A Game of Groans
By: Zach Ramsey
Tags: Game of Thrones, Avengers Endgame

Here there be spoilers. Turn back if thou hast not seen up to season 8 episode 4 of Game of Thrones.

I recently decided that the writers of Game of Thrones are getting lazy. While I recognize that my opinion is not beholden to the countless man hours, grueling shooting conditions, and biting cold endured by HBO’s employees, Bran’s fascination with the history of Targaryen wheelchairs speaks volumes more to my delicately entertainable sensibilities than a few (hundred) chilly cameramen ever could. In fact, I think my slowly broiling dislike of recent Game of Thrones episodes is partly fueled by the fact that they remind me a bit too much of the ten-ton clusterfuck that is today’s political landscape. But instead of talking about that, let me just explain why I don’t like this season of Game of Thrones. Nothing more. No politics here. If you don’t like that, turn back now.

Now allow me to paint a picture for you.

A cold, gray boardroom at HBO headquarters slowly fills with suits and ties and balding heads over the course of an agonizing fifteen minutes. The meeting was supposed to start twenty minutes ago. No one cares. The man at the head of the table stands and speaks into the silence, barely above a whisper; his eyes are dull and his hair is wispy, as though it’s been overly conditioned with a bottle of L’Oréal 2-in-1 every day for the 50 years since the man died.

“We should have Westeros ruled by its worst person, and kill the Night King after half an hour of screen time.”

The statement rings loud into the desperately quiet room. The suits remain silent. Surely, the man thinks, this idea will fly. The audience would love the unpredictability, would be rabid over the risky attitude, would relish their desire to tell a story at all costs. His subordinate raises his hand, almost dislodging the Ray Bans from his nose in the process. Reminder: they are indoors.

“I know we ran out of source material a while ago, but why increase the pacing? It took the Night King a thousand years to show up, how can we justify killing him off in such a short time?” In my alternate reality, people actually talk like this.

Wispy-hair-man sighs, and slams his hands down onto the solid marble tabletop. “We’ve written ourselves into a corner. We have multiple awful people in power already, everyone who wants the throne shouldn’t have it, and everyone who should have the throne doesn’t want it. With six episodes left, what the hell are we supposed to do?”

Again, silence. But this time, Ray Bans is the one to break it.

“What if Jaime pump and dumps Brienne?”

The crowd of suits rustles. A slight but pronounced murmur ripples around the table.

“And what if Daenerys drinks a Pumpkin Spice Latte?”

The murmur grows to a roar. Brilliant. Astounding. Marvelous. You’re promoted. Ray Bans takes his rightful seat at the head of the table. The protests of Wispy-hair-man are but a distant memory. His clothes are all that remain, the dust of his disintegrated corpse scattered into the stale conference room air. Half of the fandom will still be alive. The other half…

I’m certain it went something exactly like that.

But the point I’m trying to make remains. Game of Thrones is a groundbreaking show that faithfully adopted and distilled a thoroughly planned story, taking a twisted web of often hard to follow, complex lore and clarifying it for an audience trying to escape the madness of our day-to-day lives, bringing an obscure fantasy world filled with dragons and magic front and center in the pantheon of mainstream culture.

But it feels like once that story ran out before it was finished, they had nowhere to go, and fell into the trap of misinterpreting the popularity of their own brand. It seems as if the creators believed their show was popular simply because it did the unexpected, instead of because it built the context around the expected first, and subverted it later.

Ned Stark’s death, the Red Wedding, The Viper and the Mountain — these stories hit us as hard as they did not because we weren’t expecting them, but because of why we weren’t expecting them. Because we were led into the trap of loving characters who seemed too important to die, who we thought would win the day, when they were merely meant to demonstrate the cold brutality of war.

In my most humble opinion, the last few seasons haven’t demonstrated a clear understanding of that theme. The build-up has been lacking, and the payoff lacks oomph.

But wasn’t it so dope when Arya killed the Night King? Ooh, ooh, and when Jon rode the dragon, and then found out about his true heritage? Or when there were a ton of memes about how dark episode 3 was?

Point is, nothing I’m saying actually matters. Just enjoy the things you enjoy because you enjoy them. Form your own opinions, and don’t let other people’s bad attitudes prevent you from relaxing however you want, whether that’s eating a 42oz bag of Robin’s Eggs over the course of three days, or spending $67 on Avengers Endgame because four different friend groups of yours who don’t know each other all want you “come see it with us!”

Not that that happened to me. I saw it alone. Because I wanted to form my own opinion of the movie. Full circle. Thanks for reading.