Click for part one(not required viewing to understand this video): th-cam.com/video/PiloYP1wsI8/w-d-xo.html&t And thus concludes my discussions. Thanks for watching, and for indulging me. Back to my regular sort of content soon
In the behind the episode or the making of they said that Miguel Sapochnik told Emilia when on the dragon to be like a drug addict when she was about to attack them .Literally that makes no sense to me because they implying she fire and blood fetish/drug addict
Can't disagree with anything you say. In short: they traded Character Driven Story Telling for Story Telling Driven Characters. The characters lost all agency as the story overtook them, betraying what had elevated this fantasy drama in previous years. Such a shame.
Daenareys just snapped, no need to try to explain why she shouldn't have snapped - she's mad so that part makes sense - the show before that was just highlighting how crazy she was, while she was trying to justify her actions as somehow being good
Exactly. I wanted to be afraid of her. I wanted to see her genuine mental decline over at least an entire season, more than one would've been great. It would have been more painful for fans that love her instead of just confusing and disingenuous. What a waste.
Even George RR Martin said that this show could have been 10 to 12 SEASONS with the material that they already had. Dumb and Dumber just wanted to be done with it.
I know nicknames are fun, but I'd hesitate to use that one. D&D are good writers. They've shown that, and through them we fell in love with this show. What ruined the final season wasn't stupidity or a lack of talent; it was laziness and arrogance. Which, in my eyes, is far far worse.
@@The00devon Okay but no when your reason for a character to act stupid is "she (and her advisors, of course) kinda forgot that big enemy" you are dumb. They're good when it comes to adapting books, I won't take that from them, but as soon as they took the wheel the series became full of teleporting characters and deus ex machinas. They're not talented writers.
I get being burned out on something creatively. 10+ years working on one of the biggest, most expensive and expansive shows of all time with insane pressure from rabbit fans is a monumental undertaking and honestly, they did a pretty good job at this up to season 6. Season 5 and 6 had issues and the cracks were starting to show but overall it was still good. But if they were done with the show or wanted to take a break, they should have handed over the reigns to someone else to continue the show properly. Unfortunately it looks as though ego played a part at this. They seem to think that only they can finish this show and that it's their baby and that even if they are checked out on it, they should be the ones to do it. That was a huge mistake. Now they have no goodwil from fans with their future projects, season 8 has been overwhelmingly rejected and the GOT spin offs are put in jeopardy thanks to this fan backlash. Had they left at season 6, even if what followed sucked they would have left the show as the top writers and most beloved showrunners in Hollywood.
@@edvinsebastian1290 my take is that they decided to downplay Jon being a Targaryen -- that's why him being Aegon Targaryen was _pointless_ overall & they didn'thave him really bonding with the dragons, esp "his dragon" Rhaegal -- bc they were gonna say most Targaryens "go mad" & theyre the "bad guys" w/their dragons & Jon snow was going to be the one to kill her as a "good guy".
Also there were only 5 mad Targaryens in total and none of them committed genocide with their dragons like Daenerys did not even the more evil ones like Maegor the Cruel and her dad only wanted to burn the entire city when he knew for sure he was losing the war and he was definitely insane he had voices in his head (schizophrenic)
@@sydnitheromantictaylor112 Exactly. Using "genetics" was a sloppy way for D&D to "prove" Daenerys was "mad/bad" & the ultimate reason why she needed to be killed off.
@@karyleianawildernesscapes exactly it's stupid that they had to have her go insane just because she's a Targaryen and supposedly most Targaryens are mad and that's not true you can count the mad Targaryens on one hand there were some that were way more extremely brutal than Daenerys ever was and they never used their dragon to burn down an entire city and that's why I think it's dumb as hell
Agreed. I'm fine with the concept of evil Dany, and I fully expect it to happen in the books, but the writers should have known it wouldn't work in the time they had left. They should have been willing to be creative with the ending rather than trying to cram in all of GRRM's story beats.
I liked her in season 7, too. She had all of ONE outburst (two if you count burning the Tarlys) but was otherwise very rational and calm. I liked the love story, and re-watching that season, you can see it played extremely welly by Emilia Clarke. The reciprocal wasn't that well done, though. A 'grey' ending might have worked best - she does SOMETHING out of rage - like attacking the keep directly, which causes some collateral damage. Maybe then all the wildfire left by her father (and by Cersei) ignites causing more death, but not what she intended. Jon and Tyrion would be upset about that, but wouldn't think she was evil for it. She wins the throne, Jon stands beside her.... then something in the epilogue gives us hint and makes us ask "will she become a mad queen after all?"
@@FrayAdjacentTX I liked her in season 7 too. I was just so overwhelmingly frustrated with the plot that season that it's hard to appreciate the good parts of it. I like your "grey" ending ideas. I definitely would have preferred if she caused the destruction of KL by accident by setting off the Wild Fire, and watching the character come to grips with her mistake. Having her go full Emperor Palpatine in one scene was probably the worst possible choice the showrunners made throughout the entirety of Thrones.
@@FrayAdjacentTX yeah exactly this would've made for a better ending but dan and Dave wanted to subvert expectations rather than logical writing that would've stayed true to how the character was developed so far
I think it was supposed to happen. They just rushed tf outta her character arc. She should have been the mad queen throughout seasons after seasons. Not 1 episode. Just like Walter White was breaking bad throughout 5 seasons.
@@bereasonable8018 I think that's the joke he's making, the characters don't actually have free will they do whatever D&D want them to do, so yeah, that's what he's implying. He's paraphrasing "Danny kind of forgot about the Iron fleet..."
@@AlbertoFolres I hope their reputation really does suffer. How they thought they could get away with ruining one of the best shows ever on TV because they wanted to move on is beyond me.
@@AlbertoFolres They wrote and shot one of, if not THE MOST successful TV show in HISTORY. Doesn't matter how it ended, they made a killing for HBO. They're not going anywhere son.
Honestly after the way the Game of Thrones finale ended I'm not super hyped about the new Star Wars series, and I'm a Star Wars fan but unfortunately l don't feel super stoked knowing D&D are involved l don't know perhaps the series might be good but I don't have much faith in it at the moment.
This is where I get off the "we should have all seen the Mad Queen coming" train. People are mistaking violence with insanity, and saying that because Dany has always used violence as a means to an end, she was always going to be a brutal tyrant. Massacring KL wasn't brutal tyranny, it was insane, irrational, and senseless. At no point in Dany's history has she ever killed an innocent person for no discernible reason; her violent actions have always been either calculated or directed at a loathed enemy. What happened in KL was different in both scale and kind to what we've seen up to this point, because of rushed and lazy writing. Nothing Dany has ever done suggested she would go on a killing spree of innocent women and CHILDREN for no reason whatsoever. Ruthless toward her enemies? YES. Insane, random killing AFTER she won a battle and civilians surrendered? NO. In fact, nothing even in the last two episodes of build up suggested she would do what she did. I expected worse case she would mow through the meat wall that Cercei let into the Red Keep. What the hell was even the point of that PP? Her heel turn made no damn sense the way they wrote it. She had zero motive to zigzag through the streets for 30 MINUTES.
Fingolfin of Noldor that’s right. Her character turn would’ve made sense after two seasons of growth not two minutes. Good writing would have made it believable and controversial. No sane person agrees with what dany did - either the reasons or the actions
I've been arguing against the "we should have seen the mad queen coming" excuse ever since people were dumb enough to try an implement it into a defense for this season. If what Tyrion said is true and that her killing the masters, the khals, the Sons of the Harpy, and so on was an indication of madness and justifies her being killed or treated this way then why isn't Sansa and Arya on the chopping block too? Sansa had a man ripped apart and eaten by his own dogs, and sentenced another man to death all without a fair trial, she cowered in the crypts letting the walkers kill the women and children SHE was supposed to be ruling over. she betrays John after swearing secrecy to him pretty much making an oath to him, then blabs to Tyrion the next day after getting on John's ass in season 7 about punishing those that break their oaths, she wanted to take the homes of people who had no say in what their parents did- basically punishing them for their father's mistakes. Arya is even worse, she's killed 6 people, one of which was an innocent stable-boy and the others she killed in psychopathic anger- even drawing out their pain an misery as long as she could before brutally killing them. She left Sandor to die after he risked his life to defend her and she bursts out laughing after she hears that her aunt is dead (who the fuck does that??). And let's not forget that she killed an entire house with poison after killing the head of the household, slicing his face off, and wearing it as a mask in order to pretend to be him in the first place. if Danny deserved to die than so does Arya and Sansa, they did things that were just as bad as what Danny did before season 8- if not worse. By the show's own logic both of those characters should be labeled as insane and stabbed to death due to the fact that just because the people they killed were "bad" it doesn't mean that killing them is the right thing to do.
@@UbinTimor And don't forget Tyrion. He blew up a whole fleet with wildfire, so by the showrunner's logic that totally disregards character motives for their actions, he should get angry one day and start randomly blowing up people with wildfire.
@@UbinTimor Great observations. And don't forget that Jon has had his fair share of questionable killings as well. Yet, even with his Targaryean lineage, he still isn't "mad" or worthy of death, apparently.
@@practicaldreamyr On top of that, the 'The True Heir' EXECUTES a War Criminal (cause that's what she has become) and is BANISHED?!! What gives them the authority to do that? No one mentions his claim in the end? The Man that passed the sentence swung the sword but Sansa still ends up with the throne she has wanted since she was a girl and let her access to that life threaten the life of her own sister!!! Oh Bull...!
I don't know any creative person or artist worth their salt that would essentially drop their current project, putting their whole team into overdrive to make up for it just so they can move onto something better. I wouldn't want to work with someone like that at all, you wouldn't know their priorities or even know if they are giving their full creative skills to the the current work their doing. I don't know why they didn't hire new show runners and writers that they vetted with the help of George R.R. Martin. All the designers and artists involved in the show did they best they could do and for that they deserve props and D&D were good show runners in the management view at least, then again I have no idea what they will do with Star Wars because they aren't good writers and their directing leaves a lot to desired it's all very odd and confusing in the end much like the end of this series.
@@Alice_Long So the crew who has for years made one of the best television series surpassing film in terms of production design (they literally built city blocks for the penultimate episode) and effects who were forced to rush production and most likely exhausted because of shooting schedules all of sudden becomes not the most talented people because they forgot to screen some things for a scene.
@@Alice_Long another reason why rushing was the wrong way to go.. let a fresh passionate person give the time that was needed to keep it great instead of racing to a bad end
Im curious almost what a star wars movie would be like from them. star wars has never had amazing dialogue but the characters are what makes or breaks it. Not to mention the last few star wars movies havent been as original ... i dont want to support any new stuff they do just because of how poorly they handled this season.
@@daniel_netzel Thank you for reminding us who Daenerys really was: a protector of innocents, someone willing to sacrifice everything for the man she loved, someone incredibly brave and filled with inner strength and compassion because of all she had been through and overcome. I love how you talked about her "grace". So well put together and narrated....They could have subverted the "Mad Queen" expectations : her story could have been one of redemption, perhaps one of her killing innocents through collateral damage (not intentionally, the way the show writers put it onscreen). They could have shown her reaction as devastated by that outcome. She could have realized that she had won the iron throne and lost Jon because of their blood relationship. It would have been a hollow victory, but would STILL have been a commentary on the dangers/consequences of war and absolute power, in the vein of GRRM.......I don't accept their version of Daenerys. What makes this so devastating is reading about Emilia Clarke's reaction to that script, the first time she read it. She cried, and went for a 5-hr walk through London. coming back with blisters on her feet. Kit cried when he read it, too, at the table read. I can't imagine how hard the KL episode was for her to act, and then how hard Daenerys' death scene was for Emilia and Kit to film. Neither of them wanted that ending for their characters. I STILL CAN'T GET OVER IT. But I have to say, you reminded everyone who saw this of all the good Daenerys accomplished. She even helped save the world from the white walkers, for God's sake!......Thank You.
