The ending was okay. I dont know why people expected some major twist in the finale after the previous 5 episodes where as straight forward as it gets.

GOT did turn classic hollywood this final (2?) season though, what a happy ending. Compare that to years ago with Ned/red wedding/viper/...

Such a letdown this final season. How can u rush the ending of a series this great.. Its sad to see so much potential go to waste.

Dexter still an all-time low if we are talking about series finales (i literally just laughed when i thought about it)

Lost ending still good.

Nobody was expecting a twist ending. We were expecting an ending to GoT, not Gilmore Girls. If you liked the end you literally missed the entire theme of the show.

Second comment not directed at anyone particular.

Thought it was a good episode. IDK what you guys were expecting, like anyone who tries to plot an alternate ending in here is guaranteed to be worse. The last two seasons have sucked, but building off that base I don't see how you could have ended it much better. The King Bran thing is obnoxious, I was spoiled for that but who really cares. It actually didn't annoy me as much as I thought it would because they made it plain he was just going to be a figurehead. Jon and Dany's endings were pitch perfect. Sansa's was good. Arya's was good.

This should be good. What is the entire theme of the show?

I say "this should be good" because ASOIAF doesn't HAVE an "entire theme", so you're guaranteed to be wrong. About the most you could say is that it's an exploration of identity.

What in the past three seasons made you expect anything different than what we got?

What in your opinion is the "entire theme"?

Anyone know how the bookies are paying out?

Are they paying both Bran and Noone bets?

The markets were generally "to rule Westeros" so it pays Bran.

It was a show about the corrupting influence of power where the good guys don’t win and the bad guys don’t always lose.

It became The Princess Bride, but way worse.

Someone doesnt watch the opening credits

One thing that I've learnt watching this season is that people always blame the failure of any plot on the denouement, even when the actual problem occurred way earlier.

[D&D] Hey we're introducing this character called the NIGHT KING! He's a supervillain! Also he created all the White Walkers, so if you kill him it eliminates the entire threat!
[Everyone] YAAAAYYYY!! *clap clap*
[D&D] *kill Night King, eliminate entire threat*
[Everyone] BOOOOO that sucked!

Other than King Bran which is obnoxious but I don't really care, I didn't see any problems with the finale that weren't created earlier.

I thought this finale would finally flip the stubborn fans but I guess kneelers will always be kneelers

You are still confusing plot with execution. Overall the plot was fine, with some obvious exceptions. The execution was absolutely horrifically bad.

?????

One of the heroes in the show got stabbed through the heart by the other hero, then he got banished to a gulag in Siberia.

Prior to this ep airing, the universal complaint in fandom was that GRRM had said the ending would be "bittersweet" and this was just bitter. You know, Jaime going back to the dark side, Brienne getting dumped, King's Landing getting burnt to the ground by a show hero. How is it a happy ending lol.

You’re not even trying to make a coherent defence of the end. See my post above.

The execution of the Jon/Dany ending was pretty great imo and that's all I really cared about. I guess I just checked out on this stuff earlier than you guys. I gave up on the plotting making sense at about ep 2 of season 7.

What's "the end"? King Bran sucks. Jon/Dany was good. What else are we discussing?

I’d be curious to see a tally of the number of minutes/hours spent on the many faces plot.

I really don't get these weird meta takes. It's like the horse-race style of reporting on politics applied to TV. What I found exciting about The Bells was the possibility that they were going to take the story in an unexpected direction that would give you something to think about past the end of the show. I mean, sure, conditional on the show having been an aimless sloppy mess for the last four seasons and conditional on needing to wrap up the just-introduced Dany plotline in half an episode and then settle everything else in the balance of the episode, it was shakily executed but fundamentally OK. But it's still bad. The things you're gesturing at as extenuating circumstances are just the explanation of how and why the episode was bad.

Perfectly said.

Well like, I thought it was the best episode of the season, largely because at no point did anybody do anything wildly out of character, unlike every other episode this season. I'm grading on a curve obviously, so what? The season sucked. Last season sucked. I enjoyed watching a bunch of this ep. I thought everything up until (and not including) the council where they chose Bran as king was really good. As in actually good, not grading on a curve good.

I guess to me it reads like Browns fans who rant and rave about how bad a 21-17 loss to the Patriots in week 12 was. What did you expect? (this may be a dated take, but you get the point).

Like if the takes were "well that was pretty bad, seems about right" I'd be like, sure. All these takes of "OMG ONE OF THE WORST ENDINGS EVAR" I do not understand.

Edit: Like the final season of Dexter was bad but the final ep still managed to be a substantial step down.

I felt insulted when Sansa opted out of the kingdom, and that's just ducky with everyone.

You seem to be grading the ending as if the entire rest of the show never existed. Sure in that context it wasn’t horrid.

The rest of us are grading it in the context of a decade of watching a show. It’s WOAT because it is the ****ty culmination of a terrible season to what was once an all time top five show.

Arya is going to die in the books imo. Jon's ending was full bore LOTR, it was almost exactly Frodo's ending.

Did the "writers" simply ignore the Valonqar prophecy? In the books, Maggy concludes: “And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” Valonqar means “little brother” in High Valyrian, and in the books Cersei assumes it's Tyrion who will kill her (hence her intense hatred of him). Seems like it. No one choked her to death.