If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you’ve invested eight years and more than 100 hours watching the epic HBO fantasy.
And if you’re a real fan, you’ve started to realize just how terrible this final season really is.
You’re not alone.
A new Change.org petition is calling for a do-over. “Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers,” reads the petition, which then bashes the show’s writers.
“David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on. This series deserves a final season that makes sense. Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!” says the petition.
At the time this article was published, the count of those who’ve signed the petition stood at 502,352, passing their original goal of 500,000 . Now, the petition’s author is shooting for 1 million signatures.
One signer, “Wendell Edwards,” wrote an expansive note explaining his reason for signing.
“The story fell apart, the characters became caricatures of themselves — and some worse, unrecognizable — and the world lost the cohesiveness and believe-ability it had maintained previously. Do not mistake this petition as fans who “don’t like the dark turn it took”, since I think this fanbase can handle really dark things. I’d argue that we no longer recognize the narrative and characters we once knew.
In addition, I myself watch the show for the multi-dimensional characters–a feature now seemingly discarded for the purpose of spectacle–and the story line. Ending the show with heavy-handed morality tales about the corrupting quest for power are trite and cliched at best, completely out of place at worst. It felt like watching a shallow blockbuster movie (which are fun when you go into it knowing that’s what you’re getting!), and felt like the showrunners took the easy way out by flattening characters and the use of spectacle. I’m shocked not at how the story progressed, but at how much discontinuity there is between this season and previous ones. Sad to say, I’ll be watching the final episode to see how this trainwreck settles into its own trash heap. I would *adore* it if I were proved wrong, but I’m not holding my breath,” he wrote.
The show, though, is not being hurt but what many think is terrible writing. HBO says Season 8, the final one of the series, is averaging 43 million viewers per episode. And Sunday’s episode, the next to last, was watched by a record 18.4 million viewers across all platforms, HBO said.
Benioff and Weiss have expressed concern about the series’ ending, telling Entertainment Weekly that “from the beginning, we’ve talked about how the show would end.”
“A good story isn’t a good story if you have a bad ending,” Benioff said. “Of course we worry.”
While reviewers have continued to praise the show, viewers have soured. According to viewers’ ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and a chart made by Reddit user dozzinale, viewer ratings have fallen off a cliff. The first seven episodes ranged between 91% and 97% in critic reviews, but fared far worse when it came to regular viewers.
“Of the high scoring episodes, 22 received a 100 per cent ‘fresh’ rating and 51 are at 90 per cent or above,” the Daily Mail reports. “Four different episodes from Season Three landed in the top 10, which was rounded out by two from Seasons Four and Five – each and one apiece from Seasons 2 and 6.”
But not so much this season.
Episode 3, which featured what was touted as the longest battle shot ever filmed, came in at just 74%. The episode cost $15 million to make but was widely criticized for being too dark to see on home TVs.
Episode 4, titled “The Last of the Starks,” came in at just 54%. And episode 5, “The Bells,” came in at just 47% — making it official “rotten.”
And there’s just one more show. If things stay the same, expect it to be terrible.
