Burning Loose Ends in the Last Season of ‘Game of Thrones’

GOT Season 8 Student Review (Spoiler Alert)

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Gazi Fuad

Tate McLean ’19, an avid ‘Game of Thrones’ viewer.

As the iconic HBO show comes to an end after eight seasons of feuds, betrayals, and dragons, students express differing opinions on how David Benioff and D.B. Weiss tie loose ends in an attempt to finish off the seemingly interminable series. As students express their disappointment in “the seasons to end all seasons,” they complain that the season in no way lived up to the hype.

First episode: lame. Bran didn’t move from his spot in the courtyard of winterfell for the entire episode….which was multiple days and nights. I figure that ‘Episode 2’ has got to be better, right? Wrong. Where’s the development? Where’s the scenery? It looks like it went with George R.R. Martin,” complained avid Game of Thrones watcher, Max Levitt ’19.

Fans also protested the scriptwriting of this season, claiming that the scripts were poorly written, the timelines not fitting in as Daenerys sped through Westeros when the same journey took a couple episodes in previous seasons. The cinematography of this season was also criticized, as students thought everything was too dark and made everything hard to see.  “’Episode 3′ comes along. The battle of winterfell. We’ve been waiting eight seasons for this battle. Eight seasons! And what is there to show for it? A black screen for an hour. I couldn’t see a thing,” said Levitt.

Another student noted that for the longest battle in television history, it did not live up to the hype and ended all too abruptly. “It was clear that the writers had to find a way to fit two wars, The Great War and The Last War, into one season, and so they decided to have perhaps the most abrupt ending to a war that I have ever seen. There was no nuance, no surrender: one kill, and the entire army went down,” said Helena Macrigiane ’19.

As students express their disappointment in “the seasons to end all seasons,” they complain that the season in no way lived up to the hype.

“This season is very unpredictable, but unpredictable in a bad way. We can’t believe that the writers are killing off characters the way that they are. At this point, who knows what the writers will do next, who they will make us dislike next,” said Tate McLean ’19.

In reaction to the last episode of the series students have engaged in heated debates over the worth of the last episode, some arguing that it was the best episode of the season, others, like Adam Israelevitz ’19 claiming that “this season has been a disaster on epic proportions.”

“The cinematography, acting, and directing are all still amazing parts of the show that serve as the backbone for the series, but the writing has fallen off a cliff this season. Character arcs have been destroyed in the name of a cool plot twist for fans. One thing the writers seem to not understand is that foreshadowing doesn’t equate to character development,” said Israelevitz.

Contrastingly, Levitt, previously a critic of the season admitted that the last episode made up for the “horrible” last five episodes.“Great redemption for the rest of the season. I think it was pretty smart what the writers did: they lowered our expectations to give us a great finale. Bravo,” said Levitt.