Major Game of Thrones spoilers ahead!
Welcome to a post-Thrones world, where Sansa Stark is Queen of the North (praise be!), Daenerys Targaryen is dead, Bran Stark is the ruler of Westeros, and we no longer have to deal with showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss’s controversial take on George R. R. Martin’s novels. My skin is already clearing up just at the thought of not stressing about this show every week.
According to many viewers, one of the biggest travesties of all is how Bran ended up on the throne after basically doing nothing but killing Hodor and occasionally warging for the past 10 years. It honestly all feels like a big prank, and the ending had loyal fans who never bought into the “Dany is the Mad Queen” narrative looking like clowns.
As it turns out, the dude who plays Bran, Isaac Hempstead Wright, also thought the ending was a joke and had an interesting take on the finale. He told Entertainment Weekly that when he first read the script, he thought Benioff and Weiss were pranking him with a fake one. He said, “I genuinely thought it was a joke script and that [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] sent to everyone a script with their own character ending up on the Iron Throne.”
Obviously, Benioff and Weiss were dead serious, and this is the ending that many disgruntled GoT fans (hi) are left with. Live footage of me rn:
Isaac also said that while he’s actually happy with the ending, he wishes Bran would’ve died. He added, “I kind of did want to die and get in one good death scene with an exploding head or something.” Honestly—and I cannot stress this enough—same.
Ultimately, Isaac said the ending is exactly what GRRM would’ve wanted but believes it will be polarizing. He explained, “I don’t think anybody will think it’s predictable and that’s as much as you can hope for. People are going to be angry. There’s going to be a lot of broken hearts. It’s ‘bittersweet,’ exactly as [saga author] George R. R. Martin intended. It’s a fitting conclusion to this epic saga.”
Debatable!