‘Game of Thrones’ Best Season Didn’t Need George R.R. Martin At All

Since its controversial conclusion in 2019, Game of Thrones has been used as one of the prime examples of the trend of multimedia adaptations being of lesser quality than their source material. But although there are some major problems with the final seasons of the blockbuster fantasy series that are hard to deny, one of the middle seasons is, for the most part, stronger than some viewers remember or are willing to admit. By Season 6, most of the source material from the completed entries in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series had been exhausted, and, while Martin told the series’ creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss some of the most crucial aspects of his plans for the still unreleased final novels, for the most part, it was up to them to continue the show how they saw fit. Without the guidance of the books, the ending provided by Seasons 7 and 8 became uneven at best, but the first full post-book season is one of the series’ most exhilarating and its best.