This is another one of those reviews that I'm purely doing for completionist reasons. Everything that could possibly have been said about this show -- and particularly this season of this show -- has already been said. Furthermore, I'm not a major GoT expert. I read like 75% of the first book, saw the pilot episode, and drifted in and out of the plot line as my wife has watched it over the course of the decade. I watched Season 7 and Season 8 in full, and while I might not have the depth of the background that everyone else had, I knew enough about the key plot points and characters prior to Season 7 such that I was not hopelessly lost.
The prevailing opinion seems to be that Season 8 was disappointing. I found it to be fairly entertaining. The standout episode was "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms", which featured the knighting of Brienne and all of the build-up before the Battle of Winterfell. The Battle of Winterfell was very confusing due to the weird choice to make everything extremely hard to see (exception: I thought the scene with the Dothraki torches being extinguished one by one off in the distance was pretty cool).
A lot of people were mad about Dany's heel turn, but it seemed like this was foreshadowed pretty well throughout the series and rooted in what we know about her character. She's had plenty of moments of kindness before, but she's been all about power from the jump, and her lean into the "tyrant" mindset wasn't all that shocking.
The final episode did a good enough job. It's impossible to tie up all of the many remaining threads in a way that satisfies everybody. I thought Drogon burning the Iron Throne was one of the weirdest scenes of the series. The decision to make Bran the new king was shocking to everyone except Las Vegas bookies, who apparently had that one nailed from the jump. Bran was such a weird goober for the entirety of the last two seasons and I didn't like much of anything they did with him (particularly given that his powers were basically useless at the Battle of Winterfell).
Tyrion's whole deal for most of the series is that he's smarter than everyone else, but the show's writers fashioned him into an idiot who couldn't see two steps ahead down the stretch, which was really odd. The show tied up Arya and Sansa's arcs pretty well, and Arya's story in particular in this final season was a strong point.
Another thing that I thought was strange was that Euron Greyjoy's fleet was so dominant against two dragons with support in one episode and then completely helpless against a single dragon the next. They didn't do a good job of making it clear why Dany was so much more successful the second time around.
Anyway, those are my scattered thoughts. They're even less coherent than usual because I know I'm not going to match the same passion for this show as the superfans and again, this season's been beat to death all over the place (plus, I'm getting around to writing this over a month late).
Season Grade: B
