Listen to JOE’s brand new Game Of Thrones reaction show, The North Awaits, with Michael Fry & Carl Kinsella right here.
“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”
That quote from the sadistic Ramsay Bolton as he tortured Theon Greyjoy is a favourite for Game of Thrones fans. It’s often tossed out when debating how the show will end, and whether the remaining characters will have any kind of happy ever after.
More important than this though, some would argue, is whether the fans get the ending that they’ve been dreaming of since the show’s first season.
With just two episodes left of HBO’s groundbreaking flagship series – based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of books by George RR Martin – the murmurs are louder than ever.
The Long Night, which was adored by some fans, simultaneously provoked enough disappointment to become the show’s second-worst rated episode on Rotten Tomatoes. Well, that was until The Last of the Starks came out a week later and overtook it, bringing the show to what some certainly consider its lowest ebb.
But there are mitigating factors to take into account. As any beloved show approaches its denouement, the stakes are at their highest. Not just on screen, but in your living room too. After all, you’ve invested all this time and all this thought, all this emotion and effort in following the journey of these characters.
It’s your fandom that the show’s creators can draw upon when they want a bigger budget from HBO. It’s public support that allows a show like Game of Thrones to thrive and take flight in the way that it has. That propels its writers and directors and actors on to bigger things. And for the most part, these relationships are reciprocal. You love the show because it’s brilliant and the show’s brilliance is facilitated by that selfsame love.
So what happens when the wheel gets broken? What happens when it doesn’t end the way you want?
Complaints that have arisen throughout Season 8 include: the darkness of the battle of Winterfell, how stupid it was for Dany and Jon to launch the Dothraki at the dead, the plot armour that seems to be protecting the main characters since Season 7, the unexpected demise of the Night King three episodes from the end, and Euron Greyjoy’s appearance from nowhere to cut the show’s dragon-count down to a lean one.
Some moments take too long. Other moments feel rushed. Not all of it makes sense. That’s the case against Game of Thrones in the briefest possible terms.
As so many of the show’s fans have rounded on their old fave, it has been noted online that it is notoriously difficult for any show to stick the landing.
Lost, for example, another hybrid of drama and mythology, absolutely came off its wheels in the final two seasons. It went back on the show-runners’ promise to leave time travel alone and featured heavily on scenes entirely set in the afterlife... question mark. Similarly, Game of Thrones can’t rely on a Sopranos’-style cliffhanger either. There are too many stories and too many strands to simply finish on Cersei diving at Jon Snow with a dagger before a cut to black. Even The Wire ran out of steam and ideas as its glittering run came to an end.
So the natural question is simple. Is there any way in which Game of Thrones can end to everyone’s mutual satisfaction?
At first glance, it would appear not.
In the two years since the penultimate season aired, and against the backdrops of a far more detailed series of books, fans have lost themselves in a world of their own theories.
There are full Reddit pages and Game of Thrones message-boards devoted to this wild speculation. Fans who think they’ve cracked the show ahead of time. Put together all the clues and come up with foolproof arguments for why Bran is the real bad guy, why Littlefinger isn’t dead after all, why the show is getting ready to introduce krakens with just minutes to go.
SPOILER: There will be no krakens.
Only for these theories, one-by-one, to shatter like a Night King stuck with a Valyrian steel dagger from someone nobody saw coming.
But Game of Thrones has defied expectations all along. In business terms, that’s the unique selling point of the show.
This is a story that geared us up for an all-out Stark-Lannister war before butchering the King in the North, his mother and his unborn Stark heir in the most brutal way. A story that raised Ned Stark up as the only man of honour in a world gone mad, only to cut his head off before the first season was out. Now, it is a story that appears to have dispatched with the show’s main enemy with three episodes to spare, leaving the show’s ending… open-ended.
With two episodes to go, many will persist with the idea that it will only “make sense” if Cersei is killed by Jaime or vice versa. Or Tyrion. Or vice versa. Wait! Or if Tyrion sits the Iron Throne. Or Jon. Or Sansa?
Fans have become bogged down in what they believe to be narratively necessary to fit their personal idea of how the show must end.
For some, the White Walkers were supposed to make it all the way to the end, with the Night King on the Iron Throne. Others base their read on the show entirely around a handful of lines about “the prince that was promised.” Fans had made assumptions about how the show will end. Game of Thrones pretty much put paid to them all when the Night King was killed by a character who had never even seen him before.
Good stories aren’t about what the listener wants to happen next. You don’t get to decide how a story ends based on how smoothly it corresponds to your own imagination. If everything goes according to plan, then it’s not a story worth telling.
In order for Game of Thrones to end well, it must catch the audience off-guard like the death of Oberyn Martell. It must make us cry like the Red Wedding. It must enthral us like the Battle of The Bastards. It must leave us in awe like The Spoils of War. And it must entertain us like it has done. Time and again.
With two episodes to go, can the show still surprise us? It wouldn’t surprise me.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
