r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 2d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Endings so awful they completely destroy the legacy of the media.

Gallery image

Gallery image

  1. Two and a Half Men's final episode teased Charlie Sheen's character coming back and going to harm the other characters whilst also having insults to his character and Charlie Sheen himself. It's clear the director had a grudge and the ending where his character comes up to knock then get crushed by a piano before it cuts to the director before he says "winning" before getting crushed by another piano
  2. This was an upbeat animated show about a magical teen princess. The writers desperately wanted a romantic endgame for her and her best friend, but the way they got there was essentially multiversal omnicide. To stop a villain, the main character unilaterally decides magic is the root of all evil and destroys it entirely. By doing this, she casually commits mass genocide against every purely magical being in the multiverse. It also triggers a massive apocalyptic event that violently crashes different dimensions together into a chaotic hellscape. But the show frames this horrific, mass-extinction catastrophe as a sweet, triumphant ending just because two teenagers get to hold hands in the rubble (Star Vs The Forces Of Evil)
5.1k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

2.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

5.3k

u/irihS 2d ago

obligatory game of thrones karma farm mention

697

u/Symphoniedesaucisses 2d ago

Daeneryses, Aryas and Khaleesys were poppin' out of wombs all around the world, and now all their parents regrets it.

Nothing can top that.

342

u/MjollLeon 2d ago

Arya can at least be passed as a normal name. All the Khalessi and Daenerys’ are so stupid.

  1. khalessi was always a bad name, the Dothraki are terrible no matter what.

148

u/Badloss 2d ago

Khaleesi is a title and not a name. It's like naming your kid "Commodore" or "Duchess"

64

u/BarracudaAlive3563 2d ago

Earl, Baron, and Duke are all given names that started out as noble titles.

18

u/TonySperguson 2d ago

prince, amir, raj, malik, marshal, patrick, rex

57

u/Potential-Ant-4335 2d ago

theres definitely got be a few Duchesses running around out there

21

u/redflamel 2d ago

See also Regina (literally queen in Italian)

4

u/ElectricSliderz 2d ago

And Reina

3

u/grip0matic 2d ago

That's a name for a cat. And my cats were named by a friend as Lana and Rey. I was ready to name my girls Pars and Ley until he said that I would regret not giving them good names.

4

u/Suck_my_dick_mods69 2d ago

I know like six Commodores

10

u/hurricane_97 2d ago

I know 64

5

u/dearth_of_passion 2d ago

There's plenty of women running around with Princess, Precious, and Babygirl on their tinder profiles. I've seen them. None of them are people I'd want to date.

3

u/gh0stsafari 2d ago

Dr. Dre's nephew plays football at USC and his name is King Miller.

→ More replies (2)

60

u/json_argonaut 2d ago

Eh, that part isn't inherently as dumb as people say. Earl, Rex (and Regina), and Duke are all used as names even though they're titles.

12

u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 2d ago

I named my kid Warlord

5

u/Monotreme_monorail 2d ago

I’ve known men named Judge. I thought it was unusual but it happened more than once (and these guys were probably born late 60’s/early 70’s) so I guess it’s a thing.

2

u/Grundlebot 2d ago

Yeah, and unless it's a dog, those names are stupid as hell

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

3

u/Gimetulkathmir 2d ago

Regina and Candace would like a word.

2

u/ladyMacbeth2500 1d ago

Well no because one sounds fucking crazy and is fictional

1

u/Lost-Comfort-7904 2d ago

Commodore... that's respect!

1

u/ACody9879 2d ago

I knew a kid named Commodore back in the 90s, he was cool though.

Only kid in the neighborhood with a Sega Genesis when they first released it.

1

u/arfelo1 2d ago

Lady is a common name in Latin America. Usnavi is also not too uncommon (US Navy)

1

u/Careful_Eagle6566 2d ago

If I ever see a resume for a Commodore, that's an instant hire from me.

1

u/TesticleMeElmo 2d ago

I knew a kid growing up named Sergeant lol

1

u/The_Autarch 1d ago

Queen and Queenie are both real names already, tho.

54

u/apatheticsahm1 2d ago

Arya is an actual name in India (means "noble"), but GoT made it more popular.

32

u/MjollLeon 2d ago

Yup! But let’s be honest most of the people naming there children Arya were not from India or even of Indian descent.

My grandmother (Gujarati) was so happy to hear that my sister had another Indian in her class, only to be supremely disappointed to learn it was a little white girl named Arya.

Not that she should’ve been disappointed because Arya is super sweet but my grandmother really wanted me and my sis to have Indian friends

6

u/dearth_of_passion 2d ago

I'm betting a lot of people thought Arya was just a "fantasy style" way to spell Aria.

3

u/Monotreme_monorail 2d ago

Aria (alternative spelling) is also a common name in English speaking countries.

