Backlash Erupts Over Game of Thrones Petition to Remake Final Season

A petition urging Game of Thrones producers HBO to remake its eighth and final season is receiving pushback of its own on social media.

The petition, since signed more than 575,000 times, campaigns to redo the season with "competent writers," away from "woefully incompetent" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Despite Season 8 reaching ratings highs with its most recent episode — penultimate episode "The Bells" emerged as HBO's most-watched single episode of any series with 18.4 million viewers — that episode also marked the series' lowest-ever critically rated episode, earning just a 47 percent critics' approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Benioff and Weiss previously told EW fan reception "matters a lot" to the showrunners, who hope to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the George R. R. Martin-inspired fantasy drama.

"We want people to love it," Weiss said. "It matters a lot to us. "We've spent 11 years doing this. We also know no matter what we do, even if it's the optimal version, that a certain number of people will hate the best of all possible versions. There is no version where everybody says, 'I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this' — that's an impossible reality that doesn't exist. I'm hoping for the Breaking Bad [finale] argument where it's like, 'Is that an A or an A+?'"

Added Benioff, "From the beginning we've talked about how the show would end. A good story isn't a good story if you have a bad ending. Of course we worry."

Game of Thrones concludes Sunday, May 19 on HBO.