How I Would Have Ended Game of Thrones Differently

It’s a high-order task, but I’m prepared to take it on

Accurate depiction of author idealistically envisioning the path toward a better Game of Thrones ending / HBO

There are some tasks that should be left to the professionals. As much fun as it might be to yell at our flat screens when our favorite sports teams drop the ball, most of us still wouldn’t willingly line up on a football field as a stampede of 250-pound men come barreling toward us.

But there are also those times in life when our leaders, role models, and most revered creators give us a moment to pause and argue with a shrug, “Yeah, I think I could do better.”

For many Americans, the world of politics long looked off-limits. But the 2017 ascension of Donald Trump (and reascension in 2025) has left me and many others seriously asking ourselves from time to time, “Should I throw my hat in the ring?”

I may not be a great leader, but I reason I’d be at least as good as Duane “The Rock” Johnson or any other former WWE personality — even if only a fraction as charismatic. But to rank somewhere above our top 3 worst presidents would still leave me looking like a marked improvement from one of the two people running in our current election, at least according to most historians who are polled. It may not be a high bar to clear, but Trump presents an impressively low standard to limbo.

Maybe as an American everything just has a way of circling back to the 2024 election. Anyway, all of this is my politically timely — if totally convoluted — way of saying that… I think I could craft a marginally better ending to Game of Thrones than what we got.

It’s one thing to say that Game of Thrones’ ending was among the most heinously abysmal TV show conclusions of all time. But it’s another to put my money where my mouth is.

Of course, I won’t test your patience, nor my incredibly limited prowess as a screenwriter, with over two full seasons worth of content correcting plots back to the first instance where they began to go awry. That would be a gargantuan task and I’m not even sure at this point that world creator George R. R. Martin is up to the challenge of reassembling each dangling plot.

My summary here may not suffice as the proper ending to the fantasy epic that we all craved. But if it can bring even a piddly morsel of solace to the fans Game of Thrones let down — the vaguest glimmer of light in the void that those final two seasons created — then I must fulfill my sacred vows and do my small part to right these irreconcilable wrongs. As years continue to tick by and it begins to grow increasingly apparent that a septuagenarian Martin isn’t up to the task, the need for a hero grows plainer by the day.

But alas, not all heroes wear capes. Some sit at keyboards and type up tirades about TV series that began over a decade ago — and how they should have ended differently.

Game of Thrones’ lifeblood was its expansive world and its ability to take risks with the vast network of characters latticed throughout it. When adversities grew serious enough, those people we loved most succumbed to horrible fates. Even when the odds weren’t insurmountable, we were perpetually reminded that human lives within the brutal world of Westeros were feeble. They could end in an instant with the swing of a sword or the infernal blaze of a fire-breathing dragon.

There were plenty of stumbles in the lead-up to the final season. Some saw the cracks beginning to form as early as season five. By the time the penultimate season ended, the blaring alarm bells among loyalists had spread to even large swaths of the show’s more casual fans. But not until midway through the final season did the issues grow so expansive that the show could no longer be saved.

I would argue that when the show truly fell apart beyond all repair was in the episode, “The Long Night.”

From Game of Thrones’ pilot on, there was one peril that loomed above all others: the Night King and the Army of the Dead. As a battalion comprised of the resurrected, skeletal remains of a million dead men and women, it was a force that was equal parts cryptic and inevitable. Throughout the show, it was established as a threat of such supernatural vigor that stopping them seemed impossible. it was the singular source of paranoia that lingered over the heads of viewers and members of the world alike during its sprawling seven+ seasons worth of content.

In the entire show’s runtime, there was no greater betrayal to its core spirit than that which took place when the army of the dead finally encroached upon the show’s heroes (and antiheroes). After multiple displays of almost godly aggression, the horde was diminished down to a burden that could be defeated by one single hero with one well-timed jab and a shockingly dexterous long jump. The phalanx of fighting cadavers that they spent the entire show building up crumbled in a matter of only milliseconds.

The first critical change I would have made — and call this a cop-out if you will — would be to kill off almost every character in one fell swoop when that weighty threat finally arrived. In a world where a whole slate of protagonists can be unceremoniously dispatched by a plotting, old lech, Game of Thrones had firmly cemented itself as a different show than the one fans knew in that anti-climactic refusal to kill off just about any character of real importance.

In nearly any other show, I’d call my “I’d just kill off every character” solution lazy. But there are shows and movies where the ending offers no hint of hope. Reflecting on the embittered, shell-shocking peaks that defined Game of Thrones most, to me it couldn’t be clearer that Game of Thrones was the rare show that could have stuck that apocalyptic landing.

But in the ending we got, with few exceptions, nearly every person we know and love survives. The combatants in the fight against those unremitting foes walk away with barely more than scratches, from the famously soft Samwell Tarly to Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister — while smack dab in the middle of a crypt full of attacking zombies. (Why were they hiding in a crypt during a zombie apocalypse? Peter Dinklage certainly doesn’t know, and the rest of the cast’s reactions to the show’s ending are equal parts damning and telling.)

