Winter is (almost) over

‘Game of Thrones’ penultimate season springs for the finish line

The following contains Game of Thrones spoilers. Duh.

I feel sorry for George R.R. Martin fans who have been devouring the “Song of Ice and Fire” novels for 20 years. Over the last seven, they’ve enjoyed a thoughtful, sophisticated, and faithful-ish adaptation of their beloved book series transposed into prestige, watercooler not-TV by HBO—only to have its biggest mysteries spoiled over the last two years without a new volume in sight.

The series was always bound to lap Martin’s glacial writing pace. Showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff got their jobs by deducing the mystery of Jon Snow’s true parentage, and were given the broad points of how the story will eventually resolve in anticipation of their outpacing (or perhaps even the actual death of) its author.

But consider that Jon Snow died in 2011’s “A Dance with Dragons”—the cliffhanger of which was resolved on the series over two years ago. That must be exquisitely frustrating for those still patiently anticipating news of his fate in the upcoming book “The Winds of Winter.”

Last year, season six’s change of pace was immediately apparent—and refreshing. (Not that the show ever really felt like it was spinning its wheels.) It had a deliberate focus on the complexities of its characters, savoring their personalities and the scope of their world, until the holy shit moments hit the fan. Untethered from the text, Weiss and Benioff were free to not only dictate the narrative momentum, but arrange the pieces on the board as they saw fit.

But in this latest season, truncated to seven episodes from ten, the show’s accelerated pace has changed the tone—not necessarily for the better. Characters magically flit between Dragonstone, the Wall, King’s Landing and Winterfell in what seem like mere moments. Events that both fans of the show and books have been awaiting for years—the Starks reuniting, Jon and Daenerys meeting, characters like the odious Littlefinger dying, the White Walkers arriving, and the aforementioned Jon and Dany finally hopping the train to Pound Town—are all matter-of-factly dropped in a way that feels perfunctory.

Only in the last episode, the best moments of which were just characters talking, did the momentum seem to calm down.

I still love “Game of Thrones” to death. But after almost a decade in Westeros it’s hard to escape the feeling that Weiss and Benioff are kind of over it.