Litopia Rewrites Game of Thrones?!

[Steven McC]

There have been a few threads on here lamenting how shoddy the ending to Game of Thrones was. As we're all writers, I wondered if anyone fancied having a go at their own ending to the show or a rewrite of particularly disappointing episodes.

Someone on YouTube has had a go at rewriting the last three episodes and did a pretty decent job, but can we do better?

For the sake of catharsis, I've decided to rewrite episode 5, the one where the show (for me) turned from disappointing to disastrous. If anyone else fancies joining me in geekland feel free to join in below...

 

[Steven McC]

Episode 5 (Remastered)

Episode proceeds much as in the show until the bells of surrender ring out.

Daenerys takes off on Drogon and flies towards Cersei in the Red Keep, Rather than (ludicrously, inexplicably) beginning to scorch innocent women and children she flies to the Keep to confront Cersei, landing on the roof above the floor map of Westeros where Cersei has plotted for two seasons.

Cerise appears broken and stunned and walks out to face Dany (and Drogon) against the advice of her entourage.

The two women face each other. "If you have any last words, now would be the time" Dany says, triumphant, arrogant, echoing Cersei's words prior to the execution of Missandei.

Cersei suddenly switches back to her former, malicious self, "Dracarys!" she shouts.

The noise of wooden doors being slid back. The last four scorpions in Kings Landing are revealed, pointing directly at Drogon and Dany.

Drogon is hit three times. As he rears back in pain he smashes Dany's head against brickwork before the two tumble off the Keep and towards the ground. The wounded dragon regains control just before they crash, breathing fire in rage, scorching those on the ground. Dany digs her heels into his side in anger, forcing him skywards, raising a hand towards a head wound gushing blood.

Cersei receives a shout from a scout and hustles into the lower levels of the Keep as Dany and Drogon swoop overhead and the dragon commences the destruction of the Keep, dashing towers with blasts of fire, Dany searching for Cersei with fury in her eyes.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Kings Landing Greyworm sees the fire and breaks the fragile truce by throwing a spear into a Lannister soldier's back. The fight commences as it does in the episode, with Jon trying to stop the needless slaughter (and failing).

Drogon weakens from his injuries and drops to the bottom of the Keep. The second dragon (in my version of the story it doesn't pointlessly die in the previous episode) swoops down beside him and begins withdrawing the scorpion spears from Drogon with its teeth. Dany, meanwhile, attends to her head wound. While doing so she is exposed to a crowd of Kings Landing civilians below. Scared, angered at the death of those scorched by fire or by the falling brickwork from the Keep, they hiss at her and throw stones. One strikes Dany on the head and now she has (plausibly) lost it with them (and all the people of Westeros who have failed to take to her).

She jumps back on Drogon and shouts "Dracarys!" He scorches those hissing at her and leaps back into the sky. The full scale destruction of Kings Landing begins, with both dragons breathing fire and slaughtering civilians.

The Hound and Arya are caught up in the chaos. Still towards the bottom of the Keep they are separated by a collapsing tower. They have the conversation in which the Hound convinces Arya not to seek revenge. He heads deeper into the collapsing Keep and Arya tries to escape but is caught up in dragon fire. A collapsing building prevents her escape but opens up a passageway down to the sea...

On the streets Jon witnesses the horror of his men turning to rape and pillage. Davos Seaworthy is equally horrified and comes to the aid of a girl who reminds him of Shireen Baratheon. We see the destruction by the dragons from his perspective as he tries to lead the girl to safety but fails.

In the Red Keep the Hound meets Cersei's descending party and it proceeds as in the original script. Cleganebowl amidst a collapsing Keep with Cersei creeping past to the catacombs, suddenly all alone.

On the streets Davos and Jon lock eyes, both having witnessed the burning of the young girl. Something strange happens. Jon stops looking round in hopeless despair and closes his eyes...

A dragon screech rings out. Wings swoop and the second dragon, Rhaegal comes to Jon. He is a true Targaryen, he has summoned a dragon as Dany did in season 4. Jon jumps onto the dragon's back and chases Drogon and Dany down, shouting across at her to "Stop! Stop!" There is true madness in Dany's eyes. She ignores him, forcing Jon to jump from Rhaegal onto Drogon's back. He just manages to hang on, threatening to fall. Dany reaches a hand out towards him, conflict in her eyes. He is just steadying himself when her eyes spark and she pushes.

Jon falls but catches the one remaining scorpion spear in Drogon. The twist of the spear brings a horrifying screech from Drogon and he hurtles downwards. Dany, Jon and Drogon crash into the sea...

Meanwhile, in the Red Keep Cersei collapses against a wall, weeping and clutching her belly. This is true defeat. She hears terrifying crashes above her as the whole place threatens to collapse...and suddenly she sees Jamie.

She runs to him and hugs him, but pulls back. There is a coldness in his eyes. She steps back further and sees that he has two hands...

Arya removes Jamie's face (she has, we presume, found him dead or dying after Euron and claimed his face) and says to Cersei "Do you remember me?"

