Academedia: Game of Thrones - The final season part 1

There's just too much that went wrong for a true postmortem to be worth the time.  To say nothing of the fact that the Youtube post-mortems (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Seth Rogan leading the high horse brigade!?!, 7, 8, 9, 10) are some of the most entertaining pop culture narrative criticisms you've ever seen.  People like to say that the rush job to finish is what compromised the product but the flaw in the season is right there in the first episode.  They want Dany to go crazy so they manufacture this idea that Sansa would somehow be openly distrustful or defiant of Dany, who at best is probably going to be her sister-in-law and at worst is the salvation of the North.  That just doesn't make any sense.  If Sansa was as politically savvy as her character arc is supposed to make her, the Littlefinger in her has to be thinking that if everything goes badly, they'll all be dead and if they aren't all dead, she'll probably owe Dany her life.  Combined with the idea that her noble brother both loves and believes in her and the undeniable truth that if Dany wins the Iron Throne Jon will probably be in King's Landing with her the rest of his life - half a moment's thought identifies that Sansa has both selfish and selfless reasons for wanting to be Dany's friend and wanting Dany to be Queen - Dany is putting conquest on hold and risking her life to defend the North and when she's gone, Sansa will be the Warden of the North and have the Queen's ear for the rest of their lives.

Honestly, if Sansa and Dany were really to meet, with or without the pretext that they were probably one day going to be family, would it really take more than a night and a couple of drinks, a mention of my psychotic brother-Viserys here, a mention of my psychotic husband Ramsey-there, oh you hate Cersei, so do I, gee maybe you do know what its like being a woman in a man's world, for these two people to become actual friends?

Of all the character in the series, they probably have the most in common.  But since the ending has already been written, the most natural of arcs between them is stifled in the crib: Sansa has to despise Dany before they even meet, because she's simply a wedge to help nudge Dany to paranoia and try and make a psychotic turn plausible.

This is where the season goes awry - not in the Long Night but in the opening moments where Weiss and Benioff decide to sacrifice any notion of nuance or a natural arc to things for the endless, mindless, inexorable drumming of the story beats.  You can almost feel a stop watch in every scene - 'okay by the 7 minute mark, Dany has to be pissed about this, and by 14 we have to make her uncertain about that...'  It's laughably forced that Dany would even care that much about what Sansa thinks when 1) she's conquered all of Essos, 2) Jon Snow has already pledged the North to her 3) there's nothing in the North that she cares about and once she leaves she's probably never coming back and 4) uhh, she still has those two fucking dragons and the biggest army in the world...But no, they dislike each other, its a thing, and it needs to be a thing because Weiss and Benioff need it to be a thing.

So, once the idea of a natural development of relationships to the end is abandoned on the alter of 'what if we did this..." everything that follows isn't stupid per se.  It's just convenient, existing not because its good or remarkable but instead because it is the easiest way to get from one place to the next - and the entire final season exists solely to satisfy the convenience of Weiss and Benioff.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than by the death of Jorah Mormont.  I hear people say things like 'well his character arc is over'.  Really?  Is that how life works?  Does Jorah wake up one night and say to himself, 'I've served Dany long enough...redeemed my father's name...I'm ready to die now'?  Redemption doesn't work that way - its a motivation for more, more courage, more dedication, more sacrifice.  His actions are the reason why Lyanna Mormont is head of their house at the ripe old age of 14 - you're telling me that a man Jorah's age could look at Lyanna and her burdens and not feel guilt or shame?  Not feel a need to serve, a passion to fight for her and his house as he did Dany?

A character arc lasts as long as a writer's dedication to his story and the story of those around them.  But as we have established, Weiss and Benioff are not dedicated to a story anymore, they are merely dedicated to THEIR ending.  And so you have Iain Glen's final baffling scenes: A seasoned military man put on the front line of a pointless cavalry charge against an unseen enemy accomplishing nothing of strategic or tactical significance. And his death there - marching into certain death for Dany without a question or a goodbye snuffed out off-screen - could have been poignant, gutting and harrowing...a clear statement of the end of plot armour...

Instead he somehow survives certain death by retreating (running?).  He alone survives and every other Dothraki dies?!?  And he survives the impossible only to again die - conveniently - at Dany's side, when every other major character survives.

