Game Of Thrones Star Says Everyone Was Wrong About The Series Finale

Game of Thrones star Jacob Anderson makes a valiant attempt to defend the final season, insisting that the series was never going to be what fans expected.

By Mark McKee | Published

There aren’t very many television series that begin on a high, then reach a stratospherical success before an epic fall to a subterranean place marred by hate, but Game of Thrones accomplished that feat. After seven seasons of a cultural phenomenon that became a global sensation big enough to make massive stars out of its cast, the series presented a shortened final season that left fans feeling abandoned and betrayed. According to an interview with Pop SugarGame of Thrones star Jacob Anderson believes the fans got it all wrong and was massively disappointed at the reaction the finale got.

“I think everybody assumes that we all hated it, that’s not the case at all. I remember when I first got the scripts for that final season, I was like, ‘There’s something kind of punk about this season.’ It feels risky.”

Jacob Anderson on his reaction to Game of Thrones final season

Jacob Anderson appeared on the series as Greyworm, appearing in the third season and staying by the side of Daenerys Targaryen (Emile Clarke) until the end of the series. In the interview with Pop Sugar, the actor talks about how he didn’t have an issue with how the series ended, instead believing that it fulfilled the promise the showrunners made at the beginning about Game of Thrones, that nothing about the series would be what you expected. He also said that his first response when getting the scripts was to think that there was something punk about the finale and that he liked that it felt risky. 

What the actor didn’t like was the response the series finale got from the fans; after 11 months of filming in the snow with thousands of people, it was disappointing to hear the reaction from fans. He said that after working on the final season for almost a year and having people immediately demand the crew remake it, then call it the worst thing ever was really sad to hear. He also said he wasn’t surprised, even though he liked the ending; he knew people would be annoyed by the ending of Game of Thrones

Jacob Anderson as Grey Worm in Game of Thrones

Of course, to understand why fans were so annoyed by the final season, you have to go all the way back to the beginning to understand what they loved about the first season. While the world of Westeros is expansive, and there is a lot of lore to tell, the writers found a way to keep the story relatively small, focusing on and developing individual characters and hooking fans with the fact that even the most beloved characters aren’t safe. When you fast-forward to the last season, the writers lost an entire four episodes, and the result was a rushed storyline that felt out of place in the decade of seasons, as a matter of fact, the final collection of storylines for characters turned most of them into caricatures of their former selves. 

Regardless of how you feel about the ending of Game of Thrones, it can’t be denied that the final season stands apart from the rest of them. While Jacob Anderson has moved on to a new series based on an incredibly popular book series in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, he doesn’t seem to shy away from the ending of his previous work. According to him, the finale’s detractors need to take a new approach to view the episodes and remember that Game of Thrones was never what you expected it to be.