Season 8 feels like a monument to flawed ambition and flailing Peak TV decadence, all massive battle scenes and brainless strategy. There's an odd lack of balance underpinning this last season: Three hours spent on the build-up to the showdown with the Night King, but Daenerys decides to annihilate King's Landing on what feels like a spur-of-the-moment decision. And the hook-up between Jaime ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Brienne ( Gwendoline Christie) felt like a reductive moment for a fascinating double act. The final season of Thrones definitely lost track of too many key characters, banishing Cersei ( Lena Headey) and Sansa ( Sophie Turner) to looming-authority C-plots. Then came the scalding of King's Landing, a major final-act twist that inspired loud debate. First came the battle with the Army of the Dead, a fatality-heavy long night in Winterfell that became immediately infamous for some rather poor lighting decisions. The final six episodes aimed for a double shot of epic-showdown catharsis. Season 5 never quite figured out how to make drama out of bureaucratic stasis, and so every season since has seemed like an eventful counter-reaction. The rest of the season can't compare, unfortunately, the occasional Dragon cameo aside. There's a standout episode here, barely essential but wondrous to behold: The unexpectedly epic "Hardhome," which adapts a distant skirmish from the books into death-metal glory. Years past his prime, poor terrible Stannis ( Stephen Dillane) tries to do something. In the post-Tywin ( Charles Dance) King's Landing power vacuum, a new strain of religious fundamentalism adds a curious new quirk to Westerosi courtly politics. In positions of authority, Jon ( Kit Harington) and Daenerys ( Emilia Clarke) struggle to keep various factions united. Requiring a near-total reboot in the wake of season 4's wondrous calamities, Thrones began its second half with its characters embedded in frustratingly unfantastical perils. Sand Snake jokes aside, a serious scholar could find a lot to praise in the show's least-loved season.
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