Game of Thrones Season 8: What went wrong?

Using Data Science to investigate what made the final season of the hit TV show so unpopular

Few TV series have caused as much drama amongst viewers as Game of Thrones. For the first several seasons fans were adamant that the show was unrivalled in its storytelling, gripping drama and loveable characters. Fast forward to the end of Season 8 and we’re in a very different place. Many fans of the show were extremely disappointed with how the storylines ended, some even going so far as to start an official petition to remake the final season, which currently has over 1.7m signatures!

The graphs below show visually how unpopular Season 8 was, plotting the trend in IMDB and RottenTomatoes ratings for all Game of Thrones episodes.

Graphs showing the 3-episode moving average rating for Game of Thrones episodes, from ratings websites IMDB and RottenTomatoes.

Undoubtedly there are several reasons for this, some of which are hard to quantify as they are ultimately subjective - for example, the development of the storylines themselves. We have no meaningful way of quantifying a storyline and even if we did it is impossible to knowing whether a given alternative would have been more or less popular with viewers. As a result, I’ll focus on things that can be quantified - the results still give a surprisingly clear contrast between Season 8 and it’s predecessors, which may help to explain where the show went wrong.

Bang for your buck

First up, I’ve pulled together a graph to visualise what is mostly common knowledge anyway: the cost of producing a Game of Thrones episode is astronomical.

The graph below is very rough and the data is taken from various estimates across the internet, the veracity of which I cannot vouch for. However it at least gives an indication of the kind of money the producers have been working with each season.

Graph to show the estimated per-episode cost of production for Game of Thrones (i.e. the reported budget for each season divided by the number of episodes)

As is already widely known, despite Season 8 being by the far the least popular, it also cost by far the most to produce each episode. Here lies a source of contention for many disgruntled fans: when you’re spending 50% more than you ever have done before, the viewers should at the very least enjoy it as much as previous seasons. This was not the case.

There are a few obvious explanations for this higher cost: a) the increased level of special effects this season due to a more significant presence of White Walkers & dragons and larger battle sequences; b) the length of each episode was increased (see below), meaning more production time was required; and c) the salary of actors will have risen in line with the increasing popularity of the show.

One series, six movies

Season 8 of Game of Thrones was once described by an HBO chief as being like ‘six movies’. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly the high production costs but another reason is the length of each episode, which reached unprecedented levels. Below is a graph showing how the running time of each episode changed over the seasons.

3-episode moving average of episode length across all 8 seasons of Game of Thrones.

While it is clear that longer episodes were less popular it is not clear why. There are probably several reasons, many of which are intangible and impossible to quantify. One of the more plausible is that episode length was increased in order to condense the end of the story into a single season, leading viewers to be unhappy with a production they felt was rushed and unnaturally fast-paced.

A little less conversation a little more action please…

One of the more common complaints from viewers is that Season 8 was too ‘shallow’, in that it did not feature the kind of intellectual dialogue that was the trademark of earlier seasons.

To examine this I looked at the number of lines per episode and the number of words per line for each season. The idea being that (if all else remains equal) more lines suggests more dialogue and less words per line indicates fewer monologues, both of which likely indicate more emphasis on the spoken word and relationships between two or more characters.

Graph showing the number of lines per episode of Game of Thrones.

This graph shows an interesting result. Season 8 had by far the fewest number of lines per episode. This, despite the fact that the episodes were much longer. This is likely due to the increasing emphasis on fighting and battle scenes, rather than dialogue.

Graph showing the average number of words per line spoken.

Again, season 8 appears to be out of the norm for Game of Thrones. Not only does it have significantly less lines, it also has far higher words per line. This is why it would appear that Season 8 has a similiar number of words to previous seasons.

What has happened here is that the final season has seen far more battles and as such the number of lines spoken has fallen. To make up for this and allow for the end of the story to be condensed into a single season, the writers have allowed for more monologues and ‘rousing speeches’, something which was unheard of in previous seasons. Take Tyrion for example, who averages just under 15 words per line. You also have to take into account the characters who have few lines but manage get off a significant monologue in those few line - Gilly (4 lines, average 16.5 words per line) and Edmure (4 lines, average 19.5 words per line) are prime examples.

