History SoYouWantTo / WriteAnEnding

''Game of Thrones'' is a fantasy epic that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019. They are based on Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's as-yet-unfinished novel series, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', which he wrote as a deliberate reaction to his years as a television screenwriter, in which his imagination was constantly hamstrung by the realities (and budgets) of working on a TV show. Consequently, ''[=aSoIaF=]'' has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, eight different {{narrator}}s in the first novel ''alone'', spans two continents, includes a number of fantastical / non-human beings, and involves a massive SuccessionCrisis on the continent of Westeros, at the exact wrong time: a GreaterScopeVillain is rising in the Lands of Always-Winter to the north, and the Seven Kingdoms must band together to meet this icy threat. Fortunately, they may have help: far to the east, on that other continent, the exiled princess of a former dynasty has performed the impossible, and revived the extinct race of dragons. Her name is Daenerys Targaryen (Creator/EmiliaClarke). If the series has a single protagonist, it is her.

Now, the {{Doylist}} explanation for ''this'' part is simple: Per WordOfGod, the CentralTheme of the game ''is not about stopping the Reapers.'' It's, "[[TheChainsOfCommanding You can't save everybody]]." And, in a (pseudo) RobotWar where all life hangs in the balance, that's a really great theme to have! The problem is that, once again, it's not in the text. You ''can'' save everybody -- for instance, you can settle the aforementioned RobotWar -- except for in certain cases where characters have very clear {{Plotline Death}}s that cannot be avoided. While these moments do have an emotional impact, they are somewhat defanged by a SadisticChoice in the first game: While Shepard and team are attacking the planet Virmire, two of your squadmates get pinned down on opposite sides of the enemy base and Shepard can only rescue one of them. The game is very explicit about this fact: you ''must'' commit a FailureToSaveMurder. And the game does in fact make you choose; you have to select the name you want to save and click a button and make a conscious decision to condemn the other to death. When compared to moments like that, the ''mandatory'', non-optional deaths of characters in the third game -- where you cannot save them no matter what, except possibly via the LoopholeAbuse of getting them killed in the ''second'' game instead -- simply do not have the same impact.[[note]]Yes, that's a gross oversimplification of Mordin's fate. Would adding those details improve how this article is making its point? No? That's why they aren't here.[[/note]]

There is, in short, a GoldenPath -- a set of choices you can make, spread out across all nine acts of the trilogy, that lead to an optimal ending. You can in fact save everybody... At least until that ending, which was clearly written for a different game. There is a GoldenPath but no GoldenEnding.

Nonetheless, Daenerys's ending shows how you can subvert expectations -- and also what to avoid when trying the same. Another good example will be her arc in the remaining two novels of the book series, ''The Winds of Winter'' and ''A Dream of Spring''. It's known that GRRM deliberately allowed Weiss and Benioff to write their own GeckoEnding, out of respect for the needs of TV adaptation... but it's also known that he told them exactly five things about the remaining two books ([[spoiler:Shireen's fate, Hodor's fate, and three other bits that D&D have declined to share]]). It's relatively safe to assume that Daenerys' fate was one of those things. Her ending in the show will be her ending in the books. However, when Daenerys goes AxCrazy in the books, it won't be an AssPull. Daenerys, as a narrator in the books, is ''very'' aware of the fact that Targaryens have madness InTheBlood, and is constantly questioning her own actions and whether she has gone too far. Consequently, when her SanitySlippage starts, The Reader will catch it -- even though she, presumably, will not.

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight[[note]]Some knights of the Vale, left over from Littlefinger's command, ought to be present; we see some ironborn; and technically, there should be some folks from the Riverlands as well, since they've been part of the Northern bloc since Season 1[[/note]], they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "AlwaysChaoticEvil." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.[[labelnote:For the curious...]]The Others, per WordOfGod, are an allegory for GlobalWarming, a GreenAesop about DividedWeFall. Having them be an AntiClimaxBoss defuses this {{aesop}}. Even worse, there's a BrokenAesop when Cersei climb to the top of the game of thones via a "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt? SomeoneElsesProblem" attitude.[[/labelnote]]) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has entrenched ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed in the battle with the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), executed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Landing to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

In this case, we can get back to the entire theme of the game: "Stop the Reapers." In the end, Shepard is given several choices: to do so, by blowing them away entirely; to ''control'' them, using them to better ends; or, if you've jumped through enough gameplay hoops, to do an ''AssimilationPlot'' on them, making them stop hating organics because now they ''are'' organics (gross oversimplification, but good enough for this article's purposes). It's a GainaxEnding, with very little foreshadowing; additionally, the "Blow up the Reapers" ending was saddled with additional baggage by requiring you to sacrifice at least one robot teammate in the process. This decision was characterized as being part of a RobotWar, at which point the sacrifice of the robot teammate starts to make sense; the only problem is, said Robot War was {{Ass Pull}}ed right there in that very scene; the Reapers' hatred of organic life is not contextualized as being a product of their syntheticity at any other time in 100 hours of gameplay.

