The ending of GoT is broadly the ending of his books. He told the producers early on how it was supposed to end. They didn't do a good job because they aren't good writers and wanted to go do star wars, which they then lost because they fucked up got so badly. Now that everyone hates the ending grrm is even more paralyzed because he can't write a better ending.
His writing style also fucks him up. He writes organically so he just let's the characters lead him. This has messed with his broad plot ideas from the jump.
There was supposed to a time jump after ASOS to let the characters and dragons grow. Instead we got 2 extra books he didn't plan for to bridge that gap.
I believe him when he says he's written a lot. It just that he struggles to edit and has to rewrite so much because he'll organically go off on another new plot line unexpectedly that affects everything else.
Yup the series was doomed from the moment we didn't have that timeskip IMO. He said the reason he didn't go through with it is because he found himself writing too many flashbacks. His "gardener" writing style essentially means that each of his characters is equivalent to a protagonist in any other series, their own perspectives need to be fully developed which means creating lore and a host of other characters in their location and story. Each additional characters adds exponentially more complication to the overall world.
GRRM's approach is what makes his world so amazing to read, because it feels real and grounded, but it's also his inevitable downfall as the project becomes far too large for one man to handle as each new character, each chapter, each location adds exponentially more complication than the last.
GRRM abandoned the 5-year timeskip because he didn't want to summarize all these massive geopolitical events like Daenerys struggling to rule in Slaver's Bay, Jon becoming Lord Commander, Cersei's misrule, Stannis establishing himself in north, origins of Aegon/Young Griff. But by deciding to include these, he created an enormous amount of new story that itself generated even more unresolved threads, thus his solution was worse than his initial problem.
Thus, I think the lack of timeskip sunk it. Now the characters are still too young, we're bogged down in a myriad of side quests and rabbit holes, not-so-important characters that aren't part of the core narrative, and the original core cast and nowhere near where they need to be.
Honestly, there are things about the ending that I don't like even if you made them make perfect narrative sense, because it's just a bad fucking idea to begin with, namely who he had the idea of having become King.
Like, sure, the show's explanation was flaming dogshit, but even aside from that, the notion of putting a semi-omniscient alien-esque entity in charge of everything is a TON of problems just waiting to happen, at least as I see it (and that's just to begin with).
Plus every actual wizard knows you go for the position of advisor-who-puppets-the-king-from-the-shadows. It gives you more time to slip out the back when the regicide shows up at the door.
That, and having a king who cannot have children while maintaining a hereditary monarchy is a pretty bad idea. They're kicking the can down to the next generation to solve that one.
And that's a problem how? It was never supposed to be a happy ending, lots of people just missed the memo (understandably, given how dogshit the writing on the show was)
I thought it was one of the bits that made the most sense out of that entire season. You mean to tell me probably the most powerful magic user alive at the time, who can see everything and affect events through space and time without anybody knowing, yet is widely underestimated because of his physical condition, "happened" to be made king?
Oh wow, what a shocking coincidence! Definitely only happened because the writers are dogshit, and not because it both makes logical sense and serves as an understated "plot twist", if you will (I don't mean "it's unexpected that this person was picked", I mean "the reader thought this person was obviously one of the good guys, but suddenly you have this looming feeling that maybe that was... optimistic")
Yeah the Bran thing made a ton of sense to me as someone who read the books, it's just that without all the hints dropped in the books, it's complete dogshit in execution. Bran Bloodraven, the now omniscient evil god became king? Who else would be made king? There's literally no other contender. The end of the story is the absolute worst most horrible outcome and that's on brand.
The Dany thing also makes sense in a way, but again it's so utterly compressed. She was never going to break the chains, she was always going to become Targaryen mad, but the show just decided that the slow death by a thousand cuts journey they could instead make it into a light switch.
I don't think Bloodraven is supposed to be evil - more of a ruthless good guy and morally gray. He's supposed to be a peak "ends justify the means" guy.
