Game of Thrones Showrunners ‘Sort of Forgot’ Geography Existed After Season 1

Summary:

• The lush greenery of the King’s Landing’s surroundings suddenly changed to a lifeless desert in the last season of Game of Thrones.
• Some fans tried to provide an in-universe explanation for this phenomenon, but the majority opted for ridiculing GoT’s showrunners.
• The most likely reason for the biome change was the need to showcase an army surrounding King’s Landing that required a flat and open area.

Game of Thrones saw many characters grow during its eight seasons, and some locations changed forever as the result of several wars and global events, but nothing comes in comparison with what happened to King’s Landing. The entire city seemingly teleported to Dorne, and no one batted an eye.

King’s Landing Keeps Changing in Game of Thrones

When we first visit the city of King’s Landing with the Stark family, it’s a sight to behold. The capital of the Seven Kingdoms is located near the ocean, surrounded by lush green forests, and has an entire mountain next to it — magnificent scenery no matter where you look. King’s Landing deserves to be called the Gem of Westeros!

Unfortunately, it’s not entirely accurate. In the first aerial shots of King’s Landing, there’s a noticeable absence of the Dragonpit, one of the most iconic capital landmarks. The only giant buildings that stick out are the Red Keep and the Sept of Baelor; the Dragonpit will be missing up until Season 7 when it’s first needed.

Throughout the show, King’s Landing undergoes several changes that are easy to spot thanks to the aerial shots. Nothing too dramatic happens, however; the nature around the city may deviate insignificantly, but the lush greenery and the mountain are still there. But sure enough, that can’t last for too long, can it?

In Season 8, King’s Landing looks completely different. Suddenly, the biggest city in Westeros gets teleported into a desert: there are no more forests around it, and the huge mountain is nowhere to be seen. The capital of the Seven Kingdoms is surrounded by sand now, and everyone acts like nothing significant happened.

How is that even possible — and, more importantly, what happened to the city?

Fans Try to Justify King’s Landing’s Glow-Down

Over at the biggest Game of Thrones subreddit, fans tried to explain this phenomenon. Three main approaches immediately emerged: the funny, the coping, and the realistic. All of them have a point, which is rare.

Some fans tried to provide a “lore” justification for the dramatic landscape changes around King’s Landing: according to them, it was all thanks to the war efforts.

“As an in-universe explanation, perhaps the trees were chopped down because the city expected to be sieged. It's easier to defend yourself if you don't need to try and catch a look of your enemy between trees and shrubbery,” BluejayPrime suggested.

While a valid point, it doesn’t explain why the soil turned into sand — and it definitely provides no background for an entire mountain’s vanishing. That’s why other fans immediately jumped to their favorite activity: ridiculing the showrunners of Game of Thrones. “D&D sort of forgot geography exists” was the most popular explanation, alluding to Benioff and Weiss’s many slips throughout the later seasons.

The more rational part of the community acted as the voice of reason, explaining that those changes were merely cosmetic and tied to the current needs of the show.

“Sometimes, you need to alter the landscape a bit to remove some production constraints or because you didn't know that you would need this location in the future. In S7 and S8, they needed to shoot some scenes with a large number of people outside the KL walls, so they removed the trees/mountains close to that side of the city,” poub06 stated.

This is, of course, a valid point and the most likely explanation for King's Landing’s glow-down. Still, we can’t help but feel like there were more believable ways of tackling the issue that didn’t involve changing the entire biome of such a central location and making it look excruciatingly ugly all of a sudden.