Even worse, the Robot War justification opens more {{Plot Hole}}s than it closes. The Reapers claim that their biocide is out of a sense of altruism: RobotWar is inevitable, and so the Reapers save organic species from being killed by robots by, you know, killing them with robots ''first''. In addition to being InsaneTrollLogic, the "Robot War is inevitable" premise is not supported by the text. In fact, it can be ''contradicted'' by the text if Shepard has jumped through enough gameplay hoops. You can, in fact, fight the Reapers with a united force of organics and synthetics, one that has not only had a Robot War but is now having a Robot ''Peace''.

A lot can happen in 73 episodes, obviously, especially for a setting with as much BackStory as Westeros. The War of TheUsurper, where Robert Baratheon dethroned Daenerys' dad, was 17 years back. As of Episode 7, King Robert is dead; as of Episode 9, Ned Stark is dead, and with him the realm's only hope for a WeCouldHaveAvoidedAllThisPlot. As of Episode 10, we're officially divided into ThreeLinesSomeWaiting. By odd coincidence, the three lines can be analogized to one of the nouns in the phrase "A Song of Ice and Fire":

This is perhaps best exemplified by the fate of Lord Eddard Stark (Creator/SeanBean), who dies during the first season. That fact in itself is not that unusual -- he's not even the first character from the ''opening credits'' to die; and the fact that he's played by Sean Bean should have given the game away. But the truth is that the story goes out of its way to position Ned Stark as TheProtagonist, making the reveal that he's a DecoyProtagonist much more powerful: he's at the center of events, he is doing his best to be TheGoodChancellor, and he's played by (at the time) the biggest-name actor in the cast. Even the credits got in on it: the reason Peter Dinklage couldn't lead them is that Bean did! Consequently, the moment when Ned is killed is a WhamEpisode for the show -- not just because of its impeccable acting, cinematography and production, but because it represented a huge plot twist (to any viewer who hadn't already read ''Literature/AGameOfThrones'' when it came out 19 years ago). ''The show kills its own main character''. "AnyoneCanDie" has never had so much meaning.

I mean, we ''are'' surprised. Ned has just done everything in his power to save himself, up to and including perjury... and typically, when Main Characters try to save themselves, it works. But the story doesn't suddenly go in an unexpected direction. It's ''always'' been a possibility that Ned would lose his head at the end of this scene. We didn't think it ''would'' happen, but we knew it ''could''.

A lot can happen in 73 episodes, obviously, especially for a setting with as much BackStory as Westeros. The War of TheUsurper, where Robert Baratheon dethroned Daenerys' dad, was 17 years back. As of Episode 7, King Robert is dead; as of Episode 9, Ned Stark is dead, and with him the realm's only hope for peace. As of Episode 10, we're officially divided into ThreeLinesSomeWaiting. By odd coincidence, the three lines can be analogized to one of the nouns in the phrase "A Song of Ice and Fire":

* '''The fire''' is Daenerys, doing her thing where she hatches her three dragons and returns magic to the world. While Westeros is having a civil war and completely ignoring the Night's Watch, Daenerys becomes a WarriorPrincess, using her dragons to cut a swath through Essos. But Daenerys is TheCape. Essos is the heart of the world's slave trade, and Dany strikes exclusively at the oppressors -- she becomes known as "Breaker of Chains" for exactly this reason. She is always very scrupulous about using her powers against those who would hurt others, and sparing anyone else.

When Dany finally gets to Westeros -- which doesn't happen until Episode 61 -- she's got a lot of room to make her mark. First off, Cersei is a person of great ambition but few qualifications; amongst other things, she solidified her hold on power by getting all her enemies to the Great Sept and then ''blowing it up'', decapitating her opposition but also showing her utter disdain for the country's most powerful organized religion. She serves as the BigBad of the show. Even worse, it's GrimUpNorth: Jon Snow has hit the YouAreInCommandNow trope and is leading the Night's Watch, but it turns out those White Walkers are ''{{necromancer}}s'' and can summon hordes of dead with a gesture, making it that much harder to fight them. Good thing both zombies and ice demons tend to be WeakToFire. It is, in short, the ''perfect'' place for a woman with ChronicHeroSyndrome -- and, more importantly, three flying flamethrowers -- to make her mark by resolving the song of ice and fire.