This kind of monologuing simply didn’t happen in previous seasons. It is arguably an unavoidable side-effect of ‘goodbyes’, but whatever the reason it is clear that this is another way in which Season 8 was unique and perhaps points towards an explanation for why it failed to meet expectations.

Every good hero needs a villain

Another area in which the final season was lacking, was the presence of a good villain. This could tie into the disillusionment surrounding both the surprisingly quick demise of the Night King and the development of Daenerys’ character. In a survey of fans, the top 6 favourite Game of Thrones villains (across all seasons) comprised of: 4 people who were dead at the start of Season 8 (Littlefinger, Ramsay, Tywin & Joffrey), Cersei & The Night King.

As has been mentioned by many commentators - and as I proved in my recent article ‘A Game of Words: Season 8’ - Cersei was at best a minor character in Season 8 with many of her appearances being non-speaking. The graph below is adapted from that article and shows how few lines Cersei had. The blue line and number indicates her average number of lines per episode from Seasons 1–7, showing how she played a significantly smaller part for the first time in this season.

Graph showing the number of words spoken per episode by Cersei Lannister, and her average number of words per episode in seasons 1–7.

Given that the Night King was also a non-speaking villain, this season was severely lacking a strong antagonistic character who could interact with the heroes of the show.

It could be argued that Daenerys was supposed to be the true villain of Season 8, but even if this is the case it wasn’t until Episode 5 at the earliest and she wasn’t a truly evil villain, so couldn’t replace those who actually were (i.e. Littlefinger, Ramsay, Joffrey).

Location, Location, Location

Season 8 was also by far the least diverse season in terms of locations. One of the most popular aspects of the show in earlier seasons was the multiple different storylines simultaneously occurring all across Westeros. It is perhaps inevitable that as the series drew to a close characters would gravitate towards each other geographically, but the graph below shows that this change was very sudden, giving further credit to the idea that the ending of the show was rushed.

The black line gives the actual number of different scene locations for each episode while the blue line gives an average number of locations per episode, for each season.

Graph showing the number of locations per episode and the average number of locations per episode for each season of Game of Thrones.

Aside from the final episode (which showed shots from various locations as the characters went their separate ways), Season 8 was by far the most static. This can be clearly seen by the averages, in fact if you argued that the final episode only took place in one location (Kings Landing) then Season 8 averaged 1.5 locations per episode, less than a third of the average of any other season.

As I mentioned this is partly inevitable due to characters dying and storylines being tied up but it is clear that there was no gradual coming together of characters over the final few seasons, instead there is a sharp decline in geographical (and therefore storyline) diversity in season 8 as the series rushed to its conclusion.

Overview

To summarise, I think the disappointment that fans have voiced over the final season of Game of Thrones stems from several origins. Many of these are impossible to quantify as they relate to an inherent emotion arising from storytelling that data cannot yet easily comprehend. However, there are some clear ways in which Season 8 did not live up to the standards set by the previous 7 seasons.

The data points to the final season being displayed as an expensive action/sci-fi, rather than a strategic drama. This focus on special effects and visuals over meaningful dialogue and well-developed storylines has contributed to the anger shown by many fans of Game of Thrones. It is also clear that there was no gradual development towards the finale, with Season 8 being vastly different from the 7 predecessors without any real intermediate step. This was most likely down to the reality of business but has disillusioned fans who have been devoted to the series since its inception.

Thank you for reading! I’ve written several analytical articles about Game of Thrones so if you enjoyed this or found it interesting feel free to check out the others! My most popular article looked at analysing scripts from the first seven seasons to see how the words characters spoke could represent their storylines. My most recent article continued this by looking at data for the final season to see how this compared to the previous 7. The results (as they were here) are extremely telling.