There’s a strong case to be made that the Game of Thrones season 8 finale will be the biggest moment in scripted television history. Messily so, because the days of a nation gathering around their television sets to find out at the very same moment who shot JR in Dallas are over, and both the viewing of and discussion around TV has atomised with the advent of streaming and social media. But it is sure to be the biggest talking point of the day when the finale is broadcast sometime in 2019, a spectacle likely to even eclipse whatever one Donald Trump has planned that day, reports Independent.
Production on the eighth and final season wrapped last month, and tidbits – albeit very guarded and probably HBO-approved ones – about the show’s climax have been slowly extracted from the cast (and a couple of crew members) when they haven’t been busy filming.
Describing Dany’s “final on-screen moments”, actress Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) told Vanity Fair: “It fucked me up. Knowing that is going to be a lasting flavour in someone’s mouth of what Daenerys is…”
This was unusually candid for a GoT cast member and suggests Daenerys’ story may not exactly end heroically and with fanfare – which is probably for the best given her character has always been deeply flawed, an egalitarian one minute a despot the next.
Even more intriguingly, Clarke added that Dany will be “doing all this weird shit [in season 8]. You’ll know what I mean when you see it.”
Speaking to Digital Spy, actress Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) was quick to dismiss the idea that her new “The pack survives” tattoo, a Stark slogan, constitutes a spoiler, pointing out: “That would be terrible, if I got the ending tattooed on my body just before the last season came out. That would be so stupid.”
She did, however, serve this up: “People have come up with so many fan theories about how it’s going to end, and who will end up where, and who will end up with who. It really is so unpredictable the way that it ends up. I’m very satisfied with that, and I think that the fans will be satisfied with that, too. Well, we hope. We’ll see!”
It’s not so much the GoT creators’ or George R. R. Martin’s fault that so much of season 7 was predicted correctly but the internet fandom’s for so ceaselessly theorising around the show and plotting out its every possible course. If indeed the show does manage an “unpredictable” conclusion it will be quite the feat, and a pleasing one given surprise has been an integral part of the show, perhaps even cementing its success with that infamous killing off of its protagonist Ned Stark back in season one.
Moving behind the camera now, Francesca Orsi (Senior Vice President, HBO Drama Series)
said that when the whole cast and key crew sat down for a script read of the entirety of season 8, “it was a really powerful moment in our lives and our careers.
“By the end, the last few words on the final script, the tears just started falling down,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “Then there was applause that lasted 15 minutes.” This might be hyperbole, but it has to be a good sign. Side-note: the video of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul reading the script for the final episode of Breaking Bad for the first time is quite charming.
