George R.R. Martin‘s feelings about how Game of Thrones should have ended are coming up again, thanks to a four-year-old conversation. The comments come from an episode of Game of Owns, the long-running A Song of Ice and Fire fan podcast, which the hosts recently reuploaded to YouTube.
That upload dropped an old sore spot back in the fandom’s lap. Martin wanted the show to go on for more seasons. He even mentioned that it could have ended up having 13 seasons. However, creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss wanted it to end after seven, eventually wrapping it after eight seasons. He shared on the podcast:
David and Dan wanted to wrap it up in seven seasons and I was arguing for 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 seasons. but it was clear that they were going after 7, it turned out to be 8. But the eighth season is really the second half of the seventh season.
That later portion of Martin’s comments is a real complaint fans had about the show. Season 7 ran seven episodes and the eighth ran six, but it could have been easily made into a single season, skipping the two-year gap and the anticipation that built up with it. The question here is whether 13 seasons were possible for GoT.
Why George R.R. Martin’s 13-Season Dream Was Nearly Impossible
The biggest problem with George R.R. Martin’s 13-season dream for Game of Thrones was that the books were never going to be ready. Even in a perfect world where David Benioff and D.B. Weiss adapted every published page and kept the plots they dropped, that gets you to roughly ten seasons and no further.
The Winds of Winter still would not exist, and neither would A Dream of Spring. The wall was always there, and the only question was when the show hit it. Season 5 was where the show began outrunning the books, and by Season 6 it was largely on its own.
If they pushed that to thirteen seasons, the showrunners wouldn’t be adapting Martin anymore. They would instead be writing years of original fantasy television from an outline. Many fans believe the pair read the room, worked out the remaining novels were not coming, and cut the story to the threads they could actually land.
The counterargument is worth hearing too. Some argue more episodes could have earned the beats Season 8 rushed, especially Daenerys’ turn, which needed groundwork the show never laid.
The Author Claimed He Had No Say in Game of Thrones’ Final Seasons
George R.R. Martin | Credits: Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY- SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
George R.R. Martin has been blunt about how little input he had once the show moved past his novels. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in 2022, he said he made no significant contribution to the later seasons. He also added that he had more influence on House of the Dragon than he ever did on the original show. He shared:
I had no contribution to the later seasons except, you know, inventing the world, the story, and all the characters. I believe I have more influence now [on House of the Dragon] than I did on the original show.
Four years on, that line has aged in a way nobody expected. The relationship between Martin and House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal has publicly soured. Martin posted a long critique of the series on his blog and deleted it, though fans had already saved copies.
In it, he warned of larger and more toxic butterflies to come if the show went ahead with changes planned for Seasons 3 and 4. His biggest complaint was the removal of Maelor, which he argued weakens both Blood and Cheese and Helaena’s eventual death. So much for having more influence this time.
What do you think of Martin’s Game of Thrones comments? Let us know in the comments below!
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