I hated it. The reverse montages exist as well. Wish someone would show both sides already. The moment someone begins leaving out factual evidence to their montages to prove their point it means that person is wrong, or at the very least extremely biased. Reminds me of hbomberguy. Can't watch the rest of this.
1.5 million people didn't sign the petition, actually thinking or believing that HBO would re-do the entire season, they did it as a statement that they were disappointed, and offended by the results, and were not afraid to put their names to that statement. That's why they signed the petition, to state on the record, their massive disapproval.
@@edienandy it's a poor season to be sure, but yeah, when you got 1.5 million people trying to petition to remake a show rather than other things like feed the hungry or end human trafficking, yeah, it's a first world problem.
@I'm Done that most won't go out of their way to sign it, a lot of casual viewers too that just wanted entertainment and I'm sure they were mostly satisfied with it.
Skeptical Chris And now spinoffs are cancelled except for the Targaryen related one. Good because that spinoff with Naomi Watts seemed so politicized. I mean for the sake of diversity and representation. I don’t watch TV or movie for diversity or politics. I watch it for entertainment.
My problem is also that they changed the main focus of the show from characters to visuals and explosions/action scenes. For example in season 7 episode beyond the wall, which was a retarded plan to begin with, they said that the polar bear was super cool and they looked super proud about it that made ne question if they remember what the show is about. I don't care about dragons and polar bears if the plot is dumb as fuck. That's also their great problem.
@@daniel_netzel Yes, off course. You are trying to be fair and I get that. But when somebody f's-up and you are angry with them then you need to motivate that anger. It's not only for the sake of being understood by somebody, but also to give them a chance to learn from it (hopefully). I am not saying that D&D will learn from this or any other critical video on TH-cam - they seem to be too arrogant for that. I'm saying that SOMEONE, who is or will be a writer in the future, could benefit from stern criticism. Because everybody, who has at least half a brain can understand that failure is never the entirety of one's work and that D&D excelled in adapting the books in the past. People understand that failure is just a point in time. What gets to the minds of only a few, though, is that more often than not, these points are what shapes History (also film history). And THAT is usually what needs to be brought to the attention of many. Kudos for trying to be fair, though.
An eloquent and sympathetic analysis. Thank you. By the time Daenerys was burning King's Landing I felt nothing, and I am a very empathic person. One must empathise at least to a degree with one or more of the characters in a story to feel some immersion. This was destroyed way before the end. Farewell my dragon queen, you deserved better.
Exactly this. Usually the show made me feel so many feelings, I was totally immersed, couldnt think abt anything else for days after an episode sometimes. Normally what happened to Kings landing and daenerys and her dragons would have made me cry for weeks but I watched and just felt nothing. I didnt even feel the urge to cry..just nothing. They managed to take away the emotional connection to the show completely in 2 seasons when I have been so extremely emotionally connected to through all the seasons before.
Someone handed the clone of Daenerys (because the original wasn't likely to do this) a few respawn codes. It was out of sympathy as she was brand new character in a series with some that had been around for years, so she needed a hand.
The scary thing about ego is that it can consume even the strive for personal achievements. D&D traded away something potentially so great just for few more skrilla bags on SW. Maybe it was incompetence, maybe vanity, a sad thing either way.
Majority of your blame is misplaced. After GRRM got the HBO money, he sat on his ass for 7 years and never finished the last books. D&D are film makers, not writers. Their only fault is that they mistakenly decided to continue and conclude the show on their own and never admitted their failure to deliver.
Leave Lord GRRM out of this. D&D is a fraud and pretentious writers case closed. Unlimited budget and HBO offering 10 episodes and perhaps more season for GOT? D&D: Hold my beer, We could do it in 6 episodes. Put the budget of the dragon sfx in our pocket. Give us 2 years. We go in then we go out to make Star Wars movies. Easiest money of our lives!
@@fcuk_x GRRM wants books to be perfect and perfection takes time. Also writing the end is more difficult from the writing start. He isn't lazy he just has a writer block like every writer has at least once in their career. And get out from block is more difficult than you think, I know because I wrote small things too. But again showrunners trusted him to finish books before they run out of the book source so he and the showrunners should have overseed this and started the show at least after Winds of the winter came out.
Indeed! Good people can definitely become horrible over time, but you don't go from being Joan of Arc to being Hitler in like a week. It was just ludicrously abrupt.
What's the absolute worst is waste of so many good actor's, portrayals, style, music and tons of effort from everyone, just because D&D are full of themselves doofoses who wouldnt resign and hand the torch to someone who would keep it going strong for couple more seasons as both HBO and George were open towards. If they grew tired and disinterested with no more passion for it they should fucking resign and not fuck it up in way that cant be ever fixed wasting away entire series and what it was in every way. Fucking hacks....
Other biggest bullshit from these two hacks, Was their trope of subverting expectations for sake of subversion. In unrealistic and retarded ways. Last time they cared was season 6...and even then not all that much because Euron and Dorne were already fucked up. But dialogue and script for everything else were still good. They should've resigned from the show during Season 6 production and give it to far more passionate and good writers who would do GoT/Asoiaf justice with more seasons and by expanding known threads and going along most interesting plots like book Euron, real Dorne.
True. I watched all episodes over and over again, until i saw last season. It totally ruined all the characters builds. Whole show is ruined. Can't watch it anymore. :(
"What were the writers' justification for Dany's descent into madness" - if it were well-written and made sense, they wouldn't need to justify it at all
Exactly. And their justification feels a little sexist. How many men on this show have killed without mercy when necessary, but when she does it, it's a sign of madness?
@@aprilcole8331 Heck, look at Arya: she killed all Frey, but apparently that's ok for her?!! And then Sandor says after this event that killing Cersei would transform her into him.
The petition for HBO to rectify what the audience feels is a grievous injustice is a long, long, longshot, true. But I think this group knows nothing will come of it and it's more to put on record what writing hacks Benioff and Weiss are. It's a public record (like this video) that will undoubtedly mark their resumes for the foreseeable future.
That's exactly what the petition is for. The guy who started even said he doesn't really think there's any chance of season 8 being redone. There are literally millions of people who feel like they've been cheated. The petition is about being able to voice that.
To quote Pitch Meeting: "Then one of the dragons is taken out by a scorpion!" "Oh, so Danni kills the rest of them?" "What? No! A dragon is no match for a bunch of scorpions" "Oh ok, what happens next" "Well Danni invades destroys the iron fleet and the city wall." "Wait aren't there a ton of scorpions?" "Yeah, but they're no match for a dragon!"
There are other great shows that actually held up for all of their seasons, this is but one of them... that happened to burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp.
GnomeDazzle X to doubt. Daenerys going full on mad queen was rushed af and there’s hardly and build up towards it to make sense if you look at her character arc in the past 7 seasons.
GnomeDazzle Fans through tantrums over Reddit theories? What Reddit theories? Jon killing Dany? Dany going mad? Kong’s landing being burned? Tyrion betraying her? Like all these things happened. All the major theories ended up becoming true because D&D life to write some good ol fanfics. Your logic isn’t really workin out here mate
@@sa1sa624 I didn't always agree with the fact that they might have done Stannis dirty, but looking back they kinda rushed his descent into desperation as well. He didn't seem like he would have done that to his only child I mean who would be his heir later on?
Best video for explaining how they ruined character arcs. Daenerys, Jaime, Varys, Cersei character arcs just ruined. Like you said since they decided to rush these last two seasons they shouldn't have added the twists at all.
After watching Dany's character for 7 seasons, the idea that she would mercilessly incinerate innocent civilians by the thousand is as nonsensical as the idea that Jon Snow would do the same. They are both moral people and have been meticulously built up to be such. Just rushed idiotic comic book movie writing at its worst. And it's not surprising.
Exactly. Every character faces tough decisions, between mercy and vengeance, and pretty much every one of them has chosen vengeance. Arya has done a lot more vicious shit than Dany ever has and she wouldn't just kill tens of thousands of innocent people.
Not really, Dany uses morality as a tool when it benefited her. She has talked about burning cities and fire and blood for 7 seasons. She fed a Meereen noble to her dragon and told the rest she didn't care if they were guilty or innocent. She said she could destroy Meereen an everyone in it because she knew what was good better than they. She either didn't have the capacity or had someone to talk her down. When she says she doesn't want to be queen of ashes, she is just repeating Tyrion to sound noble, he had just talked her out of it. That is why Tyrion gives her that look.
@@kpllc4209 It truly benefited her when she executed a commoner for killing someone working for the Harpy. She only had a support of common people and yet she did this to show justice. Or when she commanded Yara that there will be no raping and raiding when she win the throne even though she risked losing their support and their fleet which was needed to bring her army to Westeros. Or when she took the slaver cities, because she cared for common people even though it didn't brought her closer to the throne. Or when she refused to sail to Westeros, because she wanted not only to learn how to become a better ruler but also to protect former slaves.
Brienne stayed pretty true to character. I don't know why she would have left Sansa for Bran but otherwise she ended in a good place. It wasn't her fault Jaime 'kinda forgot" his character development and abandoned her for Cersei.
Exactly how I felt after episode 5. I was angry and still can’t believe the writers and producers thought it made any sense to completely pull a 180 on Dany’s character. We needed more episodes showing Dany losing it.
It just felt like they wanted to subvert expectation and thats all well and good if it makes sense. This however just doesn't. They were so happy that they could do it, they never asked themselves if they should do it.
I was a huge fan of the show, it was realistic to the point of making me cry, sweat and even have nightmares. After episode 4 of this Season I knew at once D&D were about to destroy GOT, I even almost didin't watch episodes 5 and 6 but I was advised to. Guess what it was so much worse than I could imagine. I watched it with no emotions, I was not happy or sad, I felt nothing. That is the word to describe SEason 8, NOTHING:
Its only Gendry. If he was a bastard of a noble women and king robert then it would be waters since he said he was born in kings landing. But shouldn't even have a last name because his mother was a commoner and he was an unacknowledged bastard.
Interestingly in the actual script it says she "vaults off of a pile of dead whytes" but they decided to make it way more ambiguous in the actual show.
I think they tried to make it seem like she was as fast as wind or something lol.. Because if you go back, you can hear the wind & see a white walker looking back as if he heard/saw something, but couldnt quite figure out what exactly.. Then the next scene is Arya jumping towards the Night King. Idk how she could be THAT fast or not be seen by the white walkers, but fuck logic at this point.
I've spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for this video, in order to re-watch the amazing clip montage starting at 3:20...It's stuck in my brain forever now! Whenever I think about Game of Thrones, I remember this video. This comment is for my own record: Awesome Dany montage starts at 3:24. Thank you for letting me watch GoT and listen to the music, without having to actually watch the show. ❤ _(Yes, I'm binging GoT TH-cam videos again. I will go to my grave angry. Even if I'm technically over it by then, I'm still dying angry on principle. I will never forgive what happened and what was done to all of the amazing people who worked for years and years on this show, just to have it ruined and their work abandoned, forgotten by everyone because the only way to cope with it is to move on and pretend it never happened.)_
Precisely. Daenerys always targeted her enemies. If anything, she would have flown her dragon straight at the Red Keep to get Cersei. If there would have been collateral damage from that action, it would have made it more logical. Daenerys flying around randomly burning people made no sense.
Seriously. Or the people turning on a foreign invader and trying to attack her dragon would have justified her killing some folks. They literally went with the least logical option.
If George RR Martin wanted Bran to be the King so be it, but the Directors & Writers of Season 8 literally ruined the way it was presented. Very very sloppy writing, it feels different from the Game of Thrones we knew. Was a big fan until Season 8. Everything was ruined thanks to those clown directors.
Thank you for clarifying how inconsistent and down right terrible the writing was for Dany’s character. I would have been ok with her turning to the dark side if it had been developed more. If I had seen some conflict within the character. But there was no inner conflict, no inner dialogue to show her switch from defending the innocent to not giving a shit about them. She went from being a good person who wanted to help people to the ultimate evil worse than Cercei. I hated it. and there’s nothing that can redeem it in my eyes.
