If you haven’t watched Game of Thrones season 8 yet, you might skip this post.

One of the key elements of story telling is the steady escalation of stakes. Generally, the stakes go up gradually until they hit a peak, a climax in the conflict occurs and there is some sort of resolution. In a romantic comedy the stakes are the couple will break up and not get back together. In a big super hero movie, the fate of the world (or the universe) is in the hands of the hero. It is very rare for the stakes in a story to peak and then go down to a lower level where a another conflict must be resolved before the end of the story.

Yet, here we are in GoT season 8 with that situation. The greatest threat to everyone was the Night King and the army of the dead. They are defeated. Now the stakes are who wins the Iron Throne. For the principle characters, its a fight to the death. If someone doesn’t kill Cersei, all the other main view point characters will be hunted down and killed. That sucks for them but for most of the “small folk” no big deal. Life goes on, more or less the way it always has just with new management.

Will it work as a story? Maybe. George broke a lot of rules with this story. According to the standard advice given to novelists and screen writers there are too many point of view characters, too many sub plots and too many complicated names and relationships to remember, heros killed part way through the story, unsympathetic protagonists, anti-heros and probably a lot more. This rule though. I don’t know. It may be the one that really breaks the ending. Who gets the throne, while central to the themes of the story, is way less important than the survival of humanity in general. It could end up being a bit of a let down. Hard to say.