Ten fucking years now since the last one came out. :-)
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They’re all working. It’s not like they’re all at home on the couch. It would be a gargantuan effort.

The dirty little secret no one is mentioning is Snyder did it with film he had in hand. To my knowledge there weren’t reshoots post release.
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I don't want them to redo the turd, but will never rewatch the last season.
The damage is done, they botched the ending of what should have been the greatest show in television history.
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They seriously thought Bran being the ticket was the best option. That's near criminal negligence levels of failure. Can we sue for emotional distress over a TV show?? :-)
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It will end up like the Wheel of Time. Someone will have to finish it for him.

GRRM is done.
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That was Martin’s ended. According to him.
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There is part of me that feels like he was going to bat for D&D after the awful reviews of season 8.
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I think the Dany and Bran endings are definitely him. GOT fans unearthed an interview he did pre-season 8 where he described Dany as the "primary antagonist" of the series (while at a comic con promoting a freaking Encyclopedia he released on Targ lore instead of writing Winds of Winter.) and he pretty much outlined the entirety of her storyline's end. Nerds have found passages where she hears wolves howling that are accompanied with her thinking of her mortality.

GRRM also defended the Bran decision and has commented the most about that showending more than any other. I think that ending is definitely his own, too (in the books I'm sure he'll dwell more on how humans are inherently conquerers and conquerers can't rule).

I think Arya and Tyrion will more or less end up in the same place since those are his wife and his favorite characters. Sansa maaay end up leading Winterfell but will do so through actual intelligence and cunning rather than a gas leak in Winterfell causing LF, the lords of the North, and Jon's IQ to drop 50 points to allow her to rule it.

Would not be surprised at all to see different endings for Jaime, Cersei, Brienne, Littlefinger, Varys, the Tyrells, Martells, etc. But the main beats seem to be pretty darn in line with what he has planned.

"Planned" is the key word. Him signing that lucrative new deal with HBO feels like confirmation that he has no plans to finish the series. He also admitted he's "hundreds" of pages away from finishing WOW a few months back. Like others have said, I put the most blame on GRRM rather than D&D. The dude just bailed on providing a satisfying ending to his series in any medium.

I think we're due for a battle with the WW at the Trident (from Dany and Arya's dreams), but it will be way different. Martin was most critical of the Night King (all the way back in Season 5) than any other decision of the show (he was also outwardly critical of how they used Bronn after Season 4). But he had always, always been critical of the NK. Would not at all be surprised if the WW have a different ending entirely in the books.
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Yeah, he mentioned that several times in interviews. Bran ending up on the Throne and Dany being killed was their end fates.


I didnt follow it so close after the series ended because I was so pissed off but did GRMM ever say anything about the other characters endings? Was the end result what he wanted? Outlined to D&D?
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He and D&D have indicated they followed the outline he gave them sometime between S3 and S4 (seriously? They knew Bran's ending and chose to not have him in S5 at all? Lol). Anywho. There is some indication that Cersei (and by extension, Jaime's) endings will be pretty different and he has openly indicated he has different plans for the WW and that the Night King was a show creation. Beyond that, things have been kind of shuttered.
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I believe that was Martin's plan the whole time.

It didn't have to be bad. Bran as king, Jaime going back to Cersei, Daenerys becoming the Mad Queen, Jon not becoming a ruler, honestly, it all would have worked had they taken more time to flesh everything out.
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Bran as king just sucks. Totally sucks. As an advisor, the master of whisperers, sure. A good ruler should inspire his people; in a medieval setting, he should be a warrior and a leader on the battlefield; he should project strength. Who's going to be inspired by a wheelchair bound weirdo with zero charisma?

Jon was banished basically to placate the dothraki and the unsullied. After they left, what would be the point in giving a shit what they thought? It's not like they would have come back. At the very least he should have stayed at Winterfell. Sansa was such a nasty, jaded bitch by the end of it that she could have ended up as bad as Cersei.

It was just stupid. It was stupid for Tyrion to suggest it. Hell, pretty much everything Tyrion did in Season 8 was stupid. Did somebody drop him on his head between Seasons 7 and 8? He was like a drunken Yoda for seven seasons and then turned into Wile E. Coyote.

So basically, at the end of the show, Jon is a quitter, Arya is a quitter, Tyrion is a moron, Sansa is a bitch, everybody on the high council is in over their heads, and the rest are dead.

Yay. :-)
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I’d argue the drop happened between Seasons 6 and 7. His strategies did not work in Essos during Season 6 but the show did a decent job laying out that this was because he was playing away games and didn’t have an understanding of slaver politics. Season 7 was when Tyrion suggested the stupid wight hunt so that Cersei (:-)) would align with Dany against the WW, costing Dany a dragon in exchange for Jaime Lannister since Cersei did the obvious thing and betrayed them (somehow surprisingly to Tyrion). Gee, how cool would it have been if Jaime had a defining role in the battle of Winterfell and saved Arya to make that trade worth it? (Maybe it could have been engineered by Bran) this could have justified that stupid storyline. Instead we got Beric Christ in a show that had been wildly atheist in its symbolism until S8 (the random White Horse, too). Blah.
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Seems apt for 2021.
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I think one of the biggest problems was we didn’t get to see Dany as an antagonist or on that path for long enough to really experience her transformation and to really find ourselves sad and angry about what was happening to her. It was a gigantic element to her story but it was just glossed over too much. I realize there were hints here and there but it was something far too important to the endings of numerous characters and impactful to the resolution of basically every major conflict to not be given long term devotion and attention.
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