Game of Thrones Creators Explain Why They Didn’t Realize How Controversial Ending Would Be

With each passing year since its debut, the Game of Thrones series on HBO grew its following, which amplified the pressure that was put on co-creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff to offer up a fulfilling conclusion to the adventure. The pair recently looked back on how they knew that there would be controversy surrounding the response to its ending, though admitted that their projections over how audiences would react to the series finale may have been clouded by the support they received at HBO not being a reflection of the average viewer. While there have been a number of spinoffs announced for the franchise, the pair have expressed their lack of desire to return to Westeros.

“I guess I hadn’t really taken into account the network effects. The network’s effects, it can help the show when they’re working in your favor as a positive feedback loop,” Weiss shared with the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It’s hypocritical to love it when it’s blowing in your direction and to decide it’s the end of the world when it’s going the other way. I think maybe that was the part of it that we hadn’t really accounted for, in knowing that some people were going to like it and some people weren’t.”

Benioff added, “I think we knew it would be controversial, I think we hoped that it would be a little more 50/50. I think you hope for a better proportion of … Definitely didn’t want it to be quite so much hate, we were prepared for some of it.”

The nature of any piece of art released into the world is that it won’t be unanimously praised, so while support from HBO can seem overwhelmingly positive and skew perception, the negative reactions on social media can be overwhelming on the other end of the spectrum. Earlier this year, the pair addressed how they were not only focusing on the support they earned from the network, but were intentionally avoiding reactions to the show from fans on the Internet.

“You always hope everyone’s going to love anything you do and it would’ve been great if 100 percent of people loved it, but they didn’t,” Benioff confessed to The Hollywood Reporter of online backlash to Season 8. “You can get so bogged down in public opinion that you spend your whole life Googling things and trying to find people who felt one way or the other way.” 

Weiss added, “Even super positive feedback makes you feel weird and teeth-grindy and on edge. There’s a drug quality to the feedback, and as soon as we went cold turkey — the last time I Googled myself was in 2013 — the ambient stress level in our lives dropped by about 50 percent overnight.”

The pair have since left Game of Thrones behind to focus on their new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, which is streaming now.

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