I said what I said. Robb was a better commander, a better king, and honestly way more interesting to watch. Jon had the bigger story, but Robb was HIM. 🗿

"I want to break the wheel" is sometimes mistaken for having a well-thought-out political theory.

In essence, her whole claim to authority is:
I am deserving of the throne because I was born into this family.

She talks about liberating people all the time, but she also feels that she has a natural right to dominate them.

To be honest, the fact that her conclusion seemed hurried does not automatically make her prior choices seem wise.

The Targaryen leadership is not as powerful as the propaganda.

What are your thoughts?

Here are my favorite 5 among many great ones:

1. ⁠“You’re going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton. Sleep well” Sansa Stark

2. ⁠“Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me” Olenna Tyrell

3. ⁠"Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe. When people ask you what happened here, tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter came for House Frey." Arya Stark

4. ⁠“What? Now? Today? You're not going anywhere to die today. You're not going to die for quite a while." Cersei Lannister to Septa Unella

5. ⁠“No, of that(poisoning Joffrey Baratheon) I'm innocent. I'm guilty of a far more monstrous crime. I'm guilty of being a dwarf.” Tyrion Lannister

So Jaime’s character growth is probably one of the most compelling aspects of the show, but why do so many people think he should’ve killed Cersei in the end? I don’t think it fit his character at all even if it would’ve ‘completed’ his arc thematically. I think the main reason that was the expectation is because in the books he seems to start cutting Cersei out of his life in his journey to becoming the honorable man he wants to be, but I believe the outcome will be the same even in the next editions of ASOIAF, it’s almost destined to be that way imo. The only problem I have is that his return to Cersei was a bit too sudden and should’ve been more gradual.

I want to know what people mostly hate about the ending in my perspective Dany losing her main point of making people free and not be like her dad was the most disappointing thing
What are your views I want to see diff perspective (no too long paras pls)

Saw the post earlier about which death felt the saddest so it made me wonder what do y'all think about the most underwhelming death in the show. Like this guy should've died harder.

Imo it's little finger. That character had zero redemption so a slit in the throat in front of northerners didn't hit hard enough.

Whats yours?

My problem with Season 8 of Game of Thrones was never the ideas on paper. Most of the endpoints could have worked. Daenerys becoming a tyrant. Jaime dying because of Cersei. Sandor facing fire. Even tragedy as the dominant tone. None of that is inherently bad.

The real problem is that the writers stopped writing characters and started writing plot twists. They became obsessed with being unpredictable. With subversion. With “look, you didn’t expect that.” And in a show that lived and died by character logic, that obsession completely nuked the ending.

This was not a story that needed to surprise people. It needed to pay off what it spent eight seasons building.

Shock Over Character Was the Core Mistake

Plot twists matter in short stories or short shows. If you have one season, or a limited series, a big reveal at the end can carry a lot of narrative weight because there simply isn’t time for deep character development.

Game of Thrones is the opposite of that. By Season 8, these characters were deeply established. We knew how they thought, how they spoke, what they valued, and how they made decisions. At that point, characters becoming “predictable” is not a flaw. It’s the reward. It means the writing worked.

The writers treated predictability like a disease. Instead of asking “What would this character logically do,” they kept asking “What would shock the audience the most.” Those are not the same question. And Season 8 is what happens when you choose the second one every time.

Sometimes subversion works. The Hodor reveal worked because it was shocking and perfectly aligned with character and theme. It recontextualized the story without breaking it. Season 8 did the opposite. It broke characters to manufacture surprise.

Tyrion Was Turned Into an Idiot for Plot Convenience

Tyrion was one of the top three smartest characters in the show. That was his core trait. His failures came from emotional blind spots, not from basic stupidity.

Season 8 throws that away.

Putting civilians in the crypts during the Long Night is inexcusable. Tyrion knows the Night King can raise the dead. He has personally seen it. Hiding women and children in a room full of corpses is not a mistake Tyrion would ever make. That scene exists because the writers wanted zombie horror, and they were willing to lobotomize Tyrion to get it.

If Tyrion was going to fail, he should have failed despite being smart, not because he suddenly forgot how the enemy works. That’s tragedy. What we got was character assassination.

Jaime’s Arc Was Completely Thrown Away

Jaime’s story was one of the best arcs in the entire show until Season 8 undid it. He starts as a man defined entirely by Cersei. He kills a king to save a city. He loses his hand. He gets humbled. He learns honor. He leaves Cersei behind to fight for humanity against the dead. Then, at the end, he just goes back to her and dies under rubble.

That’s not tragic inevitability. That’s regression. The ending Jaime deserved is obvious. He should have been the one to kill Cersei out of love, not hatred. Seeing that she is completely unhinged and beyond reason, he does what he already did once before. He kills the ruler he loves to save everyone else.

