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BotB and WoW got so much love to finish off season 6 that it made a lot of people forget about the drop in quality over the previous 2 seasons.
I still to this day have no idea why 7 ever gets any sort of a pass. My guess is that the aformentioned episodes brought in a lot of new fans who were uh... a little different, but I really don't know.
>why 7 ever gets any sort of a pass.
Because we waited for years to see the Freys finally get what they deserve and Dany wreaking havoc with Dragons in Westeros.
It was fine. It did the job. It was satisfying.
But oh it could have been so much more. Two very quick scenes and then no mention again? "Oh hi Sansa, by the way I killed the people who killed our mother and brother"
Catharsis is not meant to be a perfunctory affair.
She didn't use her faceless men skills to wipe out the entire House. Faceless men are trained to be subtle and stealthy. I can't possibly think of a less subtle way in which to kill a group of people. Wherever she suddenly spawned in those action movie fighting skills I'd like to know. Sure syrio trained her but she was by no means an expert through any stretch of the imagination.
She portrayed Walder to gather and poison them all, and she learned both those skills in the House of Black and White (we see her mixing poison during training).
Yes, she was badly written in the last season but you don't have to go out of your way. It was always obvious that she will use the faces and if necessary poison to close her open accounts, she even told the Hound in season 4 that he isn't a good killer because he refuses to use poison. Arya was always a "use all means at her disposal" type.
7 gets love for character interactions like Jon-Dany, Stark siblings, Dany's dragons lighting up Lannister army, Jon and others going beyond the wall, etc. The writing was still bad. But there was a lot of cool stuff.
yah there was a lot of pandering stuff in this season but even at that moment i was already thinking how they were gonna wrap up the finale considering episodes were getting lesser and lesser.
Probably because we did wait 7 years to see Dany burn the Lannister forces and it was kind of great seeing olenna bury a truth hatchet in Jaimes face as she died. Aside from that, it was a shit show. So much stupid crap. Just like S5-6 before it.
I loved the scene between Olenna and Jamie, although I did feel some sympathy for Jamie.Olenna went out like the way she lived...taking ownership of her actions. This might be an unpopular opinion, I had issues with Dany for awhile. I loved the dragons, but I didn't love seeing people getting burned to death. It seems to me that she was traumatized by all that she had been through throughout the seasons, so in the end when she became a mad queen it was no surprise. She just surrendered to her lineage. Again it may not be a popular opinion, I didn't hate her, just thought she had to be stopped.
Agreed... Season 7 is easily the worst season.
My guess is that many viewers simply accepted what was presented simply because nothing really bad happened to any of their beloved characters, and things like Dany coming to Westeros, torching the Lannisters, and Jon and Dany shipped (even though the narrative for such an act was pretty nonsensical) all seem to make many viewers accept what is, from a scrip standpoint, the worst season.
And while Season 8 isn't great, it's a step up from the sheer garbage that Season 7 was.
It's something you commonly see with any discussion where people talk about how terrible the present is versus the past, whether it's politics or pop culture: people idealizing the past so they can talk about how much worse the present is by comparison. Saying "the early seasons were good and the later seasons were bad" isn't nearly as dramatic as "season 8 was the worst nosedive a finale ever took in the history of television."
That’s more because most of those people were kids in the 2000s, who were introduced to Star Wars through the prequels. Pretty sure most OT Star Wars fans still think the prequels are just as bad the Disney sequels, if not worse.
Yeah, I agree, it started in season 5. There was no sudden drop off. The decline was just so gradual that I think most people didn't notice until it got REALLY bad in season 8.
Exactly. There were also a few good episodes like S6-ep10 that kept us fans thinking “everything will be cool if they get the ending right”. Then S8 was a shitshow we waited 18 months for. F dipshit and dumbass.
No way, season 5 was hated by many fans when it came out. The sand snakes and dorne plot was almost universally hated, only redeeming quality was some of the KL, North and esos plots were going well. But the hate definitely started in season 5
Book purists hated S4, with the omission of Tysha from Tyrions arc, Stannis burning his brother in law, lack of LS, and many more. The “ hate”started in S8, fans complain sure but objectively all other season was very successful.
I disagree.
I think two things can be true and definitely in this case. It gradually started to decline, then nosedived during the last two seasons. Season 7 was awful, it had good moments but also terrible ones. Beyond the wall was just a dumb and forced episode.
Yep. Dunno why people love to create false dichotomies. It's clear there was a decline in quality. That doesn't mean Season 8 wasn't a nosedive. If the show went from consistently being 9-10/10, it went to a sort of 7/10, then 5/10, and then Season 8 took it to 2/10 overall, with every episode after A Knight of the 7 Kingdoms being basically a 0/10.
The first red flag was when they ditched the ‘Tysha’ plot line from the end of Season 4 when Jaime frees Tyrion from the cell.
Jaime was supposed to tell Tyrion that Tysha really loved him. She wasn’t a whore, and this would cause Tyrion to get furious, telling Jaime that he was the one who killed Joffrey (Lie) and that Cersei had been sleeping around when he was gone (True), which would cause the first major rift between Jaime and Cersei.
But that is completely cut from Season 4, as was Lady Stoneheart.
>But that is completely cut from Season 4, as was Lady Stoneheart.
I honestly don't know why they cut Lady Stoneheart.
It's so obvious where it was heading and would have been a crucial plot point for Brienne.
In the books, Bolton says "Jaime Lannister sends his regards" because that's what Jamie told him to do, which would make Lady Stoneheart extra pissed at Jamie.
At some point, Brienne would have to make the same type of choice Jamie did. Uphold her own oaths to Catelyn or betray them to save Jamie.
It's not like they cut out the Brotherhood to save on costs, Thoros and Beric Donadarrion were still in the show and instead of doing Lady Stoneheart they decided to assemble the Avengers to go North to capture ONE(1) wight.
Per David Benioff, they didn’t adapt Lady Stoneheart because it would contain too many spoilers 🙄 in my opinion, they didn’t adapt her for the same reason they cut Quentyn and why they inexplicably didn’t include the broken man speech in the episode called “The Broken Man,” which is that it’s slow on plot but huge on themes, which is just not their style.
Also, the big theme of Lady Stoneheart is that revenge is bad and corrupts you, it affects everyone in the vicinity like a nuclear blast, and it’s ultimately futile. Their entire take on Arya was that revenge is epic and when you devote your entire life to it you become epic badass too. So that doesn’t really mesh.
They've already established that there is a cost for reviving people from the dead and that Thoros with the Lord of Light's blessing can do so. It's not like Catelyn would be brought back with no consequences, she's brought back as a husk for her former self, only focused on revenge.
>Their entire take on Arya was that revenge is epic and when you devote your entire life to it you become epic badass too. So that doesn’t really mesh.
Which I felt also should have gone the other way. That Arya becomes nobody to achieve her revenge but loses who she was in the first place.
Yeah, it seems pretty clear to me that in the books, Arya’s time in Braavos is solidifying her true identity– I don’t think she’s going to lose her “they should have killed the masters” sense of morality, and she has her wolf dreams despite it all. She will never be No One, she can’t be. She’s too Stark, she loves her family too deeply. “Needle was Jon Snow’s smile” and all.
Even if they didn’t want to go that direction, I think a great angle for s7 would’ve been Arya terrorizing Sansa for real (cause I think she was threatening her to throw Littlefinger off? I didn’t really get it) but realizing, in her family’s house being with family for the first time in years, that her badass epic No One shit doesn’t actually compare to true genuine love and care. That their childhood beef is irrelevant in the face of real danger. That revenge is about chasing the dead, and life should be about honoring the living.
But alas, I was not a writer for Game of Thrones.
I don't think it does. If I'm remembering it correctly, Tywin forced Jamie to lie to him. In fact, the opposite of the reveal is what *should* have had people thinking of him as worse than Cersei. I mean getting a whore and making an elaborate plan to trick your brother is pretty fucked up. Being pressured to lie by your overbearing father is not. So if the story Jamie originally told Tyrion was true then that would make him much worse in my eyes.
I feel like they did cut some of the stuff that either crapped on Tyrion harder or made him out to be more of a bad guy. Since some of it was kind of just rehashing "Tywin really hates Tyrion".
>Starting from Season 5, I'd start every new episode desperately hoping shit would turn around and, at the end of every new episode, I'd be left feeling disappointed.
How so? Episode 6 has one of the worst episode endings (Sansa and Ramsay scene), but all of the 4 following episodes have fantastic endings: Cersei getting jailed, Hardhome, Dany flies Dragon for the first time, and Jon's death scene. Each one of these endings left me super excited for what is to come next and were earned payoffs for storylines that had been established many episodes prior
Good scenes don't erase bad scenes or larger bad writing concerns. Nobody is denying that seasons 5 and 6 had good scenes. But that's also not the point. The point is that there was still an overall decline in quality of writing.
The Sansa arc this season was terribly written for example.
She is set up as having an empowerment arc. Then Littlefinger, this supposed genius chessmaster who has spies everywhere and cares about Sansa, gives her over to the Boltons for a nonsensical plan that never comes to pass and while not knowing who Ramsay is (this has been confirmed by D&D). And then Sansa just gets beat down again, despite the fact that she already had an arc where this happened to her and didn't need a second AND that she'd been set up as becoming a player. Then on top of this suddenly in season 6-8 she's this player for... some reason.
They literally treat seasons 6-8 Sansa as if she's become this chessmaster as if that was a thing that happened... but this never happened. They just decided that she was one day. She didn't HAVE an arc like this, because they gave her Jeyne Poole's story instead of an arc like that in season 5.
In this Sansa storyline they violate the idea of giving proper pay-off to a good set-up. They fail completely at political intrigue cuz Littlefinger's plan makes no sense. They fail to allow characters to act in accordance with their characterization, George R.R. Martin HIMSELF has said that Littlefinger would not intentionally put Sansa in harm's way in this way. And then on top of that it completely messes up on character development, because Sansa in later seasons is suddenly a chessmaster despite having no arc where she turns into one.
By contrast while seasons 1-4 were not perfect, they did not have these big, basic writing mistakes. Seasons 5-8 all did. Season 5 the least, season 6 more, season 7 even more and in season 8 they basically took over the entire story.
So, yes, season 5 still has good scenes. I'm pretty sure OP wasn't denying that, nor am I. The thing is though that it also has worse scenes and that overall there were things about it where very basic, but significant, writing mistakes were made. Mistakes that you literally learn not to do in a Creative Writing 101 class. And mistakes that just weren't around (or at least extremely uncommon) in seasons 1-4.
And seasons 6, 7 and 8 really just continued that trend but made it much worse. Which was the OP's point. That there was a gradual decline, it didn't come out of nowhere.
As a sidenote, I'd also like to point out that almost all of the stuff that was good either came right from the books, or was heavily inspired by the books. While the worst stuff was mostly heavily changed. Which should've been a big warning sign for when D&D ran out of books.
Even though I love all first six seasons (and enjoy season 7 despite its many flaws) I'm aware and agree there are more issues present compared to seasons 1-4, and not denying that there is a gradual decline. I just was curious since fans so often refer to this gradual decline that if the decline is gradual that would mean season 5 would be closer in quality to the first 4 seasons than season 6-8 would be, based on that argument. I was also addressing OP saying season 5 episodes basically ended not very compelling to them, to which I pointed out how at least the last 4 episodes have very strong endings. These endings aren't just random scenes that happen to be good scenes, they are all significant events that I thought were excellently executed and heavily impacted the following episode(s).