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight[[note]]Some knights of the Vale, left over from Littlefinger's command, ought to be present; we see some ironborn; and technically, there should be some folks from the Riverlands as well, since they've been part of the Northern bloc since Season 1[[/note]], they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "AlwaysChaoticEvil." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.[[labelnote:For the curious...]]The Others, per WordOfGod, are an allegory for GlobalWarming, a GreenAesop about DividedWeFall. Having them be an AntiClimaxBoss defuses this {{aesop}}. Even worse, having Cersei climb to the top of the game of thones via her "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt? SomeoneElsesProblem" attitude results in the show tacitly ''condoning'' said attitude. This may have something to do with the whole "51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes" thing.[[/labelnote]]) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed in the battle with the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Landing to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

The ending was a decent wrap-up of everything that had happened... But a lot of viewers had trouble reconciling that ending with what had happened in the penultimate episode. Simply put, they felt that Daenerys being EvilAllAlong was CharacterDerailment. While very few people can disagree that there was accurate foreshadowing -- that whole "madness and greatness" thing is quoted ''in that very episode'' -- what was missed was the escalation. There's no SlowlySlippingIntoEvil, there's just a FaceHeelTurn with almost no set-up; indeed, the "PreviouslyOn" segment to the episode does ''a better job'' of foreshadowing Dany's Turn than the actual show does, precisely because it gets to engage in a biased re-reading of the text, cherry-picking all of Dany's bad moments while ignoring the three or five heroic moments in between each one. Daenerys spends 70 episodes consistently being TheHeart, doing that are risky, even foolish, but well-meaning, where a wiser (if colder) ruler would turn away: She has ChronicHeroSyndrome, and that's just how her character is written.

To re-iterate, the problem wasn't the Plot Twist itself. Is there a character arc where Daenerys, who has ChronicHeroSyndrome, comes down with SamaritanSyndrome as well? What if she gets tired of doing the right thing only to face relentless and unfair consequences? Where she gets frustrated by the fact that she can ''never catch a break''? Where she's so tired of being a FailureHero that she decides that it's time to don a coat of a different color? TheUnfettered, say. Could such a character arc exist? Yeah, absolutely!

The problem is that it didn't. Or, if it did, it lasted all of one shot and 30 seconds.

But we don't get that footage. The show ''doesn't care'' whether she's BeyondRedemption; the writers have decreed she must die, and so she does. She is a victim not of injustice or genetics but of CreatorsApathy, losing all characterization to instead become some sort of object lesson about... [[ShrugOfGod something the show is unclear about]]. Tyrion levels what is meant to be the main criticism of her character by proclaiming, "Everywhere she goes, [[PayEvilUntoEvil evil men die]], and we cheer her for it," and he's not wrong... But his assumption -- that he, and by the extension the audience, were wrong to cheer for someone who Pays Evil Unto Evil -- is not proven by the text (not to mention being a BrokenAesop). Are we instead meant to believe that WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity? Are we meant to believe that she was merely DrunkWithPower? Are we meant to believe that ''there can be no heroes'', that anyone who does good things will inevitably be revealed to be a bad person? ''There is no textual support for any of these interpretations''. There is a {{Watsonian}} explanation for why Daenerys ''might'' decide to commit war crimes, but none as to why she ''did'' -- much less as to why she did it so quickly. There is no explanation; there is only {{Railroading}}.

