Television Review: Game of Thrones, Series 8

Show: Game of Thrones, Series 8

Company:  HBO

Date: 2019

Plot: Final season of the Emmy® Award-winning hit HBO drama series Game of Thrones – an epic story of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honor, conquest and triumph. 

I’m nervous about posting this review because of the backlash around this series. But I always intended to do it, so here goes.

I have mixed feelings. I wasn’t satisfied with the ending; I got to the final episode and thought what was the point? It felt flat to me, although that could be because I found the pacing of the entire series slow.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. This show is huge, and has had some of the most intense episodes I’ve ever seen. There are twisting, complicated relationships, constantly shifting alliances and a threat that comes from all directions at once. Everything was lined up to bring the characters together. You assume by the final series there’s going to be people who don’t make it – so none of the deaths shocked me. It was bound to happen. I was expecting the unexpected, in a way.

How about the characters? There’s been an outcry over Daenerys, saying her character wouldn’t do that. But she’s always had a violent streak. She burnt a woman alive in series 1. She locked her servant in a room to starve to death in series 2. Her executions have always been brutal. Tyrion summed up her character beautifully: we’ve never noticed because she’s gone after the bad guys. But she hasn’t been the innocent girl we met in the first series for quite some time.

And Jon? I feel like he missed his potential this series. You never quite knew what he was after now that he saved the north, and the latter episodes made me feel he had lost some of his drive a bit. That’s not to say he stopped being my favourite character – far from it.

I loved Arya in this one – her more human/caring side came back through that has been missing. Bran, too, wasn’t as detached as he had been so you remember the boy he was; the one who couldn’t lie to his mother. Sansa felt stubborn in this one, but she didn’t annoy me the way she did in the early series.

There wasn’t much Cersei, despite her still playing a key role. With there only being four episodes, and a Night King to defeat, it’s natural that some characters are left by the wayside. I definitely was anticipating something stronger for her ending though.

Despite the battles, the tension really lacked for me. Multiple episodes left me feeling bored: they could have kept them shorter and missed out some of the long, dragging scenes. It completely undermined the tension that we’ve grown used to from previous series.

What I thoroughly enjoyed, however, was the visuals. You can’t deny the big budget behind this series has certainly led to some impressive effects. The dragons were incredible on screen and there were some powerful shots that summed up characters more than words could.

Overall… it ended where it needed to end. I’m not necessarily satisfied, but nor do I know what I was wanting to happen.

Buy it

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