As for the petition, most people are signing it to insult D&D and/or ward them off of Star Wars. I doubt even 1% of people who signed it genuinely expect the season to be remade. Even the person who made the petition doesn't expect it and never did. The ways for consumers to actually express discontent for a product in a way that makes a difference are incredibly limited. It's why things like review bombing exist for games. The situation is not ideal, but it's all consumers can do.
The fact the just cut and run makes it even worse. They gained the respect and trust of the writer and fans, then after a decade they rush it through to do something else. They obviously learnt nothing of honor.
I really wanted to have a proper conversation between Arya and dany ... which never happened and all of sudden we get to know Arya hate dany... fuck...
This is the very best explanation, both with using scenes set against scenes of Dany's CONSTANT mercy towards the Innocents, whether it is an impediment towards her #1 goal, or her "punishment"/ necessity to remove" towards her own dragons when they burned only one single child. And your voice over through these scenes is the very best explanation of rationality that I've read so far, especially with the arc of Dany. Thank you for this voice that explains every single sadness I have for the characters and the show both.
I just wanted to show that this whole "she's been evil the whole time" and "you haven't been paying attention" argument is total garbage. I've watched the entire series several times and her arc has always showed her as merciful above all else.
Thank you for putting together this well thought out analysis. So many people are just going around yelling slogans like “character arc!”, “didn’t earn it!”, “needed more time” without really knowing what they’re talking about. But I appreciate your video because (well it says exactly what I was thinking”, but also it’s concise, with solidly backed arguments. Thank you!!
EGO!!! THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT. It was Dumb & Dumber's Ego. They could have passed the show along to someone, (like you said) with better vision. They destroyed the show to get Star Wars money. And now...they will destroy Star Wars.
I cry. Again. I can hear in your words how much you empathize with all the fans who are deeply heartbroken by the last season of Game of Thrones. I'm not even angry at D&D anymore, just truly utterly heartbroken. I have loved this show to pieces the exact same way a pet owner loves his dog. Now it feels like my dog died. Not of old age, though. He was butchered. Butchered by the very person you trusted with it the most. And there was nothing I could do about it. I'm just sad. And that's all there is now.
Excellent video. You're totally right, characters are the core of a story and nothing is more irritating and disappointing than seeing their slow and subtle evolution and maturation as individuals suddenly ruined with no logic.
This still hurts me so bad. I can’t believe none of the actors objected but chose to remain silent. The actors might have been thankful to D&D for their careers, but incompetance should not be rewarded with blind loyalty.
considering the fair amount of disappointment the actors have expressed, i doubt that "none of the actors objected", I'm sure that a number of them probably expressed their displeasure to the writers, but at the end of the day they are actors and are contractually obligated to do their job. An actor who signs a contract then refuses to work because they don't like the direction their character is going is not going to look professional and risks getting a bad reputation in their industry.
Dany’s character arc would make more sense, or “be earned” if there was 2 more full seasons (as HBO and Martin wanted) to show her slowly being corrupted by power and slowly mistrusting the people around her.
The hilarious thing is that Dany has multiple sentence added in the show to make her more heroic, has epic music, doesn't have to suffer bad consequences for taking these cities nearly as much as in the books... Everything done before pointed another ending then the books. Dany ends Dance with dragons thinking her attempt at diplomacy was worthless in this "barbaric world", that trying to change it was foolish. Essentialy, she abandonned, both the innocents and pacific ways. In the show, she just stand around and just gets help from Dothraki to solve Essos problems. What does that tell?
Excellent articulation about how I think/feel about Daenerys and how the writers MURDERED her. You're right, D&D deserve at least some praise - they brought this show to us in the first place. They really did a good job adapting the source material. That brought us into the GoT world and made us love it. They brought to us possibly the greatest show ever made for television. The cast, crew and everyone that worked on this epic show are well deserving of the highest praise. But then the writers decided to just wrap it up, abandoning well laid out arcs and themes, unceremoniously killing that show, and all it had become. They took an endpoint they decided on and entirely unconvincingly rushed to it. I wish they would have just stuck to an end that "made sense given the groundwork laid". Going with "oh, she was always going to go mad", basically genetic pre-determinism, was a cop out. They just wanted to blow shit up and make it shocking. When even the actress playing the character says of her actions "it came out of fucking nowhere. I was flabbergasted. Absolutely never saw that coming"... we have to realize that was in the context of the woman who played this character, and brought her to life. Everything the character did, Emilia Clarke portrayed to us. If anyone aside from the writers should have had any clue, it would have been her.
Exactly, all Dany had to do was sack Kings Landing and it all would have been fine. Hell, Tywin did it and it worked out fine for Robert. But for some reason the idea of civilian casualties is completely unheard of when it comes time for Dany to do what she needs to do. How hilarious is it that they propose starving the city instead; as if people wouldn't die from that. It's like the whole universe has conspired to make Dany the bad guy. She even sacrificed her army and fought side-by-side with the north and they still don't respect her. Her state of mind was fine, she had 3 dragons and all her unsullied and dothraki warriors at full force. If she burned the Red Keep along with Cersei, she would broken the alliance that Cersei and Euron made back in season 7. Dany wanted to siege KL, her advisers cautioned her otherwise, and the whole thing has spiraled out of control into a colossal clusterfuck. Now if the show treated it like her advisers were idiots and she should have just sacked KL that would be one thing. Instead, we're supposed to believe that Dany is unfit to rule and Tyrion and Varys need to stop her because she's out of control. Like, she's only in this terrible situation because of those two dunderheads in the first place. To make her "madness" a thing both Tyrion and Varys were dumbed down to a ridiculous degree and achieved absolutely nothing in two seasons. And were only used as plot devices to thin her army out, get rid of her allies, dragons etc. Both of them are turned into 21st pacifist. What a great writing, for all his time with Dany on Dragonstone, Varys did absolutely nothing, no scheming against Cersei, no attempts on her life, no spying. Zero effort to take KL. Nothing. He barely even talked and just stood around like an extra. Until the plot demanded to be the plot device to act against Dany. Then he started writing letters and scheme. Whole Mad Dany arc is forced and is unnatural. If it wasn't, the smartest characters around her wouldn't be acting out of character and being complete fools. Or practically voiceless extras for the entire 7 season (Varys). It feels cheap because Dany literally did everything she could and made all the right moves still got fucked over to the nth degree. It just doesn't make sense. It'd be different if the show made it seem like these seemed like the right choices at the time but were wrong in hindsight, but they don't. The "right move" was apparently to not siege KL, as evidenced by how we're supposed to root for Varys/Tyrion conspiring against Dany to stop it. The "right move" was to go north and fight against the WW, but in doing so Dany lost half her armies, a dragon, and gained zero respect. Jon's character and parentage are literally plot devices for the mad queen plot. D&D also stripped Jon's personality and we don't know how Jon feels about his parentage. Missandei has no interaction with Daenerys this season. They have talked plenty of times in private since season 3, but no gotta make Daenerys feel isolated somehow for the mad queen plot. One of the my main issue is that the show equates ruthless ambition with madness. I think in the books Daenerys is going towards a path of being so ruthless that she is called mad (by her enemies) but that she is never mentally ill like her father was. Making her mad take away all her agency as a character and reduces the weight of her choices as something "she couldn't help doing because she's crazy."
@@fingolfinofnoldor3592 I agree with you... it seemed like due to the writing, NOTHING Daenerys did worked in her favor. It was either treated as insignificant, or was entirely unappreciated. You're right about Jon's portrayal... he was blank. We don't really know how he felt about his true identity. We can infer he felt uncomfortable in the least, but there's no dialog. He just goes blank the entire season. We see no inner conflict in him, just blankness. Tyrion and Varys were indeed dumbed down to just simple plot mechanisms. It was sad. Varys really should have/would have been working on intrigues in KL probably before they all left Essos. But nah, let's just forget for 2 entire seasons that he was Master of Whispers. Daenerys got robbed and murdered by the writing. It pisses me off. What I could see happening, maybe a more palatable alternate ending would have been that things do happen generally the same, the North (especially Sansa) are unappreciative and Dany feeling isolated. Jon, at least at first doesn't really know how to handle learning his true identity, and is indecisive, while Dany knows she loves him regardless. She feels like she's lost him, combined with the paranoia from the possibility of him telling his sisters who he really is. She loses Rheagal and Missandei, which causes huge anger. When Jon arrives at Dragonstone, Tyrion counsels him, letting him know that Dany feels betrayed, angry and alone, and he's seriously afraid she's going to do something horrendous, from which she could never return. He makes Jon understand that his true identity really doesn't matter to Dany, and that she needs him. Only he can bring her back to reason. Jon pulls his head out his ass and agrees. While doing the love story bit is cheesy AF, love is easy to write, because it makes people do all kinds of irrational and unexplainable things. I think Dany loved Jon enough that she would have backed down. Their love story was supposed to be one of the most major pairings of characters on the entire show.
Oh, they can adapt. And what they adapt and change is shit. Barristan, killed. Lady Stoneheart removed. The Martells and Sand Snakes crammed together. The once manipulative and terrifying Crows Eye made into a jerkass who just babbles about his big cock and fingering Cersei. Briennes arc in the Riverlands removed and replaced with her sitting outside Winterfell waiting for a candle to be lit. Stannis changed from an honorable and competent leader into a moron. Tyrions darker aspects removed out of fear of losing popularity. And so forth. Books were so much better.
I've seen almost every video about this subject and this is easily the one I'd recommend people watch above all the rest. This video was literally a work of art. No hyperbole. That montage was legitimately mesmerizing.
Wow, thank you so much! It took forever to find the right clips and structure them in a way that I felt worked, but I think it turned out pretty solid and I'm glad you liked it!
*Bran with the BEST Story* - Becomes Three-Eyed Raven. - Once in a while says something creepy. - Sometimes Turns into a Crow. - Expert in Bird Law. - Turned Wylis into Hodor (Retarded). - Peeping Tom on his Sisters and the rest of the Realm. - For 43 Episodes he was pushed around in a sled by Meera. - Becomes a King. - *Total Screen time* (Season 1-8): 224 minutes (Compare to *Jon:* 651 mins, *Dany:* 524 mins, *Sansa:* 418 mins, *Jaime:* 392 mins). *"You looked beautiful that night" - Bran*
Most logically consistent explanation: D&D didn't care. Bad reviews and criticism doesn't affect their paychecks and their future projects are already approved. It's like an ego driven power move.
"I do not distrust you because you're [D&D], I distrust you because you're not as smart as you think you are." Basicallly what happened to D&D when they took the reins of the show. In the end they were not clever nor creative enough to handle such a massive franchise.
Game of Thrones ended with worst kind of finale i.e Frustrating One. It is because we all know that D&D had a lot of opportunities and support to end this once great show in a good way that it gets even more frustrating to see that they rushed through all these years of amazing character development.
I love how you said after the penultimate episode you couldn’t find yourself caring about a single thing in the end. I just kind of realized I felt the same way. I wish D&D put as much time into the final season as you did into this vid. Also, Barry is excellent but Westworld is definitely the “next best thing on tv” =p
practicaldreamyr the 2nd season of WW wasn’t a hot mess and didn’t jump the shark. It just progressed at a different pace than the 1st season/structured episodes differently and explored different themes. It didn’t subvert character arcs or 7 seasons of character development for an expedient ending so that the Disney money could trickle in. It also didn’t have 4+ seasons of source material to work with.
Haha, I honestly wonder how much time they spent on the scripts, it feels like a rushed high school essay. The first season of Westworld was incredible, but I didn't much care for the second season.
Or better yet other people shouldn't have undermined Jon and Daenerys, they should've just let Jon and Daenerys be and the burning of Kings Landing wouldn't have happened.
I will never understand what the civilians of King's Landing did to provoke Dany's wrath. I could see her murdering Cersei, Cersei's soldiers or perhaps the nobles of King's Landing in the most grisly way imaginable. But slaughtering thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of whom had never resisted her in any meaningful way? What a ludicrously abrupt character shift! It's like if Martin Luther King Jr. decided to a bomb an entire city filled with innocent people after leading the civil rights movement for decades. Doesn't make any goddamned sense.
