You probably know that on Sunday night, the tumultuous and divisive eighth and final season of Game of Thrones came to an end.
HBO
WARNING: If you haven’t yet watched the season finale, there are spoilers ahead!
The five preceding episodes had all been met with varying degrees of backlash, and the finale was no different. In fact, a petition calling for Season 8 to be remade in its entirety using “competent writers” ticked over the 1 million signature mark after the episode aired.
People were mad at the outcome for various reasons — from the fact that Bran was absent for the entirety of Season 5, to him receiving powers that amounted to nothing, and the fact he said he couldn’t be lord of Winterfell and yet was fine with taking the throne.
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Seriously, there were a lot of angry fans.
Sansa: (survives torture and comes out on top by using her wits)
Arya: (trains for years with some of the best fighters in the world and kills the motherfucking Night King)
Bran: (falls out a window and says weird shit)
White men: This guy should totally be our king.
And, it turns out that the actor who plays Bran, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, was also incredibly surprised by the eventual outcome. So much so, in fact, that he thought it was a joke.
HBO
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Isaac said: “When I got to the [Dragonpit scene] in the last episode, and they’re like, ‘What about Bran?’ I had to get up and pace around the room. I genuinely thought it was a joke script and that [showrunners] David and Dan sent to everyone a script where their own character ends up on the Iron Throne. I was like, ‘Yeah, good one guys. Oh shit! It’s actually real?!'”
Isaac went on to say that he was “happy” with the outcome, but confessed he had been previously hoping for his character to meet his fate in a “good death scene”.
And, defending the criticism of the season and its finale, Isaac said he believes it was actually a “fitting conclusion” to an “epic saga”.
Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty Images
He explained: “It’s difficult to finish a series as popular as this without pissing some people off. I don’t think anybody will think it’s predictable and that’s as much as you can hope for. It’s ‘bittersweet,’ exactly as George R.R. Martin intended. It’s a fitting conclusion to this epic saga.”
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