The Ending We Deserved: The Unreasonable Demands of Fans

Can’t we all just learn to get along?

So… Game of Thrones ended on Sunday. You might have heard about that. I promise a review of the season- and the series- is on the way, but right now, I want to talk about something I’ve seen running rampant on social media. Fans are complaining about the ending.

(Minor SPOILERS may follow)

This isn’t new; fans have complained about a lot of things before. In fact, I’m sure the definition for “fan” is quickly becoming “those who complain about the things they love.” Now, I’m not saying you have to love the ending of this show- or any of the other things fans complain about- as it is entirely within your rights as a fan to dislike something about the thing for which you are a fan. It’s not a rule that you must love 100% of it; point in fact, I’m a major Star Trek fan, but there are plenty of movies and episodes (and entire seasons) that I think were completely terrible. Same for Doctor Who, and same for Star Wars, and same for plenty of other franchises I follow. Nothing is perfect, and sometimes my favorite things swing and miss spectacularly. And I might complain; after all, I write reviews. It comes with the territory. I’m a fan, and I reserve the right to complain when I feel something doesn’t stick the landing.

There’s a clear difference, however, between bad writing and just not getting what we expected. Take Iron Man 3; everyone complained about the Mandarin twist, but it wasn’t bad writing, in fact it was very clever writing, and in no way ruined the experience or the story. And yet fans treated it like it did.

But where I draw the line is fans believing they deserve anything from the creators. That is what I’ve been seeing ever since Game of Thrones ended on Sunday. Fans saying that they deserved a different conclusion. And I hate to say it, as a fan, but the writers and creators of the things we love don’t owe us a damn thing.

They are there to tell a story. In many cases, they have an idea of where they want this story to go, what they want to tell. I know I do for…