LIFE UPDATE: We negotiated the house and are currently waiting to close, which may be as soon as the end of this week. I am going to be spending a lot of time packing/cleaning/adulting for the next few weeks, so expect a lot of checkdowns at best.

I might fill this space with Game of Thrones opinions in detail later, I’m going to bed late now. the TL;DR – I think they rushed the final seasons and took away a lot of what made the show work, but they could have messed it up far worse and ultimately the end wasn’t that awful. If you think this is one of the worst endings to a TV show ever you must not watch a lot of TV. It was okay for the corner they painted themselves into.

This is a safe space for GoT opinions, feel free to discuss your thoughts here. If you hate or don’t care about the show, let the nerds have their fun and don’t be that “I DONT CARE ABOUT THIS” guy. Nobody likes that guy.

EDIT: Longer thoughts-, and spoilers, but if you still care about that after the biggest TV show in history ended I don’t know what to tell you.
I think pretty much every problem with the final 2 seasons had to do with the speed in which they wrapped it up. GoT was a show that thrived on slowness, where you could take time to appreciate each move and change and how it affected all characters. It felt like we had zero time to breathe, and every scene felt like it had to advance the plot significantly. We didn’t get the small moments, outside episode 2, which was coincidentally my favorite of the last season.

I would have preferred two full seasons. I wish season 7 had focused very much on the white walkers and resolved that plotline with the long night at the end. The white walkers are kind of boring and a bit too fantasy for this story. Finishing them off then and then spending season 8 being devoted to Cersei’s undoing and Dany’s descent into tyrant would have given each plot a more satisfying amount of time to conclude. As it stands Cersei did absolutely nothing for two seasons because she already had her climax in S6 and was waiting around to die. But seeing her slowly lose control would have been nice instead of one moment at the end. Dany’s descent was probably my favorite part and to me made total sense, but it was still so fast that she went from savior to dragon hitler in the span of maybe 1 episode. Some more time devoted to seeing her suffer more and more isolation to make her heel turn feel earned would have been appreciated.

I hated Ayra this season. It felt like her arc was over when she gave up being a faceless man and rejoined her family. When she decided to fight for the living, that felt like the end of her story. Having her kill the Night King was the most irritated I’ve been at the show. It might be symbolically her really turning away from death by killing the leader of the dead, but she didn’t deserve that moment. Jon or Dany did. Jon’s entire fucking story was about the wall, the walkers, and the true threat to Westeros while everyone else prattled about in King’s Landing. His entire arc was leading to that night, and he spends most of it being useless. Arya didn’t even know the white walkers existed until like, last season, why does she get the final blow? That’s a bad subversion of expectations. Even Dany getting the killing strike made way more sense narratively. Dany killing the night king then falling from grace would have made her even more tragic. If Ayra killing the night’s king was one of the plot points GRRM told the producers had to happen, they did a poor job setting it up imo.

Bran being king is fine, but would have been great if he was like, at all useful. He’s been fucking weird and useless with no insight into his character. He just sits around doing jack shit. What’s he seeing? What’s he thinkin bout? No clue. At least now Westeros will be wheelchair accessible. In fact, it’ll be easy to add ramps as they rebuild everything. Huh, maybe Bran knew this was the only way. HE PLAYED US ALL.

I love Davos and I am happy he lived. He was my favorite character in the books and while his show character was a bit different, I loved him just as much. I want a show of Grumpy Grandpa Davos.

Drogon melting the throne ruled. I also liked Jon’s ending. He belongs beyond the wall. He found himself there and now he’s free. I wish he had chosen that route himself instead of being banished there, but I’ll take it. Putting Jon on the throne would have been to fanservicey. Jon deserves to do the Westeros equivalent of going into the west. Why did Ayra do that? Why is she suddenly interested in exploring the sunset sea? Ayra was not well executed this season. Also Euron sucked.

Overall, it was a mediocre end to an outstanding show. The production values, acting, music, all of it remained top notch. I think once the dust settles a bit and we can look back on things more critically instead of with HYPERBOLE OMG WORST ENDING EVER, time will be relatively kind to it and the impact it’s made cannot be overstated. Most people seem to agree the plot and story wasn’t a huge problem, just the pace in which it was executed ruining a lot of the impact. That’s on the producers, who turned down full seasons from HBO to finish it fast.

I find it ironic that GRRM gets a ton of flack for not writing fast enough (He doesn’t owe you shit) and the showrunners are now getting flack for finishing too quickly. Neither version of this story is perfect, nor will it be. I think people holding onto hope that the books will magically fix these issues are setting themselves up for a different disappointment. The books aren’t perfect. They will make some aspects better, but I doubt GRRM will magically wrap things up right compared to the show. I think GRRM is more in love with the world he has created than the story within it he was telling, and I don’t actually want him to finish the books that much. I think years of angry nerds yelling at him to has probably ruined his desire to finish them, and I wouldn’t want him to force it because that won’t be as good. Stephen King forced the end of the Dark Tower series when he got panicked about his mortality and that series ended pretty poorly. If all GRRM wants to do now is side stories or spin offs, I’d be okay with that, because his world is very interesting. At least I got some sort of ending thanks to HBO, and the journey is the fun part.

I’d also be okay if he just shitposts about football for the rest of his life and the entitled nerds never get what they want.