The last Game of Thrones season has come to an end and a lot of the fans are disappointed at how it turned out. But why was season eight a failure? Spoiler alert.

No.1: It was rushed.

Everything in season eight appeared to be happening too quickly, and it would often feel like three episodes worth of information was being crammed into a single episode. Because of this, fans weren’t able to enjoy the big “payoff” moments like they had in previous seasons. For example, in episode one of season eight, Jon Snow rode one of Daenerys’s dragons, Rhaegal. This event has a huge significance to the plot but it did not feel like it was displayed in that manner because it was shown half-way through the episode, where loads of other really important things happened. When you compare Jon’s first ride on a Dragon to Daenerys’s, it pales in comparison. Senior Noah Reiser said, “I think the last season of Game of Thrones was rushed because the writers wanted to move onto other projects.”

No.2: Character Development

Something else that seemed like a direct consequence of the rushed season was character development, which left viewers feeling confused, shocked or even betrayed. Every character has been painted so vividly up until season eight, and within this season some have changed beyond recognition of what they used to be. The best example of this is Daenerys Targaryen who we have been watching develop over the past seven seasons as one of the main heroes of the show. Many fans feel that her image was torn down and destroyed in the last three episodes when she burned down King’s Landing. If this development had happened over more than three episodes, it would have been fine. However, it was rushed, and left fans feeling shocked as one of their favorite characters turned into the Mad Queen in the blink of an eye. Senior Zack Cassidy said, “The writers took the best characters and made them into fools who blindly follow a prewritten script in order to make the plot reach the ending as quick as possible.”

No.3: Anticlimactic Moments

One of the least satisfying moments in season eight was the death of the Night King. While the battle was huge and beautifully displayed on the screen, it still was not what some fans have been anticipating since the white walkers were introduced in Season one and two. In episode one of season one, the opening scene displayed members of the Night’s Watch going beyond the wall and coming face to face with a white walker for the first time. Ever since that point, the white walkers have been somewhat of a side narrative until their full return in later seasons. The Night King and his army was being built up as a strong, and seemingly undefeatable force for many seasons, that is why mid-way through season eight when he was killed by Arya in an instant, some saw it as an anticlimactic moment. Not only did we not get to see any of the skilled swordsmen battling the Night King, or any of his henchmen, but we did not see Jon battling the Night King which had been teased from the moment they first met. Senior Justin Culotta, “They spent seven seasons building up the death of the Night King, and it was disappointing when he died in one episode in one move.”

“I was really disappointed with the last episode of Gam eof Thrones. My family and I watched it all the time and we were hoping that its end would leave us with a posiitve impression of the show, but it left us all very disappointed,” sophomore Jonathan Healy said.