Game of Thrones creators break silence after infamous finale backlash
HBONearly five years later, Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have finally addressed the intense backlash to the show’s notorious finale.
The rise and fall of Game of Thrones should be seen as a pop culture parable: it had it all – worldwide fans, second-to-none storytelling, calculated spectacle – only to burn itself to ashes in its final season.
As a spiritual, high-fantasy successor to Lord of the Rings, it became the biggest show in The Known World, piercing the mainstream lexicon with George R.R. Martin’s jargon and mythos. After a heated period of online rioting, its footprint basically vanished, hushed into an emotional vault for self-preservation.
This year, we’ll get the second season of House of the Dragon, a series that restored audiences’ faith in Westeros. As for the showrunners, they’ve returned with a brand-new, epic Netflix series – but they’ve now spoken out about the disastrous reception to the closing episodes.
Game of Thrones creators finally address Season 8 backlash
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Benioff and Weiss discussed the fervent reactions to Game of Thrones, particularly the infamous final season.
“You always hope everyone’s going to love anything you do and it would’ve been great if 100% of people loved it, but they didn’t,” Benioff said.
“You can get so bogged down in public opinion that you spend your whole life googling things and trying to find people who felt one way or the other way.”
HBOViewers loathed to content themselves with the finale to such a degree that they started a petition, titled: “Remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers.” Unlike similar campaigns that garner a little bit of traction before fizzling out, this one is still gaining signatures – and its toll stands at 1.86 million.
Weiss added: “Even super positive feedback makes you feel weird and teeth-grindy and on edge. There’s a drug quality to the feedback, and as soon as we went cold turkey — the last time I googled myself was in 2013 — the ambient stress level in our lives dropped by about 50% overnight.”
The online discourse around the show may have quietened, but it hasn’t exactly cooled; most have made peace with an ending they didn’t like, but others can’t let go. Yet, even when the writing duo have encountered fans in real life, it hasn’t been as volatile as you’d expect.
“There’s an underlying decency when people acknowledge you as a person and vice versa. There’s something that happens in the transition from human interaction to online that pushes things in a specifically aggro direction,” Weiss said.
House of the Dragon Season 2 returns this summer. Find out more here, and learn a bit more about 3 Body Problem here.