It’s strange how a TV show can take over your life, causing you to obsess and puzzle over theories which will ultimately leave you feeling, well, a little deflated in the end.
There are many near perfect TV series which deserve discussion long after the final roll of the credits. Breaking Bad, for instance, gave us one of the most seamless and thought-provoking endings of any medium.
No doubt in a few years I’ll be giving the entire series a rewatch, content to watch the narrative flow carefully and poetically to a conclusion which looked, felt, and sounded right.
But just imagine for a minute that you’re in the pub and you tell your mates about your plans to re-watch the entirety of Game of Thrones; winding the thread right back to when Bran Stark was just a plucky little boy who liked to climb walls.
Imagine keeping a straight face as you tell people you look forward to once again seeing the parts where the plot starts to stumble without the structure of book material; where character arcs take rollercoaster dives and coffee cups scar you like a blast of dragon fire.
Your mates would no doubt look at you as if you were a bit bonkers, which is honestly kind of sad. Game of Thrones is, let’s be honest, a magnificent feat of television, and there is so much still to enjoy from evenings spent returning to the turbulent, engrossing land of Westeros.
And yet those shaky final episodes will undoubtedly colour viewer perceptions for some time to come; with the clever dialogue and unparalleled world-building of the early seasons only adding to the disappointment of what lies ahead.
George R.R. Martin – who has yet to give readers closure through a book ending – has recently spoken about how things could (and should) have been different.
Speaking with German publication Welt, Martin revealed three big movies were planned to bring the series to a close after the seventh season, bringing an epic conclusion to the epic saga.
When asked whether or not there was still the potential to turn Game of Thrones into a movie, Martin told Welt:
At this point in time, it wouldn’t be for me to decide, because HBO controls the film rights for Game of Thrones.
Apart from that, we had actually considered this option: David Benioff and Dan Weiss, the two creators behind the series, actually wanted to end the saga after the seventh season with three big movies. Game of Thrones was to end in the cinema. Four or five years ago, it was seriously discussed.
Martin then went on to explain why the movie series didn’t end up going ahead:
Because HBO didn’t get involved. The responsible people said, ‘We produce TV series, we’re not in the cinema business’. And when HBO makes movies, like now with [Deadwood], then they produce it only to show it on TV – not in the cinema.
Everything is changing right now. What is cinema today? What is television? What is streaming? Is Netflix now making cinema or television? Everything mixes. Today we no longer know where the boundaries are between cinema, streaming providers, and television.
Who knows what to expect in the years and decades to come. The story and scale of Game of Thrones will most probably tempt showrunners of the future, who may well be interested in ending their version with a film trilogy. Hopefully Martin’s books will be finished in time to guide them…
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.