It actually would have been an amazing ending , if they just did it right and added two or more seasons. They wanted it to end too quickly. I've been watching over the earlier seasons and I just can't fathom how an amazing show ended so badly. The show has always had it's faults but this last season feels like a fuck you to the whole show.
Re-watching as much as I did to find the right clips for this video gave me so much nostalgia. This show was truly something spectacular for a long time there.
This is honestly a fantastic video! I love the way you have broken this down, I agreed with everything you said especially in regards to Daenerys! Not only were you talking complete sense but I love that you spoke in a calm, measured and reasonable tone- it gave your opinions so much legitimacy in my opinion. This isn't the knee jerk reaction of an angry fan who is ranting and swearing (Not that I blame them) This is a heartfelt summary from a fan clearly heartbroken over the way something he loves was mistreated so badly and ruined it's characters with rushed turn around's in personality's, done for shock and to tie the show up quickly.
Thanks for saying so! I got through all my ranting discussing it with friends haha, I wanted to make a measured response for the video though, I personally don't respond to the rant-esque ones.
This video explains so perfectly everything that went wrong with the ending. One of the best videos I have seen in the internet about GOT ending. And you were right I felt I did not care anymore about what would happen after each episode of the last season because I already thought the showrunners have ruined a lot of things for me that I cared so much since the beginning of the show. I wish this last season never happened and that D&D would have done it better or just passed it on to other people who cared about the story like fans do. It is heartbreaking because it ruins the whole show for me.
Thank you for the kind words! I can just honestly remember how I felt two years ago, so excited to see the conclusion to my favorite series...if only I had known.
When Dany goes mad everyone suddenly wakes up, when they did the "bad pussy" comment, ruined the Dorn plot, killed off Stannis and Roose in pointless ways, to rush things etc. noone were complaining. This began back in season 5 and has declined each season. D&D didn't care anymore, they had a Star Wars trilogy to start, so they rushed things. Should have left the series to someone else, capable of making at least 10 seasons as HBO wanted, AND proper writers.
It would have been so cool to see the Night King win the Battle of Winterfell, and go on moving across Westeros while Jon, Daenerys and their armies retreat and are forced to keep moving as far as they could while they figure out what's next. The story that the old women told Bran, is what I wanted to see. Bran literally says the Night King wants and endless night, and the show doesn't even give him a single night... not one.
Worst thing about Dany's flip is that it could've easily made some sort of sense--destroy one city to scare the rest of the world into submission. That's been the justification for everything from dropping the A bomb in WWII to the Vietnam war to the Iraq war. That would've been fascinating problem to wrestle. But no--she was simply "triggered" by seeing the red keep.
Yeah, I'd say it's a little too "Alderaan", but they had no problem with Dany's First Order/Nazi rally scene so tired cliches clearly weren't a concern.
Honestly, I think the only plot point that couldn't be saved with better writing was how Bran became King while Sansa simultaneously defected, alone, from Westeros. That part is really indefensibly stupid... but other than that, everything else that happened would have been fine with better writing (especially if the North stayed in Westeros). For example, I loved Stannis until he watched Shireen burn... but it was still much more compelling to watch than the last two episodes because it was a process.
I was bewildered by how Dani went from a wonderful woman to a homicidal maniac in the last season. She was abhorrent of all that the whole time but in the last few episodes she snaps and just doesn’t care anymore? I absolutely hate that storyline. And Jon always loved the Night’s Watch and did a fairly good job as King in the North. Arya was able to be a ninja for one episode and that should have been a two parter at least. The Battle of King’s Landing should have also been better. The whole last season was terrible.
What pisses me off ROYAL is they had Cersei set up to become the mad queen perfectly and they did JACK ALL with her. She cried a little, had no dialogue and died from a ceiling. My disappointment is boundless.
The series really started to fall apart a few seasons ago. D&D had nowhere to turn for a story template, so they made stuff up out of whole cloth. None of the characters were actually theirs, just adaptations of George R.R. Martin's, so they didn't have a true handle on them.
Total character assassination. They took her from a solid flawed but moral hero to a raging psychopath worse than her father in the span of 2 episodes. It’s absurd. The ending of the last episode of season 3 where she is being carried and her dragons are flying overhead..That was the perfect sentiment of her character, and how she was painted for 95% of the series. It’s the worst hatchet job of a ham-fisted subversive jerkoff I’ve ever witnessed. She was supposed to end her story in the series in a more Tolkien fashion, perhaps with her and Jon reigning as king and queen. Or with her dying in some kind of heroic act and then Jon following through with her promise of breaking the wheel. Whatever, any of those would have been far better. It isn’t a matter of a stereotypical happy ending either. It’s a matter of lack of earned character outcome. It all went rapidly downhill once the source material wasn’t there as a crutch. Laid bare was the truly amateur hour writing ability of Dumb n Dumber.
Honestly given some time to reflect the ending I would have liked to see is Danny winning, the bells ringing.. then it's revealed that Cersei and Qyburn decided that they would never, ever surrender King's Landing.. and detonate the rest of the Wildfire caches. Danny ends up queen of the ashes by pushing Cersei into a magic-nuking of the whole city. Everyone dies, it could be framed as her not giving Cersei some way out, and it would have been a ton more interesting. Wildfire was such a huge, huge, huge part of the show and Cersei's "I will poison everything I love so you can't have it" attitude could have paired up for a great destruction of King's Landing that had nothing to do with Danny 180'ing her whole character.
I actually thought Cersei would have some wildfire tricks but they wasted her character this season. She was so boring all she did was drink wine and stare out a window her big bang moment was having Missandei beheaded and then we see her vet a lame ass death and it's getting killed by some rocks, how underwhelming.
Within the context of the show, they should have let Dany take out Cersei first and then have her fight the NK and dying against her last enemy in Westeros. It would have made more sense to keep Dany as a heroine than turn her into a villain. Jon should have been the one to kill the NK and take the throne afterwards. It seems formulaic but that is what the show was building up to. The NK and Dany's dragons were the two greatest forces in the show and they should have been left for the final conflict. Instead they tried to make the show match the books and it didn't work. The show was very pro Dany and then attempted to make her unlikable the last two seasons. She also knew when to take advice and when not to. The real Dany would not have listened to Tyrion and attacked Kings Landing in Season 7 episode 2 or 3 like as soon as she arrived in Westeros. Then she would have had to deal the the White Walker threat.
Click for part one(not required viewing to understand this video): th-cam.com/video/PiloYP1wsI8/w-d-xo.html&t
And thus concludes my discussions. Thanks for watching, and for indulging me. Back to my regular sort of content soon
In the behind the episode or the making of they said that Miguel Sapochnik told Emilia when on the dragon to be like a drug addict when she was about to attack them .Literally that makes no sense to me because they implying she fire and blood fetish/drug addict
Congrats on 100k(inevitably). You earned it man!
Can't disagree with anything you say.
In short: they traded Character Driven Story Telling for Story Telling Driven Characters.
The characters lost all agency as the story overtook them, betraying what had elevated this fantasy drama in previous years. Such a shame.
Daenareys just snapped, no need to try to explain why she shouldn't have snapped - she's mad so that part makes sense - the show before that was just highlighting how crazy she was, while she was trying to justify her actions as somehow being good
JUST LIKE THE NORTH REMEMBERS. THE TRUE FANS WILL REMEMBER....NEVER TO SUPPORT ANYTHING THAT David Benioff and Dan Weiss put their hands on!!!
They ruined their character arcs by forgetting to have them.
"well we kinda forgot about game of thrones"
@@johnapple6646 words right outa my mouth
said it perfectly!
They slayed Daenerys as badly as Rhaegal.
Fast and nonsensical.
I want to fear a Mad Queen, not doubt her authenticity.
Exactly. I wanted to be afraid of her. I wanted to see her genuine mental decline over at least an entire season, more than one would've been great. It would have been more painful for fans that love her instead of just confusing and disingenuous. What a waste.
@@marcshimpar7645 Why didn't she burn the city before they surrendered?
Marc Shimpar you didn’t watch the video didn’t you?
She was foreshadowed of going crazy since season 1. It's not D&D's fault that dany stans weren't paying attention.
@@dustnbones0013 Foreshadowing =/= character development.
Jon Snow Dialogue season 8:
“She’s my Queen”
“I don’t want it”
“You are my Queen”
Jay NYCE Also “SCREAMING AT DRAGON”.
@@Dragonmont the most important one!
Its not the jon snow. Its d&d's jon snow
Henrique Rothbard Exactly.
They chopped Jon's balls off and made arya kill his villain
Even George RR Martin said that this show could have been 10 to 12 SEASONS with the material that they already had. Dumb and Dumber just wanted to be done with it.
And HBO was willing to give it to them. It was their highest grossing show, gotta take care of that cash cow.
I know nicknames are fun, but I'd hesitate to use that one. D&D are good writers. They've shown that, and through them we fell in love with this show. What ruined the final season wasn't stupidity or a lack of talent; it was laziness and arrogance. Which, in my eyes, is far far worse.
@@The00devon Okay but no when your reason for a character to act stupid is "she (and her advisors, of course) kinda forgot that big enemy" you are dumb. They're good when it comes to adapting books, I won't take that from them, but as soon as they took the wheel the series became full of teleporting characters and deus ex machinas. They're not talented writers.
I get being burned out on something creatively. 10+ years working on one of the biggest, most expensive and expansive shows of all time with insane pressure from rabbit fans is a monumental undertaking and honestly, they did a pretty good job at this up to season 6. Season 5 and 6 had issues and the cracks were starting to show but overall it was still good. But if they were done with the show or wanted to take a break, they should have handed over the reigns to someone else to continue the show properly.
Unfortunately it looks as though ego played a part at this. They seem to think that only they can finish this show and that it's their baby and that even if they are checked out on it, they should be the ones to do it. That was a huge mistake. Now they have no goodwil from fans with their future projects, season 8 has been overwhelmingly rejected and the GOT spin offs are put in jeopardy thanks to this fan backlash. Had they left at season 6, even if what followed sucked they would have left the show as the top writers and most beloved showrunners in Hollywood.
@@Alice-rt6fz thank you. I could not have said it better myself.
"..ultimately, she is who she is & that's a Targaryen" ...okkkk, so D&D kinda forgot that JON is a Targaryen also?! 🤦🏻♀️
I guess it doesn't count because he's only half Targaryen but yeah, no.
@@edvinsebastian1290 my take is that they decided to downplay Jon being a Targaryen -- that's why him being Aegon Targaryen was _pointless_ overall & they didn'thave him really bonding with the dragons, esp "his dragon" Rhaegal -- bc they were gonna say most Targaryens "go mad" & theyre the "bad guys" w/their dragons & Jon snow was going to be the one to kill her as a "good guy".
Also there were only 5 mad Targaryens in total and none of them committed genocide with their dragons like Daenerys did not even the more evil ones like Maegor the Cruel and her dad only wanted to burn the entire city when he knew for sure he was losing the war and he was definitely insane he had voices in his head (schizophrenic)
@@sydnitheromantictaylor112 Exactly. Using "genetics" was a sloppy way for D&D to "prove" Daenerys was "mad/bad" & the ultimate reason why she needed to be killed off.
@@karyleianawildernesscapes exactly it's stupid that they had to have her go insane just because she's a Targaryen and supposedly most Targaryens are mad and that's not true you can count the mad Targaryens on one hand there were some that were way more extremely brutal than Daenerys ever was and they never used their dragon to burn down an entire city and that's why I think it's dumb as hell
That Daenerys montage was heartbreaking. She was such an incredible character through Season 6. She deserved better.
She certainly did deserve better and they shouldn't have added the twist at all since they weren't going to do more seasons.
Agreed. I'm fine with the concept of evil Dany, and I fully expect it to happen in the books, but the writers should have known it wouldn't work in the time they had left. They should have been willing to be creative with the ending rather than trying to cram in all of GRRM's story beats.