He becomes the Kingslayer again, this time fully aware of the cost, that completes his arc.

What we got erased it.

Sandor Died for Spectacle Instead of Meaning

Sandor’s story was never really about his brother. It was about fear of fire and the small bit of humanity he found, especially through Arya. His ending should have combined those two things.

Instead of dying in a revenge fueled brawl, Sandor should have sacrificed himself to save Arya from dragonfire. Choosing to face the thing that traumatized him his entire life to protect the one person he cared about.

Fire still kills him. But this time it means something.

Daenerys Needed a Slow Burn, Not a Switch Flip

I do not have a problem with Daenerys becoming a tyrant. That was always on the table. The problem is pacing.

Missandei’s death alone is not enough to justify burning an entire city full of civilians. What we needed was a slow, uncomfortable decline across the entire season.

Paranoia as the North rejects her. Isolation as Jon’s heritage threatens her legitimacy. Advisors doubting her. Her language slowly shifting from liberation to obedience. Fear replacing love step by step.

By the time King’s Landing burns, the audience should feel dread, not confusion.

Jon Snow Became a Passenger in His Own Story

Jon’s parentage is built up for years as a world changing revelation, and it ends up barely mattering.

A better ending forces Jon into an impossible moral position. Killing Daenerys should not feel like a plot requirement. It should destroy him. Love, honor, loyalty, and identity all colliding at once.

His exile should not feel quiet or convenient. It should feel like punishment for doing the right thing in a world that does not reward morality.

Bran Becoming King Made No Sense

I’ll be blunt. Bran becoming king is ludicrous. He is detached, uninterested, and barely involved in ruling decisions.

We’re told he has the “best story,” but that’s not how power works in this world. Kings rise through loyalty, legitimacy, fear, or love. Bran has none of that.

If Bran was meant to be king, the show needed to earn it. It didn’t. Realistically, there were only two endings that worked.

Tyrion as King Would Have Been the Most Human Ending

Tyrion does not want power. He understands what power does to people and how it corrupts them. That awareness is exactly why he would have been a good ruler.

Tyrion has repeatedly shown a willingness to carry burdens he does not want for the sake of others. Making him king would not be triumphant. It would be responsibility. A reluctant acceptance of duty.

That is a very Game of Thrones ending.

Jon Snow Was the King of the People Jon was already king in practice. He was chosen by the North. Not through manipulation or bloodline politics, but because people trusted him.

If the show had committed to its own setup and made the final conflict Jon versus the Night King, his ascension would have felt earned. Not because he wanted it, but because he proved himself. Predictable? Maybe. Satisfying? Absolutely.

The Real Failure of Season 8

Season 8 didn’t fail because it was dark. It failed because it was afraid of being predictable. It prioritized shock over character. Endpoints over journeys. Subversion over payoff. It stopped trusting the characters it spent eight seasons building. Game of Thrones did not need a happier ending. It needed an honest one. One where tragedy came from choice, not convenience.

Watched a YouTube video posted by Think Story 7 years ago on how s8 should have been. I agreed with some parts but also disagreed with a lot so I refined his ideas and wrote about how it should have ended (including Aegon who allegedly didn't die during the rebellion). I’m open to what you guys think and what you could add to make it even better

EDIT: would also like to add, Aegon (young griff) would have been introduced towards the end of s4 when Tyrion kills his dad and escapes kings landing. The idea is he was allegedly swapped before the lannisters invaded kings landing by Varys who keeps in abroad in essos until he’s grown up before being brought over at the end of s4 by the golden company and hidden in westeros before eventually taking dragon stone (around s8 maybe end of s7). I wrote this at 3am and I’m very open to suggestions 😊

I just finished the show and the credits are still paused in my last tab.

I was always averse to watching it in the past because whenever the show came up people would just start talking about how horrible the ending was, which really turned me off putting 80 hours into a story that I would loathe by the ending. I changed my mind after seeing some clips of Tyrion and Bronn on YouTube without knowing they were from GOT and ended up binging the entire show in the span of like 2 or 3 weeks.

The first 5 seasons were impeccable. I have very, very few criticisms about those seasons and I loved almost every part.

Season 6 really just pry's your eyes open to how essential George Martin's books were as a trellis for the quality of writing. Jon starts to lose what made him special and turns into a walking block of plot armour, Arya forgets how to use a power she spent multiple seasons training (among also becoming impervious to stab wounds and subsequent infections from jumping into sewer water; but I digress), Bran still does jack shit with the powers of a deity, and the sly politicking that made the show more than just a fantasy war story was infantilised.

