Why Did the Later Seasons of GOT Get So Bad?

 

Team Stark?  Team Stannis the Mannis?  Team Targaryen?  There are plenty of things the most diehard Game of Thrones fans can argue, debate and clash over.  Would Renly Baratheon have made a good king?  Should they have kept Jeyne Westerling in the story?  Is Asha or Yara a better name for Theon's sister?  Will the show follow the Valonqar prophecy in the books?  The list goes on ceaselessly with questions, comments and debates.  

But one thing the community seems deadlocked in agreement on is that from "Winter is Coming" to "The Children" is the peak of the entire series.  Seasons 1-4 are without a doubt the best and most consistent episodes of the series.   And with that agreement also comes the well known belief that Seasons 5-8 are of significantly lesser quality.  Why is that?  Is it because the writers ran out of books?  Did the acting styles change?  Was it just the stories they were following through with?  

Well, it's a lot of things.  No one singular thing can be directly attributed to the downfall of Game of Thrones (I mean technically you can blame two people, but I've already done that to death).  It was a combination of many things that contributed to the decline in quality of this once legendary show.  And that's not to say that Seasons 5-8 don't have their moments, because they do.  Some very memorable and solid moments.  But there is something Seasons 5-8 lack that the first four had.  And I think it's time to figure this out once and for all.  I have a few ideas as to what it could be...let's discuss.  

1. The Books

Season 5 and parts of Season 6 are an amalgamation of the events that take place in the books "A Feast For Crows" and "A Dance of Dragons" in the book series written by George RR Martin.  Both were originally supposed to be one novel, but were split into two separate books due to so much story line being written in each book for so many different characters.  "Feast" follows the events that take place in King's Landing following Tywin's murder through POV chapters of Jaime and Cersei, Brienne's POV as she searches the Riverlands for Sansa, Sansa's POV as she learns about playing the game from Littlefinger, Arya's POV as she learns from the faceless men of Braavos, Samwell Tarly as he leads the dying Maester Aemon Targaryen and Gilly to Oldtown to learn how to become a Maester and new POV chapters taking place between a handful of characters in Dorne and the Iron Islands.  "Dance", conversely, follows the simultaneous plot points occurring between in Essos from the perspectives of Daenerys, Barristan Selmy, Jon Connington and Tyrion Lannister, of Davos Seaworth as he tries to win support of the Northern Lords for Stannis, Jon Snow as he struggles to be Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, Bran Stark as he continues his journey to meet and learn from the Three Eyed Crow and Theon Greyjoy as he suffers from the physical and mental abuse of one Ramsay Bolton.  These books, while still good, were very controversial upon initial release.  Ignoring how the books were just split in half at one point, it also covers topics that hit a lot closer to home now, with both racial prejudice and religious extremism on the rise in various places on Earth.  I feel like George handled it all tactfully, but I know there are quite a few who have issues with the characters in these books and not only how they act, but what they do and to whom. 

But the books themselves start to no longer matter when George has yet to release the next chapter of it.  Yes, for those of you unaware, Game of Thrones surpassed the books roughly around the end of Season 5, but some carries over to Season 6 very loosely.  The next chapter in the series, the long anticipated "Winds of Winter", has been put off and delayed by Mr. Martin for years now, with him signing onto more projects and overseeing the final stages of the show.  And it wouldn't have been as much a problem if the books didn't end on so many cliffhangers.  Jaime was departing with Brienne, unaware that she was leading him to meet Lady Stoneheart.  Stannis Baratheon was marching on Winterfell having just captured Asha and Theon Greyjoy.  Jon Snow had just been murdered by his Night's Watch brothers for turning his back on the Watch to ride south and save Arya, whom he believes was being raped and tortured by Ramsay.  Daenerys was captured by the Dothraki.  The religious extremists in the Faith Militant have seized complete control of King's Landing and the newly anointed Hand of the King in Kevan Lannister was murdered by Varys, who proclaimed the arrival of Aegon VI of House Targaryen.  The Battle of Slaver's Bay was just beginning and Tyrion was trying to keep things under control for Dany (whom he still hasn't even met yet).  And Cersei awaiting her trial before the Faith Militant for her wicked ways.  We know how most of these things panned out in the show, but we don't have 100% certainty of how these things will pan out in the books.  Will Stannis be slain with Brienne still leagues away from his army?  Will Aegon VI really be Aegon VI or another pretender for the Iron Throne?  And the few confirmed chapters of "The Winds of Winter" we've gotten have only shown us very light tidbits of information.  Not nearly enough to go on.  And George is not in a hurry to finish this next chapter of his story with all of his additional projects he's interested in, prompting many in the community to wonder if the books will ever come at all.  