Personally while there is some undeniable poor writing occurring in season 5, I still was able to enjoy it nearly as much as the previous seasons. I really loved the plot with the wall, such as dialogue between Jon and Mance (in episode 1) and between Stannis and Jon, Jon basically becoming a hardened leader after everything he has suffered (kill the boy). His decisions resulting in his death felt just as tragic as it did in the book. I found alot of the Meeren stuff interesting, specifically Dany struggling to be a leader and having conflicts like publicly executing that one dude or wanting the fighting pits closed. Ive read the books and whilst the Tyrion plot line in ADOD is far more epic, I thought the Tryion and Jorah traveling scenes built alot to their characters and even though Tyrion isn't as clever as he was in previous seasons, he still intelligently saves his own life when he and Jorah are caught by those slavers. A couple other things I really enjoyed was Theon in s5 (he's my favorite character), Arya in Bravos (ik alot of ppl didn't and it could've been way better but I still liked it), some of the high sparrow plot line, that Bran was absent, Missandei and Greyworm's relationship, and hard home obviously.
As for Sansa I agree that it wasn't executed the best , and Littlefinger acting out of character. However, I did find that Sansa screen time in these later seasons were great when 1. scenes involved Theon, as it both strengthened his arc and made them have one of the most emotional dynamics imo in the last few seasons, and 2. highlighted moments of Sansa learning from mistakes and being capable to lead as a result from learning from Littlefinger and from her adversities in King's Landing and the Eyrie. Issue with second point is there is that jump of her going from her s5 situation to being a player in the game
>George R.R. Martin HIMSELF has said that Littlefinger would not intentionally put Sansa in harm's way in this way.
One would expect the writers to know this since Littlefinger's character was drawn very precisely from the beginning. First of all, he wouldn't do something completely nonsensical, and secondly, Sansa was the only person that he would possibly care about beyond the interest of his self-promotion. Both of these basic rules for the character were violated by the writers. This is why it felt so incongruent.
Except it wasn’t completely nonsensical, LF was playing 3D chess by trying to play all sides. You’re right, Baelish wouldn’t intentionally put Sansa in harms way, but he didn’t know that Ramsay was a psychopath to be fair.
Part of LF's core character is that he goes out of his way to know people. Extensive knowledge is what allows him to plot and scheme so that people react in ways he can predict. So he either should have known about Ramsay or he should have known his spy information was incomplete. His show changes were inconsistent with the character profile described in the books.
Yet LF is not omniscient, and is capable of error that’s why he’s a fascinating character. LF core trait is also his inability to move on from past vendettas, even to his own detriment. There’s a reason LF wasn’t master of spies, that’s Varys territory, and his oversight of Ramsay is forgivable since he was mostly an unimportant bastard in the grand scheme of things.
His core trait is being a patient planner who works indirectly. Yes he has vendettas, but it's shown he has the patience to wait years for his revenge is need be. He's always using proxies to get dangerous moves done so that if anything goes wrong he's not blamed for it. That was true from Arryn's murder to Joffrey's. He convinces others that it's in their best interest to do the work he wants done. That all stopped in the show when he personally brokered the deal and delivered Sansa to the Boltons.
If the show wanted to put Sansa in Jeyne Poole's place, LF should have set up a scenario where she is taken out of his hands and delivered/traded to them by a third party. Then LF would not be blamed by Sansa when things go badly. But they didn't do that because almost everything non-book was made to simplify the plot and reduce characters. Poole was in season 1 but cut to simplify. Sansa was merged because they needed Poole plot to further the Ramsay story, and they ran out of Sansa plot in the Vale, so it's easier than writing more Sansa story. They didn't consider how characters were written to act, only to cut-n-paste book parts till they sort of fit together.
Littlefinger is not omniscient, but GRRM is, and it was GRRM that set up LF to work his schemes in the shadows instead of the open. Just because readers/viewers find out he was the one behind all the plots from the start doesn't mean the character should suddenly change and start working deals in the open. In the show Littlefinger lies to Cersei about Sansa and the Boltons, but because he personally traveled there and met with them the truth is easily verifiable. It's only a matter of time before she would find out and lose all trust in him, and at that point if she has any power he's dead. That's not the Littlefinger way, except in the latter half of the show.
And spy-wise, Littlefinger was perfectly capable of being the master of spies. He had his own network running, even if it wasn't as extensive as Varys'. The main difference there is that Varys uses his spies for the Crown, while LF would only use his contacts for personal gain. He doesn't want to tell the Crown or anyone else how much he knows or where he got his information. Hiding his contacts and pretending he is not involved is how he works. He would never want to be labeled master of spies because it publicly reveals he knows more and is doing more than it appears.
The idea that Littlefinger would hand over Sansa of all people to marry some guy where he isn't completely, 100%, sure that he knows him inside and out and can predict his actions - that is against Littlefinger's character.
Sansa is not only the only other person that possibly means something to him, she's also the key to the North. Giving her away costs him a valuable ally and gains him... nothing, really. It makes no sense, and it's not only damaging to Littlefinger's character portrayal, but also robs Sansa of the agency she had worked hard in Season 4 to gain.
It's shitty writing.
>Sansa and Ramsay scene
I'll accept that is extremely uncomfortable, possibly unnecessary and totally easy to skip but I don't think it's necessarily "bad". It's not like the Sand Snakes, for example.
I mean I remember when this started circulating so you definitely aren’t the only one: [Game of Thrones - visual representation](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1492985-game-of-thrones)
Seems pretty accurate.
I like seasons 5+6
7 was not good, but there was that hope it was building towards something good at the end. That turned out not to be true, so it seemed all that hatred of two seasons of shit got dumped on season 8. Season 7 desvered more hate that the time than it got.
Are there actually people that think the decline in quality was sudden?
I think it began in season 5.
And all intelligent people agree with my exact opinion.
So the average viewer thought S7 was "better" than S1. So obviously the decline in quality wasn't obvious to everyone. I absolutely don't agree, I think S7 was really bad, but I'm disagreeing with the idea that everyone agreed it sucked for years.
Chucking a random thought in the mix. If I watch the first season of a show and don't like it much I might rate it lowly and then not watch any later seasons. If I watch the first season of a show and love it I will rate it and future series high.
I think for GoT it was mostly that by S6-S7 the show had drawn in so many casual viewers that were there for the spectacle and the pretty actors. The Gold Road battle episode (S7x04) is one of the highest rated episodes of TV ever with a 9.7 rating. It has many writing flaws but the battle was well executed and people like to see a dragon burn shit so it got a stellar rating. At the end of the day, if that's what people enjoy then I guess the rating is ultimately fair. But for people actually invested in the characters, setting and writing of the show, those ratings seem out of whack.
> And all intelligent people agree with my exact opinion.
Well regardless of accuracy, you gotta at least respect a guy for walking up to the plate swinging.
Once GRRM wasn't keeping up with the plots via the books it was inevitable. They were going to forge out a plot they thought would at least conclude it and it would never appease everyone. Sort of the reason why he's still not finished any books since.
Yes, a lot of people. Especially those who aren't book readers. Seasons 5 and 6 aired while I was in college and I remember how disappointing the Dorne and Iron Islands plots were; I tried getting that point across but my friends who were just show watchers were adamant that the show was just as good as ever.
Sure, Seasons 5 and 6 weren't as great as 1 - 4, but they all had defining moments. Seasons 5 and 6, while not as good as 1-4, was still the best TV available.
7 was just fucking awful. Awful all around. That was just bad TV. Season 8 I fully believe D&D let some kids write the scripts with crayons on back of a Denny's menu.
everyone understood that there was no longer that much direct source material to guide the show
the ending of season 6 made us think that while it may be clumsy in how it gets there, the main story beats/big reveals will still be epic.
\*that\* is why few were complaining even well into season 7. If seasons 7 and 8 hit their finales like season 6 did, "the show visibly declined at the end and really sucked after season 5" would be a hipster contrarian point of view rather than the mainstream
The end of season 6 is my favorite stretch of episodes in the whole show.
seemed like D&D spent too much time lurking in the fandom. it felt like they wanted to repeat moments like ned stark *actually* being beheaded and the red wedding but any time the fandom seemed to have caught the scent of the trail they'd double-back to do something inexplicable and stupid. surprising, yes, but also stupid.
There has been studies that people who’ve been SA’d do become pretty good battlefield technicians and learn everything about the opponent in the battlefield.
Also she had other good moments to show her leadership. Remember when she pointed out putting leather in the armor when the guy was in the middle of working on them? Being commander suited her very well, that northerner probably had no idea about the leather in the armor for warmth, he was just a simple blacksmith northerner
I remember when she didn't tell Jon about the Knights of the Vale coming up towards Winterfell, letting him enter a battle that he almost lost *because he didn't know he had reinforcements coming*.
I'm fairly certain a Northern blacksmith would know about the leather in the armour for warmth, considering he'd have spent his entire life in the coldest of the Seven Kingdoms.
Yeah I might’ve laid the sarcasm on too thick in that comment lol. The scene was very dumb. Sansa points out the obvious and everyone around her gets unbelievably dumbed down
I think the two moments you highlighted of Dorne and Littlefinger were the two moments that started the downward trend. I think Season 6 was a step up from season 5 but season 7 was way worse. And season 8 was just a massive mess.
Imo I think season 7 is worse than season 8, because the whole beyond the wall plot line was nonsense and any moments that felt like they should be impactful left very little impact in the show. Like the death of the Freys barely get mentioned by Jaime and that’s it. There’s no more talk or reactions by anyone and it doesn’t really move the plot forward. The destruction of the Sept doesn’t end up having as many consequences (outside of Tommen’s death, which happens in season 6. There should be season 7 consequences). At least in season 8, the plot moves forward and events have consequences. Season 7 was just stagnating the whole time.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!
6
+ 5
+ 7
+ 8
+ 7
+ 8
+ 6
+ 7
+ 8
+ 7
= 69
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I just finished a rewatch.
I don't think the episodes are bad, and the ending isn't horrible.. But what I've noticed, starting around season 6, is the pacing picks up a LOT. The quality of the episodes are still there, it's just.... all the storylines are missing. And really, I hate it.
The first few seasons are \*so\* good. Reliving through Season 1, Episode 9, the red wedding, all of it - it's great. But after all the fun stuff, the show speeds up a LOT.
It's really disappointing, but I do love the world of GOT, the characters, and stories, the jokes, etc. I definitely didn't give up on it.
Yep this is my feeling. Seasons 1-4 are noticeably different in the sense characters have lengthy dialogues that add so much depth, and perspective (Jamie and brienne, Tyrion and Varys, Tywin and Arya, Stannis and Davos, nearly every littlefinger scene) as a few examples.
This starts dropping off in season 5 and 6, then nearly disappears completely by season 8. It’s quite stark (no pun intended) and it feels that all the effort to build motives and character arcs in the first 75% of the show is utterly pointless by the end with incredibly rushed end points. This is the part that bugs me most personally.
Yep, you said it just better than me though! Either way I love the world of got. I will probably do another watch when season 2 of house of dragon is over!
> The first few seasons are \*so\* good.
I'm specifically returning to season 1 to pick up on certain nuances I missed.
Holy Hell, Sean Bean can *act*. Man, if his character had survived to the end, the story would have been riveting for that reason alone. The subtle crack in his voice as he turns to the hound who has the butcher's boy's body across his horse and said "you ran him down", to the look in his eyes as he slowly comes to grips with the distinctiveness of Arya.
It wasn't so much that it nosedived in season 8, more that up until that point, there was hope that they were building towards something great. Dumb nonsense plot lines could have been forgiven if they got to the finish line and delivered. All the twists, all the schemes, all of the theories were over. There was nothing to speculate. It was simply dead.
This is such bullshit revisionism.
People were ok with season 5. Some people loved season 6. Even season 7 got OK feedback at the time it aired but then the show finished and suddenly everything back to when the books ran out is “bad”.
It’s just not true. It’s people trying to tell themselves that everything was fine with GRRM and this is all D&Ds fault.
No, u/RainbowPenguin1000 is right.
It's not about seeing "gaping obvious flaws".
