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Actor Kit Harington has come forward to say mistakes were made on the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones in terms of its storytelling and execution. Speaking to GQ, Harington said the entire final season was negatively impacted by the fact that the entire cast was worn out. And for the series finale specifically, Harington said some of the story choices “didn’t quite work.”
“I think if there was any fault with the end of Thrones, is that we were all so f***ing tired, we couldn’t have gone on longer,” he said. “And so I understand some people thought it was rushed and I might agree with them. But I’m not sure there was any alternative. I look at pictures of me in that final season and I look exhausted. I look spent. I didn’t have another season in me.”
He added: “Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think there were mistakes made, story-wise, towards the end maybe. I think there were some interesting choices that didn’t quite work.”
The first handful of seasons of Game of Thrones are very fondly remembered, but the show trailed off in terms of quality and execution as it came to a close, many fans have said. Despite that, Game of Thrones ended in 2019 with the highest ratings the show had ever seen.
George R.R. Martin has said he hoped HBO would produce more seasons of Game of Thrones. Creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff wanted to end the series as a trilogy of feature-length movies. Neither got their way, and the show wrapped up as it did.
The Game of Thrones series continued with the spin-off prequel series House of the Dragon, which just finished its second season. The next spin-off is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which premieres in 2025. Harington was planning a Jon Snow TV series, but it never got off the ground.
Harington said in the GQ interview that HBO came to him to ask if he would be interested in a Jon Snow series, and Harington said his initial reaction was to turn it down. However, Harington thought there was an interesting story to be told about Jon Snow’s life after the war. However, the show never materialized because the team never came up with a good enough story.
“I felt that there might be something left to say and a story left to tell in a pretty limited way. We spent a couple of years back and forth developing it. And it just didn’t… nothing got us excited enough. In the end, I kind of backed out and said, ‘I think if we push this any further and keep developing it we could end up with something that’s not good. And that’s the last thing we all want,'” he said.
