It’s been one year since the mega-hyped «Game of Thrones» series finale. How does it play now?
For two months last year, in April and May 2019,Game of Thrones took over my life, and my life was Game of Thrones. I reckon I’m not the only one. It was the final season of one of the biggest shows ever, the last piece of the TV monoculture with more Emmy wins and nominations than any scripted series. As someone who writes about TV for a living, it was nice to cover something that everyone was watching, or at least was willing to discuss (yell about) the next day; it sure beats writing about Brockmire for an audience of 47 people who are slowly catching up on Hulu. (Watch Brockmire! It’s great!)
But following the series finale, which apparently people had a lot of opinions on, I haven’t re-watched a single episode of Game of Thrones. That’s not a knock on the show overall (I love The Sopranos, which has an objectively perfect finale, but I also haven’t gone back to “Pine Barrens” since binging all six seasons a few years ago) so much as Thrones burnout. It got back so bad that last April, I started dreaming about hanging out with Daario. Not even a good character, like Sansa, but Daario! Do not recommend.
Anyway, I should say, I’m in the majority of people who did not enjoy the finale. I wasn’t angry about it, but I can’t say I liked it, either. And I haven’t thought about Thrones much since. But with today being the one-year anniversary of the finale, I thought I would re-watch “The Iron Throne,” and see if it was better, worse, or the same as I remember.
I was cautiously optimistic heading into the re-watch, hoping we were unnecessarily cruel on “The Iron Throne.” Maybe it was a victim of unprecedented hype, and it would have a Pinkerton-like arc: hated at the time, loved in the future. But “The Iron Throne” isn’t Pinkerton — it’s Make Believe, or Raditude, or Harley, or the disappointing Weezer album of your choice. There’s enough good stuff in there to remind you of what once, but not enough to make you, y’know, like it.
