Not really a big surprise. But still, a sobering reminder of the current state of the book series.
My theory is that the botched GoT series took the wind out of his sails. He just doesn’t have the drive anymore to complete it.
I believe the ending could’ve been more or less fine if the showrunners gave it time. If we got there in 3 or so seasons instead of one, there could be character development to support it and they would have time to do justice to other things they rushed as well.
They used his ending without getting there properly.
I’m not sure about 3 seasons, but yeah, it needed more time to cook. I think the acceleration was twofold. The obvious is that they ran out of source material to lean on and just didn’t have the chops to keep up. The other is something I picked up on I think my second watch through, and then specifically looked for it on the next watch: in early seasons, a lot of the cuts to different locales are also jumps forward in time as well. By the time season 7 happens the list of locales is greatly truncated, and the cuts become more and more jarring. I think my least favorite sequence in the entire series is the wight hunt beyond the wall. We gets lots of leisurely walking and talking scenes. Then shit goes down, Gendry runs back to Eastwatch (covering who knows how much ground before collapsing), then the raven to Dragonstone, then the winged cavalry arrives… days’ worth of (in)action all in the space of like 20 minutes. It feels like it was on fast forward, and I think that’s due in part to the lack of available locations to help mask the jump cuts.
And then season 8 did season 8 things.
I mean to be fair, the foreshadowing was there and GRRM would have done an infinitely better job at writing it than D&D did.
It’s also not clear which parts D&D added, and which parts they took out. It could also very well be that Cersei was supposed to fill the “Mad Queen” arc, and not necessarily Daenerys.
Ultimately though, the show was just so, so rushed towards the end. That is what ruined it. If GRRM ever finishes ASOIAF (a big if lol) it will be much better done, not rushed, and actually make sense.
Could you imagine having that on your conscience as a showrunner? “I treated your work with so little respect you don’t love it anymore”