2

u/lincoln_muadib 2d ago

Agreed. She's Batman.

1

u/the_lonely_creeper 2d ago

Arya is a name

1

u/Selverd2 2d ago

dani or Callie still work as nicknames.

1

u/PT10 2d ago

Racist

1

u/Fit-Ask-6524 2d ago

I know some catholic friends that named their daughter Aurea, completely unrelated to GoT, because of the Marian title Domus Aurea.

2

u/MjollLeon 2d ago

Aurea is a pretty name

1

u/bgbarnard 2d ago

 the Dothraki are terrible no matter what

Even at their most violent, real Plains and steppe cultures would be shaking their heads at how ridiculously evil the Dothraki are.

1

u/RohansEarings 2d ago

Eh I don't know about naming a kid Arya, sounds too close to the whole "the Aryan race is the master race" thing that Hitler was pushing.

1

u/paroxitones 1d ago

Khaleesi is absolutely stupid, always wondered why not Daenerys if you like the character so much

62

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

48

u/nightwingoracle 2d ago

Naming a kid that ever is a tragic. It’s not even a name in universe ffs

10

u/licoricenipple 2d ago

To be fair plenty of titles get used as names. Roy, Rex and Regina all mean king/queen, there's Earl, Marshall, Amir, Barron etc

4

u/lincoln_muadib 2d ago

Arya was the Game of Thrones Batman.

  • Orphan
  • Trained by Ninjas
  • Who want to make an Assassin of her
  • She fights against them to assert her individuality
  • She refuses to give up her identity
  • Returns to her home after a long period away
  • Fights a Frozen guy

BATMAN

3

u/Bleperite 2d ago

True. I'd have gone with Emilia!

3

u/EduinBrutus 2d ago edited 2d ago

Daenerys was written the way the character turned out from the fucking start.

It was lack of media literacy that led to all the mini psycopaths running about today.

As for Arya, that name is close enough to existing names in English and doesn't even stand out. Also, whats wrong with the character's ending? Arya was one of the least fucked with characters in S8.

1

u/Reverend_Lazerface 2d ago

They just kept poppin' outta them thangs

205

u/Sie_sprechen_mit_Mir 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZFJYcVE5lYvWE
D&D rushing the ending to do Star Wars is what GoT them fired from Star Wars.

31

u/licoricenipple 2d ago edited 2d ago

They didn't get fired from Star Wars specifically. Disney shut down every single A Star Wars Story movie project at once, when they had about 8-10 in various stages of development, ~6 months before the GOT finale in response to Solo bombing, Episode 9 becoming a mess and the decision to launch their own streaming service and retool movie projects as TV. This included James Mangold's Boba Fett movie (which eventually was given to Jon Favreau as the TV show Book of Boba Fett), Stephen Daldry's Obi-Wan movie (which was given to Joby Harold as the TV show Obi-Wan Kenobi), David S. Goyer's Jabba the Hutt movie (cancelled), Laeta Kalogridis's Knights of the Old Republic movie (cancelled), Kevin Feige's unspecified movie (cancelled), J. D. Dillard and Matt Owens's unspecified movie (cancelled), and Rian Johnson's trilogy (never entered pre-production, this call came during its early planning) in addition to Benioff & Weiss's.

By the time the GOT finale aired, Benioff & Weiss had long abandoned Star Wars and were in negotiations with Netflix for what became 3 Body.

7

u/FlyingDutchman9977 2d ago

While I agree that they weren't 100% to blame for losing Star Wars, if they hadn't botched the final season of Game of Thrones, they could both be having much more lucrative careers than they're having now. At the very least, they could be working on their own Game of Thrones spin off, but they'll likely never touch the franchise again. No matter how you slice it, they back the wrong horse and lost severely.

→ More replies (1)

5

u/Sie_sprechen_mit_Mir 2d ago

Thanks for the information. I guess all of that was just announced to the public when the finale rolled around.

1

u/Jonaskin83 2d ago

3 Body is so fucking good, I recommend that show to everyone.

4

u/RaisedByBooksNTV 2d ago

I see what you did there.

→ More replies (1)

809

u/Viggo_Stark 2d ago

It was absolutely fucing shit though

491

u/irihS 2d ago

it really, really, really, really, really was. truly generational levels of awful.

280

u/Viggo_Stark 2d ago

I was engrossed by the show since it aired. I read all the books because of it. And by the time the credits rolled on that last episode I didn't care anymore. And that might be really be the bigest insult I can give it.

136

u/Winjin 2d ago

I remember GoT merch being EVERYWHERE

Everyone was invested. It was on tracks to become an absolute gravy train

And the thing is, the legacy was basically erased. It's like it almost did not exist, and it was so bad, that even the spin-offs, while they exist, are barely relevant. They are just... there. Sort of.

