Game of Thrones: Season 8 – Television Review

And now our watch is over. Whether you like Game of Thrones season 8, hate it, or feel like you are ambivalent about it, it's hard to deny it was a hell of a lot.

Looking back at my early reviews of the season, the word "disappointing" appears several times and, in the end, it's probably my dominant feeling with regard to season 8 in his entirety. While there have been amazing surprises (like Arya eliminating Night King), perfect fallout (Jaime Knighting Brienne), and breathtaking centerpieces (the heartbreaking destruction of King's Landing), the everything never resulted in the sum of its impressive parts – mainly because the season seemed to aim more impressive than meaningful.

Compared to the narrative festivals of Seasons 1 to 4, which were filled with fleshy character games, political maneuver and sprawling web of fascinating cities and cultures, the abbreviated season 8 closely resembles to a candy – in the immediate level of sugar, it is often fun, often hilarious and certainly dazzling (that's why I evaluated Episodes too intense a posteriori – I look at you, "The Long Night"), but when this rush is lifted, you might feel empty, and even a little sick.

I discussed my problems with Daenerys. Nel heel runs long after "The Bells" and "The Iron Throne" (though if you want to beat a dead dragon, we're unzipping it from almost every imaginable angle to the final episode of Dragons on the Wall's audio version from the episode here), but looking at Season 8 as a whole, it's clear how much of our "POV" characters have been stripped of their point of view in these last six chapters.

As I mentioned in my review of episode 5, David Benioff and Dan Weiss deliberately kept the audience away from the characters during the past two seasons , giving more value to shock us than to the construction. a coherent narrative structure. Part of that might be because, after pbading George RR Martin's novels (which literally described Jon's internal monologues, Daenerys, Cersei, Arya, Sansa, and Tyrion), perhaps they had no idea of ​​what Martin knew exactly. our heroes thought – the ultimate goal that the author wanted to achieve, without all the context that underpinned it.

But even though they had not followed Martin's plan, Benioff and Weiss were still in the heads of these characters. over the last 73 episodes, so it's hard to buy that they simply forgot how to credibly explain the motivations and inner turmoil of our protagonists – even though that often seemed the case when we watched Jon escape every opportunity to have an honest conversation with Dany or act strategically against the Night King, and see Tyrion commit a fault in his maneuvers against Cersei, while he was perfectly aware of his sister's vindictive and destructive thrust his life . (These are the same writers who have done such a thoughtful and poignant job of clarifying relationships that we have not had to explore much in books, such as those of Robert and Cersei, or Tywin and Arya, but that is also those who have completely mismanaged Dorne and the Sand Snakes, some of the most interesting characters in the novels.)

The entire Game of Thrones Season 8 is in no case a failure; Technically, this is one of the most impressive TV seasons of all time, demonstrating the kind of visual art you could only see in a multiplex. The machinery that surrounds it, from the global advertising and marketing campaign to the actual production of the actual show – which spanned several continents – created thousands of jobs and required the kind of security and secrecy that would previously existed only for the transport of royalties, was unprecedented and unprecedented. and, in this way, it is an impressive feat of which the actors, the creatives and the team should be rightly proud. Whether they ultimately agree or disagree with the fate of their characters (or that they have the material that they deserved, which many of them do not. did not), the entire cast delivered powerful, nuanced and engaging performances, reminding humanity of these characters even when they were discarded for the benefit of visual effects or shocking twists.

The entire Game of Thrones Season 8 is not a failure.

And with the growing dominance of streaming services and the shift away from weekly and linear television, it is less and less likely that we will ever see a show that can truly dominate a cultural conversation in the same way as Game of Thrones encouraged him to encourage the Internet to debate and dissect each episode in real time. It has helped connect people from different countries, break audience records for HBO and win an awesome number of awards, but none of that would matter anymore if we did not win. We had not fallen in love with these characters during season 1.