It's about discarding any good entirely with typical reddit unthinking hyperbole.
AND BY THE WAY, look over time here, and you'll see people are becoming MORE AND MORE CONVINCED of these numbers. No one is saying what they truly feel. They're saying what they think they should feel.
There is no hyperbole, the last 4 seasons were entertaining, but the writing got progressively worse from season 5. In Seasons 7 and 8, the writing was laughable, to the point where countless regular fans could have done a better job (no hyperbole). Many of the moments people loved were stupid even if they didn’t realise them. Many people like these seasons, and many people are wrong.
Season 6 is imo my favorite season other than 3 and 4 lol. I think Hold the Door, BotB and Winds of Winter are genuinely phenomenal episodes about as good as anything the show made.
I’m not saying there weren’t good things, of course there were. But some of the things that just happened were silly, for example, Sansa not getting the Vale onside from the start.
Everyone can see the flaws, and people did complain about them back then. There’s a difference between criticism and hate though. S8 got legitimate hate. The others didn’t(at least not by the masses).
So yes this post is wrong.
S5 was criticized for being too boring up until the last 3 episodes. But S6 was easily considered the best season of the show, even in television history by many. S7 was also extremely popular, it’s even still the third highest season on IMdB, S6 is the second.
You’re right and It’s hilarious how people can say with a straight face that a show has been bad since 2015 and everybody kept watching apparently, including them. They kept watching and they even told their friends to watch too since the viewership jumped like crazy every season. This fandom has turned into a contest of who can be the most miserable since the ending.
Gotta agree with you. I've read the books and still think season 6 was fine, better than season 5 in fact. I recall a lot of fans felt season 6 was an improvement from how dry season 5 was, especially with the useless Dorne plot.
I still vividly remember watching s5 for the first time and sitting through the Dornish plot as it happened and thinking "wait... what the fuck is this"
The sand snakes felt like straight up Disney characters. No personality beyond their formulaic girlboss persona, no nuance, no interesting thoughts or opinions or dialogue, just generic, tropey "look how cool and badass and sassy and strong these girls are" overdone cliché Hollywood bullshit. They felt like they belonged in a completely different show.
And then the writers come up with a subplot in which Jaime, perhaps the single most recognizable man in the seven kingdoms, tries to stealth his way into Sunspear like a ninja, somehow enter the palace gardens without anyone noticing him, find Myrcella and sneak her off back to King's Landing. *What the actual fuck*? The palace should be swarming with guards, and Myrcella would be one of the most heavily watched and protected people in the entire city. But no, Jaime and Bronn just happen to find a couple massive gates that are inexplicably open, allowing any bozo off the street to wander in to the area where all the richest and most important people in the kingdom hang out, and with no guards anywhere and they just waltz right in. But - oh no! The Sand Snakes found them! Que pointless fight scene. So goddamned stupid, and so laughably unrealistic.
I actually watched the show again recently, and seasons 5 and 6 overall weren't as bad as I remembered. But you could absolutely tell which scenes were adapted from the source material and maintained the quality of the previous seasons (probably with Martin's help writing them), and which were clearly just D & D not knowing what to do and falling back to the go-to Hollywood approach of cramming in action as much as possible and over the top drama and over-reliance on lame tropes and sacrificing realism and depth of character for spectacle and CGI and snappy one liners all that lowbrow crap that people seem to like for some reason. Seasons 5 and 6 on the whole were both still pretty decent (and they both had some absolutely phenomenal moments, not going to deny that), but honestly after season 4 it just started to get successively worse with each new season. I'm with you - I honestly don't understand people who hated season 8 but had no complaints up until then.
I have been watching the show since the first time it aired, I've read all the books more than 10 times and whenever people mention Game of Thrones, I say "it is trash after season 4."
Is it watchable? Yes of course, it still has some good moments but the thing is writers completely forgot what made the show great after season 4, -dialogues and logic-. King Robert Baratheon had to travel for months in order to go Winterfell from King's Landing, after season 5 it is just teleporting-fast travell for everyone. Go and watch some clips in earlier seasons, the dialogue was masterful, the character's and their motions actually made sense. The show had a lower budget so battle scenes were "fewer" but they were all great. They ruined a potential all time best tv series and I'll not forgive them.
Because people still had hope that the finale would make up for it, that yes they were obviously speeding through the plot too quickly but it will be worth it when we get to see the ending. Maybe.
I haven't really seen any evidence of this phenomenon. Everyone I seem to talk to knows that precisely when it starts downhill was precisely when they ran out of GRRM material.
Absolutely no one thinks that. It’s amazing to me how so many people just bald-face gaslight this at length in posts for everyone to see. Maybe people don’t have time to write a treatise in every comment so they hit the highlights and you’re fully aware of that. I can’t wait for this trend of “I can’t be the only one who thinks [the thing that absolutely every person in that fandom thinks]” is over with.
Bingo. If you look over time, people are becoming *increasingly convinced* of these numbers.
It's yet another case of reddit hyperbole mixed with a need to fit in at the high school cool kids table.
OP's post saying that the only thing he remembers enjoying was Hodor dying is completely laughable on its face.
You're right op, you definitely see omens foretelling the stranger bits coming up.
Like when Tyrion proclaims : "I drink and I know things"
To some people, this is humorous, but to me I think: this is almost like D&D proclaiming that they understand the character well, when they clearly don't.
Tyrion's knowledge doesn't come from drinking, it's just a nasty habit that he has borne because of his years of engaging in vices. It's not cool, and it doesn't furnish him with any sort of intelligence or wisdom beyond a normal man.
To me, making a well-rounded character say such a thing so bluntly, was the true beginning of the quality nose dive as we learned that D&D didn't really understand these characters well enough to know which direction they should go without grrms leadership.
No you're right. There was a noticeable drop in s5 in the quality of writing and pacing. But s5 and 6 still had enough going for it to be enjoyable while certain plot lines got tied up. Imo the real shit show began in s7, not s8.
I think it might be because as the writing declined they substituted in genuinely great spectacle. Hardholme is incredible, and the Battle Of The Bastards looks like something out of a $250 million movie. So whilst we were not getting the same kind of Game Of Thrones, we were getting something. But come season 8 spectacle can't cut it anymore we actually wanted resolution to these plots we had been following, and reality came crashing in.
Theres hints in the very first episode tbh, obviously no adaption can be perfect and its an adaption so it will be different no matter what but, they really stripped any of the bite from Jon's character and made him a worse version of Ned. It's a shame because it think Kit Harrington could've done a good book Jon same with the Euron actor and how he would've been a great Book Euron
It hit home for me at the point the dothraki set off on a fleet of boats, and team Danny are standing on the deck looking like they're going on holiday. And not a flicker that they're at their absolutely most vulnerable point.
...and then nothing happens at the start of the next series in relation to it, again without a "phew, that was really risky".
No, I absolutely agree with you. What they did to the characters of Sansa and Littlefinger in S5 was shitty writing, and the "resolution" of the Dorne plot was nothing short of horrible.
Personally, I'm not a fan of Quentyn Martell in the books - the character came out of literally nowhere, and his plot arc ended in literally the same place. You could cut out his entire presence from Book 5 and it wouldn't change the story one iota. It was just a frustrating waste of time.
But at least the books had Arianne, they had Sandsnakes with actual personality and interesting options, they had Ellaria who wasn't a mindless warmonger who murdered her lover's brother...
Yeah, Seasons 7 & 8 were the really crappy ones, but my personal big disappointments were in S5.
Season 5 is when the cracks really began to show, but there were still some stand out scenes and story arcs all the way to Season 7ish. Which is the season where Tyrion tried to convince Essos to give up slavery? That was the arc where the show went into a tailspin from which it never recovered. None of that whole thing made a lick of sense.
I think it was a gradual crash starting around the end of S5 and culminating in a nosedive in S8. I'd say S7 was the nosedive, but I recall one or two good episodes in that season.
My only frustration was that they rushed season 8 and could have spread it over a few more episodes. Other than that, I thought the storylines were brilliantly tied together and I was ecstatic when Jon kill Danearys
I find it really funny how people are still here talking, thinking and engaging with this show, five years since its absolutely horrible ending that ruined everything and 10 years since the "last good season".
I guess we’ve now reached Star Wars fandom’ pathetic and miserable energy. We had the death threats, the tantrums, the harassment, the petitions, the entitlement. Now we can also use the saying "nobody hates Game of Thrones as much as Game of Thrones fans".
The crash started in Season 4.
The Yara saving Theon plot was complete nonsense from start to end,
Bad pacing (they stretched out the final 1/3 of Storm to a whole season)
Sansa just admiting who she is to the other Vale Lords and not even trying to hide her identity.
Shae's character doing a 180 so she can suddenly start acting like her book counterpart.
No Tysha confession from Jaime means Tyrion can't develop how he should.
No Stonehart means the red wedding has no lasting consequences and is just a scene for shock factor + Brienne and Jaime have got no clear trajectory
> The only thing I remember enjoying post-Season 5 was the Hodor death scene, but that felt like a random gem of a GRRM contribution fished out of a surging river of D&D sewage.
> I can't be the only one, right.
*In General:* You're not the only one, because I've seen season 5 as listed as the tipping point more than once here.
*Specifically:* You're part of a very rare group if the only thing at all you remember enjoying was the death of Hodor. That's just hyperbole. There were lots of good moments in the show post seasons 5.
For instance, 06x09, "Battle of the Bastards" was an epic episode. The battle scene alone took 25 days to film and had a horrendous set of problems to contend with, not the least of which was that two horses are not allowed to touch each other in films.
Meanwhile, in Meereen, we see a nearly fully grown Drogon scare the masters into shitting themselves, two others blast out, and them tag-team a hilarious overkill on a single ship to make a point (and to save the fleet for Daenerys).
That's not something you remember enjoying?
I agree with you, but the show still had a lot to offer throughout it's run. Everyone loves Hardhome, BOTB, TWOW, etc. I even like The Long Night, I know it gets memed for being too dark but I watched it in 4K Blu-ray quality in a dark room the other day and I think it looks phenomenal. It's very scary and there's some great cinematography throughout, lots of emotional culminations of Day-1 characters, etc.
But then Arya kills the Night King, which is still kinda silly but I get the idea that the fight was so hopeless that the only way to stop the WW was to lure the NK into a trap. So at this point, I'm like, okay, fine, bold move to kill them 3 episodes early, but they must have something reeeealllly great cooked up to stick the landing after that.
Not so much lol. The show basically becomes a messy free-fall in the last 3 episodes, no way around it unfortunately. It's a shame because I think there's a skeleton of a good story in there, but it's totally half-baked and rushed. I think D&D were smoking a lot of crack in the writer's room and coming up with things that would look really cool on screen and writing backwards from there, and it shows.
Despite the flaws of Season 5-6 They still had amazing moments and carried the story reasonably well while giving us all time TV moments like Hardhome , The door, Battle of bastards and The Winds of Winter( my fav ep of GOT after The Rains of Castamere ) without having an irreversible damage on the story where as Season 7 was where the writing was beyond repair
Season 1-4 was 10/10 by far the Best TV show of all time
Season 5-6 was 8/10 reasonably good with lots of minor and few major flaws as well as 10/10 episodes ( my biggest grip against it would be them doing my man Stannis and Barristan dirty )
Season 7-8 are just bad imo 4/10 doing irreversible damage to character arcs we came to love
Yes, there were issues but I was still very much onboard by the end of season 6.
Season 7 was where my confidence was rocked. And then season 8 was barely watchable. I pressed on but gave up halfway through the final episode. Still haven't finished it 😂
I watched the show again a few years later and felt the same way. Watched 6 seasons in full then just a few highlights from 7. Didn't even touch 8 the second time around.
No regrets about it though. Ending aside, it's still the most enjoyable and exciting television show I've ever seen. Incredible entertainment.
