GOT Season Finale: Just Okay

Game of Thrones fans have been raving about the season finale last week, "The Children," and viewership was certainly high, with 7.1 million sitting by their televisions and the show's popularity surpassing HBO's The Sopranos.  However, I was underwhelmed.

If you haven't seen it, you should go no further here.  If you have, maybe you will agree with me that the prior episode, “The Watchers on the Wall,” with the entire episode focusing on the Wildlings attack on the Wall would have been a better ending to the season.  The two-front battle scenes reminded me of the Lord of the Rings films on a somewhat appropriately scaled down level, while we saw Jon Snow finally take on the long-awaiting role as leader of the Night's Watch.  The ending scenes with the death of Ygritte and Jon Snow walking alone into the wasteland north of the Wall was the perfect set up for the next season.

But no, we still had one more episode where instead of a single location, we hopped from location to location as characters drop one by one - Tywin, the Hound, Shae, and Jojen - and went to Dany long enough to show here chaining two of her dragons.  The whole episode had the feeling of cleaning up the remains of the season so things can start anew next season.  Maybe this is consistent with the book, but the writers have not been afraid to stray a bit for the sake of the on-screen story, and this is maybe where they should have tried a little harder.  I am not saying the final episode did not have plenty of good scenes and was an important marker in the series.  I am simply saying it could have been part of the cliffhanger going into the next season.  Oh well, what's done is done.