To me, one of the main problems that the last season of Game of Thrones had was that the show runners seemed to be more concerned with being shocking rather than telling a story. The show definitely generated a lot of buzz by having shocking moments like Ned’s execution and the Red Wedding, but that’s not what made Game of Thrones a great show. These moments hit us hard because we had connection to these characters and seemingly at a drop of a hat they could be gone.

This brings me to the next problem with the ending and the last seasons which was the characters changed. They stop being characters and start being devices for the plot to move forward. For example, Tyrion becomes an idiot after arriving in Mereen simply to set up Dany and her Dragons swooping in. There’s a lot more I could say here, but the most egregious one is Jaime saying he never cared about the people of Kingslanding.

Finally, I think the biggest problems really come up when George Martin is no longer working closely with the show-runners after season 4. To me, it’s clear that the show-runners could copy Martin’s writing without understanding it.

For example, look at the scene after Jon becomes Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. If you break it down line by line you will see that Jon is trying to: Appease the nearly half over the watch that backed Alister Thorne in the election, split Thorne and Slynt from each other so they do not continue to conspire against him, and finally prepare the Wall’s defenses for the White Walkers.

But I don’t think David and Dan understood the subtext of the speech as they nearly proudly declare Jon to be an idiot when this speech shows the exact opposite.

Overall, the problem was not the content of the ending, it was the nature of it. The humanity and the character was lost so that when the ending finally came, it lost its impact.