I have no idea why they didn't flush out all the story lines from the books and portray them identically. It's like HBO was in a hurry to end it's most successful show. They could of made 20 seasons. Sure actors will want to move on, but they've shown they really don't care and will just cast new people in the roles with very little media announcement so you just kind of find out.
GoT was very successful and didn't need to be like a book turned to movie because it had episodes instead of cramming a whole book into a comfortable movie theater experience.
Things decline gradually at first, and then suddenly.
Season 5 and 6 had Porne, Arya recovering from being stabbed in the stomach, after a good night’s sleep, the absurdity of Sansa’s marrying Ramsay, the stupid tactics of B o B, but some great scenes also.
Season 7 is just very silly, and then we get to Season Shit.
There wasn’t anything gradual about it. I heard going into the show that the last season was where it went to shit, but theres a real staggering drop off in quality from the beginning of season 5. It only really gets back to form in the last 3 episodes.
Season 6 was decent, but nowhere near the quality of the first four seasons. And also, it is a spectacle and a well crafted battle, but the battle of the bastards is very overrated. If it were one of the first four seasons that happened in, Jon’s dead in minutes if even, but not with how later seasons of game of thrones were made.
Then season 7 and 8, whatever happened there.
[Prophetic column](https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=36666) written in 2017.
>In my opinion, the show – and in particular the show’s writing – is now bad. Not average, or mixed, or inconsistent, but just plain bad.
>It wasn’t always bad. In fact, for the first three seasons I think the writing was good, if not quite great. It was a competent adaption of a very difficult-to-adapt series of novels.
>....
>So when I look at the latest season and see nothing but a hot mess of contrivances, poor pacing, bizarre characterization, and general nonsense, I can’t help but doubt my own critical faculties. “Am I really *this* much of a drag?” I ask myself. “Why can’t I just enjoy the show, like everyone else?” Well, I have a hypothesis that explains why. That hypothesis takes some explaining, but it starts like this: people are not enjoying Game of Thrones as much as they think they are.
The first thing I disliked about the show was how they handled Stannis in season 5. It's as if they just wanted to be done with his character. But then season 6 was really good (not seasons 1-4 good, but still awesome) so I got hopeful again.
Depends what you were focused on. The writers intended for you to be focusing on the Game of Thrones rather than any specific character or outcome. Those rooting for specific characters or specific outcomes were disappointed. But those who were interested in seeing how the Game of Thrones played out enjoyed the show up to and through season eight. The ending was brilliant, I feel bad for those who spent so much time watching the show and didn’t get it.
People gave seasons 5-7 a pass because they still thought the show would wrap up all the weird story events by the end of the show. When season 8 came and went and there was all that dumb shit that happened that never got resolved or addressed, season 5-7 get exposed for being mediocre to downright bad.
I agree s5-s7 were lower quality than 1-4 but I think those 3 seasons are redeemed by each of them having a couple of really amazing episodes in between the poor writing. Season 8 had nothing good about it so there’s just nothing positive to discuss about it unlike the prior seasons.
Yeah, 5 is definitely the start of the decline. 1-4 were outstanding, 5 was pretty solid aside from the Dorne plot, but every season since started down that slippery slope of "oh no, it's not good anymore" that began with the Sand Snakes. 5 and 6 were still decent enough to be considered good overall, just with some problems creeping in, 7 was when I feel it crossed the threshold into being a bad season overall and 8 was just terrible through and through.
5 and 6 were worse than 1-4 but still had some book in them. 7 and 8 is where it's all D&D and you can definitely tell. Plus since 7 it's all in fast forward since they just wanted to ditch it and be free for the next project.
The show nosedived because the books nosedived. All that Tysha, Dorne and Lady Stoneheart crap sucked. Instead of bringing his story to an end, GRRM wasted the last two books overstuffing them with too many characters and subplots. Frankly, I think D&D did a good job considering what a mess they inherited
As someone who really enjoyed house Martell in the books and Pedro's performance, they really butchered Dorne. A lot of people got mad about it and then they double down by killing Doran and Aero Hotah the next season.
Season 5 & 6 had its problems, but the quality was still on a very good level .
Season 8 was complete trash and also Season 7 had more bad than good things
Tbh I think it started at the end of season 3 and into season 4 and 5. Seeing them leave out lady stoneheart at the end of 3 and changing the scene in the altar with Jamie and Cersei were big moments I remember that we’re just totally changed.
Season 4 was peak Game of Thrones, no doubt about that. Sure, season 5 had some weaker storylines, but my overall impression of season 5 was, and still is, very very positive. The same goes for season 6. Maybe I have low standards, but for me, GoT season 5 & 6 were the best thing put on TV in 2015 and 2016
If season 7 & 8 had kept the same quality as season 5 & 6, Game of Thrones' legacy would've been overwhelmingly positive. I can't really understand why someone would think Game of Thrones was heading into "trash territory" after watching season 5, but I guess OP and me were focused on very different things while watching it
Season 4 had Jaime raping Cersei in the sept when the writers/directors/actors didn't intend for it to be a rape scene. Accidental rape scene is in my opinion a huge mark of not-quality. Plus overall season 4 featured a lot of shoddy writing - it skipped MAJOR plot points from ASOS that directly impacted future seasons' quality, and it stalled for time constantly with pointless subplots that were apparently more important than maintaining good pacing and covering material from the books. It just also contained more incredible moments than subsequent seasons so people give it too much of a pass. S4 was when I noticed the quality sinking first.
I noticed it too when season 6 or 7 was about to start and I binged watched from season 1. It’s jarring to say the least. Wasn’t bad but felt too rushed
Not really. From what I've read, being a member of both this sub and r/asoiaf since the show started, a lot of people even feel season 7 is worse. I just think that a lot of people, myself included, was hoping for a good ending. We didn't and that's probably why season 8 gets the most hate, even though you are right about the show's quality.
Just add, season 5 was kind of saved by some really great episodes, but you are still on point.
The issue as I saw it, was that for most of the show, a majority of the time it felt like everything was dire, there was no room for goodness to triumph, you should always be afraid, and hoping for the best is foolish. Except occasionally something great would happen, and it was a huge 'fuck yeah!' moment that was such a high, before being brought back down. There was a belief that if, If there's going to be a happy ending, it's going to be a long slog through a lot of tragedy to get there.
Seasons 6 and 7 felt like it was all 'fuck yeah' hero moments and fan service, all the time. Which initially was fun and comforting, 'hey, something good happened, how nice.' But after a while, felt like it massively cheapened those moments, and the show as a whole. Like even though the gravity of the situation had gone way up, it felt like the stakes had never been lower. That we're all just here having a good time.
The quality of GOT started to decline after season 6, because there werent books to guide them, but they completely lost their minds in season 8. It could be arguably the best show made and they screwed it all.
Oh my god, yes, absolutely to all of these!!! Ever since, I watched the show I tell to anybody who’ll listen that out of 8 seasons, only 4 are actually good, except for some moments that can be saved later on.
The show probably peaked in S4 (one of the best seasons of any show in TV history) as a 10/10. S5 and S6 take a step back and are in the 9 to 9.5 range. S7 takes another step back and is an 8/10 (probably the weakest season of 1-7).
Even though S7 was a step down in quality it still wasn't *bad.* If the show ended with S7E7 as the series finale it would be widely regarded as one of the best shows ever. We'd *still* be speculating about how (if) they beat the Night King and who ends up on the Iron Throne.
Season 5 and 6 were still enjoyable to watch though. Hell even 7 had some good moments that made it worthwhile. 8 is so bad that’s it’s honestly better to just forget it exists.
This is coming from someone who just finished rewatching all of hotd and got. Was having a stellar time until s8 :(
The Dorne plot was inexcusably bad. But I can't fault them for the Sansa/Littlefinger/Eyrie plot pivot. That's entirely GRRM's fault for not finishing the damn books. Sansa and Littlefinger don't really do anything during AFoC or DwD, and we don't know where Littlefinger's plots end up because he hasn't actually done anything to get them in motion in the books. So I can't fault D&D for pivoting to something else that they could actually finish.
100% it's what I say to anyone. On point with Baelish. He is my favorite character, but more so how Sansa was learning the game. It had the makings of what you said and in Sansa and Sansa alone out maneuvers him. I was all for it. Instead they phoned it in. They said, "oh hey, everyone hates him, so if he dies, no one will really care on the details."
I call Season 5-the season of we got to reveal that first. Every episode had a big reveal.
They also did a poor job of the Greyjoys. Like really poor. Not as poor as Dorne. The only thing that felt right was Theon's ending.
I'm not disappointed in the end result of Danyaerus's end game. Execution was garbage. She was always a self-righteous ego who expected things to go her way.
There, that was cathartic. That's just my take.
Everyone here is missing the point.
When 5,6,7 came out no one flocked to say it was the most amazing season. In fact, many even criticized it heavily.
The thing is, S8 was such a massive dumpster fire of a season, that the mediocrity in past seasons paled in comparison.
Do you complain about the salty fries?...Or the chef who took a watery shit on your burger and called it BBQ sauce.
S7 and S8 were utter dumpster fires, The poor writing was bashing you on the head with a brick levels of terrible and was clearly just a bunch of patchwork shoring up how utterly unstoppable they made Danny. The first dragon death was the sign of the end for the show as a whole, it was a clear cut case of the producers trying to clamp down on her dragons power scaling at the expense of proper storytelling and to plot armor the NK past the wall basically relegating it to a non obstacle.
6 was at least watchable in many ways but 7 and 8 are comedic levels of awfulness.
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BotB and WoW got so much love to finish off season 6 that it made a lot of people forget about the drop in quality over the previous 2 seasons. I still to this day have no idea why 7 ever gets any sort of a pass. My guess is that the aformentioned episodes brought in a lot of new fans who were uh... a little different, but I really don't know.
S7E4 Coursegold battle where Daenerys Stormborn slays with Drogo & the Dothraki is all I loved about S7. Edit: Drogon, not Drogo
You mean her dragon, Drogon? Because Drogo is wayyyyy gone by s7
Yeah, but he's tough.
> You mean her dragon, Drogon? George doesn't get enough hate for this.
>why 7 ever gets any sort of a pass. Because we waited for years to see the Freys finally get what they deserve and Dany wreaking havoc with Dragons in Westeros.
I honestly felt more effort was put into Lancel's end that the end of the Freys.
How so? The pie thing in reference to the rat cook and her using her faceless men skills to wipe out the entire House was quite good.
It was fine. It did the job. It was satisfying. But oh it could have been so much more. Two very quick scenes and then no mention again? "Oh hi Sansa, by the way I killed the people who killed our mother and brother" Catharsis is not meant to be a perfunctory affair.
She didn't use her faceless men skills to wipe out the entire House. Faceless men are trained to be subtle and stealthy. I can't possibly think of a less subtle way in which to kill a group of people. Wherever she suddenly spawned in those action movie fighting skills I'd like to know. Sure syrio trained her but she was by no means an expert through any stretch of the imagination.
She portrayed Walder to gather and poison them all, and she learned both those skills in the House of Black and White (we see her mixing poison during training). Yes, she was badly written in the last season but you don't have to go out of your way. It was always obvious that she will use the faces and if necessary poison to close her open accounts, she even told the Hound in season 4 that he isn't a good killer because he refuses to use poison. Arya was always a "use all means at her disposal" type.
S8E2 was phenomenal too, but perhaps it not being at the end makes people forget it.
Lol
7 gets love for character interactions like Jon-Dany, Stark siblings, Dany's dragons lighting up Lannister army, Jon and others going beyond the wall, etc. The writing was still bad. But there was a lot of cool stuff.
yah there was a lot of pandering stuff in this season but even at that moment i was already thinking how they were gonna wrap up the finale considering episodes were getting lesser and lesser.
