Game of Thrones one year on- why it went wrong- Characters part 1
One year one from the game of thrones ending disaster I will be exploring in a series of essays what went wrong for one of the most popular TV shows of all time. In this essay I will be looking at how several characters were ruined by the show.
Character skills and traits
Much has been made about the drop in characters intelligence as the series progressed. Varys and Littlefinger went from schemers with hundreds of spies and men to do their bidding to having no plans, no back up, anything, Varys suddenly turns on Dany and plots treason out in the open.
Tyrion also has a marked drop in intelligence as the seasons progress, he goes from a capable Hand in season 2 to an idiot who screws up all of Dany’s plans and armies, as well as developing a set of modern morals alongside. In the books Tyrion is going down a darker path and has already pushed fAegon to attack Westeros early and will likely encourage Dany’s fire and blood and paranoia as to get revenge on his family.
Dany in the books has embraced fire and blood for the time being, instead the show kept her restrained to a certain degree and removed fAegon who is already in Westeros and is set to become king before she arrives, likely gaining the support and love of the common people. Instead of Kingslanding being destroyed in a second dance of the dragons battle which may happen in the books the show runners decided to have her turn ‘mad’ in the span on half an episode destroying 7 seasons of character development.
By removing Sansa’s Vale arc they removed her from her training to instead put her in Winterfell, in season 8 the show tries to portray her as this intelligent amazing ruler and great player of the game of thrones. But she was never shown developing these skills or learning how to rule (which is another big theme of the books ruling is hard) we were just told all these things. Instead she was turned into Cersei 2.0 and during the Battle of Winterfell in crypts she acted like Cersei did in the battle of Blackwater.
Arya in the books is extroverted and a warg with a keen sense of justice while the show later on portrays her as a loner, her arc in the books is about identity and the experiences of the Smallfolk and child soldiers. The show made her arc about revenger and turned her into a smirking assassin and badass warrior. But this makes no sense how is she so good she had half a year’s training with Syrio and then about a year with the faceless men and not all of that is spent battle training. She should’t be an amazing assassin because she dropped out and she shouldn’t be able to beat Brienne who has been training most of her life and is twice Arya’s size in a fight. Also the faceless men isn’t assassin’s creed it isn’t about fighting, it’s about subterfuge, poisons, reading people and being able to mimic them. The faceless men pride themselves on making the death’s look accidental and stab wounds are pretty obviously not natural.
Like Tyrion’s Jon Snow’s intelligence and character takes a nose dive in season 8 to the point where he only has 2 lines. But in the early season he was never portrayed as smart as he is in the books. In the books he modernises the night's watch, he negotiates with Stannis, the Wildlings and the Iron Bank, he leads the defence of the Wall and plans Stannis’s northern campaign, he's ambitious- he wants to be Lord of Winterfell. His own actions result in the pink letter and assassination. In the show he’s a generic action jock good for swinging a sword but not much else. He can’t negotiate with the Wildings or convince the North to fight for him, he’s unambitious and judging by the battle of Winterfell is no good at battle tactics either. His entire arc revolved around the White Walkers but the time the battle ruled around he didn't do anything of significance.
