GoT Finale We Deserved But Didn't Get: George Martin's Original Outline
One of the most highly regarded shows of all time, Game of Thrones, ended spectacularly bad – according to fans.
The show's Rotten Tomatoes score never dropped below 90% until its final season at 55%, and its final episode earned a meager 4.0 IMDb rating. George R.R. Martin's original vision for his source novels may eventually give fans the ending they desire.
HBO's Game of Thrones series is based on Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, the first novel of which shared a title with the show. His latest release was 2011's A Dance with Dragons, soon to be followed by The Winds of Winter and the final novel, A Dream of Spring.
The current lack of an ending to the story led HBO's showrunners to create their own for Game of Thrones, though Martin worked as a producer and consultant of the show, occasionally working on their scripts. But the series and show have often taken wildly different turns, often leading to bitterness from fans of the original source material.
It's not yet known how A Song of Ice and Fire will conclude, though logic states that it will make different choices from the poorly-received finale of Game of Thrones. But Martin's original pitch for his series of novels might shed some light on the direction of the last two books.
Martin wrote a letter for his publisher in 1993 that has been available for reading, though with a few blacked out sections. In it, he describes his first outline of the direction for the series, originally meant to only be a trilogy. Since then, it's ballooned to at least seven books since 1996.
Much has changed since his first vision of A Song of Ice and Fire. The names of the characters have remained, but several events have been altered.
As a summary of his outline: Catelyn, Bran, and Arya sought the help of the Night's Watch after Ned's death. After they refused to help her, she went beyond the wall for help and died at the hands of the White Walkers.
After Tyrion removed Joffrey from the Iron Throne, Jaime took the thrown by killing everyone else in succession, then framed Tyrion for the murders. Tyrion then flipped, taking the side of the Starks.
All of that information has been previously available for fans. More recently, fans have uncovered the blacked-out texts that described what Martin envisioned for the novel's end.
He intended for Bran to be sitting on the Iron Throne by the end of the first novel, put there with the help of Tyrion. That's just what happened at the end of the show – Bran the Broken became King of the Six Kingdoms after he agreed to independence for the North.
Fans have spent years waiting for Martin's more recent novels. His first three came in a five-year span; they waited another five years for the next, then six. Martin said in October that he's "75% done" with The Winds of Winter, meaning it will likely be at least 12 years between his fifth and sixth installments in A Song of Ice and Fire. There is no timeline for the seventh.
No one will know what Martin has in store for his finale until his last two books are finished, which might be at least a decade away.