Originally Posted by
Adam Allen
Awright, so first I want to point out a couple of things I thought were done really well from this last season, to make clear I'm not just jumping on a bandwagon of complaint, or dismissing this season out of hand as not being as good as the previous:
One was Theon's return to defend Winterfell against the Night King's army, and the way the Starks received him for it. Sansa's embracing him and Bran's thanking him, saying he was a good man and was "home" were I thought emotionally powerful moments, and probably the most human either of those characters felt this season. And it was a fantastic ending to Theon's redemption arc. You almost couldn't really mourn his dying in the battle, because he was dying as a hero, a human, a Stark, an Ironborn ... you know, instead of as Reek, or any of the many worse ways he could have died, previously.
Another thing done really well was Brienne's standing and speaking up for Jaime, when he would otherwise likely have been executed, and later his knighting her. Both were well acted and written moments, and both felt organic to me ... these moments felt like a realistic evolution of the individual characters, and of their complex and complicated relationships with one another. From where they began as enemies with nothing but contempt for one another, I felt like these moments showed how their shared respect for honor and duty brought them as close to one another as either character is capable of being. It was really just very well done.
But, secondly, I want to also point out that I do not dislike the ending of the series just because it's not the fairy-tale ending I would have hoped for the characters I like. Even before the Night King had an ice dragon all his own, I really felt like we the audience should not feel surprised or cheated if the last season was all the characters being sequentially killed off as the Night King's army swept through Westeros, with the series finale being their taking King's Landing, an army of the undead staring across the Narrow Sea, having killed every living thing on the one side, already. The army of the undead had been shown as unbeatable, as only growing stronger with every battle, so how should we have not seen that coming, if it were the end that was written? Not what we would have wanted surely, but consistent to the last, it would have been.
So no, I'm not unhappy that my favorite characters did not get a happily-ever-after ending.
That said, Dany's turning all Mad Queen was super abrupt and not well executed, at all. It was not consistent to even this one season, let alone to her series-wide character arc. Likewise Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Jaime, Cersei and more just behaved in arbitrary and inconsistent ways that certainly served to wrap up all the narratives quickly and neatly, but unfortunately did not do justice to the characters as they had been previously established.
Yeah, it definitely could have been worse. It just could have been a whole lot better, too. We're all entitled to like what we like of course, but I don't think there's any justification to suggest that fans who have been with the series from start are just complaining arbitrarily or dishonestly. We're complaining because the series really has dropped off quite a bit in quality.