Thoughts: Game of Thrones: The Gathering
Winter has come. Game of Thrones has reached the final stretch and everything is now converging onto one big, upcoming battle. This past season we got plenty of our favorite characters finally meeting one another as well as meeting their end. Obvious spoiler alert ahead, so you have been warned.
At the end of the previous season, we saw Daenerys sailing with her army across the sea to the island of Westeros and Jon Snow being named King of the North after the epic Battle of the Bastards. We also saw Sam finally make to the Citadel to begin Maester training and Cersei sit upon the Iron Throne as Queen of the seven kingdoms after decimating her enemies in the High Septon. It's safe to say that things were finally coming into place for this past season. This was the jumping point for the beginning of Season 7 for Game of Thrones and immediately put everyone on a crash course towards one another, eventually having a majority of the characters meet in the final episode. Everything this season felt like it was sped up in terms of a timeline, but that's because the show is coming to an end and all of our favorite characters need to be ready to eventually take on the White Walker threat.
This season is the first one to go off the books because there are no more books to go off. The show officially passed the writings of George RR Martin at the end of last season and now we have entered into what I like to refer to as the "Hollywoodization" of the show. Things that we, as an audience, have wanted to see in the show have finally happened which include Daenerys and Jon Snow finally meeting and then hooking up. We also see Arya and Bran Stark make their way back home to Winterfell, both changed completely from their long journeys taken to survive. While we know George R.R. Martin is working with the Game of Thrones production team, it has become clear that he is no longer in control of the story. We are seeing everything that has been building up come to a nice conclusion the way Hollywood would usually write a fantasy story. The heroes are starting to win and the antagonists are getting their due. This isn't the way Game of Thrones has been forged for us in previous seasons and you can tell that HBO is now firmly in control of the ending.
And just like that, we're down to one final season of Game of Thrones. Only 6 episodes are left until the end of a TV era. This past season isn't really award winning and nothing quite stood out, but rather just moving pieces into place for an epic finale. While we wait patiently and discuss what we want in the coming months, one thing can be certain: the dead are coming.
- Mike