After Game of Thrones Season 8 Disaster, Here's What Martin Regrets Most
That the final season of Game of Thrones was a disaster is not really up for debate. It was widely panned even before the last episode which proved to be sour icing on a pretty tasteless cake.
And it wasn't just fans that were peeved by the way the show just kind of petered out amid poor writing, some bizarre storylines and a conclusion that made no real sense. Some of the cast have been critical of season 8 too. As has George RR Martin who wrote the original book series on which the series was based.
Martin's books gave GoT creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss plenty of source material to adapt for the first few seasons of the show. As always, the book series was able to delve a little deeper into the goings in Westeros and the relationships between characters, but the heart of the story was already there. The role of the showrunners was to turn it into something that would make blockbuster viewing.
And boy, did they do that!
However, the original plan was always that the book series would stay ahead of the TV show. This way, there would always be source material and the TV show would continue to be an adaptation of Martin's vision.
Of course, that didn't happen. And few fans will argue against the belief that the show took a turn for the worse after the series leapfrogged Martin's books.
And the author now says that he regrets allowing that to happen. With a five-book head start, Martin says he "never thought they'd catch up". When they did, he says, it became "strange" as "the show was ahead and going in somewhat different directions".
He now wishes that he had stayed ahead of the books. Particularly as, when HBO got involved, there were already four books in print. And the fifth was released in 2011 shortly after the show was first screened.
For the most part, though, Game of Thrones remained faithful to the events of A Song of Ice and Fire until the end of season five. Benioff and Weiss were privy to the general outline of where Martin intended to take the story from there on. But they had their own ideas too. And by this time, they were in front.
Martin is on record saying that his series will end differently from the TV show. But there's another twist in this tale. Martin has been involved in the Game of Thrones spinoffs. Now, this could be good news for the shows, but it does raise the question of whether his original book series will ever hit the bookshelves.