For seven seasons, Game of Thrones was the hottest thing on television. George R. R. Martin and HBO’s cocktail of brutal violence, political intrigue, frequent nudity, and dragons saw it continually breaking viewing records and scoring award after award.
Hopes were incredibly high in 2019 for the eighth and final season, which should have been a surefire home run. However, as the six episodes aired, fans began to realize something had gone horribly wrong. Plot developments simply didn’t make sense, the geography suddenly felt broken, one episode was so dark many viewers couldn’t even see what was happening, and the fates of fan favorite characters were met with widespread vitriol.
One cast member has admitted he sensed that it might not please everyone as soon as he saw the scripts. Jacob Anderson, who played Greyworm in six seasons of the show, opened up about his misgivings in an interview with PopSugar.
“I remember when I first got the scripts for that final season, I was like, ‘There’s something kind of punk about this season. It feels risky. And I feel like it was kind of fun. I enjoyed it and it was fun to make. It was full on, but it was fun to make,”
He went on to admit that he predicted it wouldn’t go down well with fans, but was still surprised by the anger it generated:
“We were filming for 11 months in the snow and there were thousands and thousands of people worked so hard on [the final season]. And then for it to just, when it came out for people to just straight up be like, ‘You need to remake this. This is terrible. This is the worst thing ever.’ It was a little bit sad. But to be honest, I expected people to not like it, even though I liked it. I thought people were going to be annoyed by things.”
The franchise’s reputation has been somewhat redeemed by the excellent first season of House of the Dragon, which reminded us all how gripping and exciting Westeros can be. Even so, Game of Thrones season eight has now gone down in television history as a cautionary tale, and proof that no matter how much goodwill you’ve built up with an audience, they will turn on you in a heartbeat if you screw up.
Game of Thrones is available to stream on HBO Max.