I see almost no merch, barely any cosplay, games, etc

Hell, The Witcher LARP event had like 2,000 participants a couple years ago. THOUSANDS of people dressed up and showed up to play as regular folks, because there were like what, maybe thirty witchers in the entire thing. Warhammer LARP events in Moscow have had 1k+ people since 2018 or something similarly wild, excluding the Covid times

Last big GoT game was had before season finale, there is basically zero interest in larping them. I'd say that seems like a pretty good indicator of the fan response being like "eh, we're not interested enough to throw together costumes and camp for a week"

40

u/ebietoo 2d ago

What about all those poor little girls named Khalissi? Go through life like that, or change your name? I know what I’d do, even if it made home for the holidays hellish.

4

u/kevinspaceyiskeyser 2d ago

They will be ok for the first 4 seasons even 6 but after that who knows

3

u/RA576 2d ago

I mean, that was stupid even before the show shit the bed. That was a title, not a name. "Dany" would be a slightly unusual, but still acceptable name for a girl, like you don't even need to change it.

3

u/Turbulent_Lunch4548 2d ago

Poor Khalissi, their parents didn't even spell (title not a name) 'Khaleesi' right.

2

u/ebietoo 2d ago

No that’s my fault. Transcription error.

62

u/Naive-Vehicle-6845 2d ago

I live in Northern Ireland where GoT was partially filmed. It was huge for little rural towns because they'd have loads of tourists coming through to see filming locations where previously these towns were barely on maps. I drove through one 10ish years ago and they had Stark banners hanging outside the Tesco because the tourism they were getting was insane. That is how big GoT was, and then it all just vanished after the finale because it was so bad

15

u/Winjin 2d ago

Oh man and imagine how many folks made extensive repairs\repaints in preparations for the finale and the incoming boom of tourists after that... Poor folks must have lost quite a lot of money when the tourism fizzled out.

13

u/revanisthesith 2d ago

That's something I often mention when people talk about how the cultural impact just died. I think there are still GoT tours in Dubrovnik, Croatia, but they already had a lot of tourism.

I particularly feel bad for the places that didn't have as many visitors who invested in it and had it just die.

People still do Lord of the Rings tours in New Zealand and probably will be for a very long time. There's a market for things like that. But not much for GoT.

5

u/MrNotEinstein 2d ago

Also from Northern Ireland, its kinda crazy how big it was at the time. I remember planning family outings based on the filming schedule of the show. We had a picnic while watching them film parts of the battle of the bastards.

I was also part of a funeral that happened to be going past them filming something in county down. Everyone who was there for the show stopped and stayed quiet until we were well past them, which i thought was very sweet. Im not sure what scene they were filming at that point but I do know Kit Harrington was there and I think Sophie Turner. I wish I had been able to stay and watch but unfortunately I had to go and sit in the cold while they buried some great uncle I had met once when I was 3

→ More replies (1)

7

u/dino_spice 2d ago edited 2d ago

I feel like GoT was the last show we had that was remotely close to monocultural in terms of its popularity. I don't know whether I'd go so far as to say that its decline was a major contributor to the death of the monoculture, but I don't think there's been another TV show that's totally consumed society the way GoT did since it ended.

4

u/Winjin 2d ago

I agree that I feel it was, actually, too. It was one of these giant things that burned out thousands of people. No one wants to commit to yet another epic story that will end with a wet fart. I can't think of a single show that gripped so many people at once.

Like all the merch I see now is kids merch, as it always were. Bluey for kids and teen-sized Kpop Demon Hunters all the way. Adults don't really have anything they are ready to trust again so far

5

u/noahsense1 2d ago

House of the Dragon isn’t as relevant in pop culture right now, but Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was hella popular when it was airing. I’m sure the next season is going to blow up quite a bit when it comes out.

4

u/alurkerhere 2d ago

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is excellent! It's a lot of fun and very entertaining. They hit it out of the park with that one.

House of the Dragon... yeah I stopped watching.

3

u/Fargoth_took_my_ring 2d ago

Genuinely never heard of that one

And I read the Dunk and Egg stories

→ More replies (3)

2

u/CometGoat 2d ago

It was funny going to Dubrovnik in Croatia, where the old town was used to film kings landing. I completely forgot about kings landing until I saw magnets for sale

2

u/Bloodyjorts 2d ago

I remember maybe like...a year or two after it ended, I saw a reddit post from a person who said their job was directly connected to licensed merchandising and whatnot. They said that while the show was airing, GoT Merchandising was an absolute juggernaut that you don't often see from a franchise meant for adults. But after the finale, it near immediately fell off a cliff. They couldn't give the stuff away, and nobody wanted to partner with HBO to make GoT merchandise. Usually even when a series ends, the merch sales will coast for a good long while. Not GoT.