It's just convenient: nothing more, nothing less.  It doesn't deserve any more analysis than that.  It could be considered stupid to dispense with one of the show's oldest characters if there was going to be some nuanced path ahead, but there wasn't going to be one.  Dany is already destined to be her father, so if anything Jorah's death has to be hastened, because his presence compromises that.

There is clearly the problem of expectation at work within the vast displeasure with the season.  Nobody is going to tell me that we were to expect "THE LONG NIGHT"TM to last just one night.  It was literally the threat that weaves its way through the entire series.  When Jaime leaves King's Landing at the end of Season 7 to head north we see snow falling.  Winter is no longer coming, it is here - the summer of ten years is at an end and a Winter that promises to be just as harsh as the Summer was pleasant is coming as far south as King's Landing.  A winter that would coincide with the march of the Dead.  That isn't a close reading of things - that's what they put on screen at the end of every single season since 2010.

So structurally the final season just doesn't square with the premise of the series: that the Game of Thrones is actually just a distraction.  We're actually telling you a zombie apocalypse story that all the characters save for Jon Snow, are ignoring.  They literally brought Jon Snow BACK FROM THE DEAD because him being the messenger of the coming apocalypse was the only chance the world had.  Only to discover that the end of Westeros and the unstoppable, supernatural, existential threat to the entire world was worthy of a total of one single episode.

But undeniably, no one can really know if this is a true ending to the show.  Not just because everyone had a horse in the race of how they wanted it to end, but ultimately because this ending is as it was always going to be: the tacked on ending to a story by people who didn't make the story.  It should and will I think be considered as significant to the story as any fanfic ending written by any fan of any story.  Weiss and Benioff are just fans of ASOIAF - fans that happened to get a very high quality televison adaptation made.  But they didn't make the story, so how seriously should you take their ending?

Instead, I want to take issue specifically with the type of contemptable inconsistency that we should all be able to agree upon has no place in a serious drama - the kind of stuff that means that we're just wasting our time watching TV.

First, there is the idea that Weiss and Benioff didn't want a 'happy' ending -- this superficial idea of subversiveness by denying us the most obvious, expected (and dare I say, earned) ending of Dany on the Iron Throne.  I can understand the desire to do something that shakes the audiences' sensibilities and I can appreciate that they thought that a truly happy ending for Dany was too simplistic a resolution to a tale woven with so much complexity and compromises along the way.  Yet for all those tacit assumptions about what made Game of Thrones great - D&D ultimately go the route of Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises and the Starks all get more or less, the happiest ending of all that were possible for them - all four of them survive.  And it would have been one thing for the family that suffered the biggest shocks to have qualitatively the happiest outcome.  But its quite another to have the final images of the series be the four of them basking in how they effectively won the Game of Thrones even though the 'super-happy-ending' is only made possible by an idea so ludicrous, it is to my mind far and away the biggest betrayal of all based on the fact that it is not an indulgence of the narrative but rather a glaring fucking black hole of logic and common sense upon which the final scenes rest.

People can debate whether Dany's turn was plausible.  I think intelligent, thoughtful watchers can debate whether the Night King's threat to the world was more of a threat than Cersei's holding of King's Landing.

People can debate whether Euron could put 3 arrows into a dragon in mid-flight or whether Dany, with 50% fewer dragons could destroy every single skorpion in King's Landing without being shot down given the fact that one skorpion can put 3 bolts into a single dragon.

But if we, as a viewing audience, as consumers of popular media, as people with even a basic understanding of characterization both fictional and non-fictional, can't agree that Jon Snow would have been torn limb from limb for killing Dany by her bloodthirsty, worshiping ministry of an army that just finished not blinking twice at drowing the streets of King's Landing in Fire and Blood TM, maybe we can't agree on anything.

Fundamental understandings of the series would have to be reconsidered for Jon Snow being spared to be plausible.  For that to be believable, it would really challenge a everything you've been led to believe about the Unsullied for 6 seasons and the Dothraki for 7 seasons.  For starters, the Dothraki would have to be largely indifferent to her - in life and in death.  The Unsullied would have to see her as a new slave master to be wholly unmoved by a desire to avenge her.  To make either army spare Jon out of some sort of practical rationalization as to their strength and numbers compared to the Westerosi or the Northmen who would take up arms against them is to cast them both as thoughtful and self-interested - something that we haven't once been led to believe.  The Unsullied are defined by one principle - faithful service to the master that they chose.  The Dothraki are defined by one principle - might and right of conquest.

