Who will win the Iron Throne? Who should win the Iron Throne? Should there even be an Iron Throne?

The plot of “Game of Thrones” will be settled Sunday night. The arguments, if history is a guide, will never be.

HBO’s swords-and-dragons fantasy drama, about a multifactional battle among royal houses to rule the mythical continent of Westeros, appealed to audiences’ guts and brains. It was the sort of breathtaking production once reserved for summer movie blockbusters. It weaved a vast, obsessive mythology. It was part family drama, part lurid potboiler and part complex psychological study — topped off with secret-parentage twists and an encroaching zombie army.

It became a sensation domestically (18.4 million viewers last Sunday, not counting later streaming, DVR recordings or piracy) and internationally. It was a windfall for HBO to rival the gold mines of House Lannister, and it regularly lit up the internet like dragonfire.

Most of all, it was a mass-market hit for the era of no social consensus.

What made “Game of Thrones” emblematic of its time is how it divided its audience from start to finish, right down to the matter of what a happy ending would even constitute. It gave its intense fandom multiple angles to debate as well as to enjoy: whether it kept faith with the popular novels it was based on; whether it reveled in brutality in the name of critiquing it; whether it well-served its female characters or exploited them; and whether it lost control of its story as it sprinted to the finish.