suffering of his impassioned followers. Nevertheless, ever since HBO’s Game of Thrones came to a close, Martin has hinted that his literary finale will be somewhat different from the TV show.
He’s still got two books to finish – “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring” – with the former expected sometime next year. Of course, it’s impossible to know exactly what George R.R. Martin is plotting, but we can at the very least expect a more thorough conclusion to A Song of Ice and Fire.