Game of Thrones' final season didn't trust viewers the way the early seasons did -- that's why it became reliant on contemporary historical allegory

The Atlantic

George R.R. Martin's book series and HBO drama found inspiration in history that happened centuries ago, like the Wars of the Roses. But the final season and, especially, the series finale contained allusions to Hitler and Stalin, dictators whose reigns are within living memory, says Parker Richards. "The audience didn’t need a fable about power to be wrapped in a bow and delivered in the form of 20th-century historical analogies," says Richards. "(Or maybe we did—maybe some of us have 'become inured to the shoddy writing and plotting.') In its first half, and perhaps even for a season or two after leaving Martin’s books behind, the show trusted its audience enough to avoid allegory and the simplistic morality that comes with it. It trusted that the audience knew right from wrong, and knew that both could coexist within a character. It asked viewers to find their own messages in a series about a faux-medieval world of dragons and ice zombies—and take them or leave them as they saw fit. It would have been better if the show had ended that way."

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