After eight years of regaling audiences with the action-packed stories of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO’s flagship show Game of Thrones finally came to an explosive end. Fans of the popular fantasy epic were stunned by the series finale — and not in the good way. A whole year after the series wrapped for good, GoT viewers are still holding a grudge.
GoT had a number of important storylines that flowed into each other over the course of its eight seasons, and the finale episode had the Herculean task of wrapping up each character arc neatly and sensibly. If you ask fans, showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss dropped the ball. Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) was killed by her boyfriend/nephew — yeah, that’s still weird — Jon Snow (Kit Harington), who self-exiled to the Wall. Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) became the queen in the North, and Arya (Maisie Williams) set sail for adventures beyond Westeros.
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And, most offensively of all, Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) somehow landed the coveted gig of the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms despite not doing a damn thing all season.
Today marks one year since the disastrous series finale, and GoT fans are reminiscing over the events that closed out the beloved show. By “reminiscing,” I mean that many of them are either still raging over how it all went down in Westeros.
Game of Thrones ended one year ago today.
— 100T NoahJ456 (@NoahJ456) May 19, 2020
I still can't believe they ruined one of the best TV shows of all time with that ending.
What a shame. pic.twitter.com/UG8MV9VJaO
Lots happening these days but it’s important to not forget that Game of Thrones had such an awful final season that one of the biggest cultural touchstones of the last decade was almost immediately erased from the public discourse https://t.co/7S6zuOsyK5
— Galen Bacharier (@galenbacharier) May 19, 2020
It was They couldn’t
— Камилла 🇩🇪 (@starkshyung) May 19, 2020
a poem Read it #GameOfThrones pic.twitter.com/ufCaU0jHgo
This day last year, we were watching the #GameofThrones finale.
— Luvvie is currently writing book 2 (@Luvvie) May 19, 2020
I'm still mad about that ending. pic.twitter.com/UPdCIzftNI
Now that it has been one year since #GameOfThrones has ended, Kit Harington gave us the most accurate description of the show’s ending & legacy... pic.twitter.com/C4cvvMyqvW
— Jon Stormborn (@LanaAlwaysQueen) May 19, 2020
Carice van Houten (the prophesying Red Witch Melisandre) personally "loved the ending" and thinks fans may be acting "a bit ungrateful."
"The fact that some people were so disappointed is because everything before that was so good," she told EW of the finale. "You’ve had such great times and then yeah, you’re going to be disappointed because it’s not going to go exactly how you anticipated. Of course, you’re going to have all sorts of criticisms and I just thought it was a sign of how good the show was."
Even if we wanted to forget what happened, we can't — the image of Jon weeping over Daenerys's lifeless body is forever engrained in our collective memory. The final chapter of GoT brought in 19.3 million viewers, marking a series high for the show, but the last episode is widely considered its worst; Rotten Tomatoes gave it a low 56%.
Creators Weiss and Benioff had the opportunity to redeem themselves and the legacy of GoT with a prequel called Bloodmoon that cast Naomi Watts as an affluent Westeros socialite. The project was canned in favor of House of the Dragon, a series that focuses on House Targaryen and the series of unfortunate events that led them to become the outsiders of the Seven Kingdoms 300 years later. House of the Dragon is slated to air on HBO in 2022.
GoT may have not ended the way that we wanted to — justice for Brienne! — but at least we'll have a new George R.R. Martin storyline to obsess over sooner than later. Until then, at least we have the first seven seasons. As for season eight...that's one thing North doesn't remember.
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