Cooper Hendricks
Staff Writer
(Warning! This article contains Game of Thrones spoilers!)
Game of Thrones was a legendary show and was full of violence, magic, dragons, and twists and turns that made the world of fantasy seem much closer to home. Its final episode which aired on Sunday, May 19.
Now, granted, I haven’t watched every episode of the series, but I’ve learned about as much as I could have about George R.R. Martin’s vast world. Having learned as much as I possibly can about his writing style and way that he does things in his stories, and the ending to the show made absolutely no sense.
I strongly disliked the story decisions by the writers D.B Weiss and David Benioff in this season because it was more of just finishing off characters rather than giving them worthwhile endings to their story arcs.
Even some of the actors, Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) and Kit Harrington (Jon Snow) have expressed their unhappiness with the final season. They openly criticized it, albeit jokingly, but they expressed their criticism nonetheless. Not only the actors, but over a million people signed an online petition demanding that HBO remake the final season.
First off, the most glaring and undeniably questionable choice in the series is Bran Stark. They made Bran, the Three-Eyed Raven, the character who has almost one line per episode, the King of the “6 Kingdoms” because of course, the North is now it’s own free land. Bran is an extremely powerful magic user. He can warg, which is the ability to move one’s consciousness to an animal, as well as see images of the future and see the past in clear unfractured visions. To be fair, Bran is extremely intelligent and would have served a more useful position on the Small Council in King’s Landing. Him being the King of the seven kingdoms is just lazy and makes little to no sense.
Then, of course, comes the death of Daenerys Targaryen. I’ve loved Dany’s story, mainly because of the fact that it took place in Essos instead of Westeros. (Essos being the other major land continent in Game of Thrones.) Dany always had this powerful figure to her, she stood for freedom from the millennia-old Slavers in southeastern Essos. But for some great reason, they decided that her character should now burn residents of King’s landing to nothing more than piles of ash and bone. All because her friend Missandei was killed by Cersei. So, of course, everyone’s new favorite Targaryen, Jon Snow is told by several people to kill Dany. Which makes sense, but what doesn’t is Dany’s instantaneous change from “Breaker of Chains” to crazed dragon lady. She’s lost much more before the final battle at King's Landing. Her former husband Khal Drogo died, most of her close followers were killed early on. I just don’t think that the deaths of Jorah and Missandei really pushed her over the edge to insanity. Dany’s storyline was just disappointing in the end.