2. The King is Dead 

 

It makes thematic and logical story sense for Tywin Lannister to die.  It's obvious that the way he was structured as a character, he was almost invincible.  The Iron Bank of Braavos had deep levels of respect and faith in him, the Lannister Armies followed him to a fault, and whether they liked to admit it or not, Jaime, Cersei and Tyrion were all petrified of him in some way, shape or form.  He was the mastermind behind basically all of the Lannister plans.  He got Cersei married to Robert Baratheon, he orchestrated the Red Wedding with Walder Frey and Roose Bolton and he was the one who gladly welcomed the alliance with House Tyrell after Renly Baratheon was slain.  But he had several major flaws that factored into his death.  His refusal to recognize the clear affair between Jaime and Cersei or the usefulness of Tyrion would ultimately play into his House's downfall.  And I am fine with Tywin meeting his end at the end of Season 4.  

With that said, both the books and the show suffered from the lack of Charles Dance's chilling Lord of Casterly Rock.  Whether it was because they truly didn't know how to function without Tywin or that they didn't know where George was going, the show begins to sputter roughly around the same time Tywin meets his end at the end of Joffrey's crossbow and Tyrion's trigger finger.  The actions and storylines in King's Landing are significantly lesser quality than they were beforehand.  Cersei is constantly proven that Tywin's words to her still rung true in that she wasn't as smart as she thought she was.  She does literally everything Tywin wouldn't have done, from sending Jaime on a secret mission to Dorne to protect Myrcella when a threatening letter would have suffice, to organizing the Faith Militant and blatantly ignoring the Iron Bank of Braavos calling in their debts.  Jaime is Cersei's faithful lapdog and Tyrion is no where near the same character as he would be in the books.  The acting is still on par for these characters, which is something I will never deny, but the storytelling began to take stumbles around Season 5 and it unfortunately never recovered.  

3. Characters Out of Character 

Now, I'm not going to judge these characters from their book counterparts, but instead on how earlier versions of these characters from the earlier episodes would have acted.  Because one of the show's greatest flaws with it's characters was how it made many of them so inconsistent.  And the signs were there for us in the beginning.  Tyrion and Shae's relationship in the show is much more prominent than it is in the books, as the two grow to genuinely love the other.  By Season 4, out of fear that Tywin would hang her for being another whore in the bed of his son, Tyrion has to be cruel to her to send her away.  She leaves, brokenhearted, but returns midway through the season to serve as a character damning witness against Tyrion for Joffrey's murder.  She shows no remorse for it, nor does she understand why Tyrion had sent her away to begin with, something very out of character for her.  She lacks the cleverness and resourcefulness she had shown to possess since we met her in Season 1.  

Jaime's character arc is also all over the map.  His development in Season 3 is some of the greatest on screen acting, writing and chemistry I have ever seen and I give Nikolaj Castor-Waldau's acting skills a ton of credit for displaying his good side for us all and especially Brienne.  But from the time Jaime is back in King's Landing until he leaves Cersei's side in Season 7's finale, he really has no plot relevance apart from aiding in Tyrion's escape from the black cells, which inadvertently got Tywin killed.  He sort of just ditzes around from one scene to the next, with everyone questioning his loyalties and his brains with every scene he's in.  But in terms of his own development, there is a scene in "Breaker of Chains" that almost got it a spot in my Top 5 Worse Episodes list when he rapes Cersei in the Sept of Baelor right underneath the dead body of their son.  It's an unsettling scene to see a character who has shown the arrogant and rapey side of him was long gone throughout Season 3 and he was back to being the scumbag everyone hated in Season 1.  After that, he's sort of the Lannister that is just...there.  He doesn't make any grand stands for his character and just does the bidding of Cersei until he finally realizes she truly cared about him and leaves King's Landing to fight for the Starks against the Army of the Dead.  And then, we all know what Season 8 tried in vain to do with his character by ruining him and making him pretend not to care about smallfolk of King's Landing (you know, the PEOPLE HE GAVE UP HIS HONOR AND RESPECT TO SAVE FROM THE MAD KING?!?!?!?!?!) and how he stopped being a decent man to be with Cersei just...because?  They did not do our boy Jaime well.  

