There’s a specific moment in Game of Thrones history that represents a shift point in the series, though most casual viewers might not have noticed it. It occurs when the show diverges substantially from the plot of the books, creating its own narrative path and making decisions about character arcs and plot developments that George R. R. Martin’s novels hadn’t yet addressed. That moment represents one of the most fascinating and ultimately tragic problems in television adaptation: what do you do when you’re adapting an unfinished series of books and your show catches up to the author’s writing? How do you navigate creating an ending for a world that the original creator hasn’t finished writing?
Game of Thrones serves as the perfect case study for this problem. It began as a project that seemed ideal—adapting a bestselling fantasy epic with a passionate fanbase, with a complete narrative arc presumably waiting in the books. But as the series progressed, as the show caught up to and then passed the published novels, everything became infinitely more complicated. The show’s writers, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, suddenly found themselves not adapting George R.R. Martin’s story, but continuing it. And the final seasons of Game of Thrones became a test case for whether a television show can successfully conclude a story that its source material hasn’t concluded.
The Early Seasons: Faithful Adaptation
For the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, the show operated with the tremendous advantage of having source material to work from. George R.R. Martin had published four complete novels in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, with a fifth book having been promised but not yet released. The show adapted these novels with impressive faithfulness while also making smart cuts and changes necessary for the medium. Entire subplots were eliminated or combined, some characters were removed, and the timeline was adjusted for television pacing. But the fundamental story—the major plot points, the character arcs, the central conflicts—remained intact with the books.
This period of the show is widely regarded as the strongest. The storytelling is intricate, the character development is nuanced, and the show benefits enormously from the structure and plotting that Martin had already established. Even when the show made significant changes, it was doing so from a position of understanding the destination. You knew where characters were ultimately heading because the books told you. The show could make smart adjustments and know they would lead to satisfying payoffs.
The first season remains a masterpiece of adaptation. It took a 700-plus page novel and distilled it into ten episodes, maintaining the essence of every major scene while cutting away the fat. Characters like Ned Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, and the ensemble of Winterfell residents all come across clearly and compellingly. The show demonstrates that you can be faithful to source material while also making it work for television. It’s confident filmmaking in the service of a story that’s already been proven to work on the page.
The Divergence Begins
The problem began to emerge more clearly after season four. Martin’s fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011, nearly a decade before it came out. The book was already late when it was released, and while it continued the story, it also introduced new characters, new plotlines, and structural complexity that made it difficult to adapt straightforwardly. Worse, Martin had already announced that there would be at least two more books coming—The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring—books that still haven’t been published as of this writing.
The show faced an impossible decision: wait indefinitely for the books that might never come, or move forward with its own adaptation and conclusion. Benioff and Weiss chose to move forward. And initially, they seemed to have a plan. They had meetings with Martin about the trajectory of the story, about where major characters were heading, about the ultimate resolution of the central conflicts. The show didn’t immediately become unmoored from the books. Rather, it began to extrapolate from them, to make educated guesses about where the story was heading based on Martin’s outlines and plans.
Season five and six mark the period where the show began creating its own major plot points. The storylines in Dorne diverge substantially from the books. The approach to Daenerys’s story takes a different path. Characters like Sansa are given arcs that Martin hadn’t yet written. The show isn’t following the books anymore—it’s using the books as a foundation while building its own structure on top.
The Critical Middle Ground
Here’s what’s fascinating about seasons five and six: many fans and critics didn’t immediately recognize the problem. The show was still excellent, still engaging, still delivering compelling television. It was only in retrospect, when fans had time to think about how the show had diverged, and when subsequent seasons became more obviously problematic, that people began to articulate the issue. The show had been such a faithful adaptation that audiences had internalized the feeling that they were watching Martin’s story. When that foundation was removed, it took a while to realize what had happened.
Some of the changes the show made during this middle period were actually quite good. The High Sparrow subplot and Cersei’s walk of atonement happened only in the show, not in the books, and many fans consider those sequences among the best in the entire series. The show was capable of creating compelling television that Martin hadn’t written. The question was whether it could do so consistently, and whether the showrunners’ understanding of Martin’s ultimate vision was accurate.
When Adaptation Becomes Fan Fiction
The real problem emerged in seasons seven and eight, when the show had to move aggressively toward its conclusion without clear guidance from the books. These seasons feel rushed in a way the earlier seasons never did. Character arcs that should have taken seasons seem to happen in episodes. The show makes enormous narrative choices—like Daenerys burning King’s Landing—that feel disconnected from the patient character development that came before. And much of the fandom, at this point, began to say something that would have been unthinkable in season three: this doesn’t feel like George R.R. Martin’s story anymore. This feels like fan fiction.