I liked her in season 7, too. She had all of ONE outburst (two if you count burning the Tarlys) but was otherwise very rational and calm. I liked the love story, and re-watching that season, you can see it played extremely welly by Emilia Clarke. The reciprocal wasn't that well done, though.
A 'grey' ending might have worked best - she does SOMETHING out of rage - like attacking the keep directly, which causes some collateral damage. Maybe then all the wildfire left by her father (and by Cersei) ignites causing more death, but not what she intended. Jon and Tyrion would be upset about that, but wouldn't think she was evil for it. She wins the throne, Jon stands beside her.... then something in the epilogue gives us hint and makes us ask "will she become a mad queen after all?"
@@FrayAdjacentTX I liked her in season 7 too. I was just so overwhelmingly frustrated with the plot that season that it's hard to appreciate the good parts of it.
I like your "grey" ending ideas. I definitely would have preferred if she caused the destruction of KL by accident by setting off the Wild Fire, and watching the character come to grips with her mistake. Having her go full Emperor Palpatine in one scene was probably the worst possible choice the showrunners made throughout the entirety of Thrones.
@@FrayAdjacentTX yeah exactly this would've made for a better ending but dan and Dave wanted to subvert expectations rather than logical writing that would've stayed true to how the character was developed so far
Dany: "I'm not here to be queen of the ashes"
Dave Benioff: "Dany kinda forgot about the last 7 seasons..."
Sssoooooo true and SO funny!!!!😂
No Beniof, it was you who forgot the last 7 seasons
A lot of people kinda forget about her promise to burn cities to the ground outside the gates of Qarth.
I think it was supposed to happen. They just rushed tf outta her character arc. She should have been the mad queen throughout seasons after seasons. Not 1 episode. Just like Walter White was breaking bad throughout 5 seasons.
@@bereasonable8018 I think that's the joke he's making, the characters don't actually have free will they do whatever D&D want them to do, so yeah, that's what he's implying. He's paraphrasing "Danny kind of forgot about the Iron fleet..."
They didn’t let others run the show, because of their ego. They didn’t want anyone else’s name on it. They are selfish.
Funny thing is, they're done. I think people will boicot anything they make from now on... So it won't be long before Hollywood gives them the back
@@AlbertoFolres I hope their reputation really does suffer. How they thought they could get away with ruining one of the best shows ever on TV because they wanted to move on is beyond me.
How the fuck would you know that?
@@AlbertoFolres They wrote and shot one of, if not THE MOST successful TV show in HISTORY. Doesn't matter how it ended, they made a killing for HBO. They're not going anywhere son.
@@AlbertoFolres nah, the normies don't care. They'll do fine, unfortunately.
HBO: "What do we say to good writing?"
D&D: "Not today"
GOT fans hear news about the new star wars trilogy: "The north remembers..."
Not original but still good.
Honestly after the way the Game of Thrones finale ended I'm not super hyped about the new Star Wars series, and I'm a Star Wars fan but unfortunately l don't feel super stoked knowing D&D are involved l don't know perhaps the series might be good but I don't have much faith in it at the moment.
@@gese74 First the last jedi, then solo and now this. lucasfilm has really made some poor decisions after the force awakens.
Hola
Bad writings are tight.
This is where I get off the "we should have all seen the Mad Queen coming" train. People are mistaking violence with insanity, and saying that because Dany has always used violence as a means to an end, she was always going to be a brutal tyrant.
Massacring KL wasn't brutal tyranny, it was insane, irrational, and senseless. At no point in Dany's history has she ever killed an innocent person for no discernible reason; her violent actions have always been either calculated or directed at a loathed enemy.
What happened in KL was different in both scale and kind to what we've seen up to this point, because of rushed and lazy writing.
Nothing Dany has ever done suggested she would go on a killing spree of innocent women and CHILDREN for no reason whatsoever. Ruthless toward her enemies? YES. Insane, random killing AFTER she won a battle and civilians surrendered? NO. In fact, nothing even in the last two episodes of build up suggested she would do what she did. I expected worse case she would mow through the meat wall that Cercei let into the Red Keep. What the hell was even the point of that PP? Her heel turn made no damn sense the way they wrote it. She had zero motive to zigzag through the streets for 30 MINUTES.
Fingolfin of Noldor that’s right. Her character turn would’ve made sense after two seasons of growth not two minutes. Good writing would have made it believable and controversial. No sane person agrees with what dany did - either the reasons or the actions
I've been arguing against the "we should have seen the mad queen coming" excuse ever since people were dumb enough to try an implement it into a defense for this season. If what Tyrion said is true and that her killing the masters, the khals, the Sons of the Harpy, and so on was an indication of madness and justifies her being killed or treated this way then why isn't Sansa and Arya on the chopping block too?
Sansa had a man ripped apart and eaten by his own dogs, and sentenced another man to death all without a fair trial, she cowered in the crypts letting the walkers kill the women and children SHE was supposed to be ruling over. she betrays John after swearing secrecy to him pretty much making an oath to him, then blabs to Tyrion the next day after getting on John's ass in season 7 about punishing those that break their oaths, she wanted to take the homes of people who had no say in what their parents did- basically punishing them for their father's mistakes.
Arya is even worse, she's killed 6 people, one of which was an innocent stable-boy and the others she killed in psychopathic anger- even drawing out their pain an misery as long as she could before brutally killing them. She left Sandor to die after he risked his life to defend her and she bursts out laughing after she hears that her aunt is dead (who the fuck does that??). And let's not forget that she killed an entire house with poison after killing the head of the household, slicing his face off, and wearing it as a mask in order to pretend to be him in the first place.
if Danny deserved to die than so does Arya and Sansa, they did things that were just as bad as what Danny did before season 8- if not worse. By the show's own logic both of those characters should be labeled as insane and stabbed to death due to the fact that just because the people they killed were "bad" it doesn't mean that killing them is the right thing to do.
@@UbinTimor And don't forget Tyrion. He blew up a whole fleet with wildfire, so by the showrunner's logic that totally disregards character motives for their actions, he should get angry one day and start randomly blowing up people with wildfire.
@@UbinTimor Great observations. And don't forget that Jon has had his fair share of questionable killings as well. Yet, even with his Targaryean lineage, he still isn't "mad" or worthy of death, apparently.
@@practicaldreamyr On top of that, the 'The True Heir' EXECUTES a War Criminal (cause that's what she has become) and is BANISHED?!! What gives them the authority to do that? No one mentions his claim in the end? The Man that passed the sentence swung the sword but Sansa still ends up with the throne she has wanted since she was a girl and let her access to that life threaten the life of her own sister!!! Oh Bull...!
I don't know any creative person or artist worth their salt that would essentially drop their current project, putting their whole team into overdrive to make up for it just so they can move onto something better. I wouldn't want to work with someone like that at all, you wouldn't know their priorities or even know if they are giving their full creative skills to the the current work their doing. I don't know why they didn't hire new show runners and writers that they vetted with the help of George R.R. Martin. All the designers and artists involved in the show did they best they could do and for that they deserve props and D&D were good show runners in the management view at least, then again I have no idea what they will do with Star Wars because they aren't good writers and their directing leaves a lot to desired it's all very odd and confusing in the end much like the end of this series.
@@Alice_Long So the crew who has for years made one of the best television series surpassing film in terms of production design (they literally built city blocks for the penultimate episode) and effects who were forced to rush production and most likely exhausted because of shooting schedules all of sudden becomes not the most talented people because they forgot to screen some things for a scene.
Christian Longoria - Money can change people and lots of money can make people change a lot.
@@Alice_Long another reason why rushing was the wrong way to go.. let a fresh passionate person give the time that was needed to keep it great instead of racing to a bad end
Im curious almost what a star wars movie would be like from them. star wars has never had amazing dialogue but the characters are what makes or breaks it. Not to mention the last few star wars movies havent been as original ... i dont want to support any new stuff they do just because of how poorly they handled this season.
The Internet will never forget this.. Goodbye careers D&D..
I started crying at your beautifully edited Dany montage, because of how the ruined her character so much.
Look at how they massacred my girl.
@@daniel_netzel Thank you for reminding us who Daenerys really was: a protector of innocents, someone willing to sacrifice everything for the man she loved, someone incredibly brave and filled with inner strength and compassion because of all she had been through and overcome. I love how you talked about her "grace". So well put together and narrated....They could have subverted the "Mad Queen" expectations : her story could have been one of redemption, perhaps one of her killing innocents through collateral damage (not intentionally, the way the show writers put it onscreen). They could have shown her reaction as devastated by that outcome. She could have realized that she had won the iron throne and lost Jon because of their blood relationship. It would have been a hollow victory, but would STILL have been a commentary on the dangers/consequences of war and absolute power, in the vein of GRRM.......I don't accept their version of Daenerys. What makes this so devastating is reading about Emilia Clarke's reaction to that script, the first time she read it. She cried, and went for a 5-hr walk through London. coming back with blisters on her feet. Kit cried when he read it, too, at the table read. I can't imagine how hard the KL episode was for her to act, and then how hard Daenerys' death scene was for Emilia and Kit to film. Neither of them wanted that ending for their characters. I STILL CAN'T GET OVER IT. But I have to say, you reminded everyone who saw this of all the good Daenerys accomplished. She even helped save the world from the white walkers, for God's sake!......Thank You.
Same. I loved this edit.
I hated it. The reverse montages exist as well. Wish someone would show both sides already. The moment someone begins leaving out factual evidence to their montages to prove their point it means that person is wrong, or at the very least extremely biased. Reminds me of hbomberguy. Can't watch the rest of this.
@@TheStraightestWhitest then watch the reverse montages?
1.5 million people didn't sign the petition, actually thinking or believing that HBO would re-do the entire season, they did it as a statement that they were disappointed, and offended by the results, and were not afraid to put their names to that statement.
That's why they signed the petition, to state on the record, their massive disapproval.
Skeptical Chris first world problems
@@edienandy it's a poor season to be sure, but yeah, when you got 1.5 million people trying to petition to remake a show rather than other things like feed the hungry or end human trafficking, yeah, it's a first world problem.
@I'm Done that most won't go out of their way to sign it, a lot of casual viewers too that just wanted entertainment and I'm sure they were mostly satisfied with it.
@I'm Done I doubt that. surely it has significantly more than that.
Skeptical Chris And now spinoffs are cancelled except for the Targaryen related one. Good because that spinoff with Naomi Watts seemed so politicized. I mean for the sake of diversity and representation. I don’t watch TV or movie for diversity or politics. I watch it for entertainment.
D&D rushed the hell out of the last two seasons. There's no respect to talk about.
My problem is also that they changed the main focus of the show from characters to visuals and explosions/action scenes. For example in season 7 episode beyond the wall, which was a retarded plan to begin with, they said that the polar bear was super cool and they looked super proud about it that made ne question if they remember what the show is about. I don't care about dragons and polar bears if the plot is dumb as fuck. That's also their great problem.
I just think it's important to give credit where credit is due. They fucked up for sure, but not 100% of the time obviously.
@@daniel_netzel Yes, off course. You are trying to be fair and I get that.
But when somebody f's-up and you are angry with them then you need to motivate that anger. It's not only for the sake of being understood by somebody, but also to give them a chance to learn from it (hopefully). I am not saying that D&D will learn from this or any other critical video on TH-cam - they seem to be too arrogant for that. I'm saying that SOMEONE, who is or will be a writer in the future, could benefit from stern criticism.
Because everybody, who has at least half a brain can understand that failure is never the entirety of one's work and that D&D excelled in adapting the books in the past. People understand that failure is just a point in time.
What gets to the minds of only a few, though, is that more often than not, these points are what shapes History (also film history). And THAT is usually what needs to be brought to the attention of many.
Kudos for trying to be fair, though.
It is one season split in two
Alternate title: "Start the damn _The Winds of Winter_ before I piss myself"
Paul Keefer too late for me 😟
@@matthewsmith3078 You pissed yourself?
