5 Game Of Thrones Characters Whose Stories Were The Most Ruined By The Final Season

Several years may have passed, but many "Game of Thrones" fans are still bitter about how the show ended. Not only did it finish on a bummer note, but it did so in a way that undermined the characters fans spent nearly a decade rooting for. With not even the cast itself managing to muster up much excitement for it, "The Iron Throne" often ranks high on the worst TV series finales or all time. 

Co-showrunner David Benioff acknowledged the backlash to the finale in a 2024 interview with Entertainment Tonight. "You always hope everyone's going to love anything you do and it would've been great if 100 percent of people loved it," he said, "but they didn't." Benioff was talking to ET to hype up the premiere for his and D.B. Weiss' Netflix TV series "The 3-Body Problem." Will the duo be able to stick the landing for their new show's ending? While some fans think audiences and critics were too harsh on the show's final season, it's hard to have hope based on how badly they butchered these five "Game of Thrones" characters.

Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) is supposed to be one of the smartest characters in the entire series, so why does he not have a single bit of good advice for Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) in Season 7 or 8? Even with the battle against the White Walkers at Winterfell, Tyrion's strategic blunders baffled his own actor. "[The Night King is] bringing all the dead people back to life, and they've put the women and children in a crypt with all the dead people," Dinklage said in a behind-the-scenes clip, sounding bewildered. "Tyrion is smart, but I guess not that smart." 

A common fan theory among book readers is that the writers made Tyrion dumber largely for plot convenience. The show needed Daenerys to go full Mad Queen thanks to a series of devastating losses that never would've happened with a competent adviser by her side. In the books, fans theorize that Tyrion will be a poor adviser to Daenerys because he genuinely wants to burn down King's Landing out of revenge. In the show, Tyrion was always a straightforward good guy. The result is that Season 8 Tyrion is passive, dumb, and boring, when he could have been active, dark, and compelling. 

On paper, Sansa (Sophie Turner) gets one of the best endings in the show. She successfully secedes from the Seven Kingdoms and crowns herself Queen in the North. That sounds great, but the problem is how she got there. Season 8 Sansa betrays Jon's trust and helps push Daenerys further into her Mad Queen mental spiral, and does it for reasons that don't feel earned or well-defined. 

Sansa's distrust of Daenerys only makes sense retroactively. At the start of Season 8, it simply doesn't track for her to be feuding with such a powerful, desperately-needed ally. It didn't help that "GoT" writer, Dave Hill, implied in an EW interview that part of Sansa's mistrust came down to her being jealous of Daenerys' beauty. Arya (Maisie Williams) may have declared Sansa to be the "smartest person" she knows, but the writing itself never supported this claim. 

Worsening Sansa's final season arc is how cold she can be. Book Sansa's defining trait is that she stays kind to others despite life's many hardships. In fact, she's one of the few point-of-view characters to grow more empathetic as the books goes on, not less. This is a strength of hers that comes in handy constantly, not a weakness that needs to be overcome. Season 8's Sansa, defined by her near-total lack of kindness towards anyone except Theon (Alfie Allen), shows that the writers never really understood what made her worth rooting for.

The Hound (Rory McCann) is perhaps the greatest example of the show prioritizing hype moments over genuine character growth. In the early seasons, the Hound was defined by his anger at his brother, Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane. But through the Hound's relationship with the similarly revenge-obsessed Arya, he manages to let that rage go and live a peaceful life for a time. 

In Season 8's second half, however, the Hound backtracks completely on his character arc. He travels back to King's Landing to fight his brother to the death, and the entire battle is hollow because the Mountain is basically a zombie by this point, and would've been burnt down by Daenerys' dragon, anyway. 

Fans spent years hyping up a so-called Clegane Bowl, a theory that the two feuding brothers were being set up for a big epic battle to the death. Fans imagined different ways this story could've worked, but unfortunately, the show chose to go about their final fight in the most forced way possible.

"To be honest, I never really cared much for them. Innocent or otherwise," Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) tells Tyrion about the smallfolk in the penultimate episode. Although the line itself can be dismissed as false bravado, it still became fans' go-to example of how Jaime's characterization was ruined in Season 8. For most of the show, Jaime was famous for his growing empathy and sense of honor, but in his final two episodes, he seemingly abandoned both. 

What stung most for fans was how Jaime left Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) almost immediately after he finally got together with her. Fans waited years for the two to act on their feelings towards each other, and when they did, it felt like the final step in Jaime's journey to becoming a kind, honorable man. For Jaime to then instantly turn back towards his sister, declaring himself a "hateful" man in his final conversation with Brienne, was a deeply unsatisfying choice. 

It's not just that fans were upset by Jaime's backslide; They were confused. The show didn't competently explain or set up his final decision. Coster-Waldau may have given his own interpretation of Jaime's choice to EW, describing his death alongside Cersei (Lena Headey) as a "great ending for that couple," but the show itself failed to make that case to viewers. 

"I went for a very long walk after the first time I read the final season [script]," Emilia Clarke told Stephen Colbert in 2019, before Season 8 premiered. "I read it, and I couldn't quite handle it ... I'm in a daze and I don't know what's going on ... I just went for a walk and didn't bring anything. Kind of walked around London for two hours."

The quote took on a whole other meaning to fans after they finished the final season, in which Daenerys went from a fan-favorite icon to a mass murderer of men, women, and children. Daenerys turning to the dark side could have worked with tighter writing and more episodes to make her descent feel natural, but that's not what "Game of Thrones" had in store. 

In a May interview with Variety, Clarke lightheartedly complained about her final lines on the show, before her character was stabbed to death by Jon Snow (Kit Harrington). "'We break the wheel together.' That is the last thing I say before the cheeky little s*** stabs me," Clarke said. "F***ing outrageous. I was so p***ed. I was absolutely livid."