8 Things Everyone’s Getting Wrong About Game Of Thrones

8. “It’s Not As Good Now Benioff And Weiss Are Writing It”

David Benioff D.B. Weiss
LUCY NICHOLSON/Reuters/Corbis

Virtually everything on this list is going to be subjective. A lot of it is simply going to be examining opinion and trying my best to add new context to it, in the hope that it helps soften or shift your view. This however, is a matter of fact.

There seems to be some confusion relating to the shows relationship to the books, and how in some way since it’s surpassed them, the format of the writing has changed. Ask some fans who wrote Game of Thrones for TV, and they’ll probably tell you it was George RR Martin until about Season 5.

To be clear, David Benioff and DB Weiss have always written the TV show, with Martin working in a consulting capacity. That was true in Season 1, and it’s true in Season 8. When it began to overtake the source material, he steered them in what direction to go, but from the very pilot episode it’s been their vision of his story.

Crucially though it’s Seasons 5 and 6, where the pair were first freed from the precedents of the books, with some episodes that are considered the show's creative peak. The Battle of the Bastards, Hardhome, The Winds of Winter, The Door - all episodes with no source material holding them up.

So yes, not only is the “it’s not as good now they’re wiring it themselves” statement objectively debatable, it’s factually incorrect as well.

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Managing Editor

WhatCulture's Managing Editor and Chief Reporter | Previously seen in Vice, Esquire, FourFourTwo, Sabotage Times, Loaded, The Set Pieces, and Mundial Magazine