Criticising the Game of Thrones finale has become a bit tired now we all love Westeros and the Targaryens again. That said, few fans of the fantasy series would defend that final season, and even fewer would say the TV series‘ ending felt earned.
The general consensus is that the final run of episodes crammed in too much story for it to make sense and that it would have benefited from another season or two. George RR Martin even said he believed the drama series should have run until at least season 10 for the story to make sense but let’s be honest, that was never going to happen.
While the criticism often falls on the shoulders of showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss, the fact is that everyone making the show had gotten tired of it. After all, they worked on it for eight straight years; I’m not surprised the writers and cast wanted to move on to other projects. Kit Harrington admitted as much to Digital Spy.
“There’s a lot of things you can’t do,” he said. “I’m looking forward to finishing, and eight years is the right amount of time. I wouldn’t want it to go on any longer than it has.”
It didn’t help matters, though, that Martin hadn’t (and still hasn’t) finished a Song of Ice and Fire, so Benioff and Weiss sort of had to make it up as they went along. The same isn’t true for House of the Dragon. We know exactly how this story ends (spoilers: with a lot of fire and blood).
Even better, Martin has explicitly spelt out on his ‘not a blog’ blog how long he thinks the series should run for. “It is going to take four full seasons of ten episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish,” Martin wrote.
It’s nice to know that there’s a roadmap n place to tell a coherent story without the House of the Dragon cast and creators getting bored and losing focus. If you’re enjoying House of the Dragon as much as we are, check out our guides to some of the major players, Daemon Targaryen, Ser Criston Cole, and Larys Strong.