Season 7 just felt like a different story entirely. I never particularly cared for Dany's story just because she never felt like a compelling character to me being the epitome of all that is righteous and good, but she became even less compelling in this season. She starts to exhibit qualities of a mad Targaryen but her development makes zero sense when considering her actions in previous seasons. If there were inklings of ulterior motives in those earlier seasons I think I could have genuinely appreciated her volte-face as that would be an interesting writing choice, but they never did that! The plot armour of our main characters is once again exposed in the battle beyond the wall, Little Finger has such an incongruent death with his previous character establishment, and by some grace of the seven the Night King obtains industrial sized chains to heave a dead dragon from the bottom of a frozen lake. I could go on.

But season 8. I went into it with the goal of not relying upon preconceived notions that it was terrible, and I can say that I sort of enjoyed the first three episodes. They were certainly not peak GOT but they were not as horrible as people make them out to be. I have my contentions about the battle in The Long Night. It was an insane injustice that we never saw a Jon v Night King 1v1, silly that Arya snuck up on 1000 reanimated men and just 1 shots the most powerful creature in all of Westeros, the fact you can see jack shit the whole episode, and Jamie's one liner to name a few. The last 3 episodes however were all equally as horrible as one another. There is no point in kicking something that is already on the floor, so I just want to hone in on one part that specifically irritated me. Tyrion's speech in the finale.

After being imprisoned for what is assumed to be a few weeks, he is presented infront of the most powerful political figures in the country, and begins to talk about how the next king should have a nice backstory. That to me was silly enough considering the circumstances of his release at the time. He then doubles down on this idiocy by saying that we should crown a character that arguably has the least compelling story; the disabled half god who's greatest display of power was taunting Jamie Lannister with a quip he shouldn't have been able to know. My mouth was agape during this scene because I was expecting it to be Tyrion taking the piss before he was condemned to death in his eyes, but alas. I also just can't wrap my head around why they thought it would be a good idea to send Jon back to the wall when the enemy in the north had been defeated? I thought it was poetic that he was sent back, but the quality is removed when he is sent there for no reason. The fact that a dragon understands the symbolism of the iron throne better than a character defined by his honour and loyalty to righteous causes is staggering to me. Half-Targaryen half-Stark neutralises intelligence with madness. What a gargantuan fall from grace.

I have already seen some pieces of media about what makes the ending so bad and it is still somewhat hard to grasp on why. Sure some characters made some weird decisions but never anything so out of hand that made flip out about it. I just really liked how everything turned out, i couldnt have seen the story going any other way without being very lame.

My short version: Arya Stark would have died in Braavos and been replaced by another Faceless Man.

Brynden Rivers would have taken over Bran’s body and assumed his place.

Daenerys wouldn’t have saved the North; instead, she would have encountered the dead at the Trident.

Jon would have become the new Night King and opposed Daenerys.

Sansa would have remained in the Vale and waged a separate conflict against the others.

After asking you all about your most hated character during my rewatch, felt like it was only fair to flip it and ask about the most loved too.

Tormund's an easy pick for me, funny, warm, and he never has to carry the kind of moral weight half the cast does.

Jaime's the more complicated one. His arc from pure monster to someone who actually confronts his own weakness and limits is some of the best character writing the show ever did, right up until the last season (and a good part of season 7) throws most of that away.

Who's your favorite, and has anyone else had a character's arc get undone for them the way Jaime's did for me?

I hate that I watched all this trauma and death and tears, Dany’s fight for the throne, Jon finding out where he came from, all of that insanity for boring a** Bran to sit the throne. Like we went through all that?? For this????

Was it just bad writing or there was literally no one left to sort of persecute cersie for this? Biggest Rival house tyrell was erased along with her own uncle and cousin Lannisters so it's the worst kind of crime even for a society like that but hey let's crown her the queen with absolute no merit other then mother of a bastard King after he jumped from the window.

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I honestly don't get the hype around her. She's incredibly entitled and naive for most of the story. So much of her power comes from having dragons—without them, what exactly would she have done? Every time someone opposes her, her solution is basically "burn them."

And what annoys me the most is that she constantly talks about being the rightful ruler because of her name. Why? Because her father sat on the throne? That's not exactly a convincing argument.

Half the time she'll make some impulsive decision and then immediately turn to Tyrion or someone else for advice. Girl, do you have any political instincts of your own? For someone who's supposed to be a great ruler, she spends an awful lot of time relying on other people to tell her what to do.

Yes, she had a difficult life. Yes, she has some great moments. But I never saw her as the brilliant queen her fans make her out to be. To me she's an entitled conqueror with dragons, and the dragons do a lot of the heavy lifting.