To say that Game of Thrones has been a cultural phenomenon at this point would be putting it lightly. Some people may have been fans of this franchise because of the original “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series, but many people like myself jumped on board with the show, and since then we’ve all been hooked. This has been such an incredible series, and so it was a little bittersweet when it was first announced that season 8 would be the final season of the show. This is one of my favorite shows of all time, so I was always going to be sad about it ending, but at the same time I’m happy to see it end conclusively and not drag on until people are sick of it like some shows end up doing. Season 8 was promised to be the culmination of everything we’ve seen up to this point, and the closure that all of us wanted.

Season 8 was a long time in the making, debuting almost two whole years after season 7. In this time, many of the fans have taken to throwing out their wildest theories on how everything was going to end. Needless to say, I don’t want to spoil that satisfaction of experiencing the end for yourself, so I won’t mention anything that happens in this review. Rather, I’ll be talking vaguely, since people that have watched it will know what I’m alluding to anyway. The basic gist of season 8 is that there are two final battles to be fought: one with the white walkers, and one final fight for the Iron Throne. There really isn’t that much story left to tell here, so the season is condensed into 6 big episodes.

My feelings towards the final season of Game of Thrones seem to be different from the majority (or, the vocal minority at least), so let me say that common consensus seems to be that this final season was disappointing. While I’m not going to say that this season was my favorite one or anything (that honor goes to season 4), I also think that reactions towards this season have been a little…dramatic, to say the least. I’m not sure what people were expecting to happen this season, because in my eyes things played out exactly how I would have expected them to.

I’ve struggled to find many legitimate complaints against the season. Most of the hatred I’ve seen for it has revolved around either things not going the way people expected them to (I saw someone online actually complain that the showrunners didn’t follow the fan theories), or just general nitpicks. There was a Starbucks coffee cup seen in the background of one of the episodes, and you would’ve thought that someone killed a child with how crazy the internet reacted to it.

The main complaints I’ve really seen are that the writing was poor and that the season was rushed. I wholeheartedly disagree with the first point. In the second to last episode, one of the characters has a major breaking point, and some people felt like the actions that followed were so out of character. However, something like this has literally been being established since season 1, and subtle changes/evolutions were made in the character all throughout the series to get them to that point. This kind of thing felt more like people being upset that things didn’t go the way they wanted them to, and so they jump to the excuse of poor writing.

As for the season feeling rushed…well, I disagree, but I think this point is potentially a little more valid. I’m not going to begrudge anyone for feeling this way, but I also think that people need to remember that there was barely any story left to tell here. People seemed to think that so many minor things in the show’s lore were going to be addressed here, but really the season was always just going to focus on the two things mentioned earlier: fighting the white walkers, and fighting for the throne. As far as those two main stories are concerned, I felt like the show handled these points with care and didn’t really rush to the finish line at all. From my perspective, seasons 7 and 8 were kind of two parts of a larger whole for these storylines, and so season 7 really gave the build-up for it all. Season 8 is just here to serve as the climax and pay-off, and I think it mostly does well with that.

Of course, I do need to talk about the finale for a second here. Did the show deliver a satisfactory ending? Well…mostly. I thought that most of the characters got a pretty fitting ending for their arcs, and so I was mostly pretty happy with how everything turned out. Without spoiling anything, the two characters who I was most disappointed with were Jon and Bran. These two just didn’t have a satisfying ending for me. What happens to them makes sense in the context of the world’s rules and everything, but from a storytelling perspective I just thought it was really disappointing to see what happens with them. This was probably the biggest let-down of the final season for me, because otherwise I was pretty happy with it.

Listen, I think everyone is entitled to their opinions, so if you didn’t like the final season then I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong for it. But at the same time, I really did enjoy it still, and I can be pretty critical of things I love. So, part of me feels that part of the disappointment for fans simply came from unrealistic expectations. I sympathize with the showrunners, because it’s an extremely difficult task to end an epic story like this, and I don’t feel like any result would have satisfied everybody. I don’t think that this was the best season, and I also don’t feel like there was no room for improvement. However, in the end, I’m happy with the final season of this show. It’s hard to say goodbye to it because of how much I love it, but I’m glad that the show delivered a final season that I can be happy about.

4/5