Game of Thrones Fans Are Still Mad, One Year Later

From Harper's BAZAAR

• A year ago today, Game of Thrones aired its final episode, "The Iron Throne."

• The ending was so divisive that more than a million viewers signed a petition for the final season to be redone.

• On the one-year anniversary of the series finale, fans continue to share their disappointment on Twitter.

In the midst of dark times, sometimes it helps to look back on better days, like May 19, 2019, when the series finale of Game of Thrones seemed like the worst of our problems. Can you believe it's been a full year since Daenerys Targaryen was stabbed by her nephew-lover, Jon Snow; since Sansa Stark mic-dropped Edmure Tulley with "Uncle, please sit"; since Bran Stark was named king; and since we lost our collective minds over that final episode?

Viewers were so passionate about the ending that more than a million of them signed a petition to redo the series with "competent writers" (people still seem to be signing), but the motion was shut down by cast members like Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark). The actual writers and showrunners, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, later admitted that they were ill-equipped for the responsibility, which also did not sit well with fans. The duo were set to move on to writing a Star Wars trilogy post-GoT, but got even more heat for ditching the gig for an opportunity at Netflix.

Three hundred and sixty five days later, the initial resentment has cooled down, but general disappointment—or at least apathy—toward that notorious final episode has not. As Vulture's Nate Jones put it, "With 12 months of hindsight, is the episode really as terrible as it seemed back in 2019? Yes."

If we may offer some flickers of optimism from the finale, at least the remaining Starks stayed alive, Sansa was crowned Queen in the North, and we all got a cool GIF out of Daenerys's dragon-wing entrance.

Plus, the stars, who tried their very best with the material they were given, have moved on to other projects—Kit Harington is joining the Marvel universe!—and the show still walked away with 32 Emmy nominations last year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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