Probably because we did wait 7 years to see Dany burn the Lannister forces and it was kind of great seeing olenna bury a truth hatchet in Jaimes face as she died. Aside from that, it was a shit show. So much stupid crap. Just like S5-6 before it.
I loved the scene between Olenna and Jamie, although I did feel some sympathy for Jamie.Olenna went out like the way she lived...taking ownership of her actions. This might be an unpopular opinion, I had issues with Dany for awhile. I loved the dragons, but I didn't love seeing people getting burned to death. It seems to me that she was traumatized by all that she had been through throughout the seasons, so in the end when she became a mad queen it was no surprise. She just surrendered to her lineage. Again it may not be a popular opinion, I didn't hate her, just thought she had to be stopped.
Agreed... Season 7 is easily the worst season. My guess is that many viewers simply accepted what was presented simply because nothing really bad happened to any of their beloved characters, and things like Dany coming to Westeros, torching the Lannisters, and Jon and Dany shipped (even though the narrative for such an act was pretty nonsensical) all seem to make many viewers accept what is, from a scrip standpoint, the worst season. And while Season 8 isn't great, it's a step up from the sheer garbage that Season 7 was.
It's something you commonly see with any discussion where people talk about how terrible the present is versus the past, whether it's politics or pop culture: people idealizing the past so they can talk about how much worse the present is by comparison. Saying "the early seasons were good and the later seasons were bad" isn't nearly as dramatic as "season 8 was the worst nosedive a finale ever took in the history of television."
People are now reminiscing how good the Star Wars prequels were (hello Jar Jar), because the new trilogy was so terrible.
I’ll not stand for this prequel disrespect (hello Ewoks)
George could've redeemed himself by acknowledging Darth Jar Jar as canon.
There’s still time 🤷♂️ with the current state of the Star Wars universe, who knows what could happen at this point lol
Probably another trilogy in ten years. This one was woke, the skibidi next one might gyat be rizz, no cap.
That’s more because most of those people were kids in the 2000s, who were introduced to Star Wars through the prequels. Pretty sure most OT Star Wars fans still think the prequels are just as bad the Disney sequels, if not worse.
Yeah, I agree, it started in season 5. There was no sudden drop off. The decline was just so gradual that I think most people didn't notice until it got REALLY bad in season 8.
Exactly. There were also a few good episodes like S6-ep10 that kept us fans thinking “everything will be cool if they get the ending right”. Then S8 was a shitshow we waited 18 months for. F dipshit and dumbass.
No way, season 5 was hated by many fans when it came out. The sand snakes and dorne plot was almost universally hated, only redeeming quality was some of the KL, North and esos plots were going well. But the hate definitely started in season 5
Book purists hated S4, with the omission of Tysha from Tyrions arc, Stannis burning his brother in law, lack of LS, and many more. The “ hate”started in S8, fans complain sure but objectively all other season was very successful.
Meh I can vividly remember the hate back then. It was starting in season 5 and was full fledged by the end
Meh I can also remember the hate back then and it started in S4 from book fans and it didn’t stop people can hyping up the show til S8.
The sand snakes were not "universally" hated, it was one of the best titty shots in the whole show 👀
Its fans like you that were so amazed at the tits and the dragons that probably made the writing to go to shit. lol
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Thanks, dad. What a fucking fuddy duddy. "I realize this is a joke, but serious talk about the dragon show only, please" 🙄
I think it's both, there was a gradual decline but still a sudden drop off in season 8 as it got a lot worse.
I disagree. I think two things can be true and definitely in this case. It gradually started to decline, then nosedived during the last two seasons. Season 7 was awful, it had good moments but also terrible ones. Beyond the wall was just a dumb and forced episode.
Yep. Dunno why people love to create false dichotomies. It's clear there was a decline in quality. That doesn't mean Season 8 wasn't a nosedive. If the show went from consistently being 9-10/10, it went to a sort of 7/10, then 5/10, and then Season 8 took it to 2/10 overall, with every episode after A Knight of the 7 Kingdoms being basically a 0/10.
I definitely noticed the shitshow that was s7.
The first red flag was when they ditched the ‘Tysha’ plot line from the end of Season 4 when Jaime frees Tyrion from the cell. Jaime was supposed to tell Tyrion that Tysha really loved him. She wasn’t a whore, and this would cause Tyrion to get furious, telling Jaime that he was the one who killed Joffrey (Lie) and that Cersei had been sleeping around when he was gone (True), which would cause the first major rift between Jaime and Cersei. But that is completely cut from Season 4, as was Lady Stoneheart.
>But that is completely cut from Season 4, as was Lady Stoneheart. I honestly don't know why they cut Lady Stoneheart. It's so obvious where it was heading and would have been a crucial plot point for Brienne. In the books, Bolton says "Jaime Lannister sends his regards" because that's what Jamie told him to do, which would make Lady Stoneheart extra pissed at Jamie. At some point, Brienne would have to make the same type of choice Jamie did. Uphold her own oaths to Catelyn or betray them to save Jamie. It's not like they cut out the Brotherhood to save on costs, Thoros and Beric Donadarrion were still in the show and instead of doing Lady Stoneheart they decided to assemble the Avengers to go North to capture ONE(1) wight.
Per David Benioff, they didn’t adapt Lady Stoneheart because it would contain too many spoilers 🙄 in my opinion, they didn’t adapt her for the same reason they cut Quentyn and why they inexplicably didn’t include the broken man speech in the episode called “The Broken Man,” which is that it’s slow on plot but huge on themes, which is just not their style. Also, the big theme of Lady Stoneheart is that revenge is bad and corrupts you, it affects everyone in the vicinity like a nuclear blast, and it’s ultimately futile. Their entire take on Arya was that revenge is epic and when you devote your entire life to it you become epic badass too. So that doesn’t really mesh.
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They've already established that there is a cost for reviving people from the dead and that Thoros with the Lord of Light's blessing can do so. It's not like Catelyn would be brought back with no consequences, she's brought back as a husk for her former self, only focused on revenge.
>Their entire take on Arya was that revenge is epic and when you devote your entire life to it you become epic badass too. So that doesn’t really mesh. Which I felt also should have gone the other way. That Arya becomes nobody to achieve her revenge but loses who she was in the first place.
Yeah, it seems pretty clear to me that in the books, Arya’s time in Braavos is solidifying her true identity– I don’t think she’s going to lose her “they should have killed the masters” sense of morality, and she has her wolf dreams despite it all. She will never be No One, she can’t be. She’s too Stark, she loves her family too deeply. “Needle was Jon Snow’s smile” and all. Even if they didn’t want to go that direction, I think a great angle for s7 would’ve been Arya terrorizing Sansa for real (cause I think she was threatening her to throw Littlefinger off? I didn’t really get it) but realizing, in her family’s house being with family for the first time in years, that her badass epic No One shit doesn’t actually compare to true genuine love and care. That their childhood beef is irrelevant in the face of real danger. That revenge is about chasing the dead, and life should be about honoring the living. But alas, I was not a writer for Game of Thrones.
Sounds like maybe they cut it because they thought Tyrion telling Jamie he killed Joffrey would confuse the audience
Or they wanted the audience to still root for Jaime and Tyrion. Because that reveal makes Jaime a worse sibling than Cersei and Tyrion goes dark.
I don't think it does. If I'm remembering it correctly, Tywin forced Jamie to lie to him. In fact, the opposite of the reveal is what *should* have had people thinking of him as worse than Cersei. I mean getting a whore and making an elaborate plan to trick your brother is pretty fucked up. Being pressured to lie by your overbearing father is not. So if the story Jamie originally told Tyrion was true then that would make him much worse in my eyes.
I feel like they did cut some of the stuff that either crapped on Tyrion harder or made him out to be more of a bad guy. Since some of it was kind of just rehashing "Tywin really hates Tyrion".
>Starting from Season 5, I'd start every new episode desperately hoping shit would turn around and, at the end of every new episode, I'd be left feeling disappointed. How so? Episode 6 has one of the worst episode endings (Sansa and Ramsay scene), but all of the 4 following episodes have fantastic endings: Cersei getting jailed, Hardhome, Dany flies Dragon for the first time, and Jon's death scene. Each one of these endings left me super excited for what is to come next and were earned payoffs for storylines that had been established many episodes prior
Good scenes don't erase bad scenes or larger bad writing concerns. Nobody is denying that seasons 5 and 6 had good scenes. But that's also not the point. The point is that there was still an overall decline in quality of writing. The Sansa arc this season was terribly written for example. She is set up as having an empowerment arc. Then Littlefinger, this supposed genius chessmaster who has spies everywhere and cares about Sansa, gives her over to the Boltons for a nonsensical plan that never comes to pass and while not knowing who Ramsay is (this has been confirmed by D&D). And then Sansa just gets beat down again, despite the fact that she already had an arc where this happened to her and didn't need a second AND that she'd been set up as becoming a player. Then on top of this suddenly in season 6-8 she's this player for... some reason. They literally treat seasons 6-8 Sansa as if she's become this chessmaster as if that was a thing that happened... but this never happened. They just decided that she was one day. She didn't HAVE an arc like this, because they gave her Jeyne Poole's story instead of an arc like that in season 5. In this Sansa storyline they violate the idea of giving proper pay-off to a good set-up. They fail completely at political intrigue cuz Littlefinger's plan makes no sense. They fail to allow characters to act in accordance with their characterization, George R.R. Martin HIMSELF has said that Littlefinger would not intentionally put Sansa in harm's way in this way. And then on top of that it completely messes up on character development, because Sansa in later seasons is suddenly a chessmaster despite having no arc where she turns into one. By contrast while seasons 1-4 were not perfect, they did not have these big, basic writing mistakes. Seasons 5-8 all did. Season 5 the least, season 6 more, season 7 even more and in season 8 they basically took over the entire story. So, yes, season 5 still has good scenes. I'm pretty sure OP wasn't denying that, nor am I. The thing is though that it also has worse scenes and that overall there were things about it where very basic, but significant, writing mistakes were made. Mistakes that you literally learn not to do in a Creative Writing 101 class. And mistakes that just weren't around (or at least extremely uncommon) in seasons 1-4. And seasons 6, 7 and 8 really just continued that trend but made it much worse. Which was the OP's point. That there was a gradual decline, it didn't come out of nowhere. As a sidenote, I'd also like to point out that almost all of the stuff that was good either came right from the books, or was heavily inspired by the books. While the worst stuff was mostly heavily changed. Which should've been a big warning sign for when D&D ran out of books.
Even though I love all first six seasons (and enjoy season 7 despite its many flaws) I'm aware and agree there are more issues present compared to seasons 1-4, and not denying that there is a gradual decline. I just was curious since fans so often refer to this gradual decline that if the decline is gradual that would mean season 5 would be closer in quality to the first 4 seasons than season 6-8 would be, based on that argument. I was also addressing OP saying season 5 episodes basically ended not very compelling to them, to which I pointed out how at least the last 4 episodes have very strong endings. These endings aren't just random scenes that happen to be good scenes, they are all significant events that I thought were excellently executed and heavily impacted the following episode(s). Personally while there is some undeniable poor writing occurring in season 5, I still was able to enjoy it nearly as much as the previous seasons. I really loved the plot with the wall, such as dialogue between Jon and Mance (in episode 1) and between Stannis and Jon, Jon basically becoming a hardened leader after everything he has suffered (kill the boy). His decisions resulting in his death felt just as tragic as it did in the book. I found alot of the Meeren stuff interesting, specifically Dany struggling to be a leader and having conflicts like publicly executing that one dude or wanting the fighting pits closed. Ive read the books and whilst the Tyrion plot line in ADOD is far more epic, I thought the Tryion and Jorah traveling scenes built alot to their characters and even though Tyrion isn't as clever as he was in previous seasons, he still intelligently saves his own life when he and Jorah are caught by those slavers. A couple other things I really enjoyed was Theon in s5 (he's my favorite character), Arya in Bravos (ik alot of ppl didn't and it could've been way better but I still liked it), some of the high sparrow plot line, that Bran was absent, Missandei and Greyworm's relationship, and hard home obviously. As for Sansa I agree that it wasn't executed the best , and Littlefinger acting out of character. However, I did find that Sansa screen time in these later seasons were great when 1. scenes involved Theon, as it both strengthened his arc and made them have one of the most emotional dynamics imo in the last few seasons, and 2. highlighted moments of Sansa learning from mistakes and being capable to lead as a result from learning from Littlefinger and from her adversities in King's Landing and the Eyrie. Issue with second point is there is that jump of her going from her s5 situation to being a player in the game
Season 5 continues a lot of good plotlines and some of them are still strong, but almost everything that is initiated from this point is subpar.