Which, technically, it was. The show was no longer adapting the books. It was continuing a story based on its interpretation of where it was heading. And while Benioff and Weiss presumably had Martin’s input on major plot points, without the actual text on the page to guide them, without the opportunity to develop ideas over hundreds of pages and multiple characters’ perspectives, the storytelling became thinner. It became more plot-focused and less character-focused. It became more interested in shock moments and fewer interested in earning those moments.
What Martin’s Ending Might Do Differently
One of the reasons the final seasons of the show generated so much criticism is the assumption by many fans that Martin’s actual books would tell the same story in a fundamentally different way. If Daenerys does burn King’s Landing in The Winds of Winter or A Dream of Spring, it will presumably be built on a much more extensive exploration of her psychology, her available options, and the reasoning that brings her to that point. Martin’s writing style, which explores multiple points of view and internal monologues, allows for far more character depth than a television show can manage.
The books allow Martin to show us exactly what characters are thinking and feeling in ways that television must convey through acting, dialogue, and action. Daenerys’s downfall in the books might be built over 400 pages from multiple viewpoints, showing us exactly how the pieces were set in motion. The show had to accomplish the same thing in roughly four hours of television. That’s not an excuse for failures of storytelling, but it is a significant structural difference.
Moreover, the books are moving at a much slower pace than the show was. Martin is exploring side quests, introducing new major characters, and developing subplots that the show had eliminated or ignored. The Dorne plot in the books is completely different from the show. The North is developing in ways the show didn’t anticipate. By the time Martin finishes his story, if he ever does, it may be substantially different from the show’s ending in ways we can’t currently predict.
The Adaptation Trap
What Game of Thrones ultimately demonstrates is that adapting an unfinished work is a nearly impossible task. You have three basic options, and all of them are problematic. First, you can wait for the author to finish, which means your show is perpetually delayed and your cast and crew are held in limbo indefinitely. Second, you can deliberately fall behind the books and slow down your adaptation, which preserves fidelity but also creates a show that moves at an unnatural pace and potentially bores audiences. Third, you can race ahead and make your own decisions, which is what Game of Thrones did, and which creates the problem of a television adaptation that diverges substantially from its source material while still being marketed as an adaptation.
The show probably should have slowed down at some point, given itself more time to develop plot threads and character arcs rather than racing toward a conclusion. If the show had spent ten seasons instead of eight developing its story, it might have had time to earn some of the moments that felt rushed. But that’s easy to say in retrospect. Benioff and Weiss were making decisions about a show that was costing HBO an enormous amount of money, that had an enormous cast that was aging, that had incredible momentum going forward. Slowing down would have risked losing that momentum entirely.
The Fan Perspective
For many Game of Thrones fans, the final seasons created a sense of betrayal that went beyond the normal disappointment in a beloved show’s ending. Because the show had been so faithful to the books, viewers had internalized the idea that they were watching George R.R. Martin’s vision unfold on screen. When that vision was no longer present—when the show was making its own choices without that foundation—it felt like a fundamental violation. You were no longer watching an adaptation of a great book. You were watching a television show that was making decisions you disagreed with.
This is a particular problem when the source material is so beloved. If Game of Thrones had been based on a mediocre book series, viewers might not have minded the show going its own way. But Martin’s novels are widely regarded as masterpieces of the fantasy genre. The thought that his eventual books might tell a better version of this story is entirely plausible. And that creates a situation where the adaptation might be worse than the source material, at least in the eyes of devoted fans.
What This Means Going Forward
Game of Thrones serves as a cautionary tale for any future adaptations of unfinished works. It shows the perils of adapting a series that’s still being written, and it demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining fidelity to source material when that material doesn’t exist yet. In an ideal world, television studios would simply wait for authors to finish their work before adapting it. But in the real world, there’s money to be made, there are schedules to keep, and there’s uncertainty about whether the books will ever be completed.
The real tragedy of Game of Thrones’ final seasons might not be that they were bad television—though many fans argue they were. It might be that they represent the inevitable failure of trying to adapt a story that hasn’t been written yet. The show was in a fundamentally impossible position, and while the final seasons have serious flaws, it’s worth considering that no adaptation could have succeeded under the circumstances. When you’re asked to complete a story without the author’s final word, perfection is probably impossible.
The hope now is that when George R.R. Martin finally does publish The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring, they will provide a more satisfying conclusion to the story of Westeros than the television show managed. Whether they’ll explain the paths the characters took, whether they’ll justify the decisions that led to unpopular endings, whether they’ll explore depths of character and motivation that the show couldn’t manage—that remains to be seen. Until then, Game of Thrones stands as a fascinating and tragic example of what happens when a television adaptation races ahead of its source material and is forced to write its own ending.
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