As the final season of Game of Thrones aired on HBO earlier this year, a major part of the story of the final season was that a lot of fans seemed vocal about how things ended up for the series. The backlash began around the time of the battle episode with the White Walkers, when many fans complained that they couldn’t see what was going on on screen, and continued through the errant coffee cup and especially with the major plot beats of the final two episodes. This led to the circulating of a fan petition asking HBO to remake the final season, with different writers, per The Inquisitr .
HBO has announced no plans to do such a thing, but they did host a final Game of Thrones panel on Friday at the annual San Diego Comic-Con. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had originally been scheduled to appear, but cancelled days earlier. The show went on without them, per Deadline . And the issue of fan dissatisfaction was addressed on the panel.
Conleth Hill, who played Lord Varys on the show, implied on the panel that negativity toward the series had been pushed by the media, and the huge crowd that showed up to SDCC in support of the series was proof that fans liked the end of the series after all.
“You look at the amount of people that are here and we here to thank you for watching us all those years,” Hill said on the panel. “This is the reality rather than a media led hate campaign.”
Also on the panel, Liam Cunningham, who played Lord Davos Seaworth on the show, suggested a spinoff called Better Call Davos, while also joking that he should have ended the series as king.
Hill’s comments weren’t the first time this year that a Game of Thrones actor blamed the media for the idea of fans disliking the final season.
In April, days after the season premiere, Kit Harington, who played Jon Snow, gave an interview in which he directed an expletive at critics, per The Inquisitr .
“I think no matter what anyone thinks about this season — and I don’t mean to sound mean about critics here — but whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their [negative] judgement on it, in my head they can go f*** themselves,” Harrington said. He especially noted that he and the cast had worked very hard on the final season, especially the battle episode that took nearly two months to film.
The Harington interview came following the premiere, which was well-reviewed by critics, although the remarks indicated that perhaps the actor saw a fan and critical backlash coming.
Meanwhile, as reported by Vanity Fair ‘s Joanna Robinson, the panel debunked the fan theory from the season that indicated that Jon Snow had screamed at the dragon in order to help Arya Stark kill the Night King.
“NO!” Maisie Williams, who played Arya, said.