Now, I know it's the Internets and people lie, but what this poster was saying DID line up with what I was hearing from people I knew in real life, who ran stores that sold fandom merch or worked in places that made it. HBO had to be freaking out, because they made so much money off of merch.

GoT merch sales never really recovered. With HOTD, the show isn't consistently good, and they cannot figure out what the fandom actually wants (it's not cringey Rhaenyra quotes on a teeshirt, my guys), and I don't think I've seen anything made for AKOT7K, despite how well received it was. The illustrated editions of the books did pretty okay, until the publishers decided to go with obviously Gen-AI (with a sloppy paintover) for AFFC.

2

u/Winjin 2d ago

Yeah it's not like anyone did show us sales numbers but there's a lot of indications that the ending was so bad, it just fizzled out both nerds and pop people alike, even a lot of fans were no longer interested in being associated with it. 

→ More replies (2)

72

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Glory_63 2d ago

My parents described to me that the last season of LOST left similar vibes (idk though, never watched it)

6

u/CommitteeNew5751 2d ago

Similar, but not as bad. Lost had already lost a lot of its hype by then.

I'm saying this as someone who enjoyed the end of Lost, though, so YMMV.

→ More replies (1)

41

u/edgiepower 2d ago edited 2d ago

I never watched it, but I worked in a liquor store that sold Game of Thrones branded Johnnie Walker.

It was a steady seller for a gimmick brand, but I can tell you, sales died in the arse when season 8 finished. Literally overnight.

2

u/waldeinsamkeit666 2d ago

same, I was also super into the series and started reading the books because of it. couldn’t even bring myself to watch the last season. I even had plans to get a GOT tattoo, thank god that didn’t end up happening 😱

2

u/testmonkey254 2d ago

I remember when the leaks were coming out and I was seeking them because I honestly did not care anymore. I read the bran becomes king leak and I immediately thought to myself that one's fake he is the worst possible person story wise to win the throne at the end.

1

u/LoseNotLooseIdiot 2d ago

Same. I was willing to try House of the Dragon, and while it isn't a bad show, it feels like they're wasting so much potential with what you can do in that world.

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was really good, but when I think about how excited I was every week for the next episode of GoT back in the day, it really pales in comparison...

1

u/Key-Effect8176 2d ago

My spouse and I were debating starting GoT as we did not watch it when it was originally airing, but I have the concern about how bad people say the ending is. On the other hand, he did point out that we stuck it out through the end of The Walking Dead, and my god those last few seasons were just terrible.

Would you recommend we stop at a certain point before the last season or just suffer through for the full experience lol

2

u/Viggo_Stark 2d ago

No. Even with the dissapointment that was the end I still recommend watching it. First few seasons are brilliant, after that's its good. But the final season is dogshit, yet it's still based off notes from the author so in broad strokes is the ending its supposed to be, just feels unearned and rushed. You should watch it though

1

u/creepycrawlingspace 2d ago

My laptop battery died on the last 5 minutes of the last episode and since today I never bothered to watch them. Complete loss of interest in that show I adored for years and spent many hours watching theory vids on youtube for.

58

u/mightbeyourpal 2d ago

Attempted a rewatch recently- got 5 minutes into the first episodes, yelled WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT to the empty room and turned it off.

10

u/UnquestionabIe 2d ago

But that first scene includes the magical gang tag the not zombies love! Sure it amounts to absolutely nothing and the entire threat is settled in the course of a single afternoon (maybe having a load bearing final boss was a bad idea?) but ummm at least it got an ending? Yeah don't blame you at all, might as well have stopped after season 4 and invented our own ending

→ More replies (1)

15

u/BillCarson12799 2d ago edited 2d ago

This had the potential to be one of the most culturally important works of fiction of the era, something that people would rewatch endlessly, but instead, the ending was so bad that it immediately nullified all of its cultural relevance like a car hitting a concrete pillar at 150mph.

19

u/forman98 2d ago

I didn’t watch it, but I remember being really annoyed that Reddit front page was basically spoiling everything about the show as soon as it came out. Every major event resulted in tons of memes across multiple subreddits. It was a pop culture moment that got somewhat annoying with how all encompassing it was. Literally my other shows that were airing at the time were referencing it. It was everywhere.

Then it crapped out so hard I couldn’t help but laugh. Truly something to be studied with how quickly it faded from memory. From like 2012 until 2016ish, it was the biggest thing in pop culture. The last couple seasons (coupled with political hot topics of 2017 and 18) made its star power wane. But from 2012 to 2016 it was all over the place.

4

u/ChiefsHat 2d ago

It was remarkable, wasn’t it?

2

u/EdanChaosgamer 2d ago

To this day, I‘ve still never started watching GoT because I keep hearing people say that the ending is absolute shit, and I‘d rather not get invested in something that will end horribly :/

1

u/CannonGerbil 2d ago

It practically turned game of thrones from being a pop cultural touchstone to being passe overnight. Seriously, you could feel it's cultural impact vanish over the course of three months.

