I don’t think anyone who loves Game of Thrones needs reminding that the last season (and particularly that Season 8 series finale) did not please a lot of people. In fact, after years of being an Emmy-winning, pretty much adored, landmark hit for HBO, 2019 saw fans turn on the drama very quickly as they questioned the combined talents of creators/showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff, and their creative team. As you might expect with the fantasy having such a rabid fanbase, the duo still gets asked about the finale five years later, and have now talked about getting “bogged down” in people’s opinions.
What Do Game Of Thrones’ Showrunners Say About The Finale And Public Opinion Now?
As hard as it is to even get a show on the air, much less have it be as popular as Game of Thrones was in its heyday, it’s got to be even more difficult to figure out how to end that series. We’ve seen hit shows deliver some contentious endings before, but GOT might sit at the top of that heap for how polarizing the series finale was. David Benioff and Dan Weiss knew they were in trouble with a lot of fans in the days leading up to the finale, as they proudly announced that they would spend the day it aired hiding from fans.
When speaking with The Hollywood Reporter recently, they were asked about all of the negative criticism surrounding Season 8, with Benioff responding:
You always hope everyone’s going to love anything you do and it would’ve been great if 100 percent of people loved it, but they didn’t. You can get so bogged down in public opinion that you spend your whole life googling things and trying to find people who felt one way or the other way.
Though I wasn’t overly fond of GOT Season 8 or the series finale, I certainly didn’t hate much of it and was very aware of the complete uphill battle the showrunners had to bring such a popular series to a close in a satisfying way. If you’re trying to stay true to the story you created in the best way possible, but also paying attention to the (sometimes wildly different) opinions of all the fans/critics, you will absolutely not hit your intended target when writing a series finale. There will be too many cooks in that kitchen, as they say.
Benioff pointed out another extreme downside to tuning into public opinion on your creative work which I hadn’t previously thought of. Let’s say you decide to turn Daenerys Targaryen into a complete tyrant and add Mad Queen, Killer Of Innocents as one of her titles. A lot of people hate it. And after you read dozens (or maybe hundreds) of those opinions, you may become slightly obsessed with finding people who felt the decision made sense. Then you just get stuck in a never ending loop of “Three thousand fans hated X. I wonder if I can find three thousand who loved it?” Bam! You are now “bogged down in public opinion.”
Apparently, though, considering the juggernaut that GOT was, it wasn’t even just the negative feedback that caused issues for the creatives. As Weiss noted:
Even super positive feedback makes you feel weird and teeth-grindy and on edge. There’s a drug quality to the feedback, and as soon as we went cold turkey — the last time I googled myself was in 2013 — the ambient stress level in our lives dropped by about 50 percent overnight.
Oh, boy. If you dream of success like Weiss and Benioff had with GOT, take note. It sounds like once you get it, it might be even harder to focus, because not only might you succumb to the “drug quality” of it, but the pressure of having all eyes on you and a lot of now very high expectations might lead to “weird,” “teeth-grindy and on edge” feelings. Kinda hard to create peacefully under those circumstances, I’d guess.
So, they took themselves out of the public opinion game as much as they could and just stopped directly looking at the stuff. Something they’ll probably continue to do as their book-to-screen adaptation, 3 Body Problem, arrives for those with a Netflix subscription on March 21.