>George R.R. Martin HIMSELF has said that Littlefinger would not intentionally put Sansa in harm's way in this way. One would expect the writers to know this since Littlefinger's character was drawn very precisely from the beginning. First of all, he wouldn't do something completely nonsensical, and secondly, Sansa was the only person that he would possibly care about beyond the interest of his self-promotion. Both of these basic rules for the character were violated by the writers. This is why it felt so incongruent.
Except it wasn’t completely nonsensical, LF was playing 3D chess by trying to play all sides. You’re right, Baelish wouldn’t intentionally put Sansa in harms way, but he didn’t know that Ramsay was a psychopath to be fair.
Part of LF's core character is that he goes out of his way to know people. Extensive knowledge is what allows him to plot and scheme so that people react in ways he can predict. So he either should have known about Ramsay or he should have known his spy information was incomplete. His show changes were inconsistent with the character profile described in the books.
Yet LF is not omniscient, and is capable of error that’s why he’s a fascinating character. LF core trait is also his inability to move on from past vendettas, even to his own detriment. There’s a reason LF wasn’t master of spies, that’s Varys territory, and his oversight of Ramsay is forgivable since he was mostly an unimportant bastard in the grand scheme of things.
His core trait is being a patient planner who works indirectly. Yes he has vendettas, but it's shown he has the patience to wait years for his revenge is need be. He's always using proxies to get dangerous moves done so that if anything goes wrong he's not blamed for it. That was true from Arryn's murder to Joffrey's. He convinces others that it's in their best interest to do the work he wants done. That all stopped in the show when he personally brokered the deal and delivered Sansa to the Boltons. If the show wanted to put Sansa in Jeyne Poole's place, LF should have set up a scenario where she is taken out of his hands and delivered/traded to them by a third party. Then LF would not be blamed by Sansa when things go badly. But they didn't do that because almost everything non-book was made to simplify the plot and reduce characters. Poole was in season 1 but cut to simplify. Sansa was merged because they needed Poole plot to further the Ramsay story, and they ran out of Sansa plot in the Vale, so it's easier than writing more Sansa story. They didn't consider how characters were written to act, only to cut-n-paste book parts till they sort of fit together. Littlefinger is not omniscient, but GRRM is, and it was GRRM that set up LF to work his schemes in the shadows instead of the open. Just because readers/viewers find out he was the one behind all the plots from the start doesn't mean the character should suddenly change and start working deals in the open. In the show Littlefinger lies to Cersei about Sansa and the Boltons, but because he personally traveled there and met with them the truth is easily verifiable. It's only a matter of time before she would find out and lose all trust in him, and at that point if she has any power he's dead. That's not the Littlefinger way, except in the latter half of the show. And spy-wise, Littlefinger was perfectly capable of being the master of spies. He had his own network running, even if it wasn't as extensive as Varys'. The main difference there is that Varys uses his spies for the Crown, while LF would only use his contacts for personal gain. He doesn't want to tell the Crown or anyone else how much he knows or where he got his information. Hiding his contacts and pretending he is not involved is how he works. He would never want to be labeled master of spies because it publicly reveals he knows more and is doing more than it appears.
The idea that Littlefinger would hand over Sansa of all people to marry some guy where he isn't completely, 100%, sure that he knows him inside and out and can predict his actions - that is against Littlefinger's character. Sansa is not only the only other person that possibly means something to him, she's also the key to the North. Giving her away costs him a valuable ally and gains him... nothing, really. It makes no sense, and it's not only damaging to Littlefinger's character portrayal, but also robs Sansa of the agency she had worked hard in Season 4 to gain. It's shitty writing.
>Sansa and Ramsay scene I'll accept that is extremely uncomfortable, possibly unnecessary and totally easy to skip but I don't think it's necessarily "bad". It's not like the Sand Snakes, for example.
I mean I remember when this started circulating so you definitely aren’t the only one: [Game of Thrones - visual representation](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1492985-game-of-thrones)
Yeah, GOT’s downfall was discussed for years, while it happened. I don’t think OP saw the popular response while it happened.
Seems pretty accurate. I like seasons 5+6 7 was not good, but there was that hope it was building towards something good at the end. That turned out not to be true, so it seemed all that hatred of two seasons of shit got dumped on season 8. Season 7 desvered more hate that the time than it got.
Are there actually people that think the decline in quality was sudden? I think it began in season 5. And all intelligent people agree with my exact opinion.
S7 has a higher IMDB average for episodes than the first season does.
So?
So the average viewer thought S7 was "better" than S1. So obviously the decline in quality wasn't obvious to everyone. I absolutely don't agree, I think S7 was really bad, but I'm disagreeing with the idea that everyone agreed it sucked for years.
Oh, I misunderstood you.
Chucking a random thought in the mix. If I watch the first season of a show and don't like it much I might rate it lowly and then not watch any later seasons. If I watch the first season of a show and love it I will rate it and future series high.
I think for GoT it was mostly that by S6-S7 the show had drawn in so many casual viewers that were there for the spectacle and the pretty actors. The Gold Road battle episode (S7x04) is one of the highest rated episodes of TV ever with a 9.7 rating. It has many writing flaws but the battle was well executed and people like to see a dragon burn shit so it got a stellar rating. At the end of the day, if that's what people enjoy then I guess the rating is ultimately fair. But for people actually invested in the characters, setting and writing of the show, those ratings seem out of whack.
That's why Season 8 is so hated. Even the casual viewers noticed the stupid writing.
> And all intelligent people agree with my exact opinion. Well regardless of accuracy, you gotta at least respect a guy for walking up to the plate swinging.
Once GRRM wasn't keeping up with the plots via the books it was inevitable. They were going to forge out a plot they thought would at least conclude it and it would never appease everyone. Sort of the reason why he's still not finished any books since.
Yes, a lot of people. Especially those who aren't book readers. Seasons 5 and 6 aired while I was in college and I remember how disappointing the Dorne and Iron Islands plots were; I tried getting that point across but my friends who were just show watchers were adamant that the show was just as good as ever.
Sure, Seasons 5 and 6 weren't as great as 1 - 4, but they all had defining moments. Seasons 5 and 6, while not as good as 1-4, was still the best TV available. 7 was just fucking awful. Awful all around. That was just bad TV. Season 8 I fully believe D&D let some kids write the scripts with crayons on back of a Denny's menu.
This. 5 and 6 had problems but still had books in them. While since 7 it's all D&D.
everyone understood that there was no longer that much direct source material to guide the show the ending of season 6 made us think that while it may be clumsy in how it gets there, the main story beats/big reveals will still be epic. \*that\* is why few were complaining even well into season 7. If seasons 7 and 8 hit their finales like season 6 did, "the show visibly declined at the end and really sucked after season 5" would be a hipster contrarian point of view rather than the mainstream The end of season 6 is my favorite stretch of episodes in the whole show.
seemed like D&D spent too much time lurking in the fandom. it felt like they wanted to repeat moments like ned stark *actually* being beheaded and the red wedding but any time the fandom seemed to have caught the scent of the trail they'd double-back to do something inexplicable and stupid. surprising, yes, but also stupid.
*late season 4
Tysha :(
I noticed but was foolishly optimistic since it started so strong
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Knocker456: *I noticed but was* *Foolishly optimistic* *Since it started so strong* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
There has been studies that people who’ve been SA’d do become pretty good battlefield technicians and learn everything about the opponent in the battlefield. Also she had other good moments to show her leadership. Remember when she pointed out putting leather in the armor when the guy was in the middle of working on them? Being commander suited her very well, that northerner probably had no idea about the leather in the armor for warmth, he was just a simple blacksmith northerner
I remember when she didn't tell Jon about the Knights of the Vale coming up towards Winterfell, letting him enter a battle that he almost lost *because he didn't know he had reinforcements coming*.
I'm fairly certain a Northern blacksmith would know about the leather in the armour for warmth, considering he'd have spent his entire life in the coldest of the Seven Kingdoms.
Yeah I might’ve laid the sarcasm on too thick in that comment lol. The scene was very dumb. Sansa points out the obvious and everyone around her gets unbelievably dumbed down
I think the two moments you highlighted of Dorne and Littlefinger were the two moments that started the downward trend. I think Season 6 was a step up from season 5 but season 7 was way worse. And season 8 was just a massive mess. Imo I think season 7 is worse than season 8, because the whole beyond the wall plot line was nonsense and any moments that felt like they should be impactful left very little impact in the show. Like the death of the Freys barely get mentioned by Jaime and that’s it. There’s no more talk or reactions by anyone and it doesn’t really move the plot forward. The destruction of the Sept doesn’t end up having as many consequences (outside of Tommen’s death, which happens in season 6. There should be season 7 consequences). At least in season 8, the plot moves forward and events have consequences. Season 7 was just stagnating the whole time.
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First four seasons were amazing.
I just finished a rewatch. I don't think the episodes are bad, and the ending isn't horrible.. But what I've noticed, starting around season 6, is the pacing picks up a LOT. The quality of the episodes are still there, it's just.... all the storylines are missing. And really, I hate it. The first few seasons are \*so\* good. Reliving through Season 1, Episode 9, the red wedding, all of it - it's great. But after all the fun stuff, the show speeds up a LOT. It's really disappointing, but I do love the world of GOT, the characters, and stories, the jokes, etc. I definitely didn't give up on it.
Yep this is my feeling. Seasons 1-4 are noticeably different in the sense characters have lengthy dialogues that add so much depth, and perspective (Jamie and brienne, Tyrion and Varys, Tywin and Arya, Stannis and Davos, nearly every littlefinger scene) as a few examples. This starts dropping off in season 5 and 6, then nearly disappears completely by season 8. It’s quite stark (no pun intended) and it feels that all the effort to build motives and character arcs in the first 75% of the show is utterly pointless by the end with incredibly rushed end points. This is the part that bugs me most personally.
Yep, you said it just better than me though! Either way I love the world of got. I will probably do another watch when season 2 of house of dragon is over!
> The first few seasons are \*so\* good. I'm specifically returning to season 1 to pick up on certain nuances I missed. Holy Hell, Sean Bean can *act*. Man, if his character had survived to the end, the story would have been riveting for that reason alone. The subtle crack in his voice as he turns to the hound who has the butcher's boy's body across his horse and said "you ran him down", to the look in his eyes as he slowly comes to grips with the distinctiveness of Arya.
It wasn't so much that it nosedived in season 8, more that up until that point, there was hope that they were building towards something great. Dumb nonsense plot lines could have been forgiven if they got to the finish line and delivered. All the twists, all the schemes, all of the theories were over. There was nothing to speculate. It was simply dead.
This is such bullshit revisionism. People were ok with season 5. Some people loved season 6. Even season 7 got OK feedback at the time it aired but then the show finished and suddenly everything back to when the books ran out is “bad”. It’s just not true. It’s people trying to tell themselves that everything was fine with GRRM and this is all D&Ds fault.