1

u/Draelmar 2d ago

I enjoy trying to figure out what is the simplest way to fix a series that fucked their ending. With GoT there's no "simplest", because it's unfixable, other than just maybe deleting the last two seasons and just abruptly end it and leave it open-ended.

2

u/DarkApostleMatt 2d ago

I can see it being salvageable into a somewhat passable end if they had stretched the last two seasons into three regular sized seasons instead of basically speed-running it like they did.

1

u/DarkApostleMatt 2d ago

I really don't understand how the directors got away with it without HBO turning them into new Bolton skin banners with how badly they fumbled it to the point where GOT as a cultural phenomena was muted for years after.

90

u/KiwiCounselor 2d ago

Killed Dumb and Dumbers careers though

19

u/Anti_Phile_7410 2d ago

Nah they're doing 3 body problem right now and it's amazing.

60

u/Sehri437 2d ago

That’s the thing about dumb and dumber. Through GoT they’ve shown they can adapt existing material wonderfully (GoT S1-4 and TBP) but suck at making original stories (GoT S5-8)

26

u/bolobar 2d ago

Idk about that. They completely changed so much of the story. Idk why they had to take a Chinese author’s story about a Chinese scientist and turn that character into like 8 British people.

9

u/A_Bit_Of_Nonsense 2d ago

I can see why they made them British. I cannot understand why they made them 3 seperate people with one of the smartest of the lot also being a supermodel.

3

u/Ill-Preparation-3598 2d ago

yea the chinesity was kind of the point of the whole thing.

→ More replies (1)

13

u/Rhumbear907 2d ago

The book is stilted and nonsensical and the show is somehow 10x worse.

Im convinced its fame is a fucking psy op.

28

u/fiercedeitysponce 2d ago

At least the source material is complete

11

u/JadedSignificance990 2d ago

Also been adapted before, one time as a Minecraft cartoon, (no seriously) and is also getting another adaptation from Zhang Yimou.

10

u/Flincher14 2d ago

That show with 1 season and an announced date for season 2 this year that's almost over.

Published by Netflix. Notorious for never finishing any original series. Directed by DND who are notorious for finishing things badly.

11

u/BonkerBleedy 2d ago

I refuse to watch it. Fuck those guys.

1

u/root_and_stem 1d ago

Give it time, the early seasons of Game of Thrones didn't suck, $10 says they will fuck up 3 Body Problem too

7

u/ThrowawayFuckYourMom 2d ago

Did it? Or did we fail that, too?

5

u/endlesscartwheels 2d ago

We failed that, possibly because most people refer to them as D&D or similar, rather than Benioff and Weiss.

1

u/MordorsElite 2d ago

Absolutely generational fumble. I recently rewatched the show and the magic really is still there for the first couple of seasons. Then you get to season 7, which could have been an email. The first 3 episodes of S08 at least felt like a weird version of GoT. But then in S08E04, I just left half way through. I spent a few weeks dedicating hours and hours to bingewatching the entire show again. But even then I couldn't make it through the last 3 episodes.

→ More replies (1)

187

u/SortIntrepid9192 2d ago

What perplexes me is why WB didn't just... give the show to another showrunner. Like, seasons 7 and 8 weren't bad because D&D took some creative risks which didn't pan out, they were bad because they rushed through pre-production and basically wanted to tell 40 episodes' worth of content in 15 episodes so they could go and do Star Wars. HBO apparently wanted 10 seasons of 10 episodes each, and the actors were down for it. None of them had some kind of career waiting for them after GoT which would have kept them super busy, and GoT probably paid great.

D&D were the weakest link here. When they said "hey, we want to do two more half-seasons so we can do Star Wars" why didn't HBO just say "OK, go do Star Wars, Bryan Cogman is gonna be showrunner from S7 till S10" or something like that? Surely the risk of another writer taking up showrunner duties was lesser than the risk of the showrunners absolutely rushing through the plot in 1/3 of the episodes?

96

u/McFlyParadox 2d ago

IIRC, Dipshit and Dingleberry themselves have some kind of direct "ownership" of the rights to TV adaptations. Something about them talking with RRM directly to secure the rights that he had refused to license up to that point, and knowing the released source material well enough by heart that RRM trusted them - and only them - to do the adaptation.

Unfortunately, it turns out that memorizing the source material doesn't mean you can write good fan fics of it over your TV show catches up to where the books had left off (surprise!) So there very likely wasn't a way for HBO to drop in a new show runner. I'm sure they could have probably paid D&D to go away, but they probably wanted too much money and HBO after a certain point was probably like "whatever, its your reputation", because they had secured the rights to do some spin-offs.

42

u/Gr8CanadianFuckClub 2d ago

The worst part is, they wrote amazing scenes, and a few parts of the show, like Arya with Tywin, are better than Arya with Roose in the books imo.

