Game of Thrones ended one year ago today: Does the series finale still look bad?

UPROXX

When "The Iron Throne" aired on May 19, 2019, some considered it the worst series finale ever. "But watching 'The Iron Throne' on May 19, 2020, twelve months removed from the hype, that’s not true," says Josh Kurp. "It never was. The Dexter finale is way worse, to use a recent example. How I Met Your Mother, too, and I’m sure there’s some codger out there who’s still furious over how December Bride came to an end in 1959. But Dexter Morgan and Ted Mosby didn’t inspire packed Hall H panels at Comic-Con, or headlines calling them the 'world’s most popular show.' Game of Thrones became a victim of its own success; people hate the episode, because they love the show. Also, it’s boring. A year later, 'The Iron Throne' is what it always was, a disappointing ending to a once-great show, not the cataclysmic failure it’s often depicted as. It’s — to quote a show that will never have a bad finale, as it will never end (brilliant strategy, tbh) — meh."

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• Could a Game of Thrones-level show happen in 2020?: "In some respects, Year 1 of the post-Thrones era has made Thrones seem semi-replaceable," says Ben Lindbergh. "Instead of floundering without its flagship show, HBO thrived creatively, at least, introducing critical and popular hits like Chernobyl, Watchmen, and The Outsider and enjoying ratings growth from holdovers such as Succession and Big Little Lies. On Netflix and Disney+, Stranger Things 3, The Witcher, and The Mandalorian achieved audiences that rivaled that of Thrones, to the extent that we can tell who’s watching what in a time of imprecise or self-reported streaming traffic. Of those three, The Mandalorian probably came closest to Thrones-level ubiquity, thanks both to the built-in appeal of Star Wars and to Baby Yoda’s midichlorian count as a meme master. (Instead of being compared to presidential candidates, Baby Yoda surpassed them in popularity.) And in the past two months, Tiger King and The Last Dance sniffed the Thrones stratosphere as watercooler topics—or would have, if anyone had been working where the watercoolers were. We haven’t been hurting for TV to talk about, but no single series has filled the conversational vacuum that Thrones left behind."
• Can the Game of Thrones series finale improve over time?: "It may seem like that, but I think way more people enjoyed it than you might realize," says Kim Renfro. "And I think the ending will improve in people's minds with time, the same way the finales of The Sopranos and Lost were deeply controversial at the time and are now considered fine (if not great). Though, even as I type that, I have to admit that comparing the final season of Game of Thrones to any other show is inherently unfair. This was a show unlike any others before it, both in terms of its adaptation process (and the loss of that backbone) and in terms of the fandom surrounding it in the day-and-age of Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. There will probably never be another show like Game of Thrones."
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