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Game of Thrones cast member Conleth Hill may hold the media accountable for the intense vitriol surrounding the show’s final season, but HBO’s top exec does not.

At the show’s Comic-Con panel last week, Hill dismissed the Season 8 backlash as a “media-led hate campaign.” But in an interview with TVLine, HBO president Casey Bloys counters, “I do not think the media is responsible for this.”

Bloys believes the incendiary reaction to the final six episodes was inevitable. “That’s the good news/bad news about a show that was so popular — when you go to end it people have very specific ideas about how it should end,” he muses. “And, truly, the only thing that really matters is that the creators told the story that they wanted to tell.”

And Bloys does not see the debate dying down anytime soon. “It’s a little bit like religion and politics — nobody is going to convince anybody of their [opinion],” he reasons. “I think the entire show — and specifically the final season — will be debated for years to come.”

And for the record, Bloys says he was not involved in showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ decision to abruptly bow out of the aforementioned Comic-Con panel. “I have no idea [why they pulled out],” he maintains. “But I will tell you that, personally, I will sometimes commit to something and then as it comes closer I’ll go, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that.'”