Winter came. It’s done. It’s over. Now, all that’s left is the destruction. That’s basically the best way to describe the aftermath of Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” series finale. Watched by a record number of folks on HBO, the episode instantly polarized fans and left many wondering how much of series’ creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss took from author George R.R. Martin and how much they ignored.
Well, according to Martin, fans of the novels will find out. Seriously. He swears he’s going to finish those books.
“Winter is coming, I told you, long ago… and so it is,” Martin wrote on his blog. “‘The Winds of Winter’ is very late, I know, I know, but it will be done. I won’t say when, I’ve tried that before, only to burn you all and jinx myself… but I will finish it, and then will come ‘A Dream of Spring.’”
Whether you believe the author or not about the certainty that he’ll finish his world famous novel series is another issue entirely. That being said, in a perfect world, he will write the last two books and close out the story that he began decades ago. And Martin says that when the final book is written, his version of the ending might be different than what Benioff and Weiss gave fans on Sunday. Or maybe it won’t be different. Or it will. Who knows?
How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different?” wrote Martin. “Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.”
Take that for what it’s worth.
Obviously, the books were on a different trajectory than the series, as many plot points from Martin’s source material was either altered or scrapped entirely when adapted. So, even on the most basic level, whatever ending the author dreams up will be inherently different than what was shown.
And about that ending. Oh boy. People were divided, to say the least.
But then again, viewers have been divided for weeks, as HBO’s “Game of Thrones” stumbled its way to the finish line. Fans were so outraged, that over 1 million of them signed an online petition to have the network “remake” the entire Season 8. And now that the dust has settled, some of the actors aren’t too pleased with this idea.
Speaking to The Wrap, Queen of the North Sophie Turner and King Bran the Broken himself, Isaac Hempstead Wright talked about the petition.
“And it’s the way with every series finale or every final season, if it doesn’t go the way that [fans] planned, they start panicking and they hate it and they don’t want to know about it because it’s not what they wanted,” said Turner. “But the beauty of ‘Game of Thrones’ is that it throws curveballs at you.”
She added, “However, I do think the petition and all of that is very disrespectful to the crew and the filmmakers who have slaved over this for 10 years and shot 11 months for this final season and did 50-something night shoots. It just feels like there is a level of disrespect there that I definitely don’t agree with.”
Hempstead agrees with his co-star and said, “Well, I mean, I think the petition is just kind of a weird, juvenile gesture. It’s so irrelevant to start petitioning to remake a series. But I’m trying to put that stuff out of my mind. It’s just nonsense, really. People have an absolute right to react how they like, that’s totally fair and we’ve said from the beginning, not everyone is gonna like the ending.”
Either way, it’s over now. At least on TV. At least until the prequel starts up, presumably next year. Then fans will have a whole new series to debate about.