For me, the failure of the last season was not to feel much when we said goodbye to the people that we followed for a good part of the decade. I was reluctant to Jaime Lannister in season 1 to seek his redemption. Yet his disappearance alongside Cersei was barely recorded, because of the rush of his abandonment of Brienne and the fact that we had no idea of ​​Cersei's mental state. all season. Although I was relieved that all the remaining Starks came out alive, everything seemed too simple, too easy (even for Jon) – mainly because everything had been decided by a committee, probably the least spectacular way to convey informations. (Give Jon a hand-to-hand fight against the cutworm, cowards!)

It's as if the onlookers had just lost sight of the story that They were telling by choosing to focus on the show. By expanding their field of action to encompbad larger and larger battles and sets, they have moved so far away that the simple human relationships that once animated the series have completely disappeared. In previous seasons, we watched the journey of each major character unfold through their own eyes, and we listened to them expressing their desires, fears, and insecurities through intimate and meticulously stratified conversations with those around them. they are friends or enemies. .

Everything seemed way too clean, too easy (even for Jon).

When the series adapted Martin's books, we always had the emotional context for which each character considered himself the hero of his own story, even when they acted out of pride or naivety. But Game of Thrones violates Season 8's "show, do not say" scripting rule, with characters like Sam, Sansa and Varys insisting that Daenerys was just bad and Jon and Tyrion chose to defend her. was their queen and they loved her, without taking the time to properly explore what it meant, how she saw her own actions or why she had leaned against such a corner. Pivotally, we have never seen Daenerys' thought process from his own point of view, as we had had it in previous seasons, and we only saw it in the past. through the eyes of others. Cersei only counted 25 minutes on his two main villains all season, most of whom were looking out the window. The Night King only appeared in an episode after seven seasons of construction, was completely defeated and never again mentioned by name.

Cutting the crucial scenes that & # 39; We have clarified the feelings of our characters about each new twist – as Arya and Sansa's reaction to Jon's identity – the show theoretically aimed to avoid repetition without realize that the most interesting part of a revealed secret is not the secret itself. but the impact it has on those who hear it. Instead of letting the Starks digest such a seismic reconfiguration of everything that they were raised to believe in a subsequent scene, we asked Sansa to stir the pot with Tyrion, thus fully justifying paranoia and the feeling of Alienation of Daenerys.

pay attention to the emotional trajectory of their characters.

Many characters refer to crucial conversations that the public has never had the advantage of seeing with the hope that we would be able to relate the points relating to the motivations of the characters without that the show does not impose on them the work. . These breaks in continuity are even more blatant than the cups of coffee and the water bottles in the shots, because it means that the writers do not pay attention to the emotional trajectory of their characters and simply hope that we deduce their meaning on the basis of our existing attachment to these people, rather than actually gaining those moments with a careful plot.

It is said that when we asked Emilia Clarke what she would have liked to see from the end of Daenerys, she expressed the desire to see more scenes between Daenerys and Missandei. and scenes between Dany and Cersei. It is stunning to realize that these two powerful and ambitious women have barely spoken two words throughout the series, although they have clashed for two seasons – can you imagine how much he would have Was it electric to see two tyrants, absolutely convinced of their justice, facing? They were two sides of the same coin, victims of circumstances, betrayed and belittled by those they loved, attacking a world that could never accept them.

The trajectory of Daenerys was likely. to be tragic, but she was not even allowed to say one last word, hardly even a realization of Jon's ultimate betrayal – it's Cersei who received the "romantic end", dying in the arms of a man who loved him despite herself The darkest impulses, who were not willing to let the world burn, but nevertheless chose to leave it with her, rather than face to the prospect of living there without it. The truncated season was missing for these two women and the inexplicable run of Benioff and Weiss towards the finish line, but Cersei had at least years of nuanced character development before Season 8 to make it a nasty understandable, even always friendly.

But this narrative shortcut is indicative of a larger problem – that Benioff and Weiss did not seem to be so interested in the current mythology of this world, although they leaned so heavily over for several seasons, to the point that viewers feel pardoned overwhelmed by the row defeat of the king of the night, setting aside the werewolves of the Stark family (and, by extension, the power to make the war), the mysteries surrounding Azor Ahai and the forgotten face robber talents of Arya.

