GoT S7E7

I’ve had the chance to reflect on the Game of Thrones season finale last night, and I think much like last week my overriding feeling is a sense of mild disappointment.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still one of the best TV shows out there – and certainly in an age of streaming and on-demand TV, it is probably the last remaining event TV that I have to watch on a Sunday night so I can discuss it at the water cooler on Monday morning.  But having set such a high bar, maybe it is unrealistic for me to expect it to meet my lofty expectations.  Especially now that events have gone beyond the books, and I think that has definitely hampered the plotting.  What I think this season has really lacked is unpredictability and nuance – it seems clear that they have had to rush through this season, and probably will do next season, just to get to the endgame.  With this, comes a host of issues – laws of time and space disregarded, a lack of character development and insight, the sidelining of more interesting minor characters for the big players in the endgame.  The show has felt hurried and, perhaps worst of all, contrived.  This is especially true of the last few episodes, where we’ve had some ridiculous plot devices to ensure that the Night King has a zombie dragon that can destroy the Wall, a string of characters with history re-uniting for some gentle banter, and some unnecessary and blatant fan servicing.  For me, the biggest disappointment of the finale was the lack of surprise.  Almost everything that happened was already known or easily predictable – Cersei’s plotting, Jon’s parentage, Jon and Dani getting it on, the Night King marching on Westeros, Littlefinger’s demise.  It is perhaps ironic that the character who most sowed and thrived chaos was killed off, because Game of Thrones is at its best when chaotic, crazy things happen (Ned Stark, the Red Wedding!) – and I feel that is sadly lacking now.  We did get some great scenes – I’m thinking Cersei and Tyrion and Cersei and Jamie in particular, plus some token comic relief with Podrick and Bronn – but that doesn’t really make up for a season with some great action set pieces but very little emotional connection to the characters and the events unfolding.  One of the recaps I was reading online stated that it felt as if the story was driving the characters instead of the other way around this season, and I couldn’t agree more.  We’ve got some time now until the last season and its remaining few episodes, but I don’t feel so bad about having to wait for them (particularly compared to waiting for this season) as I fear that Game of Thrones may have already peaked and we are just ticking off the boxes now until we get to the inevitable showdowns between Cersei and Dani and Jon and the Night King.