After an eight-year, eight-season run on HBO, Game of Thrones finally came to a close Sunday night with its final episode, “The Iron Throne.” Over the last couple of weeks, people who have never set foot inside the fantasy world (myself included) have been caught up in the middle of a pop-cultural hurricane, unquestionably lost and confused. As such, many of them have been asking if anyone could explain the series in a single tweet.
And yesterday, William Shatner, the original Captain James T. Kirk, put his hat into the ring:
Craycray incestuous family rules 7 kingdoms. Baddies from the north invade so most put away their differences to fight together. After winning they go after the craycray Queen who didn’t help them fight and everything ends up in a hot mess and a big disappointment. The end.
It’s safe to say that Shatner wasn’t the only one who’d use words like “hot mess” and “big disappointment” to define the series’ controversial final season. Right now, there’s a petition out on the web demanding that the last six episodes be re-written “with competent writers.” So far, it’s garnered over 1.4 million signatures, and input from stars like Emilia Clarke, Isaac Hempstead, and Sophie Turner.
While most of the frustration is directed towards the sudden turning and demise of the Dragon Queen, Daenerys Targaryen, fellow GOT actor Kit Harington offered his own take on the character in a recent interview:
“I think it’s going to divide,” he said. “But if you track [Daenerys’s] story all the way back, she does some terrible things. She crucifies people. She burns people alive. This has been building. So, we have to say to the audience: ‘You’re in denial about this woman as well. You knew something was wrong. You’re culpable, you cheered her on.’”
But something that worries the star more is how fans will interpret the way the series handled its female characters towards the end.
“One of my worries with this is we have Cersei and Dany, two leading women, who fall,” he says. “The justification is: Just because they’re women, why should they be the goodies? They’re the most interesting characters in the show. And that’s what Thrones has always done. You can’t just say the strong women are going to end up the good people. Dany is not a good person. It’s going to open up discussion but there’s nothing done in this show that isn’t truthful to the characters. And when have you ever seen a woman play a dictator?”
Given the amount of ruckus that’s dawned in the mere 48 hours since Game of Thrones ended, we can only imagine what’ll come once the prequel series hits HBO. We don’t have any confirming details as of now, but one thing’s for sure, we won’t be seeing any Starbucks cups or plastic water bottles in the background.