I always thought the Dany thing would make more sense when Tyrion Lannister became more evil after leaving King's Landing (I think he does in the books) and manipulated Dany into burning the city. He said at the end of the process something like he wished he killed everyone in the city
The big issue in the show is Dany and Tyrion became too beloved so the characters were kept upstanding good people.
In the books it is essentially them both being revenge seeking, terrible people at that point and setting them up to feedback loop off of each other and get worse.
Where show tyrion says “ive lost all urge for revenge i think shed be the best queen” Book tyrion is on the opposite. He thinks Dany would be a shit queen and would likely go Mad Targaryean which is exactly what he wants. Everyone who ever wronged him destroyed.
She was never going to break the chains, she was always going to become Targaryen mad,
I would have preferred idealism worn down by pragmatism and compromise, only to be presented as "mad", and everyone believes it, because Targaryen.
Bran made a ton of sense because the whole narrative, they're showing the power of information and having loyal people in the right places, and that his whole deal. Bran's powers destroy the whole game.
The only thing about the ending i was ok with was dany going insane, just that it happened out of fucking nowhere thay i had an issue with. Evrything else in the ending fucking suuucked. Subversions for the sake of subversion. If a story arc builds up to something happen only for it to not go that way because it was to "obvious" loses its impact if every fucking arc ends thay way.
that’s why it’s a good dark ending. You’re supposed to be deeply concerned that an ancient psychic being manipulated its way to the top of Westeros. It sucks in the show because all the horror and context is removed
Okay Okay. I just did a re-watch with a friend who had never seen it before - and honestly I really enjoyed GoT all over again. After season 6 yes the writing does go downhill noticeably (conversations about cock and dick and pussy etc sound like teenage boys talking) BUT. I didnt hate the ending this time.
If we completely ignore the 'who has a better story than bran' side of it - there's something that Tyrion says that actually makes sense. Daneares (spelling sorry im not going to look it up) wanted to break the wheel - the wheel that was crushing the general public and letting the rich do whatever they wanted. And everyone who was following her was on board with all of that. So putting Bran in charge actually makes sense for this - he's unbiased, knows everything (so any argument can be instantly solved by him knowing who's telling the truth) doesnt want power, doesnt want kids, doesnt desire riches or anything like that, also will live for a really long time. He's the perfect candidate.
I think what ruined it about Bran was his acting and his lines, probably the writes fault, but his character in general was done in a very shit way.
And the whole Danaeres going mental burning everyone was just rushed - you can see how she would have got there in the end - i guess - after a long time of everyone loving John and not liking her and finding out about Johns birth etc. She loved him, she was scorned, hurt, felt like everyone was out to get her. It is still very uncharacteristic of her to burn innocent people though but. I can kind of see how they got there, sort of.
Sidenote: The Night king was essentially a hive mind of dead people, what would have been cool would have been that Bran could form a human hive mind to fight him. You'd still need to kill the night king like they did but it would have been an excellent antidote to the night king to have humans form a hive mind and out manoeuvre the dead.
Nah that would be silly. Agency and individualism is live and the living and what they fight for. What would be better is if he influenced people to go fight using the cloak of religion. Take the mantel of the lord of light, assuming the lord of light is just the work of the three eyed Raven before bran to begin with. (The series doesn't touch on that)
yeah that is the only flaw in my plan. But maybe a hive mind that still leaves them with agency, just the ability to instantly communicate across every mind and coordinate.
But i like your idea too, Bran pretending to be a God would have been pretty cool.
No-uh. That one writter even said that he asked GRRM if Jon Snow was Lyanna's son and he just "gave him a look" confirming it. There's also characters playing for the throne that never even appeared in the show (Danny's "real" baby brother is the one I can name right now, even Stannis is still alive). He gave them bread crumbs for them to finish the, at that point, awful show.
The only thing about GoTs ending that comes from Martin is Bran becoming king. The rest is D&D. The only other thing Martin has confirmed will happen in his books is Stannis burning Shireen.
How many plot points they produced is unknown. What Martin has confirmed is that only two of his plot points where included in the ending of the show. Or to put it another way: Just because the author told the showrunners the ending does not mean the showrunners used the authors ending.