His arcs have a lot in common with one of the more prominent Five Kings of Westeros in Stannis Baratheon.  In the episodes he appears in, Stannis is less of a character and more of a puppet the writers could do what they wanted with in a given episode.  Sometimes, he's a fierce, no-nonsense commander of men and soldiers.  Other times, he's a whiny, obstinate crybaby who complains that nobody liked him.  Some episodes he is a truly dynamic and well rounded character who would never do the wrong thing just to get ahead, and in others he's murdering his brother and daughter and is willing to sacrifice his nephew for some blood magic to work.  I get it that Stannis was written to be an opportunistic man who's pursuit of the Iron Throne was corrupting him,  but there have got to be some limits to someone's ambitions if you're hoping for us to like and support a guy.  George knows this, which is why in the books he has Stannis hellbent on ensuring that if he dies in battle, his men would continue to fight for his daughter's claim to the Iron Throne over any of Cersei's illegitimate children.  He would not burn his daughter alive just to get some snow to melt, guys!  Killing Renly resulted in him getting his own in the end from Brienne's sword, but killing Shireen only resulted in him essentially playing himself.  He loses his army, his second in command, his wife and the Fire Priestess who had been manipulating him all in one fell stroke.  And a few hours later, he loses his life in battle against the Boltons.  

4. Race to the Finish

Whether it was from their lack of ideas how to keep the show going, their lack of interest in producing more episodes, the rising costs of actor's salaries or the rumors that they were supposed to get their own Star Wars movies to direct and make in their own image (which turned out to instead be a Netflix deal that would set both D and D up for life), the creators of the show were keen from Season 5 onwards to rush themselves to the finale as quickly as possible.  They had their endgame in mind: Cersei vs Daenerys.  They had their goals in mind: Dany loses herself to the Targaryen Madness and destroys King's Landing, prompting Tyrion and Jon Snow to have to destroy her.  But because they had this destination in mind from a certain point and a creative head that was keen to wrap the show up as quickly as possible, they had to take illogical shortcuts to try and make Dany's turn somewhat make sense to the narrative of the plot, but they fail miserably.  You see, Daenerys never shows any signs of being a malicious tyrant from her times in Essos and even up to the burning of the Tarlys when she took her Dothraki to annihilate the Lannister armies in the Reach.  She doesn't show any madness, cruelty or the slightest signs of madness in her at all.  If anything, she's probably more of a benevolent ruler than Cersei or even Sansa would be at this point in the story.  She allows her people to go back into Slavery if they wish.  She welcomes the advice of former enemies and traitors alike in Tyrion, Jorah, Barristan Selmy, Olenna, Ellaria and Jon Snow.  She shows mercy to her enemies and then chooses to take their lives when they refuse to submit to her.  She willingly negotiates with Cersei Lannister, even when she's proven to be a bad faith negotiator.  She has done everything in her power to be respected and beloved in Westeros, only to realize that the people she wished to rule operated in a different code of ethics than she did, hence why Samwell is shaken at the death of his father and brother or how deeply mistrusting Sansa is of her, even though Dany never shows any real reasons to not be mistrusted.  Dany is also never allowed to do any of the clearly strategically advantageous things she could have done to win her support, including proposing marriage to Jon or taking Sansa up on their offer to march south and wipe out Cersei when they were rested and at full strength (but since this is Race to the Finish mode, we ignore how exhausted these men would be from fighting the Army of the Dead, to marching from Winterfell to King's Landing and then fighting in another mentally strenuous battle and have them wipe out the Lannisters without much of a fuss).  She loses half of her army, was willing to sacrifice herself, her dragons and all of her goals to aid in destroying the Night King, without any assurances or promises from any of the people she fought alongside apart from Jon.  From Season 5 on she loses all of her top advisors to either death (Jorah, Barristan Selmy, Missandei, Olenna) or treachery (Tyrion, Varys, arguably Jon).  She has given so much to the defense of the North and for both Arya and Sansa to mistrust her as much as they do is a poorly written excuse to make the two smarter or more weary than they would ordinarily be.  Remember, the Mad King and all of those things happened long before the two were born.  Ned Stark and Catelyn married during the war as Ned rode south to fight alongside Robert Baratheon.  The Targaryens have done nothing to them in their lifetimes (in fact, they wouldn't even exist if the Mad King hadn't burned Brandon and Rickard Stark alive, as Brandon would have married Catelyn instead of Ned).  Along comes this lady from Essos, with an army and three dragons who not only wants to use those armies to defend your lands from an army of Ice Zombies, but also desperately wants to wipe out the Lannisters, the family that had committed ceaseless atrocities to Sansa and Arya's including being directly or indirectly involved in the deaths of Ned, Robb and Catelyn while also personally crippling Bran, torturing Sansa physically and mentally and forcing Arya to live on the run.  She has shown no animosity towards the Starks and given neither Sansa nor Arya reason to mistrust her.  Even if they did mistrust her, they would have known to keep it below the surface (at least Sansa would) and be both amicable and polite in front of her.  But, because we're in Race to the Finish mode, Sansa's mistrust of Dany only exists to serve as foreshadowing for Dany's descent into madness.  

