Unfortunately I feel the same way. Haha. I was pretty irritated with this show during S7, but I felt like people still defended it to death because they were still in love with this show despite some of the nonsensical things. It wasn't until S8 that everyone finally turned at the same time. S7 had things like the adventure beyond the wall that needlessly gave the Night King the key to taking it down....when you basically have to infer your own theory as to how he would have gotten across without the dragon because it's never explained. Or things like Littlefinger's death where the show deliberately gives you false information about the sisters fighting while he spies on them and suddenly they're wise to his plans despite never showing how they figured it all out. Again you have to input your own theory about it like Bran helping them out even though he was basically a robot that didn't aid in fixing basically any of their other problems. It's all just kind of messy storytelling at best. You know what's REALLY sad is going through all of the older "theory/prediction" videos of things that made total sense and would have been completely awesome but ultimately led to absolutely nothing.
I'm still blown away by how rushed the sequence of events is in S8 E4 where the dragon gets sniped out of the sky, Missandei gets captured, Euron & Cersei talk, Dany's army shows up at King's Landing & Cersei beheads Missandei. I know the distance / travel complaint is pretty common as the show got into later seasons, but this sequence is so poorly done. It feels like all of the events transpire in real time about a mile from each other. That sequence to me SCREAMS that the creators did not give a fuck anymore and just wanted everything to be over with. It is such a shame. Totally different type of story, but the way they completely squandered such a tremendous opportunity reminds me of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy. Extremely rushed final chapter that wastes an incredible cast and absolutely top-notch production talent and logistics and turns into a silly CGI fest that loses track of almost everything important to the story up to that point. By the time you get to the final episode, it truly feels like the only things Benioff & Weiss felt were important were: 1) Being done with the show. 2 ) Getting across the point that Daenarys is BAD and we the audience are all VERY STUPID AND DUMB for ever identifying with her and liking her.
Also no one posts in the prequel or ASOIAF thread so this is still the best place to bring up anything related to the world at this point
Also also there's only been one post on GRRM's Not a Blog since July 16th and it was posted by his assistants....I'm gonna go ahead and hope that means he got on a hot streak finishing up Winds.
Seeing how things played out, it makes me think that Benioff & Weiss weren't so much in a hurry to move on to Star Wars per se, but really just to hurry up and get to that ridiculous bidding war for setting up whatever future projects they are going to make, the one that ended up with Netflix giving them a nine figure deal. The part I don't understand is why they felt they needed to rush the ending of the show...? The ratings were fantastic and I don't think they were declining. Surely they would be just as in-demand in another two years or so, plus they wouldn't be dealing with as much fan backlash from this show. My personal opinion is that they really had no idea what to do on their own with the story and the characters once they ran out of book material, and also that they couldn't find a good way to hit the major plot points about where the story was supposed to go handed down from GRRM so they basically just threw in the towel, said "here you go" and filmed the shortest, quickest version while hitting those beats.
It really is frustrating to think about how perfect the last two seasons could have been if done right. Someone brought up the idea of them turning the show over to someone else after Season 4 and honestly that probably would have been for the best. I wish they had done so (with GRRMs grace of course). I do hope this gets redone in 20 years or so. Some network or service will know if they pour money in and do it right, it’ll have a built in audience.
Season 8 is marathoning now. Episode 2 is still really really good, minus the rushing through Jaime's return and trial. The Long Night is pretty good even with the lighting issues TBH. And it does seem better lit than it did on premier night in general.
Kit confirms Jon went to live with the free folk. I thought it was obvious but I know there was still a lot of debate about that.
Yeah I saw that, thought it was a nice touch. In the end he just didn’t want to deal with being around the kingdoms after all the bullshit he went through. It’s kinda dumb he didn’t just stick around to be a Kingd guard to Bran tho lol. Everyone that knew his lineage at that point wasn’t gonna speak up about it.