S1 is terrific, albeit a little skewed toward the intriguing and trashy over the epic, or similarly, the political over the fantastical. But I don't think this means GOT/ASOIAF is founded on the political and the intriguing over the epic and the magical. The first scene in both the books and the series involves the Wall and the White Walkers; it thus grounds the franchise instantly in the epic and the magical, never mind the dominating threads of familial conflict throughout S1. "Winter is coming" was always an overarching arc; it defines our favorite house, and it largely defines the franchise from that first scene to the final season.
You might therefore wonder why the Long Night was one brief episode, and not even one of the last few episodes of the series. It's similar to wondering why the Scouring of the Shire ends LotR instead of Mount Doom. You get why the Grey Havens are the last chapter, but shouldn't it be Mount Doom, then going home, then Grey Havens, with no conflict in there, all resolution and tying things up? Similarly, you'd think the Long Night should be the final conflict of GoT, with just an episode or two after it to wrap things up peaceably. As it is, the series makes a statement that the game of thrones was the most definitive conflict all along, which feels silly, considering the existential threat of winter. I certainly believe Cersei and Co needed to be dealt with, but it's anticlimax after the existential threat is quelled. Well, you could argue this is just the way things played out: Dany helped in the Long Night, and then Dany died; she certainly didn't die before helping with the Long Night! Nor would the final vie for the throne be as interesting without her involved. So it makes sense that important political things happen after the Long Night. But the way it plays out isn't ideal, so I'm sure it could have been planned better. Maybe they just rushed it. Maybe there has to be political strife after the Long Night, but it deserves a handful of episodes, to take a breath after the existential threat is conquered, and then figure out where to go from there. Packing in the Long Night and the final vie in a few episodes feels anticlimactic.
Do I think the Long Night passed too easily? Probably. The deus ex machina in GoT is almost insufferable. Also, if the White Walkers are so easily killed with a single knick of Valyrian steel or dragon glass, and if such a knick has the potential to end the entire crusade, why are they fighting in the fray? If the Night King's death can end the entire crusade, and his death is so easy a single human can achieve it with one thrust, why is he so poorly guarded in the end? Also, how do so few of the massive ensemble of noteworthy characters die in the Long Night? If I remember right, it's basically Beric, Jorah, Theon... is that it? Three secondary characters sacrificed just to stop us from complaining that no one died in this enormously improbable struggle? Realistically, more would die, and the Night King wouldn't let himself get killed so easily. Arya wouldn't zoom past the guards. She'd try and fail and die.
I hope Martin rewrites the ending. I hope the show strayed from his guidance, or painfully condensed it. But I hope Martin has an ending in mind, right now. I hope he's just struggling to prose it together. I hope his writer's block is just for the prose and some secondary storylines; I hope he feels confident in his heart how the main storylines need to wrap up. And I hope he wrote it down, so when he dies, we can all see it, even if it's just a skeleton of a story. I'm not opposed to a happy ending, which is mostly what S8 was; I can't pull for a series ending that's as brutal as the S1 ending, or as the ending of storylines like Robb's, Cat's, most of the direwolves', etc. But S8 was not just a mostly-happy ending, it was a too-convenient ending, and it didn't feel justified. Perhaps it was just rushed. Lots of things in fantasy feel too convenient until you carefully study them. Maybe S8 just didn't give its story the right amount of study, the right ramp-up and cool-down. Maybe it needed 10 episodes, not 6.
Some of the magic feels random. I don't need all magic to be scientifically explained, but I like for it to feel consistent, and for there to be at least some evidence to chew on. Maybe there's more of that in the books. In the series, some of the magic comes out of nowhere, and feels too convenient or arbitrary. I guess if it were up to me, the magical elements would be fairly subtle, but the series would still find its epic identity. For example, battles that are perhaps unrealistic in scale, but not magical. The Wall is fantastical in scale, but it doesn't have to be magical. Even dragons are fantastical but not super magical. I like epic elements that may be fantastical but are not arbitrarily magical. The Battle of the Bastards is another example of something epic that's not magical, not even very fantastical, other than the annoying deus ex machina of the riders of the Vale. Even the undead are not unsettlingly magical to me. But the Lord of Light randomly resuscitating certain people feels too arbitrarily magical.
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