The Failure of Game of Thrones Season 8... 5 Years Later

The fact that the kid who won the game of thrones isn't one of the characters you talk about says a lot about the show 😂

Theres something almost poetic about season 8, the show runners fast tracked everything so they could go off and make a Star Wars movie despite HBO begging them not to do this. They did it anyway and everyone hated the season. Disney ended up not making their Star Wars movie partly because of the reaction season 8 got. They wanted it all and lost it all.

Jamie sacrificing himself to protect Bran and kill the night king would have been great. Him going back to Cersei to do anything but kill her is also terrible.

I love that all the clips from season 8 are so dark that even on a phone with the brightness cranked all the way up, they’re almost impossible to see. Such a reflection of the season overall

The best of Daenerys in the last two seasons was her outfits.

My biggest problem with Cersei is that it made no sense why anyone would follow her after season 5. She had no money, she had no legitimacy to the throne, everyone knew she was an idiot, King’s Landing was starving, and she was exposed by the walk of shame. It made no sense that a 2nd riot of King’s Landing didn’t happen.

It makes no sense for Littlefinger to give Sansa away to the Boltons. He wants their eventual defeat, so why give the object of his obsession away permanently?

Jaime killing the Night King would have been the ultimate completion of his entire story. He saves Bran, he fully regains his honor, and his title of Kingslayer is now his greatest triumph instead of his greatest shame. Maybe even allowing for a new position in the King's guard where one member wears a golden hand and that member is meant to be the only one who can strike the king if he becomes corrupt or mad. But at the cost of their life

jaime killing the night king? for generations after, people spoke of his nickname "kingslayer" with pride instead of revulsion.

"Best season ever?" Emilia Clarke

What you've forgot to mention about Cersei is A) the Maggie the Frog prophecy also mentioned that she's to be killed through the hand of her "valonqar" - which she translates with "small brother" but is simply "younger brother". She believes that Tyrion, the physically "small" brother, who has also "killed" their mother, is going to kill her. That's why she hates him so much. But Jaime is also her younger brother, she was born before him, and it was a fan favourite theory that it means that Jaime is the one to kill Cersei. Unfortunately, in the show they butchered this plotline completely. B) in the show, she is portrayed to be saddened by the death of her baby with Robert, however in the books she admits to Ned that she willingly killed the baby she had with Robert because she simply didn't want to have a child with him. I think that is a very important point to mention. Because it shows her character.

Recently rewatched all 8 seasons with my 17 year-old daughter. She loved it for the most part but by the end she said it "basically became a marvel movie". And I think that sums the show up quite nicely.

One of the weirdest decisions DnD made was to make it so that Jon didn’t want to rule. In the books, he wants that so bad. He was so close to accepting Stannis’ offer to legitimize him and become the Stark of Winterfell and the struggle between his personal desire to get the recognition he’s always wanted against the duty he has to the Wall and the Watch is so interesting.

Arya killing the Night King is the moment I knew this show was beyond saving. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so empty watching a show as in that moment. Everything that followed after was just whatever to me

I work in special effects and worked on Episode Three of Season 8. It was a brutal night shoot in a freezing quarry in northern Ireland, and even though I only filmed essentially half the episode for the six weeks I was there, I got to see the scale of this production up close. I had a great time with the cast and crew and wasn't aware at the time of how the rest of the season would pan out (I agree that it was poor) due to filming out of sequence and periodically intense scenes which take ages to shoot. My very first night shoot was filming Daenerys and Jura's last stand against the White Walkers. All the smoke swirling and blowing around them as they fight was my work as I stood on a large wind machine, blowing Artem smoke at them. It was freezing cold as the rotors sucked in already freezing air past me, chilling it almost to the point of pain! I was there when the Walkers first attack the front line, throwing in hands of soil as the characters fight the walkers (all the stuff flying past camera that looks like blood and guts in that fight scene is just plain old soil!) The best memory I have of this was sheltering in the far corner of the gigantic green screen quarry, huddled over a smoke machines as the Dothraki have their swords lit of fire. It was pitch black, about four am, with real wind and rain howling around the set, when out of the darkness the leading White Walkers in full makeup and costume slowly surrounded me as they prepared to come on for their next scene. I was half asleep when they did this and got the shock of my life when they slowly surrounded me, leaping up in fright! They all had a good laugh about that. Good memories but a shame the end result was so frustrating.

My theory always was thar after Cerse's 3 kids die, she and Jamie have another, a daughter. She dies during childbirth, bring truth to the prophecy that a younger, more beautiful queen will strike her down. She never had anything to fear, all of the pain she suffered and people she killed was for nothing.

Jaime saying that he does not care about the innocent people sounds like something you would come up with if someone tasks you with writing the most out of character line possible for this character. The equivalent would be something like Dany saying that she plans to enslave everyone (which she honestly came pretty close to), Jon wanting to make an alliance with the Night King in order to bring eternal night to Westeros or Arya saying that she wants to marry Joffrey, be his queen and have many children together.

There's no way it has been 5 years already!

Just a 4th option for Daenarys going mad I've been pondering. Playing into Drogon being the most difficult to control, in such a populated city, she loses control. Her choice is not burning the city to the ground, it is LETTING it be burned to the ground, doing nothing to stop it and accepting it as the only way.

Jaime is the most egregious to me, because like you explained in the video, his arc was basically complete. Him killing the Night King would’ve been great, but not necessary. But for him to completely 180 from having broken his Kingsguard oath in order to save millions of lives to then say “I never cared about the innocents” is a straight-up butchering of his character. He could have still gone back to Cersei. But the framing didn’t need to be “she’s hateful and so am I” - he could have simply told Brienne “she’s my sister. I love her,” and possibly even a call back to a quote he said early on in the series, “we don’t choose whom we love.” This makes Brienne’s weeping afterward more in character because it’s not that he’s leaving Brienne, but she’s heartbroken because she realizes Jaime can’t love her and never will. Honestly I think Jaime would be #1 most done dirty on my list.