Here’s a spoiler for you: Try as you might, you can’t please everyone.
It’s something that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have learned the hard way, as the final season of the pop culture phenomenon has infuriated and disappointed legions of fans and critics around the world.
In fact, so many people were upset by the final season that over a million viewers signed an online petition calling for HBO to remake all six episodes with different storylines and a new team of writers.
So what does the cast of Game of Thrones think about all this? Well, Isaac Hempstead Wright, who plays the newest king of Westeros, Bran Stark, told The Hollywood Reporter that he for one thought the petition was absurd.
“I saw today there’s a petition to redo the ending […] It’s just absurd. I can’t even fathom it. […] It’s ridiculous that people think they can just demand a different ending because they don’t like it.”
Hempstead Wright admitted that he took the petition personally, in part because he just doesn’t agree with people who think the final season was bad.
“What people were hoping for is an Avengers-esque thing where all the superpowers are explained and everybody comes together and there’s a big team effort. Game of Thrones isn’t like that. It’s unpredictable by nature. […] In my opinion, it’s a great ending […] I don’t think it’s some plot twist to be shocking for the sake of shocking. I think it’s a genuine character development.”
In fact, he thinks people getting angry at the ending is just further proof of how good the show was.
“The fact that characters are not doing what people want them to do? It’s a good thing. The fact that people are getting pissed off and having a big emotional response? That’s the reason why Game of Thrones is successful. It doesn’t do what everyone wants them to do.”
Of course, the interview with Hempstead Wright was published before the season finale aired on Sunday, May 19. At the time the petition was created, fans were still infuriated over the events of the show’s penultimate episode, “The Bells,” which saw fan favorite Daenerys Targaryen go completely mental and mass-murder tens if not hundreds of thousands of people for what seemed like no good reason.
The finale, though, has by and large received kinder critical and fan reviews. Though it didn’t fully satisfy everyone, the death of Daenerys at Jon Snow’s hand, and the subsequent crowning of Bran the Three-Eyed Raven as king of the Six Kingdoms was met more with resigned shrugs than blinding rage.
And at least Benioff and Weiss wrote and directed the finale themselves, making sure that the final responsibility for bringing the series home rested on the right shoulders. After all, as Ned taught Bran way back in the series premiere,
“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”
So while it’s true that few fans got everything they wanted out of the finale, the fact that nobody’s completely satisfied might actually be a good thing. Just ask Tyrion:
“No one is very happy, which means it’s a good compromise I suppose.”
Indeed, the last episode of Game of Thrones took some interesting turns and placed power into the hands of a few unexpected people. It also gave the members of the Stark family a relatively happy ending, something nobody could have expected after all the losses they suffered in previous seasons.
And the divisive final season doesn’t change the fact that so many people genuinely love the show, or that Thrones will go down in history as one of the most popular television series of this generation.
As the new king of Westeros said,
“If people really, really hate this season? Then so be it. But it’s been seven or eight years of absolutely brilliant television that captivated the world […] I think people will remember it as a fabulous journey to have been a part of, no matter their opinion on the ending.”
Watch the video to see how the GoT star slams the fan petition for a Season 8 remake!
#GameOfThrones #GOT #GameOfThronesFinale