And the worst part is that her CharacterDerailment pulls ''almost everyone else'' OffTheRails as well. The show -- once renowned for GreyAndGrayMorality -- then committed itself (for reasons not currently known) to a portrayal of BlackAndWhiteMorality, and Jon -- who at this point has all but stolen the title of TheProtagonist from Daenerys -- needs to be put in a situation where he can kill Daenerys ethically. So Tyrion and Varys, two of the savviest political operators in Westeros, get hit with ThirdActStupidity. Cersei, who ''is also a mass murderer'', gets to KarmaHoudini her way out of the CycleOfRevenge (which is a little goofy considering that the show doesn't manage to get out from under the Cycle Of Revenge started by ''Ned Stark's'' death until ''literally the series finale''); not only that, she's recast as ''the victim'' of Daenerys' rampage. Sansa has the MoralLuck to distrust her despite having no {{Watsonian}} reason to do so: Dany is here to put an end to Cersei, who is Sansa's [[ItsPersonal personal]] nemesis, and also to save Westeros from TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but Sansa doesn't like her, because... well, she [[MarySue just knows somehow]] that Dany was EvilAllAlong, even though that is impossible for Sansa ''to'' know because Dany hasn't done her "JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope In Thirty Seconds" thing yet. And yes, Daenerys Pays Evil Unto Evl... making her ''merely identical'' to every other character mentioned in this paragraph, all of whom have killed and murdered in the name of war or self-defense or justice, and all of whom are nonetheless framed framed, by the final two episodes, as ''sympathetic characters''. It cannot be denied that slaughtering civilians is a bad thing... But if our train of logic is, "Daenerys has power, therefore she must turn evil," then every "hero" in the show ''has already'' turned evil, with Daenerys in fact being the lone holdout who resisted the longest -- a fact the show kind of forgot to think about.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your theme and Aesop determines your ending. This is part of what enables the NoEnding trope to exist: you arrive at the conclusion of an arc, even if it's not The End. To contrast ''How I Met Your Mother'', let's look at another narrated character drama that masquerades as a romance: ''Film/FiveHundredDaysOfSummer''. The film is about a man named Tom (Creator/JosephGordonLevitt) who meets a ManicPixieDreamGirl named Summer (Creator/ZooeyDeschanel), falls in love with her and can't get over her. The film uses AnachronicOrder -- its first scene takes place on Day 488 -- to explore Tom's mentality and reactions as he tries to get over TheOneThatGotAway, not to mention his own deeper issues with being InLoveWithLove, LovingAShadow of Summer instead of the real her. In the final scene of the film, he's at a job interview and he runs into a girl named Autumn... And, on screen, the day indicator flips back to 1. Is this an ending? Is Tom about to be a victim of HistoryRepeats? Or has he learned enough to maybe make a new start? The answer is, [[AmbiguousEnding the film doesn't tell us]] -- because it doesn't actually matter. The story is fundamentally a ComingOfAgeStory, and its Aesop is, "LovingAShadow is bad." Tom stops doing this; he has learned what he can from his 500 days of Summer and is ready to move on. Therefore, it doesn't actually matter if Autumn is his SecondLove or another stepping stone on the path of his evolution; he has come of age, and the story is over, even if [[AndTheAdventureContinues The Adventure Continues]]. It is an ending... To the story director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber are actually telling, not the one audiences thought they were. And it works, ''because'' Webb and Neustadter and Weber knew what story they were telling -- something the writers of all the previous works were not sure about.

Another example is ''Film/{{Inception}}'', which has one of the most famous No Endings in history. The movie is about a group of cons who are hired to perform a heist in someone's dreams using AppliedPhlebotinum. One of the themes constantly underlined in the film is the difficulty between telling dream from reality, and main character Dom Cobb (Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio) has a top that he spins to figure out whether he's awake or not: if he's asleep, it will defy physics and never stop spinning. Another is the question of whether IgnoranceIsBliss; Dom knows he can just LotusEaterMachine himself to a happy ending, but he also knows it will be a dream. This question is underlined by the heist itself, which involves invading someone's dream and planting an idea in his head in such a way that he believes the idea was his own -- the [[TitleDrop eponymous]] inception -- because if he realizes it was planted, he won't believe it. At the end of the film, Dom finally gets his heart's desire. He starts spinning the top, but looks away before he can see the results; likewise, the film cuts to credits before we see whether the top stops spinning or not. Filmmaker Creator/ChristopherNolan had to explain that the reason Dom looks away from the top is that he doesn't care anymore; he has decided that ignorance ''is'' bliss. The fact that WordOfGod was necessary to settle this ending shows that it did not deliver its message very well. The audience approaches the ending believing that the film is about Dom making his dreams cone true, when it's actually about him learning to leave his dreams behind, and that is -- undeniably -- the fault of the filmmakers. However, the message ''itself'' makes perfect sense within the context of its story. Its Aesop is that happiness only works if you're willing to accept it at face value, and that's what Dom finally does.