How I would have written the episode would be for nearly every character who fought in that battle to meet their demise. The deaths would be a healthy combination of spectacularly dramatic, and sweeping, dispassionate, and abrupt. Daenerys Targaryen (Dany), Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, and a sparse handful of remaining allies would escape on dragon’s back. Meanwhile, a few members of Dany’s surviving forces would flee through tunnels beneath Winterfell and reconvene with the others after heading desperately south.

The Night King would kill one of Dany’s remaining two dragons and then touch Bran Stark unthwarted. And we’d watch as Bran instantaneously becomes the mysterious villain’s most powerful acolyte. With Bran’s psychic powers working in the Army of the Dead’s favor, the danger the virulent mass poses would become even more impossible to overcome for our few persevering protagonists.

The plot with Dany burning down King’s Landing is one I’d handle largely the same way. Spurned and traumatized by even greater losses during “The Long Night” than what viewers witnessed in the real episode. That, in addition to a cruelty from Queen Cersei unchanged from what we saw in the real show, would leave Dany with no extremes left that she was unwilling to entertain.

I don’t consider it to be a mistake that Dany ended up on the Iron Throne in the way that she did, as many critics of the conclusion will argue. “The Mad Queen” arc works in my eyes. I don’t think that the outpouring of fury and vengeance that led to her coronation was unanticipated. It was properly foreshadowed since as early as the second season, and that aspect of the ending was believable for me.

The only difference I’d make with that part of the plot would be to have Queen Cersei’s demise be at the hands of Jaime Lannister.

I don’t consider it a mistake that Dany’s reign as queen was so short-lived. But rather than Jon Snow putting a knife in her back, the Army of the Dead — which once lacked the ability to war against dragons — would make its way across the sea to King’s Landing only weeks after Dany takes the throne.

Dany’s rule would be brief and she would preside over a nearly lifeless world. Rather than just a city of ash, she would reign over seven kingdoms devastated by calamity. Those alive within Westeros’ remaining city-states would slowly succumb to the Night King’s growing army. Her time in control of Westeros would be marred by the aching realization that there was no realm to rule — only a defeated, displaced, and dejected population of struggling survivors left to preside over.

I would capitalize on the horrible devastation all across the realm. Castles would be scorched by the Night King and his dragon before being overwhelmed by his army.

By the time that the dead would arrive in King’s Landing, it will have become clear that whatever “game of thrones” once took place within the land has come to a swift and cataclysmic end. And the final showdown between good and evil would be a fatalistic affair to watch. The majority of protagonists that had persevered up to this point would die on screen in a fashion more jarring than during the “Red Wedding.” And for those final few protagonists remaining, their dire fates would be implicit.

Somber music would play as the dead would swarm the castle and the Night King would walk his way grimly toward the Iron Throne. All of the clawing and conniving would come to an end and that voiceless villain would rule over a body of subservient husks. Spread among them would be eight seasons worth of characters we’ve come to know, love, and loathe. A mangled and disjointed reunion of the most macabre variety imaginable. A climactically horrid homecoming between a world full of disparate characters grotesque enough to make the end of Midsommar look tepid.

In the show’s most brutal blow to date, we would be forced to reconcile — not with a plot that fell apart — but with one that delivered on its most central, most unrelenting promise. It wouldn’t aim for the Hollywood-styled, shoddy attempt to satisfy more standard TV/movie viewers that we saw in those final few episodes. It would leave us equal parts spellbound and jaw-dropped at its signature ability to spare no one.

In my version, there would be no assumption of a world about to continue. There would be no Jon Snow parading needlessly north, nor a happy array of unrealistically surviving characters assuming roles in Westeros’ most benevolent administration to date. Generations worth of feuds and titles would all cease to mean anything. It would be the rare TV show with the unforgiving denouement where all of the good guys lose.

Game of Thrones’ final season may have worked if it were the head of a different horse. But in concluding the stake-laden, slow-rolling calamity that was Game of Thrones, nearly everything that once defined the fantasy epic fell decisively out of the window. The ending of the show was rushed, but more than rushed, it caved into a criminal tendency to provide fans with something familiar rather than something Westerosi.

In its worst moments, the once-genre-defining epic felt more akin to a cookie-cutter Marvel production than the TV show previously hailed as among the most well-written ever created. Ex-Machina moments abounded, epic duels emerged from comical coincidences, and fan service was delivered with frustrating predictability (sure, it was fun to watch, but did we really need Clegane Bowl?). Hanging threads were sewn hastily and almost every plot arc was ended in sour anti-climax.

A proper ending to the show would likely have taken as many as ten full seasons. But even if restricted to the mere eight that viewers received, there are still any number of endings that showrunners could have provided that wouldn’t have felt like such a soulless selloff of every aspect that once made the show great.

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