Game of Thrones Author Started Worrying After Season 5

| November 30, 2021 |

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Game of Thrones Season 8: Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen. — *Photograph: HBO*

While HBO'southward Game of Thrones tv set franchise has attached its focus toward upcoming prequel serial House of the Dragon , the temptation to relitigate controversies of its by remains prevalent. It'due south understandable, seeing as one of the almost popular television shows in the world purposefully wrapped with a shortened last season that left a significant portion of the audience unsatisfied and exasperated. While author George R.R. Martin remained mum almost the way the finale imagined the climax to his notwithstanding-unfinished source material novels, it seems that his silence is finally starting to break.

Of course, Martin is at present defined—at meme levels—by the near prominent example of interminable writer's cake in modern literary history. It's a phenomenon that resulted in Game of Thrones essentially surpassing the storyline of his A Song of Ice and Burn down novels by 2016's Season 6, requiring showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to work off a general outline provided by Martin for the final few frames. While Martin has regretfully admitted the unfortunate issue of his extended inability to finish sixth volume The Winds of Wintertime , comments made on his behalf published in James Andrew Miller'southward quote-teeming new book, Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers (via Wintertime is Coming and Insider ), reveal that he actually shares the business organisation of fans about the show'south inconsistent storytelling past the events of his books.

"George loves Dan and Dave, just after Flavor 5 he did get-go to worry nearly the path they were [going down] because George knows where the story goes," said Martin'southward representative, Paul Haas. "He started saying, 'You're non post-obit my template.' The start 5 seasons stuck to George's roadmap. Then they went off George's roadmap."

With penultimate novel The Winds of Winter still in the works—and its completion in a perennial state of alleged immediacy—the details of Martin's roadmap will likely remain a mystery for a very long fourth dimension, seeing every bit the author volition notwithstanding demand to tackle the seventh and last novel, A Dream of Spring ; a prospect that, unfortunately, becomes increasingly inauspicious with each passing twelvemonth. Even so, based on Haas's comment, the climactic events that played out for Game of Thrones ' eighth and final season did not marshal with said roadmap. This contradicts what was long-causeless about the storytelling tenure of Benioff and Weiss for the show's last few seasons, and sets the possibility for even more divergences between the evidence and the canon of Martin's books. In fact, even the show'due south culminating ascension of a certain character to Westeros' Iron Throne now stands to be contradicted in the novels.

Controversially, the existing 67 episodes worth of Game of Thrones ' slow-burn story development—about of which adhered to Martin'due south novels—would culminate in 2019 with an abbreviated half dozen-episode frame, in which the arcs of major characters arrived at shocking places in a rather inorganic manner. Indeed, few e'er imagined Daenerys Targaryen overcoming a series-worth of often-humiliating trials and tribulations, becoming an inspirational, slave-liberating, regular army-accruing savior in the East, just to—in an most instant whim—go a genocidal pyromaniac would-be ruler in the West. Likewise, the wheelchair-jump Bran Stark'southward telegraphed destiny to get the supernaturally-omniscient, petty-ability-eschewing Three-Eyed Raven seemed to belie what would be his ultimate fate every bit Westeros'south ruler and winner of the testify's eponymous competition. Yet, those were indeed simply a few of the widely-vexing outcomes showcased on the finale.

While there's obviously nothing wrong with outcomes that ultimately surprise audiences, the predominant gripe with Game of Thrones is that the outcomes represented precipitous turns abruptly executed in the proper noun of expediency, apparently due to the fatigue of the showrunners. "Dan and Dave were tired, rightfully so," explained Haas. "They were done, and wanted to motility on, so they cut information technology short and and so negotiations became, how many seasons can we stretch this out? Because of course HBO wanted more." Indeed, the dwindling output of the final 2 seasons was a source of disappointment for fans, as the evidence's tradition of ten-episode frames was broken with 2017's Season vii, which arrived with just 7. Still, the announcement that the series-concluding Season 8 would further cut back with only 6 episodes planned—a bit of belt-tightening that, fifty-fifty alee of product, stood out as a cherry-red flag to fans regarding the show'due south increasingly-diluted, off-grade accommodation strategy for Martin'southward grandiose mythology.

Pertinently, comments from Martin himself published in Tinderbox reveal that he believes Benioff and Weiss's early tap-out adversely afflicted the quality of the evidence in its terminal seasons. "I wish it had run for 10 years," he laments. "I recollect that would've given united states of america a little more time in the later seasons to end it. But that might exist just because I'thousand nonetheless trying to end it in these books here." The showrunners' move to cut the show short was not only detrimental to the storytelling strategy, but besides afflicted their ain worth to fans and those in the industry. Indeed, an opportunity bestowed onto the duo—during the height of the show'southward popularity—by Disney to create a new Star Wars Trilogy afterwards slipped through their fingers, and their purportedly $200 million Netflix deal has yet to yield genre fruit prominent plenty to justify such a price tag.

Consequently, House of the Dragon is operating under the purview of a new showrunner pair in celebrated Game of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik and franchise newcomer Ryan Condal, who comes off USA Network sci-fi dystopia serial Colony . The serial—following the Targaryens in Westeros some 200 years earlier—volition see the franchise return to x-episode-per-season glory, debuting in 2022 on a engagement to be revealed. And as for Martin, his book comments too provide an update on his current endeavors—familiar-sounding as it may be to fans. "I'g working on The Winds of Winter fifty-fifty at present every bit I have been for the best part of a decade. And hopefully I'm going to get to that end soon and so people can argue most which catastrophe they like better."