Game of Thrones can’t have it both ways forever: What made it so great is also why its final season is so frustrating

Slate

"What we really want when something ends is the delicious feeling of watching something unexpected happen and then realizing, perhaps with a wry smile and a nod, that it always had to end like this," says Isaac Butler. "Game of Thrones doesn’t really seem to have a lot of surprises left. The biggest twist in the Battle of Winterfell was that no one we have any investment in died. The characters seem to do exactly what we expect them to do, with moves telegraphed several steps in advance. Tyrion thinks he’s a great strategist and master of rhetoric, but he keeps coming up short. Jon is a lawful good dunderhead. Cersei is evil and manipulative. Ghost is not on screen enough. Can a show that built its reputation on subverting expectations really have become so … predictable? The answer is probably yes, but it’s an inevitable result of what happens to stories when they end. Embracing an unending complexity in character, story, and world building is exactly why George R.R. Martin’s series of novels remains unfinished." Butler adds: "Game of Thrones can’t have it both ways forever. The pleasures of stories as they end—catharsis, resolution, payoff—are not the same as when they begin. The only way to keep all the nuance—which is to say, all the possibility—of Game of Thrones alive is for the show to never end. Were it a long-running soap opera, it could keep characters changing and plots twisting unexpectedly forever."

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