In the latest edition of “Please Stop or Else You’ll Ruin This For the Rest of Us,” Game of Thrones fans are petitioning for a season eight re-do ahead of the show’s most recent episode, “The Bells.” The polarizing season has set off a firestorm of negative reaction about story direction, character development and everything in between.
The petition has apparently gotten over 400,000 signatures as of Thursday morning with the intention of hitting 500,000 signatures. No matter what you think about GoT season eight, this petition is madness and completely illogical and will only dampen the excitement all fans should be feeling as we head into the series finale.
Ok, so, here’s the deal: People magazine is just one of the many outlets reporting that a Change.org petition was created a few days before “The Bells” aired on Sunday, May 12. This implies that there was dissatisfaction with how the season had progressed so far and Dany’s destruction of King’s Landing did nothing to curtail the fandom’s dissatisfaction. In fact, after the episode aired, reactions over the way the story handled major plot and character developments was so negative, there was a widespread public outcry against the show. Most of the criticism was aimed at GoT showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who were also in charge of writing season eight.
With the petition acting as a physical symbol of a certain portion of the GoT fandom’s dissatisfaction over season eight, all I really want to tell them is:
The petition’s description, which explains why this thing exists, is enough to make you want to destroy it with wildfire: “David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on. This series deserves a final season that makes sense. Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!”
Inhales deeply and tries to remain calm.
It’s true that Benioff and Weiss are all on their own when it comes to developing the season eight story and mapping out how they wanted it all to play out. With season seven finishing in 2017, this process ostensibly took them a decent amount of time as the other GoT departments took time to get prepped to shoot season eight in 2018. We’ll actually get to see how the production process on season eight went down in a new HBO documentary, Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, so it will be irrefutably clear that everyone worked their hardest, so we at least have to respect that whether we, the fans, like how this season’s story is playing out, the effort put into making it happen deserves our applause.
Fans don’t have the right to demand an entire re-do of a season. You cannot just get 500,000 signatures and send it to HBO as evidence the season they back for an award-winning, beloved phenomenon of a show that’s been a part of their network for nearly a decade is somehow unworthy of being embraced and should be redone. Millions of dollars and countless hours of work have been poured into this season. Signing that petition implies that you don’t appreciate this show as much as you think you do, nor do you understand how the television industry works and think that a network will bend to your will because you e-signed a week-old petition. Grow up.
There is a chance that the GoT series finale will provide a somewhat satisfactory ending or, at the very least, tie up some big loose ends. We’ve stuck with the show this long and it deserves our support until the very end. Stop throwing shade at this series you’ve loved just because it isn’t going the way you envisioned and go write some fan fiction if you’re so emotionally chafed by what’s happening. The rest of us have a show to watch.
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