Game of Thrones' "The Last of the Starks" tried to shove three episodes' worth of story into one episode of television

Vox

"After a season that has largely avoided the time compression problems that felled Game of Thrones season seven, 'The Last of the Starks,' the fourth episode of season eight, abruptly hit the gas and tried to shove what felt like three episodes’ worth of story into one episode of television," says Todd VanDerWerff. "It was nearly an hour and 20 minutes long — so, only about an episode-and-a-third in total — but the overall effect was mildly chaotic, with a whole bunch of things happening and very few of them having the emotional weight that Game of Thrones clearly hoped they would have. Sansa would find out information in one scene and be sworn to secrecy, then immediately betray that trust the next time she appeared onscreen. In theory, weeks passed between those moments, when Sansa truly had to agonize over the secret she now carried. In practice, it felt like about five minutes." He adds that David Nutter's direction was top-notch, but David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' writing was "a mess, making for the weakest episode of the final season so far and an inauspicious preview of the show’s remaining few hours. Then again, maybe that’s the point! The fallout from all of these events would inevitably be messy and fractious and bloody; perhaps Game of Thrones is trying to mirror that inevitability via structural storytelling choices."

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