Now, here we need to address something that doesn't always happen to novels, but will definitely happen anywhere else: Logistics. The show's Framing Device involves shots of two kids sitting on a couch. Consequently, their lines at the end -- "Go date Aunt Robin" -- were filmed in ''Season 2'' and just kept in a box somewhere, because waiting any longer to film them would have resulted in the child actors (David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca) aging out of the roles. If you wanted to add to the scene, you'd ''immediately'' have to [[TheOtherDarrin recast]] the roles, or do some ''really'' tricky CGI de-aging that your budget might not accommodate. (And how much had David Henrie's voice changed in the interim?) The point is, the creators of the show were locked into their ending as of Season 2; they ''could not'' change it, at least not very easily. You tend to have this problem more with episodic media... but the simple fact is, ''everything'' is episodic these days, because 1) it's easier to write in smaller pieces, 2) it's easier to ''consume'' in smaller pieces, 3) you can make ''[[MoneyDearBoy way more money]]'' from smaller pieces. So you should assume you'll have this problem.

And so here we have this problem. "We filmed an ending, but it's the wrong one, and we can't go back and add more." What do you do? The answer is, ''you take out the stuff that doesn't work''. Sure enough, when the ''[=HIMYM=]'' finale came out on DVD, it included an alternate ending which eschewed the contentious reunion with Robin and The Mother's untimely passing. This had the side effect of turning certain lines in previous episodes, the ones concerning Tracy's demise, into {{Red Herring}}s... but this could also have been addressed by adding ''even more'' content: since it's been foreshadowed that Tracy will not live to see Penny's wedding, have the show end with Ted saying, "I wanted to tell you all this because your mom's chemo isn't working as well as it used to. She wanted me to tell you the whole story of our lives, since she may not have a chance to do it herself." And then have Tracy come in -- looking ill, but still smiling. "Still, we'll get through this. We're a family. Right, honey?" AndTheAdventureContinues.

Second: we know Ned's life is on the line. The very first scene of his final episode establishes this. While Ned is languishing in gaol, he's visited by Varys (Creator/ConlethHill), a member of the DeadlyDecadentCourt. Ned refused to bow to Joffrey due to Ned's belief that Joffrey is not actually Robert's child, but rather the illegitimate, inbred love child of Robert's queen, Cersei Lannister, and [[{{twincest}} her own twin]] Jaime Lannister (Creator/NikolajCosterWaldau). (As it happens, [[RefugeInAudacity Ned is factually correct]].) Varys counsels him to recant this belief, to swear fealty to Joffrey. Ned has the choice between [[BeingGoodSucks what is right]] and [[EvilIsEasy what is easy]], and Varys thinks he should go Easy, because going "ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight" would result in... a second CivilWar in a generation. The Seven Kingdoms needs peace, and Ned is the only person who can provide it. Additionally, being LawfulEvil would have the benefit of Ned remaining alive. The same would be true, Varys adds, for Ned's daughter Sansa (Creator/SophieTurner), who is [[IHaveYourWife very much in Cersei's clutches]].

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight[[note]]Some knights of the Vale, left over from Littlefinger's command, ought to be present; we see some ironborn; and technically, there should be some folks from the Riverlands as well, since they've been part of the Northern bloc since Season 1[[/note]], they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "AlwaysChaoticEvil." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.[[labelnote:For the curious...]]The Others, per WordOfGod, are an allegory for GlobalWarming, a GreenAesop about DividedWeFall. Having them be an AntiClimaxBoss defuses this {{aesop}}. Even worse, having Cersei climb to the top of the game of thones via her "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt? SomeElsesProblem" attitude results in the show tacitly ''condoning'' said attitude. This may have something to do with the whole "51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes" thing.[[/labelnote]]) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed in the battle with the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Landing to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight[[note]]Some knights of the Vale, left over from Littlefinger's command, ought to be present; we see some ironborn; and technically, there should be some folks from the Riverlands as well, since they are technically part of the northern armies[[/note]], they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "AlwaysChaoticEvil." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.[[labelnote:For those of you curious...]]The Others, per WordOfGod, are an allegory for GlobalWarming, a GreenAesop about DividedWeFall. Having them be an AntiClimaxBoss defuses this {{aesop}} -- as does the fact that Cersei promises to send men but then refuses, providing the BrokenAesop that calling "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt" SomeoneElsesProblem is the correct choice. This may have something to do with the whole "51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes" thing.[[/labelnote]]) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed defending her in the fight against the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Landing to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

The ShockingSwerve is that our Main Character was EvilAllAlong.

