Can Game of Thrones still surprise us?
Excellent summary of the issues of the last season, and why it was a let down for some.
Here are my issues with a few of these issues.
Killing off characters. If you kill off everyone important, the story is finished before it ends. No one would care if it was only Dickon and the Sands fighting the White Walkers because no one cares about them. You need characters that are established and have been around for a long time. Take a look at the OT for the third season and see how many characters are in the OP, compared to how many there are in this years OT.
Twists. These things still happen but here's the thing, eventually as you reach end game there are only so many possible twists and turns because you're roster is reduced greatly and your story has to narrow to reach a conclusion. In the first season we all thought Ned was end game, Robb was end game, Tywin, we though he was as well, just as the video states. But what benefit would there be to killing off Brienne right now? There isn't one other than shock value, just as there really isn't any reason to keep her around. So why not keep her around, she's liked, she can fight. Not at all essential to the story it seems, but who knows. This goes for a lot of the remaining cast. It's not like we didn't lose any major characters this season and it's not like they still can't offer something that will shock us. We didn't expect to see Shae in Tywins quarters, but there she was.
Next, and this is the biggest, speculation and leaks. It comes to a point where there are only so many possible outcomes especially when it comes to the end game, it's a lot harder to be surprising when the two biggest outcomes are, white walkers win, or white walkers lose. But worse than that is when there are assholes coming in here, a place that's well guarded against leak talks and spoilers and they say boatsex 2 weeks before it happens. No one knows they're spoiling anything but they are. Suddenly speculation becomes fact because of leaks and limited threads in which the story can take.
Also, a couple years ago there were a lot of complaints about how this show was becoming predicable. Not because it started to follow fantasy tropes, but because it kept following it's own rules and that those rules became comical and predictable. "They killed Jon? That's just bad writing man, it's so predicable now, what's the point if you're going to kill everyone off"...Now a couple years later, "OMG everyone has plot armor all of the sudden, this show is pure fantasy now, it's so predicable it's just bad writing."
The biggest issue of the season was travel time, it was handled poorly in a lot of cases. Dany swooping in to save the fellowship could have been handled a lot better. Benjen saving Jon could be seen as Benjen was always watching the NK from a safe distance. It could have been better if Bran as the Three eyed raved sent him to save Jon, just as the 3ER sent Uncle B to save Bran and Meera last season.
Anyway, I see why some people have issues, but I think you need to understand that there are reasons, the leaks will ruin things, speculation will ruin things, the story needs to funnel and you need characters for people to care about otherwise, who cares about the story that's happening around their dead bodies. Did the season have issues? Yup, but so did every other season, for different reasons. People literally stopped watching because they killed people they cared about. The show evolved and it has to come to an end, that's it, and the end will never satisfy everyone. Not one with this many moving pieces along the way.