Could Martin be lying? I suppose, but for now we don't have any other evidence than his words.
Sucks because a well told story of Dany slowly going mad the closer she came to the thrown would have been amazing. Especially the part where John(the rightfully Targaryen) ended her life.
I'm assuming the show was supposed to be the ending but they botched it so bad he has to rethink the entire thing.
They needed to do 10 seasons 12 episodes. Hard to keep a cast together that long though. Anyone who has worked a corporate job understands how hard a 10 year project with that many deliverables would be.
Now we are just stuck with the shit rushed ending from the show and never knowing if we get the ending we deserve from all of our support and money. He could literally hire a team of the best writers in the world and have them help.
That was what was said a long time ago, but since then he has confirmed that his ending will not be the same as the show. He has not explained what will be different though, of course.
Ahh ic, I know he had a part in the ending I didnt know the ending was what he had in mind for the series. Honestly I dont understand the hate the got ending from the show I liked it. Of course it would of been nice if it was more fleshed out and led up to it more.
To my knowledge it never was confirmed nor denied that he played a part in the show's ending. We simply don't know.
GOT got so much hate because it simply was a shit production at the end. Logic flaws, destroyed/reversed character arcs that have been built for years. The battle at winterfell was, by all means, the shittiest battle I've ever seen of a show with such a budget. It's less about the ending (albeit also stupid shit), but there were so many obvious errors in the logic of it, I don't see a way to excuse any of it. And the aftermath in the next episodes made it even worse.
"Well, to a degree. I mean, I think … the major points of the ending will be things that I told them, you know, five or six years ago," Martin said. "But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added."
BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): I can’t even describe that meeting. It was like learning the meaning of life. Like God was coming down and telling you the future. We knew at that point that we were going to catch up. So it was learning a lot of these secrets and then in your mind figuring out, “What of that will work in the context of our show?”
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (author, co–executive producer): It wasn’t easy for me. I didn’t want to give away my books. It’s not easy to talk about the end of my books. Every character has a different end. I told them who would be on the Iron Throne, and I told them some big twists like Hodor and “hold the door,” and Stannis’s decision to burn his daughter. We didn’t get to everybody by any means. Especially the minor characters, who may have very different endings.
DAN WEISS: What makes the books so great is that George doesn’t make meticulous blueprints for every beat of this story, then fill in the blanks by dutifully going from A to B to C, fleshing out an outline. George didn’t have ultra-detailed versions of the last hundred pages of his story figured out.
DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): George often used the metaphor of being a gardener instead of an architect. He plants the seeds and watches them grow. Even if we wanted to be gardeners, we couldn’t. We had to plan out entire seasons. We had to write a detailed outline and provide that to production. Writing a novel is a solo endeavor, and television is a team sport. I’m horribly mixing my metaphors, but the basic point is George was a gardener, and we had to be architects to plan out the seasons meticulously so they get shot and were ready in time. It’s just a fundamental difference between writing novels and TV series.
That's what people didn't like about the ending though, that none of it was really written out well. Dany going insane as a Targaryen makes sense; the way it came about in the final season destroying King's Landing didn't feel foreshadowed or well reasoned.
GRRM left the show far before the ending; D&D explicitly stopped following his advice around like,
Season 4 and just started doing their own stuff and got frustrated and left. They did the ending entirely on their own, hence why it made absolutely no sense
This is not true ,Martin has said he left because he wanted to focus on the books. He even had a countdown where his edtor told him in seconds how much time he had to deliver the sixth book so he could send it to the showrunners, and then he blew that out. He talked about it in his blog.
While there were tensions with stuff like the showrunners wanting to cut Lady Stoneheart, at this point I wonder if they did the right thing, because apparently keeping everything made Martin not being able to write an ending.
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u/Zardif Big ol' bacon buttsack 5h ago
The ending of GoT is broadly the ending of his books. He told the producers early on how it was supposed to end. They didn't do a good job because they aren't good writers and wanted to go do star wars, which they then lost because they fucked up got so badly. Now that everyone hates the ending grrm is even more paralyzed because he can't write a better ending.