'Game of Thrones' is running out of time to make good on its promises

The problems are stacking up.

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers through Season 8, episode four of Game of Thrones. Unless you’ve seen the episode, “The Last of the Starks,” do not proceed.

Endings are never easy. They’re rarely graceful. But the conclusion taking place in Game of Thrones feels downright clumsy, like a basketball player who lost track of the shot clock and is left scrambling to fire off a shot.

There’s a chaotic element in this season that began to appear at the end of Season 7, when Jon Snow inexplicably convinced a crew of people to capture a wight and lost a dragon in the process. But that chaos is in full force in Season 8. In the early seasons, chaos — and the unexpected — were the lifeblood of this show. Even if the show took a surprising turn, it was always clear why. Instead, the show’s chaos lacks command, and the narrative feels rushed.

Was that rushed environment why a coffee cup made its way on to the set during the episode, “The Last of the Starks”? Somehow, in a fantasy show based on in a far-off land called Westeros, Starbucks got millions of dollars worth of free product placement.

That scene, a celebration of The Battle of Winterfell, had its redemptive qualities, including the moment when Daenerys Targaryen is left sitting alone to watch while the rest of her allies congregate in cliques like children at a middle school lunch. The message is well-received: she feels she has no one left to support her. And the discovery seems to be self-fulfilling because it encourages her to pursue more desperate measures, including an upcoming aggressive assault on King’s Landing, which will only continue to reduce support. In fact, Varys is the only character tending to her during that scene of celebration (which featured a coffee cup), and coincidentally, even his support seems false. He later reveals his lack of confidence in her ability to rule during a conversation with Tyrion.

But the scene made a handful of missteps, including it being too long. The show spent time on Tyrion’s truth game, which produced the revelation that Brienne is a virgin, something she tells Jamie later in the episode (which begs the question of why they made a scene of revealing it). The show hesitated over Sansa’s interaction with The Hound, which included a tone-deaf suggestion that rape was formative — and therefore somehow positive? — for Sansa. Yikes. Had they taken time to unpack that interaction between The Hound and Sansa, perhaps the message wouldn’t have been so problematic.

Had they taken the time on so many elements of this episode, it might have felt a bit more successful. The same might be true of this entire six-episode season, which might have benefited from being two ten-episode seasons. There’s too much to cover, and the show-runners are missing opportunities left and right. They have avoided tough conversations, exciting battles and the gripping magic which made this show fun. The episode, “The Last of the Starks,” showed more of those missteps.

The show-runners bypassed a view of Sansa and Arya learning Jon’s true identity as Aegon Targaryen. Instead, we get a scene where Jon dramatically asks for them to promise secerecy — only to have Sansa blab in one of the ensuing scenes. Meanwhile, the show-runners dedicated two scenes of discussion and reaction between Varys and Tyrion. Why not combine that into one scene? Why not use that time to allow Sansa and Arya to digest the news on screen?

Photo courtesy of HBO

The show-runners also bypassed the battle scene, a surprise attack — which Dany’s group foolishly didn’t anticipate. Essentially, the scene was just long enough for Rhaegal to die and Tyrion to get smacked on the head, which ended what we saw of the scene. But they don’t answer the question of how any of this really happened? How did Dany fail to anticipate this attack, when King’s Landing and Dragonstone are right next to each other? How did Dany fail to see this armada from her view atop a dragon? How did Euron manage to kill the dragon from an angle that put him out of sight of Dany? And how did some of Dany’s men escape to the shore when Euron had them pinned?

And then there’s Bran, who spends more time reminding us what he’s not (Bran) than explaining what he is (The Three-Eyed Raven). We’ve gotten zero sense of what he is capable of.

Incorporating a character with that much power is tricky. He can’t tell everyone how to solve every problem. But instead of being a magical marvel, he has instead become a tough-love therapist for Jon, Jamie and to some degree Sam Tarly and Tyrion. From a magical standpoint, we haven’t seen Bran do anything but warg into a group of birds to scout the Night King’s movements during the Battle of Winterfell. Bran’s boring stare is a weekly reminder of a missed opportunity. Clearly, we’ll never know the extent of his powers, because this show doesn’t have the time to explain.

The time issues also show up when the characters travel. Last season, we saw those timing issues during Gendry’s great Marathon of The North which allowed Dany to save Jon and crew when they were capturing a wight. Those timing issues aren’t even that problematic (at least for me). We can pretend the show has fast-forwarded a few weeks — or warped time  slightly to fit the storyline. It’s just that in the process they’re not allowing their characters time to digest the massive shifting pieces. That’s why Missandei’s death felt almost inconsequential. Her character hasn’t gotten recent screen time which has frayed the viewers’ connection to her.

Photo courtesy of HBO

Instead of worrying about Missandei in the final scene of the episode, I spent it wondering whether the show-runners had the nerve to kill Tyrion at the foot of the gates at King’s Landing. At one point, the show’s logic would allow that as a reasonable outcome — the ruthless tend to exploit sentimentality and honor. And there was Tyrion, appealing to his insane sister about an unborn child in hopes of ending a war. That was never going to work. In fact, it was the kind of logic that would get a character killed (see: Eddard Stark). Tyrion should know that and should never have put himself in harm’s way to make the case. And because of that, Cersei should have taken her shot at killing him. What’s the different between sending Bronn to do it and murdering him in the open field?

That was my logic as Tyrion stood in the face of countless archers. Instead, he walked away without a scratch, which continues to rearrange what we think we know about this inconsistent Westerosi reality. The rules, which were once so clear, are now glossed over by a fuzzy and accelerated storyline, which fails to deliver upon great expectations.