I'm genuinely dismayed at the way this season has panned out. The issue is not the decisions themselves, but the nonsensical speed and rushing which makes it all come off so amateurish and poor.
Take Arya abandoning her revenge quest. This is arguably one of the most important moments for her entire character. She spent about 5 seasons training to be a lethal assassin to take revenge on all those who did wrong by the Starks. In earlier seasons her trip with The Hound to Kings Landing would've taken about three episodes minimum, there would've been countless moments of dialogue to build up to this moment, the Hound suggesting she leave, maybe berating her for following, Arya being stubborn etc, and it would've finally built up to the moment the Hound and her stood facing certain death, him turning around, saying this is what awaits her if she follows his path, her realising this, and them bidding farewell.
Instead, we go from Winterfell to Kings Landing in half an episode, there's no in between scenes, Arya is as resolved to kill Cersei as ever and.....
"Hey, you should really turn around now, its dangerous"
"K"
*Hound walks away*
"Thanks btw"
Its absolutely tragic. My favourite character, Jaime, finally realised 7 years of character development at the end of last season when he finally left Cersei, and rather than genuinely try and build up to a moment where he either a) realises he has to be the one to kill Cersei or b) realises he loves her the most and tries to save them both, battling his own inner issues, he goes from sleeiping with Brienne and fulfilling his arc to completely regressing to season 1 Jaime and dumping her for absolutely no reason in the sake of a single scene. Entire seasons of magnificent character moments between him and Brienne, flushed down the toilet in 60 seconds as the writers needed a contrived way to have him in KL so he died.
And Cersei, my god Cersei, a woman so god damn badass that even when she sees her own children poisoned before her eyes she remained fixated on revenge and strong, spends the entire damn episode crying like a little girl, totally out of character. This is a woman so damn strong she gladly blew up her entire city, bawling and crying. Atrocious. All she did all season was look angry and speak maybe 10 lines of dialogue. An absolute travesty. Then her and Jaime, arguably the two best characters in the show, killed by some damn bricks.
Euron's death is cringe. There is no reason whatsoever he wouldnt get the hell out of there rather than fight Jaime. Again, writers needed an excuse to kill him and mortally wound Jaime. And that final line is just laughable.
Varys, smartest man in the land, openly speaks of his betrayal to Tyrion, speaks to Jon in broad daylight in front of 50 people. They took a great character, had him act out of character, caught, and executed within the first five minutes of the episode. May as well have been off screen.
The biggest let down for me though isnt even this, its the whole charade of the battle itself.The Golden Company, after allllll that hype, are about 500 men standing outside killed in about 20 seconds. 1 dragon, wins the entire battle vs a thousand scorpions, after 1 scorption killed 1 from ten miles away with absolute ease, and took the biggest damn city in the realm. Baffling inconsistency.
And deanarys "turning", something that should have been the best moment of the entire show, and in line with the show and her character, is rushed to 1 scene where it makes absolutely no sense, where she's under no pressure, and faces no threat, because they need a new villain for the ending episode.
This season is a textbook example of what not to do. It is a travesty how they've wrecked it. I actually found up to this season the writing and stuff, while maybe not quite at its peak, was still excellent. That has well an truly gone out the window and I genuinely hope this gets redone when the books finish because its absolute garbage. Like watching The Walking Dead at its worst. Season 8 is how my short stories in secondary school went, great action, great entertainment, garbage writing, paper thin characters. To see this show reduced to this is genuinely heartbreaking. Spent a decade following along to a masterpiece only to see it crash and burn. Must be how Pakistan fans felt at Mohali
Ah I genuinely just want it to end now, dont even care. Better Call Saul will remain the number 1 show for me.