Why The Ending Of Game of Thrones Didn’t Work
Transcript: The following video essay contains spoilers for the Game of Thrones TV show and the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels.
Valar morghulis, dear friends!
Game of Thrones premiered in April 2011. The show was created by David Benioff and DB Weiss for HBO. It was based upon the successful high fantasy novel series ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ by American author and screenwriter George R. R. Martin.
The show was an immediate popular and critical success for eight seasons until its end in May 2019. Game of Thrones drew in over ten million viewers per episode not including the millions who were estimated to be watching the show illegally.
There is no doubt that Game of Thrones was a decade defining, game-changing show. Just look at the shows being produced today. I don’t think that Netflix’s ‘Shadow and Bone’, Amazon Prime’s ‘Wheel of Time’, or even ‘The Witcher’ would have ever got further than the pitch meeting if it weren’t for the success of Game of Thrones.
By its final season, HBO spent roughly $15million per episode making it the most expensive TV show of all time. Game of Thrones also proved that subscription TV services could compete with the big boy Hollywood production companies in terms of scope and quality.
But to say the show’s finale was widely regarded as a flop is an understatement. I’ve never seen a show disappear from the zeitgeist so fast. I still see more ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘The Wire’ memes around even though those shows ended years before Game of Thrones.
Even now it’s remarkably absent from public cultural discourse despite its obvious success, merit, and impact.
Many were disappointed by how the show ended, myself included, but I don’t think a lot of people understand why it failed so spectacularly. If you’re interested in storytelling Game of Thrones is worth looking into as a cautionary tale.
To understand the problems with the Game of Thrones finale, we must first consider the Hero’s Journey story structure. This deserves another video all to itself — but [very] briefly, the Hero’s Journey goes as follows…
The main character of a story receives a ‘call to adventure’, in other words a reason they can no longer live their ordinary life anymore. The main character — also known as the protagonist — then sets out on that adventure where they are thwarted at first but ultimately triumph against whatever is standing in their way or stopping them from achieving their aims, goals, or heart’s desire. They then return to their old life and either they or the world they inhabit are permanently changed — usually for the better.
Some narratologists, people who study story structure, believe that every story complies to this structure whether the author, screenwriter, or bard was conscious of it or not.
At the beginning of Game of Thrones, Ned Stark is clearly the hero of the story in the classical sense of the word. Even though there are many characters, he is undoubtedly the protagonist as it is Ned Stark that receives the call to adventure when his long-time friend King Robert travels to Winterfell, his home, and asks him to be the Hand of the King. He then travels to King’s Landing, where he attempts to do his job until he discovers a conspiracy. King Robert is killed, just as Ned is about to reveal the conspiracy to him. Ned gets captured by his enemies and is put in a dungeon.
This is how Ned Stark’s Hero’s Journey is supposed to go from this point:
Ned is taken to be executed, but he breaks free and joins his son’s army which has marched down from the North. He defeats Joffrey and Cersei in battle, has them — and Little Finger — executed and places Stannis Baratheon, King Robert’s rightful heir on the throne of Westeros. He then returns to Winterfell, makes love to his wife, and falls asleep with the satisfaction that even though there has been bloodshed, all is right in the realm.
That’s what audiences, most of whom had not read the books, were expecting. But as we know, Ned Stark is robbed of his dignity by being executed despite accepting a rather humiliating Westerosi plea deal.
George R. R. Martin’s subversion of the Hero’s Journey and the abandonment of several other established fantasy tropes is what sets A Song of Ice and Fire apart from most high fantasy Tolkien-esque ‘we’re going on an adventure’ type stories. It’s what makes it exciting and it’s what made me think — wow, this show is going to be great — when I first saw it.
However… There are massive downsides to killing off your protagonist.
The reason why so many storytellers rely on this structure is because the protagonist relentlessly pursuing their aims gives the story several vital things. It gives the story direction, it gives the story urgency, it raises the stakes, and it makes conflict understandable — anyone standing in the hero’s way is a bad guy.
It’s also harder for the audience to be emotionally invested in fifteen characters at once as opposed to just one. Giving the audience a single hero to root for helps them suspend their disbelief and get emotionally invested in the quest.
