Just wrapped up The Long Night

by beattherush, Chicago, Friday, May 22, 2026, 07:06 (3 days ago) @ Jay

My winter exercise is a lot of boring stationary bike work so I end up rewatching series a fair bit, and this winter's was GoT.

It remains a monumental achievement, and the individual episode storytelling is at times masterful. But on rewatch it's even more apparent that they botched the landing.

What's funny is there are really strong individual episodes. The Long Night was by some accounts the longest battle scene ever filmed on television and it was pretty solid, although a little over-reliant on darkness. And the preceding episode looking at the tension of waiting was really great.

But they rushed the final story arc, and it shows. The first several seasons balanced out individual character development stories with bigger plotline developments. The wedding deaths were powerful precisely because you had spent smaller moments with characters and so empathized with them, even the villians. Tywin skinning a deer. Arya and the Dancing Master. Tyrion trying to survive the battle with Shagga and co.. Podrick's legendary performance.

The last two seasons are all plot and no character.

Lots of blame to go around:

GRRM for not finishing the damn books
HBO for cutting the last two seasons to 6 ep instead of 8
Benioff and Weiss for taking the Disney buyout and rushing the final

But it's too bad. I give The Sopranos the edge over GoT for "best series HBO has ever produced" mostly because The Sopranos never forgot character-based storytelling, even at the end.

It's amazing to me that they could spend 55 nights filming The Long Night and it still feels rushed.