Lol Bobby B
"End the damn The Winds of Winter and start the damn A Dream of Spring before I piss myself"
im not even excited for the books anymore to be honest
An eloquent and sympathetic analysis. Thank you. By the time Daenerys was burning King's Landing I felt nothing, and I am a very empathic person. One must empathise at least to a degree with one or more of the characters in a story to feel some immersion. This was destroyed way before the end. Farewell my dragon queen, you deserved better.
season 8 is so bad I refuse to see it as cannon, the show ended on the finale of season 6.
I think that was precisely the problem, I felt no empathy for any character in this entire season. Except maybe Theon and Jorah.
Exactly this. Usually the show made me feel so many feelings, I was totally immersed, couldnt think abt anything else for days after an episode sometimes. Normally what happened to Kings landing and daenerys and her dragons would have made me cry for weeks but I watched and just felt nothing. I didnt even feel the urge to cry..just nothing. They managed to take away the emotional connection to the show completely in 2 seasons when I have been so extremely emotionally connected to through all the seasons before.
Did it look like she ended up with more unsullied than she started with? And where did those dothraki come from?
Benioff for the inside episode for The Long Night-“What they see is the end of the Dothraki essentially”
Someone handed the clone of Daenerys (because the original wasn't likely to do this) a few respawn codes.
It was out of sympathy as she was brand new character in a series with some that had been around for years, so she needed a hand.
They gave her Negan's cheat codes.
They respawned
They stopped off at Kamino off screen. 😂
The scary thing about ego is that it can consume even the strive for personal achievements. D&D traded away something potentially so great just for few more skrilla bags on SW. Maybe it was incompetence, maybe vanity, a sad thing either way.
Majority of your blame is misplaced. After GRRM got the HBO money, he sat on his ass for 7 years and never finished the last books. D&D are film makers, not writers. Their only fault is that they mistakenly decided to continue and conclude the show on their own and never admitted their failure to deliver.
It was both for sure
Leave Lord GRRM out of this. D&D is a fraud and pretentious writers case closed. Unlimited budget and HBO offering 10 episodes and perhaps more season for GOT?
D&D: Hold my beer, We could do it in 6 episodes. Put the budget of the dragon sfx in our pocket. Give us 2 years. We go in then we go out to make Star Wars movies. Easiest money of our lives!
@@fcuk_x GRRM wants books to be perfect and perfection takes time. Also writing the end is more difficult from the writing start. He isn't lazy he just has a writer block like every writer has at least once in their career. And get out from block is more difficult than you think, I know because I wrote small things too.
But again showrunners trusted him to finish books before they run out of the book source so he and the showrunners should have overseed this and started the show at least after Winds of the winter came out.
I give you XMEN Origins Wolverine
This video has a great narrative arc
They did my Dragon Queen wrong! It was character assassination, period! A person doesn't do a 180 in 2 episodes!! Atrocious writing!
And those that defends D&D are the reason why these atrocious writers can move on to next projects without any problems
Indeed! Good people can definitely become horrible over time, but you don't go from being Joan of Arc to being Hitler in like a week. It was just ludicrously abrupt.
Dylan Kelk to be honest worse than Hitler since Hitler actually had a "motive." She was just killing for no reason
she was already a disgrace. they just made it obvious.
I'm sick of this whole GOT mess that D&D created. It shows you how much an ending can ruin a good show.
Lol, at this point, a corny, predictable ending would have been better than what we got.
What's the absolute worst is waste of so many good actor's, portrayals, style, music and tons of effort from everyone, just because D&D are full of themselves doofoses who wouldnt resign and hand the torch to someone who would keep it going strong for couple more seasons as both HBO and George were open towards. If they grew tired and disinterested with no more passion for it they should fucking resign and not fuck it up in way that cant be ever fixed wasting away entire series and what it was in every way. Fucking hacks....
Other biggest bullshit from these two hacks, Was their trope of subverting expectations for sake of subversion. In unrealistic and retarded ways. Last time they cared was season 6...and even then not all that much because Euron and Dorne were already fucked up. But dialogue and script for everything else were still good. They should've resigned from the show during Season 6 production and give it to far more passionate and good writers who would do GoT/Asoiaf justice with more seasons and by expanding known threads and going along most interesting plots like book Euron, real Dorne.
True. I watched all episodes over and over again, until i saw last season. It totally ruined all the characters builds. Whole show is ruined. Can't watch it anymore. :(
"What were the writers' justification for Dany's descent into madness" - if it were well-written and made sense, they wouldn't need to justify it at all
Exactly. And their justification feels a little sexist. How many men on this show have killed without mercy when necessary, but when she does it, it's a sign of madness?
@@aprilcole8331 Heck, look at Arya: she killed all Frey, but apparently that's ok for her?!! And then Sandor says after this event that killing Cersei would transform her into him.
The petition for HBO to rectify what the audience feels is a grievous injustice is a long, long, longshot, true. But I think this group knows nothing will come of it and it's more to put on record what writing hacks Benioff and Weiss are. It's a public record (like this video) that will undoubtedly mark their resumes for the foreseeable future.
Freefolk started that petition as a joke..
That's exactly what the petition is for. The guy who started even said he doesn't really think there's any chance of season 8 being redone.
There are literally millions of people who feel like they've been cheated. The petition is about being able to voice that.
change.org
To quote Pitch Meeting:
"Then one of the dragons is taken out by a scorpion!"
"Oh, so Danni kills the rest of them?"
"What? No! A dragon is no match for a bunch of scorpions"
"Oh ok, what happens next"
"Well Danni invades destroys the iron fleet and the city wall."
"Wait aren't there a ton of scorpions?"
"Yeah, but they're no match for a dragon!"
sUbvErTiNg ExPeCtAtiOnS
How D&D ruined the greatest show in history!!!
To be fair, they also created it... but yeah, eff them.
BENYJOSE1 they literally fucking copied from the genius GRRM
Lol, it's almost like they let another team of writers work on the show while they worked on Star Wars. Writers who never saw the show before.
There are other great shows that actually held up for all of their seasons, this is but one of them... that happened to burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp.
It’s never been the greatest show in history but you’re right they ruined it.
Amazing video, you really showed how terribly they handled Daenerys with this video.
They didn't. Fans just threw a tantrum because they thought their Reddit theories should have come true.
GnomeDazzle X to doubt. Daenerys going full on mad queen was rushed af and there’s hardly and build up towards it to make sense if you look at her character arc in the past 7 seasons.
GnomeDazzle Fans through tantrums over Reddit theories? What Reddit theories? Jon killing Dany? Dany going mad? Kong’s landing being burned? Tyrion betraying her? Like all these things happened. All the major theories ended up becoming true because D&D life to write some good ol fanfics. Your logic isn’t really workin out here mate
Thanks so much for saying so!
Thoughtful & measured dissection of why this ending was such a betrayal of everything that made it good. Thank you
hdhd u they did it to stannis.
I appreciate the kindness my friend, thank you for watching!
@@sa1sa624 I didn't always agree with the fact that they might have done Stannis dirty, but looking back they kinda rushed his descent into desperation as well. He didn't seem like he would have done that to his only child I mean who would be his heir later on?
WORST SEASON EVER!
Yeah :/
This season made me gay. I plan to sue.
@@zangiefromanov2563 💀💀💀
Best video for explaining how they ruined character arcs. Daenerys, Jaime, Varys, Cersei character arcs just ruined. Like you said since they decided to rush these last two seasons they shouldn't have added the twists at all.
After watching Dany's character for 7 seasons, the idea that she would mercilessly incinerate innocent civilians by the thousand is as nonsensical as the idea that Jon Snow would do the same. They are both moral people and have been meticulously built up to be such.
Just rushed idiotic comic book movie writing at its worst. And it's not surprising.
Exactly. Every character faces tough decisions, between mercy and vengeance, and pretty much every one of them has chosen vengeance. Arya has done a lot more vicious shit than Dany ever has and she wouldn't just kill tens of thousands of innocent people.
Not really, Dany uses morality as a tool when it benefited her. She has talked about burning cities and fire and blood for 7 seasons. She fed a Meereen noble to her dragon and told the rest she didn't care if they were guilty or innocent. She said she could destroy Meereen an everyone in it because she knew what was good better than they. She either didn't have the capacity or had someone to talk her down. When she says she doesn't want to be queen of ashes, she is just repeating Tyrion to sound noble, he had just talked her out of it. That is why Tyrion gives her that look.
@@kpllc4209 It truly benefited her when she executed a commoner for killing someone working for the Harpy. She only had a support of common people and yet she did this to show justice.
Or when she commanded Yara that there will be no raping and raiding when she win the throne even though she risked losing their support and their fleet which was needed to bring her army to Westeros.
Or when she took the slaver cities, because she cared for common people even though it didn't brought her closer to the throne.
Or when she refused to sail to Westeros, because she wanted not only to learn how to become a better ruler but also to protect former slaves.
Exactly this. So tired of people calling the massacre of character arcs just “rushed plots.”
I totally agree. I'm so tired of all the negativity.
THE PETITION IS ABOUT SENDING A MESSAGE ABOUT THE CRAP WRITING of season 8. NOT actually expecting it to be remade. Keep signing it!
The only characters that weren't butchered this season were Theon, Jorah, and maybe the hound. Davos wasn't ruined but he didn't do anything major.
Don't forget Ghost, he had like the best character development of them all in season 8
@@leelahasan3988 I can't believe they even wrote Drogon out of character
I feel like they even kinda ruined Bron as well. He was kinda way more of a dick in that scene with Tyrion and Jaime. I could be wrong.
Brienne stayed pretty true to character. I don't know why she would have left Sansa for Bran but otherwise she ended in a good place. It wasn't her fault Jaime 'kinda forgot" his character development and abandoned her for Cersei.
Exactly how I felt after episode 5. I was angry and still can’t believe the writers and producers thought it made any sense to completely pull a 180 on Dany’s character. We needed more episodes showing Dany losing it.
Making a character change so abruptly is like making a U-turn on a dime.
It doesn't take things in a new direction, it only makes things go backwards.
It just felt like they wanted to subvert expectation and thats all well and good if it makes sense. This however just doesn't. They were so happy that they could do it, they never asked themselves if they should do it.
this is one of the most well expressed GOT criticism videos I've watched. Also your voice is so calming :D
Thanks for saying so! I appreciate it :)
...as well as non aggressive, Internet has so much hatred that we don't need more
I was a huge fan of the show, it was realistic to the point of making me cry, sweat and even have nightmares. After episode 4 of this Season I knew at once D&D were about to destroy GOT, I even almost didin't watch episodes 5 and 6 but I was advised to. Guess what it was so much worse than I could imagine. I watched it with no emotions, I was not happy or sad, I felt nothing. That is the word to describe SEason 8, NOTHING:
Your montage of Dany made me tear a bit. They managed to destroy her. And so quickly....
I wish dany could have gotten a better ending
Awesome video!!! I agree with you 100%!!! Dan and Dave were selfish not to pass the show to someone who still has passion for it!!!
I've red that Martin told them about Bran, but not about Daenerys. For me they made their own fan fiction.
I think the show was really ruined for me when Gendry called himself “Gendry Rivers”.
Its only Gendry. If he was a bastard of a noble women and king robert then it would be waters since he said he was born in kings landing. But shouldn't even have a last name because his mother was a commoner and he was an unacknowledged bastard.
Still confuse where does Arya come from behind stab Night King
Ikr, she should of atleast had on a white walker face. Hard to believe all of that face training was just to kill Walder Frey.
Interestingly in the actual script it says she "vaults off of a pile of dead whytes" but they decided to make it way more ambiguous in the actual show.
She hit a crit roll on stealth, duh.
@@nbucwa6621 That's so fucking corny, I'm actually glad they just made her come out of nowhere compared to that shit.
I think they tried to make it seem like she was as fast as wind or something lol.. Because if you go back, you can hear the wind & see a white walker looking back as if he heard/saw something, but couldnt quite figure out what exactly.. Then the next scene is Arya jumping towards the Night King.
Idk how she could be THAT fast or not be seen by the white walkers, but fuck logic at this point.
