The Downfall of Game of Thrones

While the decline of Game of Thrones started in season 5, things plummeted down to new levels with season 7. It represents a further significant drop in writing quality, with essentially every major plot being nonsensical and born of stupidity. Luckily these seasons are shorter.

• The entire plot and its endless fan servicing and becoming a superhero flick
• Tyrion going from clever to stupid for no reason
• Jon Snow becoming Ned Stark v2 but even dumber, when the point of his character was to make him different than Ned
• Invisible fleets and Euron the goofball
• Inconsistent timeline

Season 7 is when Game of Thrones completely stopped being Game of Thrones, and instead turned into a poor ripoff of The Avengers. Truly; instead of being a show about deadly political intrigue, believable wars and battles, oh so human characters we love and hate and are always in peril, season 7 is a show about a group of now legendary superheroes banding together to destroy what seems to be the ultimate evil threat. Sound familiar?

The first major plot mistake of season 7 is the entire plan put forth by Daenerys and Tyrion on how to conquer Westeros. They want to conquer it almost by… not conquering it. Daenerys has around 8,000 Unsullied (spear infantry, less by now but close enough), tens of thousands of Dothraki (light, mobile cavalry), and the support of House Tyrell and at least some of their vassals (massive force) and Dorne (another massive force) and a good chunk of the Greyjoy fleet under Yara. And three fully grown dragons. Nobody would stand a chance. She has the superior force on land and a strong one at sea, with dragons potentially rendering any hostile fleets useless.

The first thing she should conquer is the capital, King’s Landing, which will fall EASILY even without the dragons. Yet Dany and Tyrion choose not to, because apparently we’re supposed to believe the only way they can conquer King’s Landing is by burning the whole city to the ground and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents? Which happens anyway in season 8, by the way.

No. With control of the south (the Reach and Dorne, doesn’t get much better than that) which is the source of most of the food supplies for King’s Landing, and the dragons and such overwhelming numbers, she merely has to defeat any forces in the field (which she does, easily), lay siege to the city, and use the fully obedient dragons to burn down some of the walls just to make an entrance for your army, and perhaps burn down the Red Keep. Minimal civilian casualties and the war would be won in two steps really.

Instead, Dany and Tyrion decide to try to take the city without direct violence, an idiotic plan bound to fail and it does. Like Sun Tzu said, “Attack him where he is unprepared”. King’s Landing was not prepared for these forces. She could’ve easily taken the city while having full control over the damn primary supply route for it!

After this asinine plot, the season then focuses on having your favorite group of GoT superheroes go beyond the wall, alone in hostile territory surrounded by over 100,000 undead, just to incapacitate one wight and bring it back to King’s Landing to show the world the true threat (which isn’t the true threat anyway, as we learned in season 8). This is incredibly stupid on every level: first of all, this is an unrealistic suicide mission, such that nobody would ever sanction it. Second, they don’t have the time to travel across more than half of the damn continent and back to do this, but then again characters are seemingly teleporting by now so I guess this doesn’t matter (this is sarcasm by the way).

But lastly, Tyrion of all people would know that Cersei is irrational and cannot be reasoned with. Yet they risk everything on this suicide mission just to take a stab at an impossible task? This is probably the dumbest plot in the entire show right here.

This is the plot in season 7 that clearly focuses on fan servicing and doesn’t care about writing quality, since the writing quality is pathetic in every sense of the word. Getting all your favorite superhero characters together (and this is Game of Thrones we’re talking about, characters are not supposed to be portrayed as superheroes as they are here) to fight evil alone. This group of superheroes is really a poor imitation of The Avengers, totally out of place in this show.

I also don’t know why Randall Tarly would join what is clearly the losing side, with an unstable ruler like Cersei. He has more to lose than to gain, so that is most unlike his calculating character.

Or at least the Tyrion we’ve come to know and love throughout the first four seasons and all of the books is dead. The show establishes as early as season 1 that Tyrion is good at the game of thrones, and this continues throughout the series. He is portrayed as the most clever man in Westeros, after his father at least who is now dead, and a surprisingly wise ruler. But in season 7 he turns into a fool. Sure, everyone mistakes, but to make the obvious mistakes described just above is inexcusable.

And as with the previous season, his wits and sense of humor are still on leave.

Way back when in the show and books, Jon Snow must sacrifice his honor for the greater good when he kills Qhorin Halfhand to become a spy within the Wildlings. This is the type of decision that Ned Stark always struggled immensely with, with mixed success: he sacrificed his honor to protect Jon Snow by naming him his bastard child, but he refused to sacrifice his honor at two critical moments that led to his demise. Of course I refer to the events during season 1 when he warns Cersei that he had discovered the truth and would be informing Robert of it, warning her to flee. The other failure happens shortly after, when Robert dies and Renly offers to work with Ned to imprison Cersei and Joffrey and seize the throne. Ned would not sacrifice his honor at these two pivotal moments, and these mistakes cost him his life.

Jon Snow, being the bastard that nobody cares for, is portrayed as being different from Ned and not making the same mistakes. This was shown when he killed Qhorin Halfhand, when he threw his vows away for Ygritte, when he made the deadly gamble to let Wildlings south of the wall, and when he threw his vows away again to aid Stannis Baratheon in his quest for the throne. Jon Snow does what needs to be done.

But the show writers forgot about this. Jon Snow breaks character in a huge way when he refuses to lie to Cersei of all people, refusing to give up his support for Daenerys’ claim as Queen. The real Jon Snow would’ve done his best to make a convincing lie here, but then again the real Jon Snow won’t be in this position in the first place because the books aren’t so poorly written that things will even get to this point.

Do you see anything in the picture above? Well, you’re not supposed to, since apparently Euron Greyjoy’s fleet (I struggle to call him Euron Greyjoy since he really isn’t him) is invisible. How else are we supposed to believe his entire fleet sneak attacks Yara’s fleet out in the open? Once again, in Game of Thrones there is no such thing as scouting, and apparently nobody on Yara’s fleet was on deck with their eyes open for the longest time.

Meanwhile, this season solidifies that Euron’s mysterious, intriguing character from the books is gone, replaced by a goofball who spends his time making bad jokes and grabbing his junk. No depth to his character whatsoever, nothing redeeming.

We’re supposed to believe our gang of superheroes traveled across more than half the continent and back with the world standing still during this time. We’re supposed to believe Highgarden, one of the most defensible castles in Westeros, falls in a pinch to the Lannisters. Theon Greyjoy also apparently has teleportation powers… honestly pretty much everyone does this season. During season 7 characters travel immense distances and the world stands still during that time, also that travel will often take place just in between some scenes and never take longer than an episode.

Let’s wrap this article up on the next page.

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