Loved it to be honest, not the series on whole but this episode. Near perfect ending for me.
People are going full Star Wars on this and I think for the same reason. They had Skywalkers story mapped out in their heads and the writers decided different. Que the rage. Everyone had an opinion of what they wanted and expected for the ending of this, people got different to the picture painted in their heads and they lose the plot. Very few long running series finish to peoples hopes/picture built up. Series I've loved like Broadwalk Empire, Sopranos left me unsatisfied with the end episodes or even last series.
They have left it open nicely, they tied up what needed and can revisit this if they want. Yeah the writing doesn't make sense in places but it's a fantasy story and people pick everything apart these days. I appreciate it for the TV spectacle it was.
Can't wait to buy the box set and binge through start to finish. When you all finish going Last Jedi on the thread, calm down and rewatch this through I think it will stand up better.
9/10 for me as an ending, 7/10 for the series.
The series is literally called game of thrones, the whole premise was started off as political theatre around gaining the throne... they guy who 'won' the game, said about 5 sentences in the entire series, hadn't done anything interested in 3-4 years and wasn't even a big player before then. In terms of his 'playing the game' you could say a couple of his sentences were important but they basically picked a character who had his character traits and personality removed several seasons earlier and might be the dullest character in the whole thing.. but he won, woooo.
The only thing I think people are too hung up on and the ONLY thing the show almost did right, but in a hamfisted and stupid way, was the succession thing. People need to not care who deserved to be on the throne, deserved and heirs are pointless. Game of Thrones was about conquering. Succession doesn't mean much of anything unless everything is at perfect peace and the king dies of natural causes then goes to the next in line. However no country, land or planet in the world has to till their species is extinct follow a line of succession. If they decide inheriting the throne is bad and decide to stop simply letting first born men sit on the throne then that's fine. If someone comes along and kills Bran, they've won the throne, they've defeated armies and get to be the leader, they don't go, but were you related to someone 400 years ago who sat on the throne, its about power and armies are how you express your power.
The show even, and this is the part they got a little bit right, said that succession is bad, we need to pick a capable and right ruler rather than let a bunch of inbred twits have the throne due to who their daddy was. The bad thing they did was picked a ruler who had no experience, has essentially no personality, had changed completely, that no one knew if he was sane, crazy or could potentially be a good leader or not. "he had the best story"... because he went north of the wall and survived a fall, lol. If you're doing away with succession and picking a righteous leader which is a good thing, then turn around and say this kid has a good story but we have zero evidence he could be a good leader, lets pick him, it's absurd.
Also as they blew up succession (which is fine) and decided to vote for leaders (great) but created a situation in which they can pick terrible leaders with no way to get them off the throne... it's as bad as before. Bad leader stacks the houses and who gets the vote and votes in their son. They literally had Sam suggest a democracy, laughed at him but could have said we'll pick a new king every 10 years through vote and that would have at least somewhat really fixed the problem with people believing they had a right to the throne and starting wars over it. Instead they created a new equally bad system.
