Game of Thrones Season 8: Over 200,000 Fans Sign Petition to Remake Final Season

The negative reception to Game of Thrones season 8 in the past couple of weeks has resulted in an online petition demanding HBO to remake the entire season, which has already drawn over 200,000 signatures and counting. The petition further states that Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B Weiss should not be involved with said remake, claiming they are “woefully incompetent writers” without George R.R. Martin's books. Benioff and Weiss have won a shared five Emmys, including two for writing in 2015 and 2016, the second of which was for “Battle of the Bastards”.

“David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on,” the online petition on Change.org states in full. “This series deserves a final season that makes sense. Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!”

While the petition takes issue with the season as a whole, the first two episodes of Game of Thrones season 8, “Winterfell” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”, were received positively by most. We called the latter one of the all-time best Game of Thrones episodes. But since then, the show's biggest faults — a rush in narrative and character development terms, alongside ignorance of internal logic — some of which were also present in seasons 6 and 7, have reared their ugly heads. That's particularly been the case for the last two episodes, “The Last of the Starks” and “The Bells”.

Even some Game of Thrones cast members, including Conleth Hill and Kit Harington, have voiced their frustrations over the past couple of seasons. Hill, who plays Varys, said he was “dismayed” by the fact that his “intelligent” character was “losing his knowledge”. And in a pre-season interview, Harington termed the final season “disappointing” before half-heartedly adding: “Epic, I dunno, one of those.”

Game of Thrones concludes with its series finale May 20 on Hotstar in India.