I read the books after the first season came out and subsequently lost interest in the TV adaptation for a long while. As a result, I come before you in 2022 having finally watched the whole show after being pulled back in by House of the Dragon.
I have to tell you: I'm fucking mystified by the adult babies that hated this ending. It's perfectly thematically cogent and set up well in the lore, the plot of the last few seasons and even the color theory employed in S7 & S8 when everyone but John, Jaime, Brienne and Davos swap their lighter colors for ominous black. I mean, with all the "coin flip" lore about Targaryen's going apeshit periodically, and you still didn't think the lady in the Hugo Boss black leather dress who burns people to death and is increasingly single-mindedly wrapped up in her own will to power might be the baddie? In the finale, TYRION EVEN LAYS IT OUT STEP BY STEP FROM ASTAPOR TO THE PRESENT HOW SHE WOUND UP LIKE THIS. So how come all anybody could talk about in 2018 was how surprising and "poorly set up" it was that the lady who crucified people turned out to be kind of unhinged and maybe not the person you want in peacetime power? Given her path, how is it at all surprising that her last remaining close confidant getting beheaded in front of her, and that confidant's last words being the classic Mad Targaryen "Burn Them All" refrain, pushed her over the edge into flagrantly cruel madness?
This is an idea in historical and political analysis that I've long found fascinating: The people who make good revolutionaries rarely have the temperament for ruling in peacetime. It's usually best for everyone if they fuck off or get murked when the war is won. Add to that the biggest underlying creative force in Game of Thrones - fantasy trope subversion - and you have a recipe for the Good Warrior Queen who goes too far and has to be put down like a dog. Robb, Ned, John, Sansa, Bran... nobody escapes becoming a shattered-and-patched together version of themselves by the end of this. Why would Daenerys? If you were expecting this to end as anything other than the hope-tinged tragedy it ended as, you weren't paying attention and I can't comprehend why you didn't give up on the show by Season 3.
I am convinced if this hadn't come out during the Trump years, when we were all collectively dealing to various degrees with the trauma/upset of Slay Kween Hillary getting fucked out of "her turn" by Trump, people would have recognized this for the genius it is. I can only hope we get to have a re-evaluation of this show soon. Benioff and Weiss killed it, beginning to end. The only subpar thing about that final season is that The Long Night was less impressive than some of the other Battle Episodes, but that's a pretty high bar since The Battle of the Bastards is maybe best battle I've seen in visual media. I will say that I hope Martin finds a clever but equally thematically coherent way to change things up in the final books (if he ever finishes), however, only because it will be more fun for me as a reader to see a different version of the story.
10/10s for Seasons 3, 4 & 6. 9/10s for all the others. 10/10 overall. Love it!
Review by ArteetenBlockedParentSpoilers2022-10-04T20:07:00Z
I read the books after the first season came out and subsequently lost interest in the TV adaptation for a long while. As a result, I come before you in 2022 having finally watched the whole show after being pulled back in by House of the Dragon.
I have to tell you: I'm fucking mystified by the adult babies that hated this ending. It's perfectly thematically cogent and set up well in the lore, the plot of the last few seasons and even the color theory employed in S7 & S8 when everyone but John, Jaime, Brienne and Davos swap their lighter colors for ominous black. I mean, with all the "coin flip" lore about Targaryen's going apeshit periodically, and you still didn't think the lady in the Hugo Boss black leather dress who burns people to death and is increasingly single-mindedly wrapped up in her own will to power might be the baddie? In the finale, TYRION EVEN LAYS IT OUT STEP BY STEP FROM ASTAPOR TO THE PRESENT HOW SHE WOUND UP LIKE THIS. So how come all anybody could talk about in 2018 was how surprising and "poorly set up" it was that the lady who crucified people turned out to be kind of unhinged and maybe not the person you want in peacetime power? Given her path, how is it at all surprising that her last remaining close confidant getting beheaded in front of her, and that confidant's last words being the classic Mad Targaryen "Burn Them All" refrain, pushed her over the edge into flagrantly cruel madness?
This is an idea in historical and political analysis that I've long found fascinating: The people who make good revolutionaries rarely have the temperament for ruling in peacetime. It's usually best for everyone if they fuck off or get murked when the war is won. Add to that the biggest underlying creative force in Game of Thrones - fantasy trope subversion - and you have a recipe for the Good Warrior Queen who goes too far and has to be put down like a dog. Robb, Ned, John, Sansa, Bran... nobody escapes becoming a shattered-and-patched together version of themselves by the end of this. Why would Daenerys? If you were expecting this to end as anything other than the hope-tinged tragedy it ended as, you weren't paying attention and I can't comprehend why you didn't give up on the show by Season 3.
I am convinced if this hadn't come out during the Trump years, when we were all collectively dealing to various degrees with the trauma/upset of Slay Kween Hillary getting fucked out of "her turn" by Trump, people would have recognized this for the genius it is. I can only hope we get to have a re-evaluation of this show soon. Benioff and Weiss killed it, beginning to end. The only subpar thing about that final season is that The Long Night was less impressive than some of the other Battle Episodes, but that's a pretty high bar since The Battle of the Bastards is maybe best battle I've seen in visual media. I will say that I hope Martin finds a clever but equally thematically coherent way to change things up in the final books (if he ever finishes), however, only because it will be more fun for me as a reader to see a different version of the story.
10/10s for Seasons 3, 4 & 6. 9/10s for all the others. 10/10 overall. Love it!