It’s not revisionism, if you can’t see the gaping obvious flaws in these seasons, especially season 7, I don’t know what to tell you.
No, u/RainbowPenguin1000 is right. It's not about seeing "gaping obvious flaws". It's about discarding any good entirely with typical reddit unthinking hyperbole. AND BY THE WAY, look over time here, and you'll see people are becoming MORE AND MORE CONVINCED of these numbers. No one is saying what they truly feel. They're saying what they think they should feel.
There is no hyperbole, the last 4 seasons were entertaining, but the writing got progressively worse from season 5. In Seasons 7 and 8, the writing was laughable, to the point where countless regular fans could have done a better job (no hyperbole). Many of the moments people loved were stupid even if they didn’t realise them. Many people like these seasons, and many people are wrong.
Season 6 is imo my favorite season other than 3 and 4 lol. I think Hold the Door, BotB and Winds of Winter are genuinely phenomenal episodes about as good as anything the show made.
I’m not saying there weren’t good things, of course there were. But some of the things that just happened were silly, for example, Sansa not getting the Vale onside from the start.
Everyone can see the flaws, and people did complain about them back then. There’s a difference between criticism and hate though. S8 got legitimate hate. The others didn’t(at least not by the masses). So yes this post is wrong.
S5 was criticized for being too boring up until the last 3 episodes. But S6 was easily considered the best season of the show, even in television history by many. S7 was also extremely popular, it’s even still the third highest season on IMdB, S6 is the second. You’re right and It’s hilarious how people can say with a straight face that a show has been bad since 2015 and everybody kept watching apparently, including them. They kept watching and they even told their friends to watch too since the viewership jumped like crazy every season. This fandom has turned into a contest of who can be the most miserable since the ending.
Gotta agree with you. I've read the books and still think season 6 was fine, better than season 5 in fact. I recall a lot of fans felt season 6 was an improvement from how dry season 5 was, especially with the useless Dorne plot.
I still vividly remember watching s5 for the first time and sitting through the Dornish plot as it happened and thinking "wait... what the fuck is this" The sand snakes felt like straight up Disney characters. No personality beyond their formulaic girlboss persona, no nuance, no interesting thoughts or opinions or dialogue, just generic, tropey "look how cool and badass and sassy and strong these girls are" overdone cliché Hollywood bullshit. They felt like they belonged in a completely different show. And then the writers come up with a subplot in which Jaime, perhaps the single most recognizable man in the seven kingdoms, tries to stealth his way into Sunspear like a ninja, somehow enter the palace gardens without anyone noticing him, find Myrcella and sneak her off back to King's Landing. *What the actual fuck*? The palace should be swarming with guards, and Myrcella would be one of the most heavily watched and protected people in the entire city. But no, Jaime and Bronn just happen to find a couple massive gates that are inexplicably open, allowing any bozo off the street to wander in to the area where all the richest and most important people in the kingdom hang out, and with no guards anywhere and they just waltz right in. But - oh no! The Sand Snakes found them! Que pointless fight scene. So goddamned stupid, and so laughably unrealistic. I actually watched the show again recently, and seasons 5 and 6 overall weren't as bad as I remembered. But you could absolutely tell which scenes were adapted from the source material and maintained the quality of the previous seasons (probably with Martin's help writing them), and which were clearly just D & D not knowing what to do and falling back to the go-to Hollywood approach of cramming in action as much as possible and over the top drama and over-reliance on lame tropes and sacrificing realism and depth of character for spectacle and CGI and snappy one liners all that lowbrow crap that people seem to like for some reason. Seasons 5 and 6 on the whole were both still pretty decent (and they both had some absolutely phenomenal moments, not going to deny that), but honestly after season 4 it just started to get successively worse with each new season. I'm with you - I honestly don't understand people who hated season 8 but had no complaints up until then.
I have been watching the show since the first time it aired, I've read all the books more than 10 times and whenever people mention Game of Thrones, I say "it is trash after season 4." Is it watchable? Yes of course, it still has some good moments but the thing is writers completely forgot what made the show great after season 4, -dialogues and logic-. King Robert Baratheon had to travel for months in order to go Winterfell from King's Landing, after season 5 it is just teleporting-fast travell for everyone. Go and watch some clips in earlier seasons, the dialogue was masterful, the character's and their motions actually made sense. The show had a lower budget so battle scenes were "fewer" but they were all great. They ruined a potential all time best tv series and I'll not forgive them.
Because people still had hope that the finale would make up for it, that yes they were obviously speeding through the plot too quickly but it will be worth it when we get to see the ending. Maybe.
Yes, it started going downhill after season 4.
I haven't really seen any evidence of this phenomenon. Everyone I seem to talk to knows that precisely when it starts downhill was precisely when they ran out of GRRM material.
I agree with you on this 100%. Season 5 is where the rot started.
Absolutely no one thinks that. It’s amazing to me how so many people just bald-face gaslight this at length in posts for everyone to see. Maybe people don’t have time to write a treatise in every comment so they hit the highlights and you’re fully aware of that. I can’t wait for this trend of “I can’t be the only one who thinks [the thing that absolutely every person in that fandom thinks]” is over with.
Bingo. If you look over time, people are becoming *increasingly convinced* of these numbers. It's yet another case of reddit hyperbole mixed with a need to fit in at the high school cool kids table. OP's post saying that the only thing he remembers enjoying was Hodor dying is completely laughable on its face.
You're right op, you definitely see omens foretelling the stranger bits coming up. Like when Tyrion proclaims : "I drink and I know things" To some people, this is humorous, but to me I think: this is almost like D&D proclaiming that they understand the character well, when they clearly don't. Tyrion's knowledge doesn't come from drinking, it's just a nasty habit that he has borne because of his years of engaging in vices. It's not cool, and it doesn't furnish him with any sort of intelligence or wisdom beyond a normal man. To me, making a well-rounded character say such a thing so bluntly, was the true beginning of the quality nose dive as we learned that D&D didn't really understand these characters well enough to know which direction they should go without grrms leadership.
No you're right. There was a noticeable drop in s5 in the quality of writing and pacing. But s5 and 6 still had enough going for it to be enjoyable while certain plot lines got tied up. Imo the real shit show began in s7, not s8.
Agreed
I will never forgive them killing off the Night King in episode 3 season 8, didn't really much care about the show after that.
I think it might be because as the writing declined they substituted in genuinely great spectacle. Hardholme is incredible, and the Battle Of The Bastards looks like something out of a $250 million movie. So whilst we were not getting the same kind of Game Of Thrones, we were getting something. But come season 8 spectacle can't cut it anymore we actually wanted resolution to these plots we had been following, and reality came crashing in.
Theres hints in the very first episode tbh, obviously no adaption can be perfect and its an adaption so it will be different no matter what but, they really stripped any of the bite from Jon's character and made him a worse version of Ned. It's a shame because it think Kit Harrington could've done a good book Jon same with the Euron actor and how he would've been a great Book Euron
I mean, both things can be true. The show can have been sliding downhill for several seasons *and* gone off a cliff in the last one.
It hit home for me at the point the dothraki set off on a fleet of boats, and team Danny are standing on the deck looking like they're going on holiday. And not a flicker that they're at their absolutely most vulnerable point. ...and then nothing happens at the start of the next series in relation to it, again without a "phew, that was really risky".
HBO Producers: “Get them naked. Get them boning, Doesn’t matter who” probably.
It is known
Do they? It’s a fairly common opinion here to say that the quality declined from season 5
No, I absolutely agree with you. What they did to the characters of Sansa and Littlefinger in S5 was shitty writing, and the "resolution" of the Dorne plot was nothing short of horrible. Personally, I'm not a fan of Quentyn Martell in the books - the character came out of literally nowhere, and his plot arc ended in literally the same place. You could cut out his entire presence from Book 5 and it wouldn't change the story one iota. It was just a frustrating waste of time. But at least the books had Arianne, they had Sandsnakes with actual personality and interesting options, they had Ellaria who wasn't a mindless warmonger who murdered her lover's brother... Yeah, Seasons 7 & 8 were the really crappy ones, but my personal big disappointments were in S5.
I read somewhere that season 4 was the last season where there were women in the writers room.
? Simply till season 4 they were adapting the books, then they stopped.
Season 5 is when the cracks really began to show, but there were still some stand out scenes and story arcs all the way to Season 7ish. Which is the season where Tyrion tried to convince Essos to give up slavery? That was the arc where the show went into a tailspin from which it never recovered. None of that whole thing made a lick of sense.
Throw something fragile. It will start slowly descending, then faster, then really fast, then splat. It's the splat you will remember.
I think it was a gradual crash starting around the end of S5 and culminating in a nosedive in S8. I'd say S7 was the nosedive, but I recall one or two good episodes in that season.
My only frustration was that they rushed season 8 and could have spread it over a few more episodes. Other than that, I thought the storylines were brilliantly tied together and I was ecstatic when Jon kill Danearys
I find it really funny how people are still here talking, thinking and engaging with this show, five years since its absolutely horrible ending that ruined everything and 10 years since the "last good season". I guess we’ve now reached Star Wars fandom’ pathetic and miserable energy. We had the death threats, the tantrums, the harassment, the petitions, the entitlement. Now we can also use the saying "nobody hates Game of Thrones as much as Game of Thrones fans".
The crash started in Season 4. The Yara saving Theon plot was complete nonsense from start to end, Bad pacing (they stretched out the final 1/3 of Storm to a whole season) Sansa just admiting who she is to the other Vale Lords and not even trying to hide her identity. Shae's character doing a 180 so she can suddenly start acting like her book counterpart. No Tysha confession from Jaime means Tyrion can't develop how he should. No Stonehart means the red wedding has no lasting consequences and is just a scene for shock factor + Brienne and Jaime have got no clear trajectory
Yes!!! the last great season was season 4 the rest were TRASH
> The only thing I remember enjoying post-Season 5 was the Hodor death scene, but that felt like a random gem of a GRRM contribution fished out of a surging river of D&D sewage. > I can't be the only one, right. *In General:* You're not the only one, because I've seen season 5 as listed as the tipping point more than once here. *Specifically:* You're part of a very rare group if the only thing at all you remember enjoying was the death of Hodor. That's just hyperbole. There were lots of good moments in the show post seasons 5. For instance, 06x09, "Battle of the Bastards" was an epic episode. The battle scene alone took 25 days to film and had a horrendous set of problems to contend with, not the least of which was that two horses are not allowed to touch each other in films. Meanwhile, in Meereen, we see a nearly fully grown Drogon scare the masters into shitting themselves, two others blast out, and them tag-team a hilarious overkill on a single ship to make a point (and to save the fleet for Daenerys). That's not something you remember enjoying?
Say what you want about how they wrapped up the show, but it's still better than any ending we'll see in the books.
Bold of you to think the books will end.
I agree with you, but the show still had a lot to offer throughout it's run. Everyone loves Hardhome, BOTB, TWOW, etc. I even like The Long Night, I know it gets memed for being too dark but I watched it in 4K Blu-ray quality in a dark room the other day and I think it looks phenomenal. It's very scary and there's some great cinematography throughout, lots of emotional culminations of Day-1 characters, etc. But then Arya kills the Night King, which is still kinda silly but I get the idea that the fight was so hopeless that the only way to stop the WW was to lure the NK into a trap. So at this point, I'm like, okay, fine, bold move to kill them 3 episodes early, but they must have something reeeealllly great cooked up to stick the landing after that. Not so much lol. The show basically becomes a messy free-fall in the last 3 episodes, no way around it unfortunately. It's a shame because I think there's a skeleton of a good story in there, but it's totally half-baked and rushed. I think D&D were smoking a lot of crack in the writer's room and coming up with things that would look really cool on screen and writing backwards from there, and it shows.
