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Game of Thrones was all the rage for the last seven years, but Season 8 is not going so well, at least according to viewers’ ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
In a ratings 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.
“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, the eighth and final one for the fantasy epic.
Episode 3, which featured what was touted as the longest battle shot ever filmed, came in at just 74%. The episode cost $15 million to make but was widely criticized for being too dark to see on home TVs.
The latest, Episode 4, titled “The Last of the Starks,” came in at just 54%.
“If it were a character, it’d be Gendry: It got down on its knees, drunkenly updated me on its latest victory, then tried to make me buy into the fact that moving on after fighting a battle against actual ice zombies is fairly easy to do,” wrote Shirley Li of The Atlantic.
“Four episodes into the six episode series, fans have complained about the rushed pacing of the scripts, poor lighting, the apparently obvious blunders that characters are making and the abrupt ending of one of its longest running plot lines,” said the Mail.
On the other hand, viewership of the series has risen steadily. Season 1 pulled in just over 2.5 million viewers, and by season 5 that had grown to nearly 7 million. Numbers so far for season 8 show live viewers topped 11 million.
Vox magazine said the series is no longer telling stories but rather wrapping things up with quick payouts.
“Game of Thrones is in such a rush to get to the end that it forgets what made it such an instantly involving series. It seemed, at times, in those early seasons, to be all middle, with never-ending squabbles and a sense of impending doom hanging over every confrontation and conversation. Now, it can’t seem to sit still long enough to just tell us a story, instead of a quick summation of what happened,” writes
“As the storytelling speeds toward the show’s conclusion, it increasingly doesn’t tell stories. It sets stories up and pays them off, and hopes that you don’t notice it didn’t do anything in between.”
After Episode 3, titled “The Long Night,” viewers had one major complaint — you couldn’t see what the @#$%*& was going on!
“So all those millions of dollars in production value must have went to the dragon scenes because damn are the battle scenes dark as hell on #GameOfThrones,” a fan wrote on Twitter.
Me trying to watch game of thrones with this lighting #GamefThrones pic.twitter.com/J6x2Vj7Jgt
— Austin Meo (@ameo31) April 29, 2019
Then in the latest episode, the internet imploded after hawk-eyed viewers spotted something amiss. At one point during the show, Daenerys is seated at a table, sipping wine. Attentive viewers, though, saw what appears to be a coffee cup from Starbucks — and they went on social media to espresso a latte of anger.
Daenerys is, of course, known as Khaleesi, but other nicknames, too, like the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms. That prompted one wag to write on Twitter: “Daenerys Targaryen mother of dragons, the unburnt, the breaker of chains, the drinker of Starbucks.”
There are still four episodes to go, but just like the show when Fonzie jumped his motorcycle over a tank full of sharks, even flying dragons might not be able to save Game of Thrones.