After Ned Stark’s death, there is a palpable vacuum, and it is immediately filled by Robb Stark. But it’s never a good idea to be the hero in a story that likes to subvert the Hero’s Journey, so Martin kills off his protagonist again. After Robb is gone, that’s when I feel like the story starts to meander. The pacing and the urgency begin to suffer a little. That’s certainly true in the books. Less so in the show — for now!
The same sort of thing happens to the disposable minor antagonists of the show. The sadistic, reckless Joffrey is replaced by the sadistic, reckless Ramsay Bolton is replaced by the sadistic, reckless Euron Greyjoy.
Two characters yet again emerge to fill the open vacancy of protagonist — they are Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow. At this point, you’re probably thinking: what about someone like Tyrion? The reason I’m not counting Tyrion as a protagonist, is because his goal is just to survive. He’s not on his own quest, he’s reacting to things happening to him rather than driving towards his own goals.
Daenerys in particular has a very clear singular goal.
I think it’s helpful in an ensemble story, such as this, to think of characters such as Tyrion as minor protagonists whereas Daeny and Jon are the emerging major protagonists. Joffrey, Ramsay and Euron are minor antagonists whereas Cersei and the Night King are the major antagonists.
Jon emerges as a major protagonist because he’s up against the Night King, who has been the major antagonist of the show since the prologue of episode one. The Night King is the biggest bad in the show, therefore by opposing him, Jon is the biggest good.
If you have read the books, you’ll know that there is another storyline that begins in book four and should have emerged from season five of the show onwards. But it doesn’t. It is at this point that the showrunners decide to cut several characters of Oberyn Martell’s family out of the story along with their corresponding storyline.
The trouble is Benioff and Weiss didn’t cut out this storyline because it’s not important to the story. It is very important to the story in the books. This is just my speculation, but I think they cut it out because they wanted to see an end to the series in sight. It seems to me that by this point they were getting bored of the show and were looking to find the path of least resistance to the show’s end rather than take the long way through.
I can’t think of a single fictional family who have been done more wrong than Benioff and Weiss did the Martells.
Seriously. Justice for Dorne.
By this point in the show so many characters have been killed off. In the books they’re replaced by the Martell storyline. In the show they’re replaced with nothing. I think that it is interesting to note that this is widely regarded as the point where the show’s writing and pacing starts to enter its decline. Even those who haven’t read the books sensed there was something missing.
Because a whole storyline has been taken out, the showrunners must now take shortcuts to manoeuvre the characters to where they would have ended up. There is a right way and a wrong way to take shortcuts. Unfortunately, in Game of Thrones these shortcuts come at the expense of our fundamental understanding of several characters.
The worse example of this is the rape of Sansa Stark in season five. Not only is this a distasteful and gratuitous scene. It also represents the slanderous destruction of Little Finger’s character. In all of Westeros there is no one less likely to sell Sansa Stark to Roose and Ramsay Bolton than Peter Baelish.
Jon fucking Snow is more likely to sell Sansa to the Boltons than Little Finger.
Of course, in the books, Lord Baelish has Sansa safely tucked away in the Eyrie and is planning a different, more fortuitous marriage for her to someone else. The person being brutalised by Ramsay Bolton is an imposter forced to pose as Arya Stark by Tywin Lannister.
By having Little Finger sell Sansa to the Boltons for the sake of plot expediency, so many of Little Finger’s previous actions make no sense. His motivations become muddied. Everything we know about Little Finger suggests he would already know exactly what Ramsay Bolton was like and he would never hand over someone he values to a character like that.
Sansa is also Little Finger’s biggest asset at this point in the story. It’s unbelievable that he would just give that away for very little in return. Having characters suddenly behave in an inconsistent manner to everything that has thus far been established about them undermines the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief.
The rules and truths of Westeros as we know it are suddenly in doubt. Events that don’t feel earnt are jarring. I remember watching this in disbelief thinking — that’s not what happens in Game of Thrones — even though that was what was happening in Game of Thrones.
Could the showrunners really not think of any other way to get Sansa to Winterfell without having her sold to the Boltons? And without Little Finger’s entire raison d’etre being thrown under the bus? It feels lazy and uncreative, and that’s because it is.