But for every good scene, theres about 10 things they did worse than the books.

5

u/Western_Chest_4688 2d ago

The classic Cersei "Power is power" scene is show original too, and its still one of the best scenes of the entire show.

https://youtu.be/ab6GyR_5N6c

→ More replies (5)

17

u/SirBiscuit 2d ago

While much of this is true, saying the actors were down for it is rewriting history. Some of them were, but a lot of them were EXHAUSTED by the time the show ended. It was a complex and tiring show to shoot.

8

u/Nadare3 2d ago

I recall an actor saying that on the contrary, the actors were not down for it, they had already devoted a good part of the last 10 years to the show and were very exhausted

2

u/creepykreme 2d ago

Yeah, everyone was over it. Filming was grueling and a lot of the cast and crew were ready to be done.

1

u/forlorn_hope28 2d ago

And then they lost Star Wars too. Truly a massive L to destroy the popularity of one IP while simultaneously getting fired from another before they could damage that one any further as well.

63

u/MagnorCriol 2d ago

GoT's rise and subsequent fall needs to be studied by future show runner generations. They were everywhere. They had the whole world in their grip. There were totally "normie", non-nerd related bars doing watch parties, giant fandom stretching across so many age and culture strata.

And then the last season was so bad that not only was it not liked, it actively undid all their fame beforehand and just almost erased the show. It's crazy.

11

u/SlimpWarrior 2d ago

When the actors say the writing creatives are wrong, it's best to listen to the actors. The Witcher has fallen into the same sad shit by alienating Henry Cavill. Then we have Stranger Things written by the two new laziest writers who used AI to make a half-shit ending. There definitely needs to be protection in place, full discussions and changes to the script if it's so bad the actors don't want to be in it. Emilia Clarke, Kit Harrington both had been depressed about it. So many signals were ignored because HBO didn't want to monitor and take care of their breadmaker.

1

u/Caffdy 2d ago

AI is an incredible tool, but if you're a buffoon with mediocre writing skills, you're never getting a great story even with AI help

10

u/BadgerBodges 2d ago

I still remember the apopletic rage of one of my co-workers when she came in the day after GoT.

Not a big fantasy nerd, not huge into anything not "realistic", but GoT grabbed her and when it failed her I've never seen someone so angry.

1

u/Reysona 19h ago

Hell hath no fury as a scorned non-nerdy nerd

43

u/Independent-Green383 2d ago

Think especially with TV shows, it gets extra noticeable when the people behind it REALLY want it to end

94

u/ChipRockets 2d ago

Now, now, don't go ruining OP's tactic of gaining traction by leaving out by far and away the most obvious piece of media

8

u/LivingClone13 2d ago

"characters that can use telekinesis and are in black armor"

First comment: Darth Vader

20

u/irihS 2d ago

i agree it was very suspiciously absent i was confused

→ More replies (1)

23

u/Serp3nt3 2d ago

The last season in particular was abysmal, even despite the drop of quality in the previous seasons the tv series was still saveable, but the finale trully made everything horrible.

1

u/Drugtrain 1d ago

I’m rewatching. Season 5 gets noticably worse. Bronn and Jaimes Fun Adventures at the Kingdom of Shitty Actors and Actresses Cringefest is particularly hard to watch.

31

u/Nondescript_Redditor 2d ago

game themed thrones

24

u/SimianWonder 2d ago

Thing is, the ending was mediocre at best, but the first four seasons are still genuinely some of the best TV there's ever been.

12

u/NarwhalsAreSick 2d ago

I've been rewatching it recently, and those first few seasons really are brilliant. The dialogue and tension is so incredibly well done, the casting is mostly perfect as well. You really care about the characters and the story.

Its sort impressive how badly they fucked it, and how no one seemed learned the lesson when they made House of Dragon. At least A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is promising!

1

u/angwilwileth 2d ago

Helps that the short stories it's based on are some of GRRM'S finest work.

→ More replies (1)

5

u/RATMpatta 2d ago

Because those seasons took a majority of their material directly from the books. Especially season 1 is almost a 1:1 copy from the first book.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/Sigward_TheOnionbro 1d ago

Honestly, even with some problems and inferior dialogues, season 5 and 6 were still great seasons, with a lot of major events properly done very well

Until this day, I still consider the ending of season 6 the last episode of GOT

7

u/vangaurd1234523 2d ago

Damn it. I was too slow on the draw

13

u/rrschch85 2d ago

"Bat-themed heroes"

10

u/snoball_the_epicguy 2d ago

probably one of the few times now that this joke is actually valid, alongside the ones in the post it's basically one of the poster childs​ for this trope

23

u/SuperSlavSergei 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's still crazy how that ending basically made people stop talking about Game of Thrones for a long while. I remember seeing it everywhere during the height of its popularity, but then it slowly tapered off, and then complete silence once the ending came out.