Why would either of these groups regard the murder of their Queen in peaceable terms?

To say nothing of the immediate context: in case anyone thought these armies were going soft in their old age, we just saw them put a city to the sword on Dany's order.  We all know what anyone would have said of the relationship between Dany and the Dothraki and the Unsullied before "The Bells".  The Dothraki are like wildfire and the Unsullied are like a winter's famine.  Led by anyone else and they would both be a force of untold destruction whereever they went.  Dany's legend - her story, her birthright, her dragons - is the only thing in the world powerful enough to tame them.

So now D&D creates perhaps the most glaring botched writing job in the history of television - one where these armies have no problem killing citizens in a massacre for her but the man that kills her gets a pass.  Yet a bungling of this magnitude cannot simply be foisted solely upon the writing team.  No, it goes beyond the problem of bad writing - it becomes an indictment of the entire production staff - a sign of incompetence at every level of the process.

How could Kit Harrington know that his character was stabbed to death by his own men, his brothers of the Night's Watch, for saving thousands of wildlings and not think it strange that murdering Dany in cold blood would get him a reprieve from her bloodthirsty, now-wholly-untamed, armies, plural?

How would that conversation have gone: well he killed our Queen, but let's think it over...?!?

Again this isn't just a minor plot point, easily glazed over.  Jon Snow's fate represents the cornerstone pillar upon which rests the entire resolution to the Game of Thrones.  And the solution they came up with is:  Jon Snow lives, Bran gets the Iron Throne, the Dothraki and the Unsullied go away and Jon lives out his days at the Wall.

I mean - literally the only thing that would make that outcome impossible would be IF Jon Snow assassinated Dany.  And yet D&D would have you believe it was possible BECAUSE Jon Snow assassinated Dany.

It raises two simply possibilities: the writing crew were so stupid that they didn't notice or they were so indifferent that they didn't care.  But who could discern between the two possibilities, when so much of the season was defined by stupidity and indifference, all the while that D&D commended themselves on their own brilliance.

Just for fun though, let's just play out the scene now.

Scenario 1: Jon is standing in the throne room - the Iron throne is melted - blood stain on the ground - Drogon and Dany are gone - Dothraki/Unsullied guards enter - Honorable Jon says "I killed the Queen"...

I don't know what happens next but the circumstances between that moment and him being in a prison cell would have to be so spectacular that they'd at least need to be on film, no?

One unsullied (definitely not Grey Worm): We should imprison him...

Isn't the most reasonable thing that happens next to be for the 2 Unsullied soldiers standing next to that holy man to slit his cowardly throat and then hack Jon to pieces?

Scenario 2 (already highly unlikely): unsullied, dothraki and northmen soldiers enter throne room - Jon says "I killed the Queen", Arya lurking in the shadows...

Doesn't that immediately turn into a standoff where northmen, Jon and Arya have to fight unsullied and dothraki and then fight through two armies to escape?

Scenario 3 (aka how the fuck could this even happen?): Grey Worm sees Drogon fly off and enters the throne room.  Jon admits to killing the Queen.  Grey Worm considers that Drogon apparently spared Jon's life.  He decides that he is in charge and he must put Jon before the Dothraki and the Unsullied to have them decide what they should do with the Queenslayer.  He does and the two armies nearly destroy each other trying to be the one to kill Jon before Greyworm decides that Jon will be slowly chopped to pieces to satisfy the Dothraki lust for vengeance.

Simply put, it beggars belief that any set of circumstances could cause Jon Snow to live long enough to eventually be judged by the nobility of Westeros whom the Unsullied and Dothraki don't answer to and whose authority they sure as shit don't recognize.

They're the most battle tested army on the continent, in a land that they despise, full of people that they think of as weaklings and cowards, betrayed by a man that their Queen helped, with literally nothing to lose and nothing restraining them - they're suddenly afraid of Northmen that don't give a fuck about King's Landing?  Why would they answer to these strangers, many of whom they know are happy to see their Queen gone?