"The Stark brat" Cersei spits

"You're one to talk about brats," Arya says. "Joffrey was yours all the way through. He started all this, you know. When he killed my father. I'd love to have been there when he died, but you'll have to do."

"Please," Cersei weeps, seeing the knife. "I have a child."

"You mean like Robb's wife," Arya says. "The one stabbed three times in the belly on your orders. At a wedding."

Cerise knows the game is up and allows herself to be wrenched to her knees, knife at her throat. Her eyes open wide. She has seen something.

Arya looks up too. The Keep is collapsing towards them.

Cersei closes her eyes as the rubble tumbles down and Arya cuts...

<Cut to Black. End of Episode. Silence before music>

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I haven't seen GOT. All I've seen is 10 minutes of Sean Bean getting his head cut off and then...

 

[CageSage]

As a writer, I've analysed the underlying thematic elements of GoT. I have to - it's the biggest thing since (probably) Tolkien (okay, it's bigger; all the more reason to analyse it).

Remember all those mentions of the Starks ruling Westeros for thousands of years? How many times did it get mentioned? You need more than two hands for that answer.
How many subplots focussed on what family means? How people chose/made decisions/acted based on family/not family choices?

If you can't see it, look again.
The whole show is about family, putting family first, doing whatever it takes to make the members of the family carry on the family tradition.
The end didn't work for me because the remaining members of the Stark pack go their separate ways. That's not pack. That's the bit that didn't work.
Okay, I admit, if Bran had put his hand on the mark on his arm so we got the idea that the Night King finally understood something ... but it's too late for that, and it doesn't take away from the underlying theme.

It's about family. Everyone, in every tough situation, put blood family first. Every time.

And which family was John? the one that raised him (as Theon demonstrated how strongly that works out in the end), or the blood? He chose, he demonstrated his allegiance to family, and we see it demonstrated, what it caused.

The story started with the main family, the one who 'ruled Westeros for thousands of years' returning to the main positions of power, to rule again for maybe thousands of years, with the king who is almost immortal, and therefore capable of maintaining the family hold for many thousands more. Again. As it should have been since ...

Any ending that changes that underlying theme will weaken the story.

And now I ask, taking the theme and subplots that demonstrate the theme, what would make the end stronger and more meaningful to the audience? This is a question to consider when undertaking our own work, and no more than that. We learn from this, and the reaction.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Ahhh...in that case, for the story to stick to the truth of its premise...the ending needs to illustrate - for good or ill, that nature is stronger than nurture, and 'blood will out.'

Along similar, true, historic lines...I highly recommend 'King Hereafter,' by Dorothy Dunnett....a different take on the MacBeth story. Historical fact, he was actually king for rather a long time....

 

[Katie-Ellen]

How do you even watch GOT anyway? Legally? Not on Amazon or Netflix. I don't have Sky. The only bit I saw was because someone put it up on YT.

 

[Carol Rose]

How do you even watch GOT anyway? Legally? Not on Amazon or Netflix. I don't have Sky. The only bit I saw was because someone put it up on YT.

It's on HBO. Are you able to get that where you are? You can also watch it online legally on HBO. I think you just have to register, but I might be wrong about that. You might need to subscribe to it through your cable provider to register for free online.

 

[Rich.]

How do you even watch GOT anyway? Legally?

The info you need, for the UK, is at the end of this Radio Times article.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Trots off to see. OK. I'd need to subscribe via Now TV.

Oh. 'Seasons 1-7 not currently available on NOW TV.'

Meh.

I'll wait.

 

[Carol Rose]

Seasons 1 through 7 are on DVD/Blu-ray so I wonder if that means you could also stream them on Amazon? Of course that probably means buying them first...

 

[Dan Payne]

Game of Thrones didn't disappoint fans because it squandered its themes. The books contain a dozen underlying themes and they only come through in abbreviated form in the show, but which one is at the fore depends on which group of characters you're watching.

The Lannisters: Family and Legacy. Tywin was determined that the Lannister name would live on. Jaime and Cersei felt that the only people in the world who mattered were themselves, and their children. In the end, Family is what broke them, and Family is what killed them: the drive to secure the future of their family led only to making enemies, and Cersei and Jaime were not capable of protecting their family from their own misdeeds. The end of the show for the Lannisters is entirely consistent with those thematic elements.

The Starks are all about honour. From the very first episode Ned shows himself entirely unbending, driven by honour even at the cost of his family. In the end he forsakes his honour for the benefit of his family - and it avails him nothing. Then, likewise, Robb is ensnared by honour (in his case, forsaking honour by breaking his vow). Jon is driven by honour until his brothers in the Watch kill him for it; in the end he also forsakes his honour to kill Danaerys, and is in turn destroyed by that action. The end of the show for Jon does justice to the theme of Honour.

Daenerys' theme is all about freedom. She is the Breaker of Chains, the liberator of slaves - but she's also a tyrant. Her entire story is about the drive to liberate people from tyranny, but her blindness to the fact she has herself turned into exactly what she's fighting against. The final season took far too many narrative short-cuts, but the thematic element of Dany's "freedom" being just another form of slavery could hardly have been more clear.

