Back to Westeros
That's right, I wartched all eight @#$%ing seasons
Few weeks back, I gave an extended rant on why “Game of Thrones” was still one of my favorite shows. But I wrote that thesis without having gone back and watching the show since it ended.
Since then, I’ve gone ahead and binged all eight seasons.
(spoilers ahoy)
TL;DR? About what I thought first time around. First four seasons are an amazing ride, the ride starts to slow for seasons five and six, then seven & eight pass in more of a blur. Beats start to repeat, characters become more inconsistent. Still think the latter seasons aren’t as bad as people give it shit for.
And when the show has a great moment, which it does have, even in the maligned final season, there’s almost nothing better.
One big complaint about the latter seasons was the time compression. I actually was less annoyed this time around. There are a few examples where it could’ve been more elegant, but really, the compression wasn’t that different from say, the first season, when in one scene we learn the king is coming to Winterfell, then the next scene is a hard cut to them arriving weeks later.
Another big bitch was that the nighttime battle with the dead at Winterfell was too dark to watch properly. First time I saw it was on a 1080p plasma TV, streaming from HBO Max, and it was tough to watch. This time, I watched 4K blu-rays on a 4K TV, with every light in the house off, in the dark of night. There were a few moments that weren’t easy on the eyes, but it felt intentional, rather than the dark muddled mess I originally saw. So that improved.
There’s still stuff that doesn’t quite work storywise, and it’s tough to justify it, even when I want to.
The madness of Queen Dani is among the hardest to justify.
Not the idea of it, but the execution. The idea is great. Dani’s sanity slowly slipping, while her advisors, the people we’ve come to love and trust for eight seasons, whisper and scheme behind her back. The tragic Westeros cycle repeats, despite everyone’s best attempts to stop it.
But Dani suddenly deciding to torch the citizens of Kings Landing goes against everything we’ve seen about her. It’s more like a wrestling turn than the subtle descents into mundane evil we’ve seen with other characters over eight seasons. I can see her doing blowing up the Red Keep and killing Cersei - the rest, while visually amazing, and hits at the 9/11 memories really hard, doesn’t really feel like the Dani they’ve built up.
One thing I did like more this time around - the whole series, there’s been this notion that things would get better if only this happened; if the right king is chosen, if this evil person is killed, if the seven kingdoms are united. In the end, our heroes have become the bosses of Westeros, but the Small Council is full of members with no experience running a country (Sam the Archmaester did like a few months’ training tops at the Citadel). The country is more divided than ever, now split between the Six Kingdoms and The North. A dragon roams the world, untethered. The Unsullied army prowls the seas, having taken up their dead queen’s mission of “freeing the people everywhere,” which seems incredibly likely to bring them right back into conflict with Westeros. And Jon Snow has turned his back on the Night’s Watch, to go live beyond the Wall with Wildlings. First time I saw it, it felt suspiciously like a happy ending. Second time, it feels a little more like what we’re used to: Westeros in yet another tenuous situation that cannot hold, but probably will keep loping on for a few years, til the next terrible thing happens. Still kind of a happy, all loose ends tied up ending, but this time, it felt more correct.
And, I have to admit, I think it would have been cooler if Littlefinger had lived to fight another day, going on to be king of Slavers Bay or something across the sea, showing how petty evil continues to permeate the world.
So, big question, is the series still one of my favorites?
Yup.
Still.
(BTW, apropos of nothing, one of my absolute favorite unproven theories about “Thrones” is that the planet that Westeros is on used to have two moons, and one of them randomly exploded, throwing the world into its wonky multi-year weather pattern. It only got mentioned once in the series, maybe once or twice in the books, but it’s one of those details I love about the material.)
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