The final season of Game of Thrones was nothing more than a Michael Bay movie about people who don’t know how to wash properly. It’s all indicative of the showrunners’ panicky rush to gallop to the end once the source material ran out, trading all the meticulous character work of the previous seasons for the empty calories of bloated spectacle.
Which was the worst bit? The moment when – set up from the very first scene of the very first episode to be the show’s terrifyingly allegorical Big Bad – got offed as an afterthought to give us more of working through his mummy issues with his sexy aunt? The episode that was exclusively comprised of a series of incomprehensible brown sludges scraping up against each other? The finale, where turned into Hitler, then died, then of all people took over, and popped in at the end to say: “I’ve written this book, called of ” and nobody punched him? And, in truth, it has probably drained yours, too. It entirely drained my enthusiasm for the series. But there was something so monumentally dispiriting about GoT’s final season. I’ve seen Lost all the way through three times now, for crying out loud, and I would even give Dexter another go (up to a point I’m not a monster). Listen, I know that it’s silly to write off an entire television series just because it beefed the finale. Now, all things considered, I would rather feed my legs to a dog than watch Game of Thrones again. Obviously that was before the final season. Emilia Clarke as Daenerys and Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo in season one of Game of Thrones. ‘Unless you read the books, it was impossible to keep up’. Wouldn’t it be good, I thought, to go back and watch Game of Thrones from the start and enjoy it with all the knowledge that the readers had? By the end of it, I had transformed into Carrie from the first season of Homeland drunk and hysterical and gesturing wildly at an incomprehensible wall of string. If you hadn’t, it was impossible to keep up.Īnd so I spent the first couple of years with only half an eye on the television, while I frantically tore through Wikipedia trying in vain to find any sort of clue about what was actually happening. If you had read the books, this was all probably very satisfying. The first two seasons, as far as I’m able to tell, are single-handedly made up of scenes where 3,000 identical-looking men with identical names growl at each other about all the different things that every single one of their of identically named ancestors did over the past 10,000 years. This isn’t because I liked it – it’s because I barely got to see any of it. Except you won’t rewatch it, will you? Even under lockdown, your life is too short.įor much of its run, I was convinced that I’d end up watching Game of Thrones all over again. It’s long and dense, and it tells a huge story on the grandest possible canvas.
Of all the shows available to watch or rewatch in quarantine, Game of Thrones seems pretty perfect. You can also read Fire & Blood, the book on which House of the Dragon is based.No: ‘The final season was just a Michael Bay movie about people who don’t know how to wash’ If you haven’t watched Game of Thrones, you really don’t need to watch it prior to watching House of the Dragon, but it might enhance your appreciation of the new series if you have some insight into the characters and the settings. While some of the locations will be the same, there will be many new places to explore. Heading into House of the Dragon, it’s expected that the new series will put an equal amount of work into establishing the Westeros of this time period. Westeros came to life with unique and memorable locations like King’s Landing, the Wall and Winterfell.
One of the reasons Game of Thrones was so successful is that it painted such an alluring backdrop for the talented cast. Either is possible - Bran Stark time traveled after a fashion, but I wouldn’t count on it. Unless, of course, there is either a seer who has visions of the future or there is some kind of time travel involved. The events depicted across the eight seasons of the series aren’t relevant. House of the Dragon is a prequel to Game of Thrones that follows the exploits of House Targaryen at the height of their power. You don’t need to watch Game of Thrones to enjoy House of the Dragon