It’s well-established in the annals of pop cultural TV history: the final season of HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” was one of the most controversial ever, arguably the most hated of any series that was once fully beloved. Originally conceived as two movies and then rethought as a series, the final season from creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss was contracted and had to jampack the entirety of its previous seven-season storytelling into six episodes. Audiences felt the storyline was rushed and too fast, and few felt that Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) heel turn was hurried and unconvincing.
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The ”Game Of Thrones” creators felt the blowback the most, and it’s been relitigated online ad nauseum. But it’s been a few years now for them to have perhaps a different perspective on the fan backlash, and so in a recent Happy Sad Confused podcast interview, the creators Benioff and Weiss were asked about it again; the HSC host standing by the merits of the final season. While it sounds like they’re at peace with the outcome—recognizing that most people didn’t care for the final season, putting a blemish on the entire affair—and they were expecting backlash, they admit it was harsher than they expected, even reflecting years later.
“I think we knew it would be controversial; we hoped that it would be a little more 50/50 [even],” Weiss admitted. “You hope for a better proportion of— we definitely didn’t want it to be quite so much hate— we were prepared for some of it, but, you know…” he said, trailing off, making a bit of a wincing face.
“I guess I hadn’t taken into account the net worth effects that can help the show when they’re working in your favor as a positive feedback loop,” Weiss said, jumping in. “Its hypocritical to love it when it’s blowing in your direction and to decide it’s the end of the world when it’s going the other way, but I think that, yeah, that was the part of it that we hadn’t really accounted for in knowing that some people were going to like it and some people weren’t.”
Benioff shared a positive story about it all, recounting his best-ever experience with Homeland Security at an airport and a “sweet moment” where a DHS officer told him he loved the series, which felt good and unexpected. “There are people out there who like the last season,” Benioff said. “You’re not the only one; there are eleven of you,” Weiss quipped.