The ending of Game of Thrones cast a very long shadow, but you can make a fair argument today that that shadow has mostly receded. The first season of House of the Dragon, at least, got people talking about Westeros again, and even if season 2 led to a bit of drama with George R.R. Martin himself, it’s far from the heights of Thrones complaining just yet. And then there’s Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which everyone actually likes and gives us a bit of hope for Thrones‘ spinoff future!
So it’s interesting in that moment where Thrones‘ pop culture status has been drawn back into the light a little bit, HBO has decided to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the series with a never-before-seen look back at the final moments filmed by the cast for season eight.
Naturally, as with any TV production, the end of Thrones was not going to be the end of filming for much of its cast, so you get to see a lot of variety in everyone’s last scenes here—Emilia Clarke during the battle of Winterfell, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Jamie’s scrap with Euron Greyjoy, or Peter Dinklage walking through the burnt remnants of King’s Landing. But of course, the thing that unites all the footage is everyone getting some degree of teary-eyed as they reflect on such a massive part of their lives coming to an end.
But again, it’s also just surprisingly nice to revisit all this and have the feelings about how Game of Thrones ended mostly dulled at this point by the passage of time and the arrival of more good Thrones things in the years since. It’s enough to perhaps allow yourself to get a little misty-eyed yourself! Just try not to remember too many exacting details about season eight if you do so.
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