Peter Dinklage Explains GoT Backlash: "They Were Just Mad We Dumped Them"
It seems that almost everybody has a view on the Game of Thrones finale, what should have happened and whether it was the right time for the show to finish.
Certainly, George RR Martin has been vocal in stating that he believed there was enough material for at least 2 further seasons, if not more.
But Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) believes the end of season 8, in 2019, was the right time to end things.
Following comments from Martin (who authored A Song of Ice & Fire) that the show should have continued, Dinklage was asked for his opinion by The New York Times. And he was pretty forthright in his view saying, "It was the right time. No less, no more."
The actor went on to say that it was important for the show not to "wear out (its) welcome". Although he acknowledged its broad appeal and mass popularity rendered that concern somewhat unlikely.
According to Dinklage, the backlash from fans following the final episode was more a case of them being "dumped" by the show rather than any particular gripe with how it actually ended.
He said that with Game of Thrones going off air, fans "didn't know what to do with their Sunday nights" and subsequently "backlashed" about it.
In fact, he went as far as to say that fans were in uproar over exactly what they had liked about the show for its 8 seasons.
The show's creators, he said, had always created storylines in which, as a viewer, "you thought one thing and they delivered another. He makes a fair point.
The show was, in the words of Dinklage, "really good at…breaking preconceived notions''.
He described how "villains became heroes" and "heroes became villains'' throughout the show, and the way in which, while fans from across the globe loved speculating and debating about where the story was going next, in his opinion, "nobody's (version of the story) was as good as what the show delivered".
At the time, there were petitions for the ending to be remade as it failed (in the eyes of many) to deliver a satisfactory conclusion to a show they had dedicated their Sunday evenings to for years.
But you do wonder whether there was any possible ending that could have placated the millions. As Dinklage points out, the one thing the writers couldn't do was give viewers what they expected.
And by deliberately opting to support TV protocol and provide what everybody wanted to see, they were automatically at loggerheads with the majority of the fanbase in one regard.
Making Jon Snow king may have been the happy ending fans (kind of) wanted. But it would have been a feeble end to an epic series that would almost certainly have received equal amounts of criticism.
And with that storyline something of a taboo, any other finale was only ever going to appeal to a handful of viewers.