With season 7 now in the books, all Game of Thrones fans are astutely aware that we are down to one season left, and if all the claims are true, there will only be six episodes. So there are going to be six episodes left to close out a whole butt-load of storylines.
I’ve enjoyed the show all the way to current in spite of what people on the internet have been saying about it, and the incessantly endless debates between book purists and show-exclusive fans. It’s entertaining, I don’t put that much tremendous thought into the plot, and the show writers are good at drumming up tension and drama, artificial as it might seem to some, and it leads to watchable television.
But six episodes to cover the sheer volume of plots and resolutions, that’s a tremendous task to be asking for, so I can’t help but be skeptical at what the quality of the final season can possibly be. Maybe if every episode is stretched beyond an hour, they could literally buy some more time to tell more story, but if we’re talking about five hour-long episodes and maybe an extended finale, I just feel like season 8 is going to be a ride faster and more furious* than the entire Fast & Furious franchise combined.
*Especially considering the fact that characters are traversing from one end of Westeros to the other and back on horse and buggy faster than Vin Diesel could ever do a quarter mile, but let’s not debate semantics
Needless to say, I have to say that I have some concerns as it pertains to the entire Game of Thrones universe, both television and novella. I just have this feeling of dread that the last season of television is going to be this rushed train wreck of very broad writing, some CG nightmare battle sequences, and a whole lot of character deaths with plot holes the size of The Wall pockmarking everywhere.
And as far as the books are concerned, if they ever get written, I don’t believe for a second that George R.R. Martin is going to be even remotely capable of continuing his story objectively, and not be seeing Kit Harrington, Emilia Clark, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey or any of the other show actors in his head, if he ever decides to start writing the books again. Mind you, the books left off with Stannis Baratheon marching towards Winterfell, which was pretty much two television seasons ago at this point, and there are a lot of things omitted from the books that made television, which makes GoT fans wonder just how important they might be in novella, if they’re not even worth integrating into tv.
Martin has become the television writer I predicted he would transform into, and by now, I suspect he has to have a general idea of where the television series is headed. And I feel like he isn’t going to start writing again until the television series comes to a close, but I also think he’s going to be making some very deliberate and almost contrarian twists to the book plot in order to arrogantly boast that the books are in fact, different than the television show.
And this will only happen after the television series has ended, and he realizes that the paychecks are going to slow down unless he actually continues writing books again. But even then, I fear that his writing will be dulled from being dumbed down for television for the last 8-9 years, not to mention the fact that I think his visions will be compromised by the acclaim and success of the television series and all its performers.
The bottom line is that as much of a fan of the series that I’ve become, I can’t help but feel a skeptical and dubious about the future of the series as a whole, in both of its primary channels. I’ve enjoyed both the books and the television show as far as they’ve come, but I fear being disappointed by one or both, because of unrelated variables that could taint the storytelling and turn them into less-than-satisfying final products.