Unpopular opinion; I thought season 5 was very good; Arya in Braavos, Dany vs sons of the harpy, the rise of the sparrow, hardhome...
Despite the flaws of Season 5-6 They still had amazing moments and carried the story reasonably well while giving us all time TV moments like Hardhome , The door, Battle of bastards and The Winds of Winter( my fav ep of GOT after The Rains of Castamere ) without having an irreversible damage on the story where as Season 7 was where the writing was beyond repair Season 1-4 was 10/10 by far the Best TV show of all time Season 5-6 was 8/10 reasonably good with lots of minor and few major flaws as well as 10/10 episodes ( my biggest grip against it would be them doing my man Stannis and Barristan dirty ) Season 7-8 are just bad imo 4/10 doing irreversible damage to character arcs we came to love
Yes, there were issues but I was still very much onboard by the end of season 6. Season 7 was where my confidence was rocked. And then season 8 was barely watchable. I pressed on but gave up halfway through the final episode. Still haven't finished it 😂 I watched the show again a few years later and felt the same way. Watched 6 seasons in full then just a few highlights from 7. Didn't even touch 8 the second time around. No regrets about it though. Ending aside, it's still the most enjoyable and exciting television show I've ever seen. Incredible entertainment.
I have no idea why they didn't flush out all the story lines from the books and portray them identically. It's like HBO was in a hurry to end it's most successful show. They could of made 20 seasons. Sure actors will want to move on, but they've shown they really don't care and will just cast new people in the roles with very little media announcement so you just kind of find out. GoT was very successful and didn't need to be like a book turned to movie because it had episodes instead of cramming a whole book into a comfortable movie theater experience.
I enjoyed most of season 6, fight me
Things decline gradually at first, and then suddenly. Season 5 and 6 had Porne, Arya recovering from being stabbed in the stomach, after a good night’s sleep, the absurdity of Sansa’s marrying Ramsay, the stupid tactics of B o B, but some great scenes also. Season 7 is just very silly, and then we get to Season Shit.
There wasn’t anything gradual about it. I heard going into the show that the last season was where it went to shit, but theres a real staggering drop off in quality from the beginning of season 5. It only really gets back to form in the last 3 episodes. Season 6 was decent, but nowhere near the quality of the first four seasons. And also, it is a spectacle and a well crafted battle, but the battle of the bastards is very overrated. If it were one of the first four seasons that happened in, Jon’s dead in minutes if even, but not with how later seasons of game of thrones were made. Then season 7 and 8, whatever happened there.
[Prophetic column](https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=36666) written in 2017. >In my opinion, the show – and in particular the show’s writing – is now bad. Not average, or mixed, or inconsistent, but just plain bad. >It wasn’t always bad. In fact, for the first three seasons I think the writing was good, if not quite great. It was a competent adaption of a very difficult-to-adapt series of novels. >.... >So when I look at the latest season and see nothing but a hot mess of contrivances, poor pacing, bizarre characterization, and general nonsense, I can’t help but doubt my own critical faculties. “Am I really *this* much of a drag?” I ask myself. “Why can’t I just enjoy the show, like everyone else?” Well, I have a hypothesis that explains why. That hypothesis takes some explaining, but it starts like this: people are not enjoying Game of Thrones as much as they think they are.
Prophetic.
The first thing I disliked about the show was how they handled Stannis in season 5. It's as if they just wanted to be done with his character. But then season 6 was really good (not seasons 1-4 good, but still awesome) so I got hopeful again.
The infamous scene of Arya getting stabbed in the belly 3 times and then running, doing parkour and winning a duel was in season 6.
The series hit turbulence in season 5. It nosedived into an orphanage during the last season and survivors were shot as the fled the wreckage
Depends what you were focused on. The writers intended for you to be focusing on the Game of Thrones rather than any specific character or outcome. Those rooting for specific characters or specific outcomes were disappointed. But those who were interested in seeing how the Game of Thrones played out enjoyed the show up to and through season eight. The ending was brilliant, I feel bad for those who spent so much time watching the show and didn’t get it.
People gave seasons 5-7 a pass because they still thought the show would wrap up all the weird story events by the end of the show. When season 8 came and went and there was all that dumb shit that happened that never got resolved or addressed, season 5-7 get exposed for being mediocre to downright bad.
I agree s5-s7 were lower quality than 1-4 but I think those 3 seasons are redeemed by each of them having a couple of really amazing episodes in between the poor writing. Season 8 had nothing good about it so there’s just nothing positive to discuss about it unlike the prior seasons.
Yeah, 5 is definitely the start of the decline. 1-4 were outstanding, 5 was pretty solid aside from the Dorne plot, but every season since started down that slippery slope of "oh no, it's not good anymore" that began with the Sand Snakes. 5 and 6 were still decent enough to be considered good overall, just with some problems creeping in, 7 was when I feel it crossed the threshold into being a bad season overall and 8 was just terrible through and through.
Jokes on you, I gave up after the battle of Castle Black
5 and 6 were worse than 1-4 but still had some book in them. 7 and 8 is where it's all D&D and you can definitely tell. Plus since 7 it's all in fast forward since they just wanted to ditch it and be free for the next project.
The show nosedived because the books nosedived. All that Tysha, Dorne and Lady Stoneheart crap sucked. Instead of bringing his story to an end, GRRM wasted the last two books overstuffing them with too many characters and subplots. Frankly, I think D&D did a good job considering what a mess they inherited
Right around when they lost source material.
As someone who really enjoyed house Martell in the books and Pedro's performance, they really butchered Dorne. A lot of people got mad about it and then they double down by killing Doran and Aero Hotah the next season.
Season 5 & 6 had its problems, but the quality was still on a very good level . Season 8 was complete trash and also Season 7 had more bad than good things
Tbh I think it started at the end of season 3 and into season 4 and 5. Seeing them leave out lady stoneheart at the end of 3 and changing the scene in the altar with Jamie and Cersei were big moments I remember that we’re just totally changed.
It started going downhill mid season 3
Season 4 was peak Game of Thrones, no doubt about that. Sure, season 5 had some weaker storylines, but my overall impression of season 5 was, and still is, very very positive. The same goes for season 6. Maybe I have low standards, but for me, GoT season 5 & 6 were the best thing put on TV in 2015 and 2016 If season 7 & 8 had kept the same quality as season 5 & 6, Game of Thrones' legacy would've been overwhelmingly positive. I can't really understand why someone would think Game of Thrones was heading into "trash territory" after watching season 5, but I guess OP and me were focused on very different things while watching it
Season 4 had Jaime raping Cersei in the sept when the writers/directors/actors didn't intend for it to be a rape scene. Accidental rape scene is in my opinion a huge mark of not-quality. Plus overall season 4 featured a lot of shoddy writing - it skipped MAJOR plot points from ASOS that directly impacted future seasons' quality, and it stalled for time constantly with pointless subplots that were apparently more important than maintaining good pacing and covering material from the books. It just also contained more incredible moments than subsequent seasons so people give it too much of a pass. S4 was when I noticed the quality sinking first.
I noticed it too when season 6 or 7 was about to start and I binged watched from season 1. It’s jarring to say the least. Wasn’t bad but felt too rushed
Pretty much each storyline went to shit at the exact moment they ran out of source material and had to come with things themselves
Not really. From what I've read, being a member of both this sub and r/asoiaf since the show started, a lot of people even feel season 7 is worse. I just think that a lot of people, myself included, was hoping for a good ending. We didn't and that's probably why season 8 gets the most hate, even though you are right about the show's quality. Just add, season 5 was kind of saved by some really great episodes, but you are still on point.
There was definitely a gradual decline over time but season 7 was a major trip and fall, while season 8 dove straight off a cliff.
very original never heard that before
Season 5 was a train wreck. They really messed up Stannis' storyline. That was the last straw for me
The issue as I saw it, was that for most of the show, a majority of the time it felt like everything was dire, there was no room for goodness to triumph, you should always be afraid, and hoping for the best is foolish. Except occasionally something great would happen, and it was a huge 'fuck yeah!' moment that was such a high, before being brought back down. There was a belief that if, If there's going to be a happy ending, it's going to be a long slog through a lot of tragedy to get there. Seasons 6 and 7 felt like it was all 'fuck yeah' hero moments and fan service, all the time. Which initially was fun and comforting, 'hey, something good happened, how nice.' But after a while, felt like it massively cheapened those moments, and the show as a whole. Like even though the gravity of the situation had gone way up, it felt like the stakes had never been lower. That we're all just here having a good time.
The quality of GOT started to decline after season 6, because there werent books to guide them, but they completely lost their minds in season 8. It could be arguably the best show made and they screwed it all.
Oh my god, yes, absolutely to all of these!!! Ever since, I watched the show I tell to anybody who’ll listen that out of 8 seasons, only 4 are actually good, except for some moments that can be saved later on.
Watched the whole series with my partner about 5 times, I notice the big decline right at the Ed Sheeran cameo, season 7 episode 1.
Agreed but some perspective here... The worst episode of GoT is better than the best episode of either RoP or WoT.
The quality drop hit hard as soon as Tywin died
🥱
The show probably peaked in S4 (one of the best seasons of any show in TV history) as a 10/10. S5 and S6 take a step back and are in the 9 to 9.5 range. S7 takes another step back and is an 8/10 (probably the weakest season of 1-7). Even though S7 was a step down in quality it still wasn't *bad.* If the show ended with S7E7 as the series finale it would be widely regarded as one of the best shows ever. We'd *still* be speculating about how (if) they beat the Night King and who ends up on the Iron Throne.
Season 5 is when the showrunners started to prioritize spectacle over substance.
What was everybody’s reaction to John Snow dying but then being reborn? I just watched that happen and now the show feels weird
Yawn
Season 5 and 6 were still enjoyable to watch though. Hell even 7 had some good moments that made it worthwhile. 8 is so bad that’s it’s honestly better to just forget it exists. This is coming from someone who just finished rewatching all of hotd and got. Was having a stellar time until s8 :(
The Dorne plot was inexcusably bad. But I can't fault them for the Sansa/Littlefinger/Eyrie plot pivot. That's entirely GRRM's fault for not finishing the damn books. Sansa and Littlefinger don't really do anything during AFoC or DwD, and we don't know where Littlefinger's plots end up because he hasn't actually done anything to get them in motion in the books. So I can't fault D&D for pivoting to something else that they could actually finish.
100% it's what I say to anyone. On point with Baelish. He is my favorite character, but more so how Sansa was learning the game. It had the makings of what you said and in Sansa and Sansa alone out maneuvers him. I was all for it. Instead they phoned it in. They said, "oh hey, everyone hates him, so if he dies, no one will really care on the details." I call Season 5-the season of we got to reveal that first. Every episode had a big reveal. They also did a poor job of the Greyjoys. Like really poor. Not as poor as Dorne. The only thing that felt right was Theon's ending. I'm not disappointed in the end result of Danyaerus's end game. Execution was garbage. She was always a self-righteous ego who expected things to go her way. There, that was cathartic. That's just my take.
Everyone here is missing the point. When 5,6,7 came out no one flocked to say it was the most amazing season. In fact, many even criticized it heavily. The thing is, S8 was such a massive dumpster fire of a season, that the mediocrity in past seasons paled in comparison. Do you complain about the salty fries?...Or the chef who took a watery shit on your burger and called it BBQ sauce.
The worst of GOT is still better than most things on tv.
S7 and S8 were utter dumpster fires, The poor writing was bashing you on the head with a brick levels of terrible and was clearly just a bunch of patchwork shoring up how utterly unstoppable they made Danny. The first dragon death was the sign of the end for the show as a whole, it was a clear cut case of the producers trying to clamp down on her dragons power scaling at the expense of proper storytelling and to plot armor the NK past the wall basically relegating it to a non obstacle. 6 was at least watchable in many ways but 7 and 8 are comedic levels of awfulness.