19659002] Battles and explosions, that's fine, but they are of interest to the audience only if we invest in the population on the ground and believe that she is really at risk. Yes, any fantastic narrative requires a suspension of disbelief, but we must adhere to the rules of a fictitious world to be able to follow it. The series has yet to adhere to its own internal logic to not undermine its story – something that Game of Thrones has often forgotten in Seasons 7 and 8 between Jaime's miraculous survival after being drowned in "The spoils of the war, "just about all POV characters Rather than asking a character if he could reasonably survive certain situations or he would behave in a specific way based on his previous experiences, writers at one point seemed to be content to ask if it would look cool. (And of course, this happened frequently.)

And although it previously seemed that Bran knew the past and occasionally knew the present as a Raven with three eyes, he finally admitted that he could see his future saying to Tyrion, "Why do you think I've gone so far?" when asked if he wanted to be king. Apart from the fact that it is only a timid, unnecessarily condescending response, it also opens up worrying implications about Bran and, as my colleague Dan Stapleton points out, fundamentally transforms Westeros in a surveillance state.

It also seems to implicate Bran as the ultimate brain of this game. Whether through cruel inaction or willful cruelty, thousands of people were slaughtered at Winterfell and King & # Landing just to pave the way for its eventual rule (many fans have pointed out, could theoretically last for thousands of years, given the average lifespan of previous three-eyed crows) . It is not so much to break the wheel as to grease it to better crush people in the millennia to come.

It would have been a much stronger message if the series had not failed on Sam's suggestion of democracy in favor of an oligarchy, given that there is no guarantee that the next generation of lords and ladies making the pickup will not be as corrupt, mercenary and interested as Joffrey or Euron. Despite the horrors of what she's been doing in search of power, Daenerys has finally failed to change much, and it's heartbreaking.

By refusing to explain the breadth of Bran's abilities, Benioff and Weiss turned him into the ultimate Deus Ex machina. Nothing in his brief appearance at the newly formed small council meeting suggests that he would be a righteous or wise (or even particularly vocal) ruler – Tyrion is basically the king of all names – and it is disturbing that its only interest is to hunt down Drogon, the Westeros equivalent of a nuclear weapon in which Bran can oppose or not, if that suits him.

And given all the conflicts and paranoia that she has caused Over the years, Jon's identity as Aegon Targaryen did not want finally say nothing. If the majority of the remaining Lords and ladies of Westeros are aware of his lineage, they certainly do not leave the weight of his weight now, and if Jon really respects his renewed wishes for Night's Watch (though, why, when there does not seem to be many brothers in black to watch him?), he will die like the last Targaryen – forgotten, like Maester Aemon. There is something very poetic about it in connection with the destruction of the iron throne – blood certainly does not allow anyone to govern.

Adequate material still has to face an obstacle between expectations and reality, and maybe I've always given the issue too much credit. Even if we want to believe that every symbol and prophecy of Game of Thrones has a significance because of the level of detail that Martin included in the design of his world, the series has never really been able to withstand the level of scrutiny which we focused on, because honestly, nothing could. After all, the central and persistent mystery of the series on the identity of Jon Snow's mother – the test that Martin put to Benioff and Weiss to prove that they are worthy to adapt his material – is the one that fans of the books have guessed long ago, well before the performance breathless, unveiled as it was a great revelation.

Like Westworld and Lost before him, we want to believe that Game of Thrones is as smart as he thinks, but for those of you for us who love theorizing about the stories we love, the collective cultural consciousness will inevitably come up with ideas much more creative and satisfying than those of an author or two animators, because we over-badyze every angle imaginable instead of just trying to tell a story .

Benioff and Weiss had no way of winning this match and I sympathize with them. But they are just as snug as Cersei by inserting most of the story, and even if we are responsible for our expectations, we are also entitled to expect more shows that have never had the opportunity to talk to their audience or privilege the show on the substance. (Remember that the show used to cut off its big battles and show us only the consequences?)

The human drama in Game of Thrones has always been more interesting than a band of people wielding swords, as impressive as it may be, the battle of the bastards was, but as the budget and popularity of the series grew, it seems that Benioff and Weiss fell into the same trap as George Lucas when he created the Star Wars prequels, believing that people were watching the ladder-dazzling rather than the complexity of his characters and their tangled loyalties.