Season seven wraps up tonight. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
I started out extremely hopeful for the show’s developing third act back in July. It seemed like the boulder set in motion all the way back in season one had finally picked up enough momentum to start moving things along to the many conclusions we’ve all been waiting for (like R+L=J).
But with each new payoff—the long awaited meeting between Daenerys and Jon, the Stark kids finally reuniting—I realized we wouldn’t have enough time left to really enjoy these new character pairings and dwell on everything they had to offer. And then (spoilers!) we got zombie dragons. At this point, Game of Thrones has reached that part in the JRPG where you’ve got your airship and the final boss has been revealed, so all that’s left is to tidy up some side-quests and find that secret weapon. In other words: the worst part.
It’s still a necessary one, however, and I’m not above wanting to know how all the cans of worms opened across Westeros will get resolved in the remaining hours the show has left. But increasingly I’m dreading the possibility that all we have left are the conventional story beats of any other medieval fantasy narrative, i.e. a big-ass battle with a bunch more Jaime charges a dragon and totally almost dies but doesn’t really type moments. At this point, I kind of just hope things end similar to how the show began, and we can once again slow down to enjoy the simple interactions between the characters we’ve spent so much time getting to know (except Little Finger, by all means let him get merc’d by some White Walkers sooner rather than later).
So what about you? How do you hope tonight’s episode set’s up the final season and is there anyone left that you simply couldn’t forgive showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss for offing in the time we’ve got left?