5

u/j_cruise 2d ago

No it didn't. It's still talked about constantly. I'll never understand why Redditors make this comment every single time it's mentioned (which is all the time). It's easily still one of the most discussed shows ever and this did not change at any point.

2

u/creepykreme 2d ago

GoT is still one of the most watched shows on HBO

3

u/RichardFister 2d ago

A lot of people here are too young to remember when game of thrones was at its peak of cultural relevance. People had watch parties, they talked about the most recent episode at work every week, the Internet was crawling with fan theories about what would happen next or who would die.

The ending was so bad all of it vanished like a fart in the wind. Almost overnight nobody gave a shit about it anymore

3

u/angwilwileth 2d ago

Avengers Endgame came out the same week. I was honestly shocked that more Starks died in that film than in the season finale.

102

u/Mammoth_Western_2381 2d ago

Say what you want abou D and D, but at least they gave us an ending. Differently from that old fat fuck who is sitting on The Winds of Winter for 15 years now while rich of adaptations.

59

u/BillynBanjo 2d ago

My copy of Dance of Dragons has a preview chapter from Winds of Winter.

I got it in 2012.

7

u/pooey_canoe 2d ago

I read my first ASOIAF book in the year 2000

42

u/Dafish55 2d ago

Man I'm just not sure. He's old, he's not some problematic person. He's kept himself busy, though he should have announced he's not finishing that series himself. I can give him some grace. Certainly if I were him, I would be enjoying my older years.

19

u/Dear-Pomegranate4470 2d ago

I just wish he'd pass it off to someone he trusts to work on it at this point. Or just any form of communication beyond the "any time now guys" we've gotten for fifteen years. I really do sympathize, but just a liiiiiittle bit of transparency would go a long way after this long.

9

u/SiegfriedVK 2d ago

Or at least confirm that he's not going to finish it just to give us some kind of closure.

→ More replies (1)

12

u/iantruesnacks 2d ago

Nah. There’s a theory he is literally biding his time til he passes so he doesn’t have to write the ending of his own series. Somewhere once I had heard/read that he killed off a character that would have been necessary for the plot. I have also read that he cant finish the story unless he has a time-skip but cant time skip because he has too much going on. The other theory is the show ending was his ending, and due to how much backlash it got, now he can’t figure out how to end it. But, if he can keep eeking out some GoT related material he can keep his contract together, and then pass and leave the mess for someone else. It’s hard to have fallen in love with a series that the author no longer gives a shit to finish.

3

u/wurmsrus 2d ago

"The other theory is the show ending was his ending, and due to how much backlash it got, now he can’t figure out how to end it" yeah that makes the most sense to me. Whether it was a bad plan for an ending or if D&D just botched the execution of it is hard to distinguish and probably is for Martin as well. So he's was left to either try to carry out his plan and hope his execution is better enough to make people happy after they've waited so long to just get the same ending or to come up with a completely new ending which with a story with so many plot threads is probably nigh impossible. (note I actually haven't watched the show so IDK what the ending was like other than broad strokes like Dany burns down King's landing and Bran becomes king because he has the best story, whatever that means

and the publisher contract makes sense as a reason he hasn't admitted books 6 and 7 aren't coming. Probably would have to pay them some kind of fee for breach of contract if he did and the spinoffs are all that's keeping them from saying put up or shutup.

→ More replies (1)

33

u/Federal_Decision5115 2d ago

I'm fine if he wants to peace out, but at this point he's being deceitful about his progress and keeps pretending he's making progress on a series he's clearly done with. If he had just come out and said he was done and passing it on to someone else, then I'd give him some grace .

14

u/ActivityFickle5700 2d ago

I don't even care if he finishes winds of winter anymore.

He would still need to write a Dream of Spring to finish the series off.

I'm not waiting another 20 years for that.

7

u/DarkGodRyan 2d ago

He said for years that work continues on Winds and then stopped talking about Winds entirely focusing only on Fire and Blood, Dunk and Egg, other spinoffs, and gets mad when fans bring up Winds now. He knows he won't finish it, he can't admit that to himself

1

u/RA576 2d ago

The rumour is he contractually can't. His publisher probably paid him a fat advance for Winds, if he outright said it's never coming, they'd sue the shit out of him, and his remaining years would be spent fighting litigation.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/booze_clues 2d ago

Fairly certain he’s said that his plan is to set his estate up so that when he passes no one else is allowed to take his work and finish it.