I've spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for this video, in order to re-watch the amazing clip montage starting at 3:20...It's stuck in my brain forever now! Whenever I think about Game of Thrones, I remember this video.
This comment is for my own record: Awesome Dany montage starts at 3:24.
Thank you for letting me watch GoT and listen to the music, without having to actually watch the show. ❤
_(Yes, I'm binging GoT TH-cam videos again. I will go to my grave angry. Even if I'm technically over it by then, I'm still dying angry on principle. I will never forgive what happened and what was done to all of the amazing people who worked for years and years on this show, just to have it ruined and their work abandoned, forgotten by everyone because the only way to cope with it is to move on and pretend it never happened.)_
They had to absolutely ruin one of their main characters (Jon) to make Dany's madness believable and they still didn't manage it.
"What vent wrong?"
They turned away from our lord and savior *GRRM*
Oliver Hugaas
He’s a good book writer but 8 years for a 200,000 word book? I mean come on he needs to finish up
GRRM is NOT the Lord nor is he anyone's SAVIOR. Grow up!
@@tanyawilliams1887 It's a joke. Get over your self.
@@xxpandagalaxyxx5655 Not a very good one and disrespectful of Christianity unless you can also 'joke' about GRRM being Allah...
#Tolerance
@@tanyawilliams1887 looool, mind blown!!! hope you are joking as well!!! :P :P
Precisely. Daenerys always targeted her enemies. If anything, she would have flown her dragon straight at the Red Keep to get Cersei. If there would have been collateral damage from that action, it would have made it more logical. Daenerys flying around randomly burning people made no sense.
Seriously. Or the people turning on a foreign invader and trying to attack her dragon would have justified her killing some folks. They literally went with the least logical option.
If the fans of GoT expected a good finale, D&D certainly subverted THAT expectation.
I knew it was bad and had low expectations. My expectations were still subverted, repeatively
If George RR Martin wanted Bran to be the King so be it, but the Directors & Writers of Season 8 literally ruined the way it was presented. Very very sloppy writing, it feels different from the Game of Thrones we knew. Was a big fan until Season 8. Everything was ruined thanks to those clown directors.
Thank you for clarifying how inconsistent and down right terrible the writing was for Dany’s character. I would have been ok with her turning to the dark side if it had been developed more. If I had seen some conflict within the character. But there was no inner conflict, no inner dialogue to show her switch from defending the innocent to not giving a shit about them. She went from being a good person who wanted to help people to the ultimate evil worse than Cercei. I hated it. and there’s nothing that can redeem it in my eyes.
As for the petition, most people are signing it to insult D&D and/or ward them off of Star Wars. I doubt even 1% of people who signed it genuinely expect the season to be remade. Even the person who made the petition doesn't expect it and never did. The ways for consumers to actually express discontent for a product in a way that makes a difference are incredibly limited. It's why things like review bombing exist for games. The situation is not ideal, but it's all consumers can do.
Exactly. The petition was all about expressing frustration with the disaster that was the last season, no one ever expected it to be actually remade.
Great video and you summed up exactly how I've been feeling about this season and how they butchered Daenerys's character. And Barry is fantastic!!!
The fact the just cut and run makes it even worse. They gained the respect and trust of the writer and fans, then after a decade they rush it through to do something else. They obviously learnt nothing of honor.
I really wanted to have a proper conversation between Arya and dany ... which never happened and all of sudden we get to know Arya hate dany... fuck...
This is the very best explanation, both with using scenes set against scenes of Dany's CONSTANT mercy towards the Innocents, whether it is an impediment towards her #1 goal, or her "punishment"/ necessity to remove" towards her own dragons when they burned only one single child. And your voice over through these scenes is the very best explanation of rationality that I've read so far, especially with the arc of Dany. Thank you for this voice that explains every single sadness I have for the characters and the show both.
I just wanted to show that this whole "she's been evil the whole time" and "you haven't been paying attention" argument is total garbage. I've watched the entire series several times and her arc has always showed her as merciful above all else.
Thank you for putting together this well thought out analysis. So many people are just going around yelling slogans like “character arc!”, “didn’t earn it!”, “needed more time” without really knowing what they’re talking about. But I appreciate your video because (well it says exactly what I was thinking”, but also it’s concise, with solidly backed arguments. Thank you!!
Exactly. While Danny burned King’s Landing I just kept saying: “Why? Why?!”
Beautiful video bro. This is incredible. Thank you for taking the time to make this.
Thanks so much for saying so my dude! I really appreciate you taking the time to watch :)
EGO!!!
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT.
It was Dumb & Dumber's Ego. They could have passed the show along to someone, (like you said) with better vision. They destroyed the show to get Star Wars money. And now...they will destroy Star Wars.
There is such a clear disconnect between the Dany montage in seasons 1-5 and seasons 6-8
I cry. Again. I can hear in your words how much you empathize with all the fans who are deeply heartbroken by the last season of Game of Thrones.
I'm not even angry at D&D anymore, just truly utterly heartbroken. I have loved this show to pieces the exact same way a pet owner loves his dog. Now it feels like my dog died. Not of old age, though. He was butchered. Butchered by the very person you trusted with it the most. And there was nothing I could do about it.
I'm just sad. And that's all there is now.
I was genuinely hurt watching this season. I feel betrayed by a show I once loved so deeply.
Jesus Christ get some help
Excellent video. You're totally right, characters are the core of a story and nothing is more irritating and disappointing than seeing their slow and subtle evolution and maturation as individuals suddenly ruined with no logic.
The reason for the Dany's arc is to have a reason for Jon to kill her.
They wanted Kit to be the hero and failed spectacularly. They threw character out of the window for spectacle. What a failure.
The show broke my heart.
Same :/
It still burns a month later.
It’s almost a year later and I’m not over it.
July 2021 and I'm still upset.
This still hurts me so bad. I can’t believe none of the actors objected but chose to remain silent.
The actors might have been thankful to D&D for their careers, but incompetance should not be rewarded with blind loyalty.
considering the fair amount of disappointment the actors have expressed, i doubt that "none of the actors objected", I'm sure that a number of them probably expressed their displeasure to the writers, but at the end of the day they are actors and are contractually obligated to do their job.
An actor who signs a contract then refuses to work because they don't like the direction their character is going is not going to look professional and risks getting a bad reputation in their industry.
There's just not much they can do, they're hired actors, paid to follow the script and the directors.
Dany’s character arc would make more sense, or “be earned” if there was 2 more full seasons (as HBO and Martin wanted) to show her slowly being corrupted by power and slowly mistrusting the people around her.
The hilarious thing is that Dany has multiple sentence added in the show to make her more heroic, has epic music, doesn't have to suffer bad consequences for taking these cities nearly as much as in the books... Everything done before pointed another ending then the books. Dany ends Dance with dragons thinking her attempt at diplomacy was worthless in this "barbaric world", that trying to change it was foolish. Essentialy, she abandonned, both the innocents and pacific ways. In the show, she just stand around and just gets help from Dothraki to solve Essos problems. What does that tell?
Excellent articulation about how I think/feel about Daenerys and how the writers MURDERED her.
You're right, D&D deserve at least some praise - they brought this show to us in the first place. They really did a good job adapting the source material. That brought us into the GoT world and made us love it. They brought to us possibly the greatest show ever made for television. The cast, crew and everyone that worked on this epic show are well deserving of the highest praise.
But then the writers decided to just wrap it up, abandoning well laid out arcs and themes, unceremoniously killing that show, and all it had become. They took an endpoint they decided on and entirely unconvincingly rushed to it.
I wish they would have just stuck to an end that "made sense given the groundwork laid". Going with "oh, she was always going to go mad", basically genetic pre-determinism, was a cop out. They just wanted to blow shit up and make it shocking. When even the actress playing the character says of her actions "it came out of fucking nowhere. I was flabbergasted. Absolutely never saw that coming"... we have to realize that was in the context of the woman who played this character, and brought her to life. Everything the character did, Emilia Clarke portrayed to us. If anyone aside from the writers should have had any clue, it would have been her.
Exactly, all Dany had to do was sack Kings Landing and it all would have been fine. Hell, Tywin did it and it worked out fine for Robert. But for some reason the idea of civilian casualties is completely unheard of when it comes time for Dany to do what she needs to do. How hilarious is it that they propose starving the city instead; as if people wouldn't die from that. It's like the whole universe has conspired to make Dany the bad guy. She even sacrificed her army and fought side-by-side with the north and they still don't respect her. Her state of mind was fine, she had 3 dragons and all her unsullied and dothraki warriors at full force. If she burned the Red Keep along with Cersei, she would broken the alliance that Cersei and Euron made back in season 7.
Dany wanted to siege KL, her advisers cautioned her otherwise, and the whole thing has spiraled out of control into a colossal clusterfuck. Now if the show treated it like her advisers were idiots and she should have just sacked KL that would be one thing. Instead, we're supposed to believe that Dany is unfit to rule and Tyrion and Varys need to stop her because she's out of control. Like, she's only in this terrible situation because of those two dunderheads in the first place.
To make her "madness" a thing both Tyrion and Varys were dumbed down to a ridiculous degree and achieved absolutely nothing in two seasons. And were only used as plot devices to thin her army out, get rid of her allies, dragons etc. Both of them are turned into 21st pacifist.
What a great writing, for all his time with Dany on Dragonstone, Varys did absolutely nothing, no scheming against Cersei, no attempts on her life, no spying. Zero effort to take KL. Nothing. He barely even talked and just stood around like an extra. Until the plot demanded to be the plot device to act against Dany. Then he started writing letters and scheme.
Whole Mad Dany arc is forced and is unnatural. If it wasn't, the smartest characters around her wouldn't be acting out of character and being complete fools. Or practically voiceless extras for the entire 7 season (Varys).
It feels cheap because Dany literally did everything she could and made all the right moves still got fucked over to the nth degree. It just doesn't make sense. It'd be different if the show made it seem like these seemed like the right choices at the time but were wrong in hindsight, but they don't. The "right move" was apparently to not siege KL, as evidenced by how we're supposed to root for Varys/Tyrion conspiring against Dany to stop it. The "right move" was to go north and fight against the WW, but in doing so Dany lost half her armies, a dragon, and gained zero respect.
Jon's character and parentage are literally plot devices for the mad queen plot. D&D also stripped Jon's personality and we don't know how Jon feels about his parentage. Missandei has no interaction with Daenerys this season. They have talked plenty of times in private since season 3, but no gotta make Daenerys feel isolated somehow for the mad queen plot.
One of the my main issue is that the show equates ruthless ambition with madness. I think in the books Daenerys is going towards a path of being so ruthless that she is called mad (by her enemies) but that she is never mentally ill like her father was. Making her mad take away all her agency as a character and reduces the weight of her choices as something "she couldn't help doing because she's crazy."
@@fingolfinofnoldor3592 I agree with you... it seemed like due to the writing, NOTHING Daenerys did worked in her favor. It was either treated as insignificant, or was entirely unappreciated.
You're right about Jon's portrayal... he was blank. We don't really know how he felt about his true identity. We can infer he felt uncomfortable in the least, but there's no dialog. He just goes blank the entire season. We see no inner conflict in him, just blankness.
Tyrion and Varys were indeed dumbed down to just simple plot mechanisms. It was sad. Varys really should have/would have been working on intrigues in KL probably before they all left Essos. But nah, let's just forget for 2 entire seasons that he was Master of Whispers.
Daenerys got robbed and murdered by the writing. It pisses me off.
What I could see happening, maybe a more palatable alternate ending would have been that things do happen generally the same, the North (especially Sansa) are unappreciative and Dany feeling isolated. Jon, at least at first doesn't really know how to handle learning his true identity, and is indecisive, while Dany knows she loves him regardless. She feels like she's lost him, combined with the paranoia from the possibility of him telling his sisters who he really is. She loses Rheagal and Missandei, which causes huge anger.
When Jon arrives at Dragonstone, Tyrion counsels him, letting him know that Dany feels betrayed, angry and alone, and he's seriously afraid she's going to do something horrendous, from which she could never return. He makes Jon understand that his true identity really doesn't matter to Dany, and that she needs him. Only he can bring her back to reason. Jon pulls his head out his ass and agrees.