It seems the underlying message of Game of Thrones is that it doesn't matter what drives you, if you let it drive you it'll all come to a bad end.

Game of Thrones disappointed fans not because of the themes not being followed through, but because it broke its promises. Promises were made throughout the series that were eventually not delivered. Prophecies of reincarnated demigods and flaming swords, Bran's supernatural powers needing to be ready for the final battle. Just enough supernatural buttressing was offered to make it seem these prophecies were going to be treated with respect. Then they all came to nothing. Promises were made about the Night King and his army being the major enemy of the series. The last third (at least) of the show revolves around Jon Snow desperately trying to convince anyone who will listen that the war against Cersei is a distraction, that the Night King will destroy everyone, that this is the Final Battle. They need everyone on board to have even a slim chance to win. And then the army of the dead are dispatched with half a season to go and basically none of the major characters die. When Arya gives a dragonglass dagger to Sansa before sending her into the Crypts to await the Night King who can reanimate, say, all the dead in those Crypts, that's a promise. Promises were made about character arcs, and then Jaime goes back to the Dark Side, Varys becomes inept and Tyrion becomes naive. The first season promised that anyone can die. The last season showed that this was no longer true.

What we can learn from this, as writers, is that promises matter. All of our writing makes promises. From Chekhov's Gun (if we choose to pay our literary attention to something, the promise is that it will have meaning in the story to come) to expectations borne of genre, to character consistency throughout the story, to every unanswered question eventually being resolved, readers expect the writer's promises to be fulfilled.

As such, I don't think rewriting a single episode is going to cut it. The final seasons needed to resolve all the Azor Ahai prophecies, the triangle between Tyrion, Jaime and Cersei, the ascension of "Ruthless Daenerys", the completion of Arya's list, Sansa's arrival as the new Littlefinger, Cleganebowl, Bran's superpower... just so much. We got some of these, others were attempted. Game of Thrones made its reputation as a show that bucks the rules, where expectations are bucked and some promises will be sacrificed in the name of surprise and drama. Keeping promises to resolve tension, breaking promises to provide surprise - it's a fine balancing act. In the last couple of seasons they clearly fell on the wrong side of the line. But that the writers managed as much as they did in so few episodes should not be underestimated.

 

[Steven McC]

@Dan Payne

I agree with loads of what you said. Ideally the whole last season and perhaps a bit of the one before would be rewritten to lift them nearer to the standard of the previous seasons.

I cannot agree, however, that the writers deserve credit for what they achieved in so few episodes. The reason I honed in on episode 5 of the final season is that it broke the spell. All stories require suspension of disbelief, particularly ones with dragons, magic and prophecies, but what kept us rooted in the world of GoT is how real the characters were.

Episode 5 blew this all apart by having one of the leading characters in the series (a character, let's recall, who once locked up her dragons for killing a single child) begin indiscriminately burning women and children in a city that had submitted to her. No convincing reason was offered for this, her face wasn't even shown during the process of changing from liberator to murderer, not because it's impossible to write but because the writing of that episode was so awful, lazy, misjudged.

The point I wished to make with my "rewrite" is how easily even the situation they'd set up could have been salvaged to provide at least some congruent sense of characterisation. For me, it's unforgivable that more care wasn't taken with this episode. They resorted to Hollywood's cheapest trick of using hugely expensive special effects to compensate for lame, unimaginative writing. The show deserved so much more.

 

[Dan Payne]

Lots of people have issues with Danaerys burning Kings' Landing. I don't. People just haven't been paying attention. Possibly the change could have been better explained - during Dany's speech to Jon, she could have explained why she did what she did. Doesn't make it any more palatable but an explanation is what we need, not a happy ending. Have a look at Game of Thrones: Season 8, "The Bells" - Los Angeles Review of Books! - possibly one of the best reviews I've seen. Then look at The Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones, which gives a very thoughtful and literary view of the change between seasons 1-6 and 7-8. Then, if you like, mosey over to my own take on it at Daenerys is not the Mad Queen.. That one's optional.

I suspect that D&D were highly constrained by GRRM's requirements for the last episodes. Some things like the Mad Queen burning Kings' Landing were probably not negotiable. The real problem they had was insisting it all be done in 13 episodes (7 in season 7, 6 in season 8) rather than taking the time they needed to do it right. But D&D had other things to be moving on to, and like GRRM didn't want anyone else to finish the work. Or perhaps it was GRRM himself who insisted the show could only be done by these guys, considering his documented intentions towards the books should he die before finishing the last one.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

This is very interesting, even though I haven't seen GOT

How many times in history have perfectly sane kings and queens, all of them absolute rulers, done absolutely atrocious things, and not been called mad? These acts were vile and terrifying, barbarous on all counts, but driven, not by cruelty for its own sake, (or at least, not usually) but based on their own reasoning of their assessment of what the situation required. You couldn't be an absolute ruler, with that weight on you, and stay completely normal.