Maybe you will remember the scenes like the Red Wedding or the Destruction of the Great Sept of Baelor, or the strange but fitting farewell of Hodor. These moments make up Game of Thrones. Even if it doesn't come close to the usual ones, we were able to relive one or two such moments. As an example, when Arya killed the Night King out of nowhere. This surprise keeps the series in full honor again. But also the meeting in front of the fireplace before the big battle. The fact that we were allowed to see the most different characters sitting and drinking together wasn't exactly what some fans wanted to see, but it is still a fitting farewell.
Even if I don't like the battle in Winterfell becuase it was too weakly implemented and also very boring, there were nevertheless conspicuous things with it. The contrast between this battle and the destruction of Kings Landing. One dark and full of coldness and the other bright and full of fire. And both battles have the bitter greed for power in them, no matter at what price. But also the heroic death of Lyanna Mormont, who was grabbed by an ice giant, such scenes are generally only seen in the cinema and not in TV shows. What was of course a logical consequence was the fight between the Clegan brothers, The Mountain and The Hound.
All this fan service, but also the logical consequences of the actions, were shown in addition to the usual epic settings and pictures, which we are used to from Game of Thrones. And how close the series, which is actually a fantasy story, is to the threshold of reality. How much the series once again shows the brutality of politics. We saw pictures that we are also used to from the TV and the news. Pictures how Daenerys burns the city down in rubble and ashes, in which people and children die, or Arya, who runs dust covered through the rubble and blood sticks to her everywhere. We know these pictures from today's war zones from our own world.
If you see Game of Thrones as a kind of fantasy fairy tale, where characters are in the foreground, you haven't understood Game of Thrones. Sure, the characters are in the foreground, but the whole story is about the politics, the fight, the brutality, the blind greed and sorrow, what it brings with it.
Let's be honest, although the series has been calling the White Walkers from the beginning of its first minute as the biggest battle, it was never really about the White Walkers. It was always about the game of power, about the throne how the title suggested us. Either you win or you lose and die.
That the throne is at the end only molten lead, although murderers, tyrants and despots have forgathered themselves around it, is actually a worthy and also a meaningful end. The mother of the dragons always wanted to smash the wheel and in the end she did - sure, not herself but her child, the dragon Drogon took over this task in a symbolic act and destroyed the idea of a power symbol and thus the wheel.
But that doesn't destroy Westeros and the world of Game of Thrones itself, no, it closes a chapter and starts with a new one. It's a new story to be written. And this story won't be dominated by an old wise one, or by a traumatized little woman gone mad, with the dragons as children, but by someone who doesn't care about power. Who is worthy to rule the world.
With a broken king in a wheelchair, a dwarf who likes to make fun of himself before others do it, on his side, who directed the happenings of the old world and is now supposed to do everything well again. Is that possible? If not, then why not? Tyrion no longer has a family that has always stood in his way of doing something good and conscientious. The fact that the series Tyrion frees him from his family and thus takes away his chains so that he can finally be free of everything is again such a symbolic allusion, which was actually awarded to the mother of dragons. And who else, if not all the losers from the second row, who had no place in the former ass-licking society build of greed, will guide the new story.
Was it all foreseeable and does it all fit into Game of Thrones? Why shouldn't it? Why is such a change so hard to accept? Is it because this idea doesn't fit into a world view which is alien to us? The final season of "Game of Thrones" gives us a conclusion we can only dream of in our real world. And a little dreaming really isn't the worst ending for a fantasy epic.
Do I personally like the eighth season? Not really. The story has been completed too hastily. It was brought to an end too quickly. The fact that the story was told too quickly became clear already at the end of the fifth season. The events changed from then on only back and forth without really showing what happened in between, as you were used to from the series. But it's the story Game of Thrones wants to tell us. It doesn't make much difference if it's decorated and told with more seasons and episodes and drama or if you end up telling it without much back and forth. Because at the end the core was told.
I'm, like many others too, not happy with the fast ending, but I take it how it is. It didn't destroy my dreams, it didn't changed my life, and it was just a series for me that didn't make up my life. A good core was told and that's it.
And that core was there from the beginning. Those who expected something different from Game of Thrones didn't understand Game of Thrones. And those who are disappointed from the end, because it was to fast told, should read the books. I will definitely read the last coming books. Because books tell you always the better stories than series or films ever can do.