LogFAQs > #939874334

I voted for season 5, but really the decline happened in two discrete chunks.

First, from season 5 they started to run into problems for the first time. What is often not appreciated is that some of this does come from the books - AFFC and at least the first 60% or so of ADwD aren't exactly top-notch material. However, they also overcorrected with changes that were actively harmful and led to some scenes which were poor in their own right, Dorne being the obvious example. The funny thing is they overcorrected AGAIN with the first episode of season 6 trashing the Dorne storyline entirely, so they probably should have just not done it or kept it to a small handful of scenes. However, despite this these seasons still felt like Game of Thrones, and still kept up the expected style and pacing along with a certain level of quality. The highs were also just as high.

So then there is the second point, which is season 7. Not only did the overall quality drop (there were more overtly bad moments and even the best moments were not at the same level) but the very style and pacing of the story changed. It became an entirely different show at this point, more focused on spectacle and sprinting to the finish line than sensible story progression and development. Especially in season 8, it was like watching a visualised Wikipedia summary rather than an actual story unfolding. There were also more obvious production and continuity errors which really gave a sense of being over the show. this drop in quality was probably worse overall, even though it started with season 5.

What I reckon is that in season 6 they were still working from some pretty well developed book material - the outline will probably end up very close to what we see in TWOW. For 7 and 8 however, it is clear that there was no more than a handful of essential plot points that were then very clumsily worked together. I feel like I know pretty much exactly what will happen in TWOW, but beyond the most important bits have no idea about past that.

Edit: Also 4 is absolutely the peak of the show (and correlates to the peak of the books), there are some hot takes in this topic. 2 is the weakest season in the first half and also has the most divergences from the first three books.

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