And then Thrones did itself no favors by deciding that, like, the solution to every complex statecraft problem was to let the Starks handle everything.Īs for those queens… well, Cersei didn’t have anything to do this season, which strikes me as the one complete failure of imagination.
All great fun to read, and I don’t think any TV series about killing a dragon with a giant crossbow can fully sustain this kind of analysis. Every possibly -ismatic framework has been glued onto Game of Thrones, a whole symbiotic lit-pile of deep readings into the gender politics, the racial stereotyping, the portrait of liberation philosophy edging into fascism, its portrait of religious zealotry. And the gradual global rise of Dany and the Stark children fed, I think, into a particularly millennial feeling of ascension, of young people rising up to change the world. You didn’t have to squint to see the Army of the Dead as a symbol of climate change, though specifically the kind of climate change you could kill with a cool battle scene. It became a generational phenomenon, uniting viewers in a shared symbolic perspective of the world. It had some very good seasons and then a couple of indifferent seasons leading up to an ending that felt more dutiful than inspired. It had its ups, its downs, its transcendent moments, its miserable phases: a lot to take in, or an unusual definition of “okay.” The show was beloved enough to be criticized by everyone for something, and unique enough to create a whole new shared cultural language. And then they seemed to just throw up their hands and let actor Pilou Asbæk have some fun, making Euron the last person in Westeros who seemed remotely happy to be here.Īm I being too mean? Am I being too nice? It’s hard for me, in the shadow of the series finale, to conjure up much ice or fire for the vast expanse of Game of Thrones. They initially tried to adapt the books’ version of Euron Greyjoy, a looming pantheistic menace. Game of Thrones will be remembered for its ornate decade-long narrative - and yet the best flourishes I’ll associate with Benioff and Weiss feel impulsive, even self-immolating. And Benioff and Weiss seemed willing to make a little room for pleasant surprises, like Bella Ramsey’s Lyanna Mormont, a scene-stealer who slayed a giant. If you were born at the right moment, you followed the Harry Potter heroes from prepubescence into British drinking age, and then tagged along with the Thrones kids from their teenage wasteland into twentysomething political prominence. That decision alone gave Thrones added potency as it went along. They cast child actors who grew into compelling adults, especially Turner and Williams. But you learn to laugh about it, like most viewers learned to laugh whenever a journey on Game of Thrones took a whole season, like those same viewers learned to laugh again when the continent shrunk in season 7 and everyone started teleporting between cities.īut credit Benioff and Weiss as producers. (This is why Game of Thrones was especially beloved by people who think art should be enjoyed like sports.) There are annoying people on every season of reality television, human beings whose mere presence on camera can feel like an assault on good taste. The source material was literary and the drama’s intentions were epic, but its success reflected the instincts of reality TV, a competition culture that inspires engagement toward an endgame: the final Rose Ceremony, the Head of Household competition, whoever will finally sit upon the Iron Throne. You could play the game of thrones along at home, rooting for certain characters and families, preferring one ongoing story arc over another. Actually, the imperfections of Thrones deepened the fandom, I think. And none of this mattered when the show was really going: when Thrones hit its stride in its relentless third and fourth seasons, or when it threw its whole narrative chessboard out the window next to poor Tommen at the end of season 6.