"Game of Thrones" Finale

Perhaps like millions of others, you've been watching Game of Thrones, HBO'S epic story that unfolded over eight seasons, beginning in 2011.

Hopefully, you know that it's fantasy, not history. 

Many of the settings, however, are very real, and you would enjoy visiting them regardless of whether you've watched the show.  

In Seville, for example, you can visit the Alcazar, which includes the "Water Gardens of Dorne" from GOT.

Built in the 12th Century, the Alcazar is still used by the royal family when in Seville.  Seville is a dramatically gorgeous city in a country rich with its own very-real intrigues.

I believe the first time I heard of the show was five and a half years ago in Northern Ireland, when our local guide Alistair, whom we'd engaged to take us to historical sites of direct interest to us personally, asked if we wanted to see the famous canopied road used in the show.

By then, there already were Game of Thrones tours popping up in the ever-adaptive, customer-oriented excursion industry.

When Alistair asked if we were fans of Game of Thrones, Jay and Amy both said they were. Julie asked them if we'd like it, and Amy said, "Dad might, but you wouldn't." Jay smiled and nodded knowingly, adding that it contained a lot of graphic sex and violence.

Between that caveat and the fact that I'm not generally a fan of fantasy, preferring more history-based stories, we didn't think about it too much until we went to Seville last year, where another guide brought up the show.

We repeated our guide's story about Jamie Lannister to the kids and learned Jay and Amy were both independently still watching the show on opposite coasts.  As the eighth and final season unfolded, they each began attending Game of Thrones viewing parties with friends in the cities where they live, like fans in other cities around the world. 

Leading up to the first episode of the final season, HBO ran a marathon of the first seven seasons.  With the miracle of modern technology, Julie set our DVR to record the whole series.

We started with episode one and knew early that warnings of sex and violence were justified, but it definitely had more to the show than simply that, so we carried on.  After episode three, we had a technical glitch, or more correctly probably conflicting recordings, that resulted in a gap of three missing shows, but we just skipped ahead and relied on our minds to fill in the story holes.

Binge-watching two or three episodes a night, we moved rapidly through the seasons, though we still wouldn't catch up in time to watch the series finale live.

After season seven, episode six, we had another gap of two shows before the final season.  By this point, we were definitely into the details of the characters and plotlines, so we signed up for a trial version of Prime HBO so that we could fill in the holes prior to beginning the final season.

We decided to go all the way back to the beginning and watch the first seven episodes, repeating a few, to lay a solid foundation for the show that didn't rely on our best guesses to watch the last two of season seven followed by the final season.

At this point, I will provide a spoiler alert, because I am going to give you my opinion of how the series should have ended.  Yes, put me on the side of people who think HBO blew the ending.

As with most epic movies, this was a hero's journey, but there were many character arcs that needed to tie together and many heroes in their own storylines.

I'd guess Amy was pulling for the Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen, to win it all  Daenerys certainly had a great character arc and became very heroic from a controlled, timid start.  If she hadn't killed a million citizens who didn't need to die for her to win, then I could live with an ending of her marrying Jon Snow and living happily ever-after in the typical Disney fashion, sans the whole ick factor of marrying her own nephew even after learning who he is.

By the way, while that seems sick, keep in mind that marrying cousins wasn't that unusual in royal families.  In the case of the last Habsburg King of Spain, Charles II, his eight grandparents were all descendants of Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad.  As the old joke song goes, he was his own grandpa.

The joint rule of Daenerys and Jon Snow nonetheless wouldn't have been the most satisfactory possible ending for me as a screenwriter.

Because Daenerys had peaked so early as the Breaker of Chains, her most interesting hero's journey concluded early on.  Once she had wantonly destroyed everything in King's Landing, she had no place interesting to go but down from a story perspective. As a history buff, it is a similar story to what we've seen play out frequently with leaders who build popular followings but are never satisfied to rest on their laurels, taking it a step too far, like Alexander the Great or Fidel Castro.  It's the reason we have elections and term limits in the United States.

Jon Snow, for me, is the greatest hero of the story.  He never wants the role of leader, but keeps getting thrust into it.  He always makes the hard, unpopular choice to do the right thing.  He would gladly just be a free man, but the call to action always seeks him out, leading him on to another hero's journey from which he returns with new skills needed to face the next crisis.

It turns out that in the books, there actually is a separate character, Aegon Targaryen, whose claim to the throne is known early on, so the series has a very cool twist having Jon Snow unaware that he is Aegon until the end.  There are lots of other changes from the books, including other characters omitted, combined or changed considerably in other ways.

Anyway, back to the HBO ending, Jon stabbing Daenerys after proclaiming her to be his queen seems very far out of character for him, to me, though I guess that surprise is what the show wanted in the ending.  I liked that unlike politicians, he refused to tell people what they wanted to hear, instead being compelled to tell the truth, even though most times it put him in a bad light initially.

I think Jon Snow being torn between his love for what Daenerys might have been with his disdain with what she had just done in killing innocents of King's Landing should have gone unresolved for him, leaving the viewer to wonder which way he would go.  Would he moderate her through marriage or would he wage war against her as his new enemy?

At that point of his greatest angst, Jon Snow would see a group of wayward waifs, representing all the surviving downtrodden citizens of King's Landing who he perceives to be, counter to his original premise, actually grateful to have been freed by their new Queen. Yes, we've seen many die, including Jamie and his twin sister Cersei, who were buried in different falling rubble than the tons that covered the Hound and Arya, but some who had been oppressed their whole lives had survived, much like the slaves in Meereen. As they get closer, Jon can see that they carry brightly-colored bouquets of wildflowers, a stark contrast to the ash covered gray of almost everything else.

How had such beauty survived the terrible destruction?

Daenerys barely notices their approach as she accepts the acclaim of the surviving Unsullied and Dothrakis, who all respect her need for revenge against Queen Cersei and her forces for beheading Daenerys's only female friend, killing one of her "children" and slaughtering so many of their friends in battles for the benefit of ungrateful Northerners, both here and at the battle against the dead which Cersei had avoided (costing Daenerys another of her dragons).

One particularly sweet-looking child hands Daenerys the most beautiful flowers of all, and as the new Queen accepts them, the child pushes a knife hidden amid the flowers into her heart.  The child runs off, with Jon Snow, Dothrakis, the Unsullied and the dragon all in hot pursuit.  She's almost caught, but somehow makes her way to a ship, where she takes off what is actually a perfect mask, revealing her true identity is Arya Stark, who had somehow survived a collapsing city and climbed out of the rubble, as she sails into the sunset.  FADE OUT.