They also choose to end Lord Varys in a mystifying way that undoes his character as well. To dishonour established characters undermines established world building. No shortcut that does that is worth taking.
At the beginning of season eight, there are two major protagonists Daenerys and Jon Snow, and two major antagonists, Cersei and the Night King. Both the major antagonists die in a way that subverts the Hero’s Journey — in other words, neither of them is killed by a major protagonist.
If you’re a storyteller and you want to write a subversive work of fiction — there are times to deviate from the Hero’s Journey and times to comply with it. I would argue the death of the main antagonist has to be a time when it is the hero who directly triumphs over them.
By season eight, we’ve spent a lot of time in the snow with Jon pitted against the Night King, but then Arya is the one to kill him. The climax of the story of the Night King suddenly belongs to Arya’s arc not Jon Snow’s.
There’s something unsatisfying about the big bad of the whole show, the major antagonist, being killed by a minor character. Even though it was exciting to watch, afterwards I felt like Jon did all the work, but Arya got to take all the credit. It would have just been better if Jon had helped Arya or had a bigger hand in her killing the Night King.
But that’s okay, because Game Of Thrones is an ensemble story and there is one more big bad for our protagonists to kill. Many, many characters have a grievance again Cersei. It’s not so much a question of when she’ll die, but who will get to kill her? Who will make her pay for all her misdeeds?
Oh, it’s none of them.
Having the main antagonist of the entire show die by accident without being directly killed by one of the main protagonists is a weak choice. Arguably it is Daenerys who kills her, but she does so indirectly.
It just feels less satisfactory than an ol’ fashioned good versus evil fight to the death. Underwhelming deaths don’t just dishonour characters, they rob the audience of a sense of closure and justice.
There is also a prophecy in the books that doesn’t seem to be fulfilled in the show. The prophecy as foretold by Maggy the Frog states: “You’ll be queen… For a time. Then comes another, younger, more beautiful, to cast you down and take all you hold dear.”
This is just my speculation, but I think the reason Cersei’s death in the show is so underwhelming is because the character who was meant to kill her was taken out of the show. They had to come up with another way for her to die — eh, drop a building on her.
Usually, a straightforward Hero’s Journey story ends sometime after the death of the main antagonist. But Game of Thrones does not. During the siege of King’s Landing, Daenerys Targaryen loses her temper and commits genocide.
Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
This behaviour is explicitly contrary to everything she has said when talking about how she intends to rule e.g. her previous conversations about “breaking the wheel” and “making the world a better place.”
In the final series it’s hinted that Daenerys is going power crazed and has got a touch of the ol’ Targaryen madness. This is not explored nearly enough to make her behaviour believable or seem inevitable.
Another factor at play here is time. We’ve been following Dany on her journey since season one. That’s eight years. As the amount of time, we’ve invested with characters increases, so does our attachment and our familiarity to the canon that has been built up around them.
My guess is to turn Daenerys from a major protagonist into a major antagonist properly would take about three full length seasons — that’s an eighth, ninth and tenth season. That’s thirty hours. Instead season eight only lasted about six and half hours.
In November 2021, it was revealed that George R. R. Martin told producers there was enough material in the books he was planning to make ten full-length seasons. He was sadly overruled by the showrunners.
I understand that there are financial, practical, temporal, and physical constraints on these types of productions but I honestly believe that fans would have been happier to wait longer and have the show finished properly rather than have the show’s runners and writers phone it in for the final two seasons.
The ultimate let down for me though, was Daenys’s last scene in the throne room with Jon.
I have tried to write scripts that get made into TV shows and I have tried to write bestselling books. I have not succeeded in doing either. Usually, it’s because I can’t do better than the people who do those things. For that very reason, I don’t enjoy making ‘take down’ style videos. That’s not what this video is meant to be about. I try to stick to good-faith critiques and fair evaluations of the art that I’m evaluating instead.
But in this instance, I genuinely think I could write a better scene than that. It’s just boring.
If you’ve abandoned so much of the books already, you may as well make changes to make the climax of the whole show more exciting even if it’s a deviation from what eventually happens in the books. By this point we’re well past that.
Daeny, Daeny, Daeny — you deserved better.