The ending was a decent wrap-up of everything that had happened... But a lot of viewers had trouble reconciling that ending with what had happened in the penultimate episode. Simply put, they felt that Daenerys being EvilAllAlong was CharacterDerailment. While very few people can disagree that there was accurate foreshadowing -- that whole "madness and greatness" thing is quoted ''in that very episode'' -- what was missed was the escalation. There's no SlowlySlippingIntoEvil, there's just a FaceHeelTurn with almost no set-up; indeed, the "PreviouslyOn" segment to the episode does ''a better job'' of foreshadowing Dany's Turn than the actual show does. Daenerys spends 70 episodes consistently being TheHeart, doing risky things for other people when a wiser (if colder) ruler would turn away: She has ChronicHeroSyndrome, and that's just how her character is written.

Now. Is there a character arc where Daenerys, who has ChronicHeroSyndrome, comes down with SamaritanSyndrome as well? What if she gets tired of doing the right thing only to face relentless and unfair consequences? Where she gets frustrated by the fact that she can ''never catch a break''? Where she's so tired of being a FailureHero that she decides that it's time to don a coat of a different color? TheUnfettered, say.

Could such a character arc exist? Absolutely!

''Did'' such a character arc exist? Absolutely not.

Daenerys [[BecameTheirOwnAntithesis Becomes Her Own Antithesis]] over the course of 30 seconds. We see her on the back of her dragon, getting angrier and angrier... And then she starts lighting the city on fire, and she is ''literally not seen again for the entire episode''. In fact, Daenerys ''the person'' is never seen again; in both of her scenes in the final episode, she's TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask, trying to make the best of the tenuous political position that she got after letting her anger loose at the wrong time. There is not a single moment where she sits back and reflects: "MyGodWhatHaveIDone Was it worth it?" Is she actually BeyondRedemption? If she decides it was, then, yeah, she's a mass murderer; if she decides it ''wasn't'', then she's had her TragicMistake. Either way, it validates the idea that she must die for her crimes -- either because she herself admits it, or because she [[SelectiveObliviousness refuses to]]. Like ''[=HIMYM=]'' above, this is another situation where an entire television series could have been salvaged with a mere ''30 seconds'' of additional footage.

But we don't get that footage. The show ''doesn't care'' whether she's BeyondRedemption; the writers have decreed she must die, and so she does. She is a victim not of injustice or genetics but of CreatorsApathy, losing all characterization to instead become some sort of object lesson about... [[ShrugOfGod something the show is unclear about]]. Tyrion levels what is meant to be the main criticism of her character by proclaiming, "Everywhere she goes, [[PayEvilUntoEvil evil men die]], and we cheer her for it," and he's not wrong... But his assumption -- that he, and by the extension the audience, were wrong to cheer for someone who rights wrongs and punishes the wicked -- is not proven by the text in any way (not to mention being a BrokenAesop). Are we instead meant to believe that WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity? Are we meant to believe that she was merely DrunkWithPower? Are we meant to believe that ''there can be no heroes'', that anyone who does good things will inevitably be revealed to be a bad person? ''There is no textual support for any of these interpretations''. There is a {{Watsonian}} explanation for why Daenerys might decide to commit war crimes, but none as to why she ''did'' -- much less as to why she did it so quickly. There is no explanation; there is only {{Railroading}}.

And the worst part is that her CharacterDerailment pulls ''almost everyone else'' OffTheRails as well. The show -- once renowned for GreyAndGrayMorality -- then committed itself (for reasons not currently known) to a portrayal of BlackAndWhiteMorality, and Jon -- who at this point has all but stolen the title of TheProtagonist from Daenerys -- needs to be put in a situation where he can kill Daenerys and still have it look ethical. So Tyrion and Varys, two of the savviest political operators in Westeros, get hit with ThirdActStupidity. Cersei, who ''is also a mass murderer'', gets to KarmaHoudini her way out of the CycleOfRevenge (which is a little goofy considering that the show doesn't manage to get out from under the Cycle Of Revenge started by ''Ned Stark's'' death until ''literally the series finale''); not only that, she's recast as ''the victim'' of Daenerys' rampage. Sansa has the MoralLuck to distrust her despite having no {{Watsonian}} reason to do so: Dany is here to put an end to Cersei, who is Sansa's [[ItsPersonal personal]] nemesis, and also to save Westeros from TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but Sansa doesn't like her, because... well, she [[MarySue just knows somehow]] that Dany was EvilAllAlong, even though that is impossible for Sansa ''to'' know because Dany hasn't done her "JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope In Thirty Seconds" thing yet. And yes, Daenerys abuses her power... making her ''merely identical'' to every other character mentioned in this paragraph, all of whom have killed and murdered in the name of war or self-defense or justice. It cannot be denied that slaughtering civilians is a bad thing... But, if the logic is that "Daenerys has power, therefore she must turn evil," then the same ''must'' be true of all the other characters... and yet most of them are ''not'' characterized as evil, but rather as the ''good guys''. Even though they have power, and therefore will [[BrokenAesop undoubtedly]] go on to slaughter civilians tomorrow, because -- according to the show -- that is merely what people in power do.