10

u/funkycookies 2d ago

Id prefer no ending at all over an ending as cataclysmically shitty as the one DB Weiss and David Benioff came up with

→ More replies (1)

15

u/Justice9229 2d ago

Nah trust he'll get on it after a few more history books, another cookbook, and maybe the fourth dunk and egg

1

u/-captaindiabetes- 2d ago

And maybe an Elden Ring sequel

3

u/jinreeko 2d ago

Yeah. I don't even think the on-paper facts are that bad, it just kinda writes them into a really strange corner if they ever wanted to do a sequel series. How do you deal with seasons now that the Others are gone? What is the ramifications of an omniscient god sitting the throne? How in the fuck is Sansa gonna rule over the whole North? Is Jon just going to... live nomadically beyond the wall? There's no reason for most of the Wildlings to go back

Any series taking place after AGOT will need to address most of these

5

u/Pliskkenn_D 2d ago

Any day now. Any. Day. 

Also obligatory Rothfuss give us our third book already. 

3

u/pun-a-tron4000 2d ago

I had a friend ask if the books were good and it felt bad having to give the standard "yes, buuuuuut" explanation of the delay

-1

u/ExpoTrainGu39 2d ago

This attitude and sense of entitlement makes me genuinely hope he never finishes it.

15

u/Dear-Pomegranate4470 2d ago edited 2d ago

So I see this debate all the time and I have to ask, sincerely, at what point can fans point out how long it's been? It doesn't feel entitled to be upset over it, it's been fifteen years. He needs to either get cracking or pass it along to a trusted proxy author.

I'm not gonna call the dude names, BUT I will say that I agree with how it seems like he's just milking it with no real plans to finish the book in his lifetime. That's frustrating, as someone who wants to support his work.

6

u/paper_schemes 2d ago

One of my dads good friends once told me he wants to read Winds of Winter before he dies. He's a big fan of the series and has been reading since 1996 when the first book came out.

He knows dementia is setting in, and he's stated he refuses to let it take him, he'll go out on his own terms before it takes over.

Selfishly, I want him to get the chance to read it. But I'm also old enough to know that probably won't happen. Hopefully someday I can at least read it for him. He's a great person.

11

u/thendisnigh111349 2d ago

GRRM is welcome to at any time just come out and admit that he's never going to finish ASOIAF so that people stop asking him for it.

Instead he has been stringing people along for 15 years as though there's still even an infinitesimal chance left that he finishes the series before he dies because he knows deep down that leaving ASOIAF unfinished will ruin his legacy as one of the great writers of our time and turn his magnum opus into a cautionary tale of endless procrastination and how not to go about planning out an epic fantasy series.

3

u/mageofroses 2d ago

I mean people felt the same way about Stpehen King and The Dark Tower and he did eventually finish it 🤷🏻‍♀️

10

u/thendisnigh111349 2d ago

Not familiar with this series, but I just took a look at when each book came out and none of the gaps come even close to the 15 years and counting we've been waiting for Winds of Winter (which isn't even the conclusion of the story).

→ More replies (1)

1

u/__RAINBOWS__ 2d ago

I’ve refused to watch it, and I’ve watched all the other seasons. That’ll stay unfinished for me.

1

u/nightwingoracle 2d ago

In Logan Lucky (which came out a decade ago) the prisoners riot and have the newest got books as a stalling condition for their riot.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/GrundlePumper420 2d ago

People love to blame D and D for everything. Finish your fucking books so they have actual source material George, or don't complain that it "isn't what you envisioned".

Crazy how many people give him a pass given that he stopped writing when people stopped liking his shit.

4

u/Particular_Leader_16 2d ago

I mean you’re not wrong

2

u/GreenGemsOmally 2d ago edited 2d ago

I don't even hate the main story beats/ideas of how the story ended. It just was so rushed and condensed when it needed more time to work that it was a colossal failure.

Daenerys going mad king and then Jon killing her, Bran becoming king, Jaimie going back to his sister in the end despite his growth is really relatable for anybody you've seen continually ruin their own life in repeated toxic relationships, etc., all of those beats are "fine" in my opinion. Maybe not the best, but they'd be doable with competent writing.

But the execution of how we got there was just so abruptly bad, it tarnished the entire show. I have had zero interest in watching either of the spinoffs because the entire IP just died to me with how the main show handled its last two seasons.

2

u/Helgrind444 2d ago

bat themed hero

1

u/MrJoyless 2d ago

As soon as Stannis burned his daughter I was fucking done with that show.

1

u/Sparkpad 2d ago

It was the most watched TV show in its heyday, and now its watch is ended.

1

u/LightofNew 2d ago

Upvote

1

u/Dependent-Kick-1658 2d ago

Funnily enough, the finale of Game of Thrones and the finale of Star vs the Forces of Evil aired on the exact same day. Two of the most dogshit finales of all time.

1

u/tokengaymusiccritic 2d ago

This entire post is a karma farm. "I hate when a show has a bad ending" like yeah?

1

u/No-Accountant5205 1d ago

Holy westeros you weren't lying when you said this is karma farm 🤯

→ More replies (12)