Which shows even more damning writing for Sansa in the later seasons.  It's shown throughout Seasons 6 and 7 that the North would not have enough food to feed everyone in the Kingdom thanks to Robb's war taking away all of the able bodied men and no one being their to reap in the harvests.  The limited food and resources was bad enough without Dany being there, but when she arrives Sansa makes it a big point to say they wouldn't have the food to nourish the men fighting, which being the case would make the North remaining on Dany's side important as she has access to the Reach and it's bountiful crops and food stores.  If the food stores were barren from Dany's campaigns and the Wars, someone would have brought that up during the last three seasons to make even slight logical sense of their situation.  But the showrunners opted to ignore this clearly serious issue and just make it a whining complaint of Sansa's.  And the biggest and most obnoxious part of Sansa's character in the last season is her out of character demands for the North to be made independent of the rest of Westeros (as the other Northern Lords had wanted during the War of the Five Kings).  But the major lords of the North at that point are all dead.  Robb, the Umbers, Karstarks, Mormonts and Boltons were all essentially wiped out.  Sansa never showed any sign of wanting to secede from the rest of the Kingdoms during her entire journey back to Winterfell and reclaiming it from Ramsay.  She distrusted Cersei and the Lannisters (with obvious reasoning behing it), but she also held deep animosity for Dany for no explainable reasons (at least ones that would make sense, as one of the writers seems to think it has to do with Sansa being jealous of Dany's beauty).  If they were going the route of Sansa wanting to marry Jon to cement his claim to the North and Westeros, that would be one thing.  But they made Sansa out to be some whiny separatist even though it had nothing to do with her arc.  She got to be Queen.  Which she could have been without intentionally sabotaging Dany's campaign.  And for the writers to make Arya mistrusting of her while also proceeding to do nothing to Dany after she massacres the people of King's Landing is deeply insulting.  

You see, the thing is, I suspect that these character points will be in the books.  And I expect a talented writer like George to have them all logically flow throughout the line.  For example, the show skipped the Aegon VI or the Faegon Targaryen storyline altogether.  I imagine this will be at the forefront for why Dany will have no love or respect in Westeros as some other Targaryen pretender will have usurped the crown from her and succeeded in driving the Lannisters out of King's Landing and back to Casterly Rock.  Sansa will become a Northern Separatist because Littlefinger is likely setting her up to inherit the North, the Vale and the Riverlands from marriage to her sickly cousin's heir, her own Stark blood and the Riverlands from her Tully relatives.  She will likely be swayed into becoming a Queen of this part of the world and might even be considered by Faegon as a wife candidate if Arianne Martell fails in her quest to seduce the new arrival. 

I don't know which of the above reasons was the one behind why they rushed Seasons 5-8, but there truly was no real excuse for it.  Game of Thrones was a powerhouse in ratings, which HBO could have more than made up the cost of actor's salaries for with merchandising and other sales.  D and D (Benioff and Weiss) could have passed control of GOT to some subordinates if they wanted to move on from the show and let them finish it, or let George himself wrap things up how he would like to see it.  There truly was no excuse for the final 33 episodes of the series to be as much of a letdown as they were.  No excuse for cutting Seasons 7 and 8 short.  No excuse for rushing through the plot points.  None whatsoever.