The ending was a decent wrap-up of everything that had happened... But a lot of viewers had trouble reconciling that ending with what had happened in the penultimate episode. Simply put, they felt that Daenerys being EvilAllAlong was CharacterDerailment. While very few people can disagree that there was accurate foreshadowing -- that whole "madness and greatness" thing is quoted ''in that very episode'' -- what was missed was the escalation. There's no SlowlySlippingIntoEvil, there's just a HeelFaceTurn with almost no set-up; indeed, the "PreviouslyOn" segment to the episode does ''a better job'' of foreshadowing Dany's Turn than the actual show does. Daenerys spends 70 episodes consistently being TheHeart, doing risky things for other people when a wiser (if colder) ruler would turn away: She has ChronicHeroSyndrome, and that's just how her character is written.

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight[[note]]Some knights of the Vale, left over from Littlefinger's command, ought to be present; we see some ironborn; and technically, there should be some folks from the Riverlands as well, since they are technically part of the northern armies[[/note]], they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "AlwaysChaoticEvil." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.[[labelnote:For those of you curious...]]The Others, per WordOfGod, are an allegory for GlobalWarming, a GreenAesop about DividedWeFall. Having them be an AntiClimaxBoss defuses this {{aesop}} -- as does the fact that Cersei promises to send men but then refuses, providing the BrokenAesop that calling "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt" SomeoneElsesProblem is the correct choice. This may have something to do with the whole "51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes" thing.[[/labelnote]]) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed defending her in the fight against the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Kanding to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

''Game of Thrones'' is a fantasy epic that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019. They are based on Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's as-yet-unfinished novel series, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', which he wrote as a deliberate reaction to his years as a television screenwriter, in which his imagination was constantly hamstrung by the realities (and budgets) of working on a TV show. Consequently, ''[=aSoIaF=]'' has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, eight different {{narrator}}s in the first novel ''alone'', spans two continents, includes a number of fantastical / non-human beings, and involves a massive SuccessionCrisis on the continent of Westeros, at the exact wrong time: a GreaterScopeVillain is rising in the Lands of Always-Winter to the north, and the Seven Kingdoms must band together to meet this icy threat. Fortunately, they may have help: far to the east, on that other continent, the exiled princess of a former dynasty has performed the impossible, and revived the extinct race of dragons. Her name is Daenerys Targaryen (Creator/EmiliaClarke). If the series has a single {{Protagonist}}, it is her.

* '''The ice''': There's a guy named Jon Snow (Creator/KitHarington), the LiteralBastard of the late Ned Stark, who lives in a BleakBorderBase at TheGreatWall in the far north. Jon is a member of the "Night's Watch," a group formed to man the Wall and protect the Seven Kingdoms from the aforementioned GreaterScopeVillain, "the White Walkers" (as the show calls them, because the books call them "the Others" but ''Series/{{LOST}}'' already took that name), an army of IcePerson EnemyToAllLivingThings types. Only, the White Walkers haven't been seen in eight ''thousand'' years[[note]]For context: here in RealLife, the oldest piece of writing we have is only five thousand years old[[/note]], and the Night's Watch has become an ArmyOfThievesAndWhores, with criminals who [[TradingBarsForStripes Traded Bars For Stripes]] rubbing elbows with political dissidents who were KickedUpstairs or ReassignedToAntarctica. Too bad the White Walkers are actually back, right? Jon's got a lot of work to do.

First off: we know that people in positions of power can die. Ned's already seen that happen firsthand: he's in the dungeon because he refused to swear allegiance to RoyalBrat Joffrey Baratheon (Creator/JackGleeson) after his father, King Robert Baratheon (Creator/MarkAddy), was killed in a HuntingAccident. Beyond that, viewers (but not Ned) have also seen Daenerys' brother Viserys (Creator/HarryLloyd) meet a CruelAndUnusualDeath after he broke some taboos over on the eastern continent. Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen are the LastOfTheirKind, the only descendents of King Aerys II Targaryen whom Robert overthrew, and therefore style themselves the GovernmentInExile of the Seven Kingdoms... a fact that didn't stop Viserys from getting offed when he overstepped his bounds. Ned has also had a TurnInHisBadge moment because he refused to sanction King Robert's desire to have ''Daenerys'' assassinated. Being king, or king-to-be, does ''not'' give you PlotArmor, and Ned knows this for a fact.