Now, ice has triumphed over fire, what’s left is the small matter of who is going rule Westeros. I assumed at this point all the prophecies and loose ends like all the stuff about the Prince Who Was Promised are going to be tied up. Nope. None of that happens to any satisfaction or is even mentioned.
Instead, they form a committee. Always riveting TV: committees. And with the words: “Who has a better story than Bran the Broken?” Tyrion Lannister hands the throne of Westeros to Bran Stark. Not because of his omnipotent sight or body-changing magic. But because he has the best story.
I get Tyrion Lannister doesn’t have HBO but we’ve just sat here for eight years and watched dozens of other characters who did have better stories. If you count the people who are dead, Bran’s not even in the top ten. The problem with this is, again, that the sheer amount of time we’ve spent with Bran pales in comparison to all the time we’ve spent watching other characters. We’re just not as invested.
It would have been better if Bran had threatened the other characters with his magic or some other show of force.
It’s like playing a video game for eight years, then completing the final boss and the end cut scene says you know what — that side quest you completed five years ago and took you twenty minutes — that was the most important part of the game.
At the beginning of this video, I said at the end of the Hero’s Journey either the world the hero lives in, or the hero has been permanently changed by the adventure. Another ending that often happens is that the hero sacrifices themselves in some way to save others even if that means not getting what they want.
Either way this goes down, the audience must have a sense of growth or change.
Jon being made to return to the Night’s Watch as if nothing had ever happened is almost comical. Why is there a Night’s Watch if the Night King’s been defeated anyway? It would have been better if Jon Snow had died in the throne room too. Then a committee to decide who rules Westeros would make perfect sense.
The audience gets so much from seeing the protagonist achieving their aim, their goals or winning the ultimate prize. They get a feeling of satisfaction, justice, and closure. It makes the time they’ve invested in the story worth it.
For neither Daenerys nor Jon to end up on the throne of Westeros means that neither protagonist gets anything. Even if only one of them ended up on the throne, the other having died or been killed, the audience still would have got just that much more satisfaction.
Having the character your fans are rooting for not get what they want only works if the audience no longer believes they deserve it. The events of the show just didn’t do enough to make me believe that neither Daeny nor Jon deserved it.
If you’ve managed to make it this far, thank you for watching. I’m glad I’m not the only one interested in the narratological cautionary tale that is Game of Thrones.
Though I will reiterate that my analysis here is concerned with the TV Show only. We still don’t know how the books are going to end. As I mentioned, several of the beats that I felt didn’t work in the show, don’t happen in the books at all.
Narratology isn’t a science, but the Game of Thrones TV show is an interesting case study on how far you can depart from the Hero’s Journey without your story failing. The hero’s journey is pervasive because it works.
Going off-piste does make things more exciting, but in many instances having the story comply to a more typical story structure would have made those parts more satisfying for the audience.
George R. R. Martin said the ending of Game of Thrones would be bittersweet — I don’t think anyone was expecting a straightforward happy ending with Game of Thrones — but where exactly was the sweet here?
There’s a lot that can be said about the technicality of storytelling, but at the end of the day, a story is about how it makes its audience feel. This could have been a been a definitive work of television, now I just hope that the whole thing gets remade properly once the books are finished.
I’ve been highly critical of the Game of Thrones showrunners, but for the best part of a decade, Game of Thrones was my favourite TV show and some of the best TV I’ve ever watched. I’m still glad Game of Thrones got made and I got to experience it.
That’s what makes the sloppiness and lack of creativity of the final seasons so surprising. There are no shortcuts that excuse lazy writing, dishonouring your characters, or depriving your audience of even the remotest scrap of justice.
I don’t like ‘take downs’ or ‘scathing critiques’ for the sake of being scathing but Benioff and Weiss ultimately proved heartbreakingly poor stewards of the source material. The cast were practically in tears at the final table read. It hasn’t even hurt Benioff and Weiss’s careers. They’re still making hundred-million-dollar contracts.
To jettison so many obvious and fundamental aspects of good storytelling. Maybe it should have had consequences for their careers. It should at least be regarded as a stain on their legacy.
Hopefully the message will eventually get through to Hollywood, that if you are bored of a project and want to move on to pastures new, you should hand it over to someone else instead of just trying to race to the finish line at the expense of serving your fans.
Valar dohaeris.
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