Game of Thrones was always going to end badly.

"he pleasures of stories as they end—catharsis, resolution, payoff—are not the same as when they begin. The only way to keep all the nuance—which is to say, all the possibility—of Game of Thrones alive is for the show to never end. Were it a long-running soap opera, it could keep characters changing and plots twisting unexpectedly forever. Just as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have had to break the laws of physics, telescope the size of Westeros at will, and mercilessly cast off untold side plots, they’ve had to make the choices the books refuse to in order to bring about the end of this story—the ending Martin gave them but may never reach himself. Not all of those choices work. But the most problematic choice isn’t in the scripts at all; it’s the choice to dole out what vanishingly little plot remains over six weeks after an 18-month hiatus. The sheer amount of time we’ve spent waiting for this story’s conclusion, along with the hype generated by HBO’s preseason publicity efforts, has led us to expect an ending that will both remain as tricky, unpredictable, and densely plotted as the earlier seasons while also satisfyingly wrapping up a considerable number of dangling plot threads.


But the ending, like winter, is her"

read analysis by Isaac Butler​

Game of Thrones was always going to end badly.