And it beggars belief that such a thing could just be totally glossed over when it is at odds with 1) what we know of the Dothraki, 2) what we know of the Unsullied's relationship to Dany, generally 3) what we know of Grey Worm's relationship with Dany personally and his already grief-stricken state with the loss of Missandei, 4) what we've been shown of medieval warfare in the last episode; 5) the tension between Grey Worm and Jon Snow shown moments earlier in the episode when Grey Worm is executing defeated Lannister soldiers at Dany's order (so not even a day has passed between when they would have killed each other right there and when Grey Worm has to decide Jon's fate but D&D would have us believe that some scenario or combination of events exist where Jon Snow kills Dany and Grey Worm spares Jon Snow when he has no Dany or anyone else for that matter, to take orders from).

We've seem Grey Worm slit the throats of slavers for daring to attack Dany at Mereen.  We saw Varys burned to death an episode earlier for 'betraying' her...

But the crime for KILLING HER is exile...to a place where he has friends and family...

A cynical observer would see this last turn as almost a gleeful final insult to one of the most crucial characters on the show that made them:  the Dothraki and Unsullied not avenging Dany makes it as though she really did die unloved, even by her own men.  More than anything though, it speaks to the quality chasm between ASOIAF and GOT that had been creaking open through seasons 6 & 7 only to become the Grand Canyon in Season 8.

If Martin deigned to fashion an ending such as the one we got, it would have manifested in an intricate, layered series of circumstances and interests that would lead somehow to the immensely improbable turn of Jon surviving the betrayal OR Martin would simply dispense with the character of Jon Snow as his purpose and destiny was realized in service of the story.

D&D have no sense of purpose or larger destiny, no master to serve.  All they have are plaititudes like "love is the death of duty" (lamely interpreted by them in such a heavy-handed way that they actually had to literally have someone kill someone they love for the sake of duty) save for hitting on certain pre-determined milestones - one of which clearly is Jon makes a sacrifice and returns to the desiny he was always meant to have at the Night's Watch.

And mistaking semblance for substance, as is the unifying flaw of all pseudo-creative types, it creates the semblance of a fitting conclusion to the Journey of the Starks at the expense of any modicum of common sense because 1) if Jon truly believed that what he did was right, he would be the first person to say he was prepared to die as his father, Ned had, 2) there is no point to having a Night's watch anymore and 3) even if we could accept that Dany's forces would recognize the authority of the Westerosi nobility (narrator: "they wouldn't"), it probably wouldn't go over well with the Dothraki and the Unsullied that the person who the Westerosi put on their dearly departed Queen's throne was Jon Snow's fucking crippled brother!

How exactly would Grey Worm explain that to his men and the Dothraki without getting himself killed?

unnamed Dothraki #4061 "So wait, wait, wait...He kills Khaleesi, he gets to live....AND his brother gets to be King?!?!"

The dothraki and unsullied get on their ships...They're cool with what went down...They crossed an ocean for one really special lady - faced down death itself because she said to - slaughtered a city at her command - that lady died - tough breaks, fun times.

D&D asks you to imagine a world where someone assassinates Dany and her armies are okay with the assassin's brother being the person who benefits from her death most

But to be clear: this is a masterpiece and the trouble with ending a show is that some people are never satisfied.

No, the trouble with ending a show is that some people go into it thinking that because they made 6 really good seasons and maybe 50 out of 73 really compelling episodes of television, the finale has to be a masterpiece.

Here's the thing: it doesn't.  It can be shit.  A gymnast can have a wonderful routine and fall flat on their face for the landing and it's all anyone will remember.  Game of Thrones, season 8 can be wonderful cinematography and the outline of something that could have been memorable, woven together by inconsistencies and plot choices that don't stand up to casual scrutiny and make less and less sense over time resulting in something that simply doesn't live up to the standard that they had established before and, adding on nothing of worth to what has gone before, accomplishes little more than retroactively diminishing the promise that they had built along the way.

And, as it turns out, that is how the watch is ended.

P.S.  I'm open to the opinions of others.  But to all the people who thought the finale was good or decent or even competent, my unyielding counter is this:  Literally the best actor in the series, Charles Dance, expressed his "confusion" with the ending.  That does not a masterpiece make.

Running start

Run towards the line...Be in motion by the time the pistol sounds...