Source: Rankin-Bass
This Sunday, Game of Thrones returns for its final season. And yes, I am soooo waiting for it. Who will take the Iron Throne. (You really don’t think Cersei is going to survive the series, do you?) Will Tyrion survive? Will Jon and Dany get together permanently? Most importantly, will the Night King’s brother Heat Miser show up?
This is going to be an epic season after an epic Season 7. Last year, we got the Battle of the Bastards, the return of the Hound, Cersei’s Godfather-style offing of half the cast, Dany raining dragonfire down on Westeros, and Bron, who, in another life, would that English bass player who was in every non-glam heavy metal band in the 80s (and possibly Whitesnake.) We learned the truth about Jon and Dany, and after seven years, it’s nowhere near as creepy as Jaime and Cersei. Speaking of which, did anyone pick up on how creeped out Jaime is getting toward his sister? Meanwhile, zombies are marching on Westeros. As Ser Davos explained to Dany, “It won’t matter whose skeleton sits on the Iron Throne.”
This year’s season will consist of 6 two-hour episodes, each one almost a feature film unto itself. It will bring closure to millions of fans of the series who don’t seem to be getting it from author George RR Martin. A Dance of Dragons was published in 2011, the year Game of Thrones debuted. It is now 2019. In that time, Stephen King has completed twelve novels, some of them massive. The notoriously wordy Jonathan Franzen has written four books, one a novel (and that dude is a perfectionist, so you can imagine slow writing to him is a virtue.) The entire (to date) Expanse series, all of them longish books, published and moved to television, now on its second network. I’ve read all the books so far, but with the HBO series about to wrap things up with loose guidance from Martin, I’m pretty much done with the books. Let HBO finish the job. And I really don’t care that Stannis didn’t die in A Dance of Dragons.
But it’s time to say goodbye to Westeros. Westworld hasn’t quite caught fire the way HBO hoped, though it does have its following. Netflix, Amazon, and even Hulu are upping the ante with Altered Carbon, a revived Expanse, and Castle Rock. It’s not that HBO is doomed. But they need to find another The Wire, another Veep, another Curb Your Enthusiasm to keep their place in the streaming sweepstakes.
In the meantime, I will be parked on the couch at 9 PM for the next six Sunday nights. In that time I will drink.
And I will know things.