HBO tried to make the line go up by cutting two episodes off the second season in the midst of the writer’s strike. Like no exaggeration, the season 2 finale ends in a way that makes it immediately obvious two more episodes were supposed to exist. They were simply truncated along with the all the payoff for many of this season’s character arcs and plot lines.
One of the writers even made a statement that an eight episode season wasn’t their decision. Unfortunately the news of that must have hit them too late in production to fully accommodate that in the writing.
Except on all the subreddits for this show, the prevailing opinion amongst dipshit redditors is that the writers are cutting book events to make time for LGBTQ asoiaf fanfiction.
While that’d be based if true, it’s not. Like wtf? Do these people live in a different universe? Are they watching a different dragon show? Redditors ain’t alright, man. These people watch the enshittification of media in real time, and their lack of media literacy results in them going on queerphobic witch hunts and throwing wild assignment of blame at anything but HBO and capitalism.
The showrunners aren’t following the book very closely at all. They’re just kinda adding their own plotlines, character relationships, characterization, etc, and using “well the book is an unreliable history” as an excuse as if the book didn’t give three competing narratives and enough information for a reader to figure out what’s probably true and what’s definitely not. They’ve taken it from “here’s an unreliable history, puzzle it out” to “this history is unreliable, so let’s just write whatever we want.”
Also in the final episode
cw sexual violence
There is a really awful scene where a character talks about all the abuse she suffered, and the other character responds by making out with her. This was not in the book, there is nothing like it anywhere in the book, none of the three narratives have it make any sense, and it was in fact an unscripted scene that the actresses just wanted to do.
Haven’t watched the show but the book was pretty good and the show ruined some of the most impactful scenes.
Also Philosophy Tube plays a pirate who has been changed to a trans man with a cuckold fetish and gets way too much screentime. It was very confusing.
Also she didn’t like the idea of playing a pirate that does horrible things and comes from a society where slavery is the norm…being a bad person. She had the writers make it clear that all those wives are fully consenting when their pirate lord husband pimps them out. Can’t have a bad guy be a bad guy.
Edit: oh! And when she’s introduced, a character literally asks her if she’s a philosopher. Like real on the nose.
Abbie is REALLY trying to break through
Also also! The book had a crossdressing (male) pirate captain in it, and it would have been so so cool to make her a trans woman and have Abigail play her! Say that the east has alchemical hrt and trans people and that Racallio was just slandered by ignorant historians! He even hated slavery! It was a perfect chance to show imperfect history, but instead they made admiral Lohar kinda confusing.
I really like the gamo books but this is not a good adaptation.