There's a good chance for spoilers at this point. If you haven't seen the show and are planning to watch it, I recommend not reading further. If you haven't seen the show and are looking for something to help you decide whether to watch it... well... go ahead and read it, but some of the impressively written surprises might be ruined. If you've seen the show and are curious about my opinions after reading that intro paragraph... hopefully it'll be entertaining...
My reason for writing this essay is that we're just a couple episodes into the final season, and how it ends is on a lot of people's minds including mine. I think I have a variation of Stockholm Syndrome... I'm an abused prisoner of the show and I have grown to want to be here.
The setting itself is really interesting. Being a huge geek (I play Table Top Role Playing Games; Have read a fair portion of the various D&D novels; Have read the Lord of the Rings books except the Silmarilian, and in general the fantasy genre appeals to me), the medieval setting with some high fantasy elements appeals to me. You have the scary specter of the undead; the dragons; the three-eyed raven; some amount of magic; Dire Wolves; flaming swords; and the faceless ones. There's a lot to drawn from.
Then the characters start appearing and you have the easy to hate Lannisters, the easy to support Starks, and a bunch of families with their own flavor and like-ability. And this is where GRRM starts to upset me. He seems to specifically choose to kill off the characters I start to become interested in as soon as they show any sign of being genuinely good or heroic. The characters I want to see more of just get killed off. It happens a lot through the series. You can almost set your watch by it. We get the occasional table scraps of King Joffrey getting painfully murdered and Ramsay Bolton getting what he deserved too. But we're talking about a couple happy blips in dozens of hours of story telling.
And for 7 seasons I've hated GRRM for being such an intolerable jerk, but I want to see what happens next... so he's doing something right. But in thinking about Game of Thrones, I have this unhappy pit in my chest... the memory of being more sad and upset than I was happy and entertained. The experience has not been a good one.
Now we face the 8th season. The first two episodes have been... hmm... dull? I guess it's setting everything up, but the season is supposed to be what? Eight episodes long? They're running out of time. So, what I've seen so far of season 8 might be necessary, but it's not super engaging yet.
What will happen in the last few episodes? Will we have a satisfying ending? If experience is a reliable judge, then no... we won't have a satisfying ending. The characters I like will all die or suffer some horrible fate. Whoever it might be, the worst person possible will end up taking the Iron Throne. All the dragons will die. The wolves all died but one (and that one will probably die too), and I hated that. I love dragons, but they're definitely going to die because they did it to the wolves and because GRRM is a piece of crap.
Nothing good will happen. They'll end the series basically where it began where most people's lives are exercises in bearing with hardship and suffering, and the people in power are selfish pieces of crap that bicker and scheme for their own wants before the needs of people. No progress will have been made. And this long story will be a huge waste of time.
But a friend reminded me that GRRM doesn't control the show (just the books). Maybe the people writing the show right now will do something intended to be more satisfying? Well... there's definitely a decent chance the current writers will try to do something better for us. But, GRRM's setup is bleak and full of bile. Turning it around suddenly might make for a happier ending, but it'll be forced if they break from the pattern. It won't fit. It'll feel fake.
My conclusion is that there's literally no way this series can end in a satisfying way. GRRM's way is just crap. And the "happy ending" way doesn't fit the foundation. It's a no win situation.
But I'm still going to be glued to the TV to watch it.