While doing the love story bit is cheesy AF, love is easy to write, because it makes people do all kinds of irrational and unexplainable things. I think Dany loved Jon enough that she would have backed down. Their love story was supposed to be one of the most major pairings of characters on the entire show.
When they started streamlining we knew it was over.
You really summed it up so eloquently and truthfully.
D&D didn't write crap... They just adapted.
They can adapt, but they could never write, just don't lie to us about that.
Oh, they can adapt. And what they adapt and change is shit.
Barristan, killed. Lady Stoneheart removed. The Martells and Sand Snakes crammed together. The once manipulative and terrifying Crows Eye made into a jerkass who just babbles about his big cock and fingering Cersei. Briennes arc in the Riverlands removed and replaced with her sitting outside Winterfell waiting for a candle to be lit. Stannis changed from an honorable and competent leader into a moron. Tyrions darker aspects removed out of fear of losing popularity. And so forth.
Books were so much better.
The way they did Daenerys, I was completely empty. She is my favourite character and always will be, hopefully the book does her justice.
let's not forget the world's biggest theory the Azor Ahai who will end the long night..was forgotten by D&D! :D
So much for that theory!
Damn, the editing for this video is exceptional. Especially Tyrion's bit around 3:20.
Thank you for saying so! I worked quite hard on it haha.
I've seen almost every video about this subject and this is easily the one I'd recommend people watch above all the rest.
This video was literally a work of art. No hyperbole. That montage was legitimately mesmerizing.
meh
all of them say the same and show the same. I've watched 20 by now that show the flaws
meh
all of them say the same and show the same. I've watched 20 by now that show the flaws
Wow, thank you so much! It took forever to find the right clips and structure them in a way that I felt worked, but I think it turned out pretty solid and I'm glad you liked it!
*Bran with the BEST Story*
- Becomes Three-Eyed Raven.
- Once in a while says something creepy.
- Sometimes Turns into a Crow.
- Expert in Bird Law.
- Turned Wylis into Hodor
(Retarded).
- Peeping Tom on his Sisters and the rest of the Realm.
- For 43 Episodes he was pushed around in a sled by Meera.
- Becomes a King.
- *Total Screen time* (Season 1-8): 224 minutes (Compare to *Jon:* 651 mins, *Dany:* 524 mins, *Sansa:* 418 mins, *Jaime:* 392 mins).
*"You looked beautiful that night" - Bran*
Most logically consistent explanation: D&D didn't care. Bad reviews and criticism doesn't affect their paychecks and their future projects are already approved. It's like an ego driven power move.
"I do not distrust you because you're [D&D], I distrust you because you're not as smart as you think you are."
Basicallly what happened to D&D when they took the reins of the show. In the end they were not clever nor creative enough to handle such a massive franchise.
Game of Thrones ended with worst kind of finale i.e Frustrating One. It is because we all know that D&D had a lot of opportunities and support to end this once great show in a good way that it gets even more frustrating to see that they rushed through all these years of amazing character development.
You are a masterful editor. That Dany montage was gorgeous. Excellent use of clips and music. 👏🏼
I love how you said after the penultimate episode you couldn’t find yourself caring about a single thing in the end. I just kind of realized I felt the same way. I wish D&D put as much time into the final season as you did into this vid. Also, Barry is excellent but Westworld is definitely the “next best thing on tv” =p
Ha, Westworld's second season was a hot mess. At least it took GoT a few more seasons to jump the shark.
practicaldreamyr the 2nd season of WW wasn’t a hot mess and didn’t jump the shark. It just progressed at a different pace than the 1st season/structured episodes differently and explored different themes. It didn’t subvert character arcs or 7 seasons of character development for an expedient ending so that the Disney money could trickle in. It also didn’t have 4+ seasons of source material to work with.
Haha, I honestly wonder how much time they spent on the scripts, it feels like a rushed high school essay. The first season of Westworld was incredible, but I didn't much care for the second season.
Jon could of kept his title as king of the north, if he proclaimed that Daenary's was made emperress.
Or better yet other people shouldn't have undermined Jon and Daenerys, they should've just let Jon and Daenerys be and the burning of Kings Landing wouldn't have happened.
Season 8 destroyed all the love I had for the series and I never want to watch it again, knowing how it ends. It all amounted to nothing.
I will never understand what the civilians of King's Landing did to provoke Dany's wrath. I could see her murdering Cersei, Cersei's soldiers or perhaps the nobles of King's Landing in the most grisly way imaginable. But slaughtering thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of whom had never resisted her in any meaningful way? What a ludicrously abrupt character shift! It's like if Martin Luther King Jr. decided to a bomb an entire city filled with innocent people after leading the civil rights movement for decades. Doesn't make any goddamned sense.
It actually would have been an amazing ending , if they just did it right and added two or more seasons. They wanted it to end too quickly. I've been watching over the earlier seasons and I just can't fathom how an amazing show ended so badly. The show has always had it's faults but this last season feels like a fuck you to the whole show.
Re-watching as much as I did to find the right clips for this video gave me so much nostalgia. This show was truly something spectacular for a long time there.
Daenerys was definitly the most damaged character in GOT. What a waste and lost ☹
Lazy Writing by D&D presented as subverting expectations. We're done, paycheck please. Enjoy our brilliance.
This is honestly a fantastic video! I love the way you have broken this down, I agreed with everything you said especially in regards to Daenerys! Not only were you talking complete sense but I love that you spoke in a calm, measured and reasonable tone- it gave your opinions so much legitimacy in my opinion. This isn't the knee jerk reaction of an angry fan who is ranting and swearing (Not that I blame them) This is a heartfelt summary from a fan clearly heartbroken over the way something he loves was mistreated so badly and ruined it's characters with rushed turn around's in personality's, done for shock and to tie the show up quickly.
Thanks for saying so! I got through all my ranting discussing it with friends haha, I wanted to make a measured response for the video though, I personally don't respond to the rant-esque ones.
@@daniel_netzel Well yours comes across really well! I even showed to my friend who is also heartbroken over GOT ending.
This video explains so perfectly everything that went wrong with the ending. One of the best videos I have seen in the internet about GOT ending. And you were right I felt I did not care anymore about what would happen after each episode of the last season because I already thought the showrunners have ruined a lot of things for me that I cared so much since the beginning of the show. I wish this last season never happened and that D&D would have done it better or just passed it on to other people who cared about the story like fans do. It is heartbreaking because it ruins the whole show for me.
Thank you for the kind words! I can just honestly remember how I felt two years ago, so excited to see the conclusion to my favorite series...if only I had known.
When Dany goes mad everyone suddenly wakes up, when they did the "bad pussy" comment, ruined the Dorn plot, killed off Stannis and Roose in pointless ways, to rush things etc. noone were complaining. This began back in season 5 and has declined each season. D&D didn't care anymore, they had a Star Wars trilogy to start, so they rushed things. Should have left the series to someone else, capable of making at least 10 seasons as HBO wanted, AND proper writers.
It would have been so cool to see the Night King win the Battle of Winterfell, and go on moving across Westeros while Jon, Daenerys and their armies retreat and are forced to keep moving as far as they could while they figure out what's next. The story that the old women told Bran, is what I wanted to see. Bran literally says the Night King wants and endless night, and the show doesn't even give him a single night... not one.
HydroBud98 - This was the only way the story could go. The Nighking wins at Winterfell and the last stand then at Kings Landing. It is a no brainer.
I think given the timeframe they were trying to work within, this would have been the best solution.
Worst thing about Dany's flip is that it could've easily made some sort of sense--destroy one city to scare the rest of the world into submission. That's been the justification for everything from dropping the A bomb in WWII to the Vietnam war to the Iraq war. That would've been fascinating problem to wrestle. But no--she was simply "triggered" by seeing the red keep.
Yeah, I'd say it's a little too "Alderaan", but they had no problem with Dany's First Order/Nazi rally scene so tired cliches clearly weren't a concern.
Honestly, I think the only plot point that couldn't be saved with better writing was how Bran became King while Sansa simultaneously defected, alone, from Westeros. That part is really indefensibly stupid... but other than that, everything else that happened would have been fine with better writing (especially if the North stayed in Westeros).
For example, I loved Stannis until he watched Shireen burn... but it was still much more compelling to watch than the last two episodes because it was a process.
I was bewildered by how Dani went from a wonderful woman to a homicidal maniac in the last season. She was abhorrent of all that the whole time but in the last few episodes she snaps and just doesn’t care anymore? I absolutely hate that storyline. And Jon always loved the Night’s Watch and did a fairly good job as King in the North. Arya was able to be a ninja for one episode and that should have been a two parter at least. The Battle of King’s Landing should have also been better. The whole last season was terrible.
I'm not mad for what she did, I'm mad for what the directors did
What pisses me off ROYAL is they had Cersei set up to become the mad queen perfectly and they did JACK ALL with her. She cried a little, had no dialogue and died from a ceiling. My disappointment is boundless.
The series really started to fall apart a few seasons ago. D&D had nowhere to turn for a story template, so they made stuff up out of whole cloth. None of the characters were actually theirs, just adaptations of George R.R. Martin's, so they didn't have a true handle on them.
Total character assassination. They took her from a solid flawed but moral hero to a raging psychopath worse than her father in the span of 2 episodes. It’s absurd. The ending of the last episode of season 3 where she is being carried and her dragons are flying overhead..That was the perfect sentiment of her character, and how she was painted for 95% of the series. It’s the worst hatchet job of a ham-fisted subversive jerkoff I’ve ever witnessed. She was supposed to end her story in the series in a more Tolkien fashion, perhaps with her and Jon reigning as king and queen. Or with her dying in some kind of heroic act and then Jon following through with her promise of breaking the wheel. Whatever, any of those would have been far better. It isn’t a matter of a stereotypical happy ending either. It’s a matter of lack of earned character outcome. It all went rapidly downhill once the source material wasn’t there as a crutch. Laid bare was the truly amateur hour writing ability of Dumb n Dumber.
Wow ... I couldn't have expressed it any better. Well done.
Honestly given some time to reflect the ending I would have liked to see is Danny winning, the bells ringing.. then it's revealed that Cersei and Qyburn decided that they would never, ever surrender King's Landing.. and detonate the rest of the Wildfire caches. Danny ends up queen of the ashes by pushing Cersei into a magic-nuking of the whole city. Everyone dies, it could be framed as her not giving Cersei some way out, and it would have been a ton more interesting.
Wildfire was such a huge, huge, huge part of the show and Cersei's "I will poison everything I love so you can't have it" attitude could have paired up for a great destruction of King's Landing that had nothing to do with Danny 180'ing her whole character.
I actually thought Cersei would have some wildfire tricks but they wasted her character this season. She was so boring all she did was drink wine and stare out a window her big bang moment was having Missandei beheaded and then we see her vet a lame ass death and it's getting killed by some rocks, how underwhelming.
Within the context of the show, they should have let Dany take out Cersei first and then have her fight the NK and dying against her last enemy in Westeros.
It would have made more sense to keep Dany as a heroine than turn her into a villain.
Jon should have been the one to kill the NK and take the throne afterwards.
It seems formulaic but that is what the show was building up to. The NK and Dany's dragons were the two greatest forces in the show and they should have been left for the final conflict.
Instead they tried to make the show match the books and it didn't work. The show was very pro Dany and then attempted to make her unlikable the last two seasons. She also knew when to take advice and when not to. The real Dany would not have listened to Tyrion and attacked Kings Landing in Season 7 episode 2 or 3 like as soon as she arrived in Westeros.
Then she would have had to deal the the White Walker threat.
in memory of : Stannis, littlefinger, varys, dany, barristan selmy, rhaegal, thoros, bericade, night king, summer, shaggy dog, rickon, tyrion's IQ, Arya's faceless man technique, melisandre, ellaria, doran, Jaime's redemption arc, Tormund/Brienne OTP, Dany's memory.