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight[[note]]Some knights of the Vale, left over from Littlefinger's command, ought to be present; we some ironborn; technically, there should be some folks from the Riverlands as well, since they are technically part of the norther armies[[/note]], they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "AlwaysChaoticEvi." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed defending her in the fight against the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Kanding to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

* '''The ice''': There's a guy named Jon Snow (Creator/KitHarington), the LiteralBastard of the late Ned Stark, who lives in a BleakBorderBase at TheGreatWall in the far north. Jon is a member of the "Night's Watch," a group formed to man the Wall and protect the Seven Kingdoms from the aforementioned GreaterScopeVillain, "the White Walkers" (as the show calls them, because the books call them "the Others" but ''Series/{{LOST}}'' already took that name), an army of IcePerson EnemyToAllLivingThings types. Only, the White Walkers haven't been seen in eight ''thousand'' years[[note]]For context: here in RealLife, the oldest piece of writing we have is only five thousand years old[[/note]], and the Night's Watch has become an ArmyOfThievesAndWhores, with criminals who TradedBarsForStars rubbing elbows with political dissidents who were KickedUpstairs or ReassignedToAntarctica. Too bad the White Walkers are actually back, right? Jon's got a lot of work to do.

When Dany finally gets to Westeros -- which doesn't happen until Episode 61 -- she's got a lot of room to make her mark. First off, Cersei is a person of great ambition but few qualifications; amongst other things, she solidified her hold on power by getting all her enemies to the Great Sept and then ''blowing it up'', decapitating her opposition but also showing her utter disdain for the country's most powerful organized religion. She serves as the BigBad of the show. Even worse, it's GrimUpNorth: Jon Snow has hit the YouAreInCommandNow trope and is leading the Night's Watch, but it turns out those White Walkers are ''{{necromancer}}s'' and can summon hordes of dead with a gesture, making it that much harder to fight them. Good thing both zombies and ice demons tend to be WeakToFire. It is, in short, the ''perfect'' place for a woman with ChronicHeroSyndrome -- and the only three flamethrowers in the world -- to make her mark by resolving the song of ice and fire.

And so here we have this problem. "We filmed an ending, but it's the wrong one, and we can't go back and add more." What do you do? The answer is, ''you take out the stuff that doesn't work''. Sure enough, when the ''[=HIMYM=]'' finale came out on DVD, it included an alternate ending which eschewed the contentious reunion with Robin and The Mother's untimely passing. This had the side effect of turning certain lines in previous episodes into {{Red Herring}}s, but this could also have been addressed by adding ''even more'' content: since it's been foreshadowed that Tracy will not live to see Penny's wedding, have the show end with Ted saying, "I wanted to tell you all this because your mom's chemo isn't working as well as it used to. She wanted me to tell you the whole story of our lives, since she may not have a chance to do it herself." And then have Tracy come in -- looking ill, but still smiling. "Still, we'll get through this. We're a family. Right, honey?" AndTheAdventureContinues.

In this case, we can get back to the entire theme of the game: "Stop the Reapers." In the end, Shepard is given several choices: to do so, by blowing them away entirely; to ''control'' them, using them to better ends; or, if you've jumped through enough gameplay hoops, to do an ''AssimilationPlot'' on them, making them stop hating organics because now they ''are'' organics (gross oversimplification, but good enough for this article's purposes). It's a GainaxEnding, with very little foreshadowing; additionally, the "Blow up the Reapers" ending was saddled with additional baggage by requiring you to sacrifice at least one robot teammate in the process. This decision was characterized as being part of a RobotWar which was... introduced right there in that very scene, as the Reapers' hatred of organic life is not contextualized as being a product of their artificiality at any other time in 100 hours of gameplay.

The Reapers claim that their xenocide is out of a sense of altruism: RobotWar is inevitable, and so the Reapers save organic species from being killed by robots by, you know, killing them with robots ''first''. In addition to being InsaneTrollLogic, the "Robot War is inevitable" premise is not supported by the text. In fact, it can be ''contradicted'' by the text if Shepard has jumped through enough gameplay hoops. You can, in fact, fight the Reapers with a united force of organics and synthetics, one that has not only had a Robot War but is now having a Robot ''Peace''.

Now, the {{Doylist}} explanation for ''this'' part is simple: Per WordOfGod, the CentralTheme of the game ''is not about stopping the Reapers.'' It's, "[[TheChainsOfCommanding You can't save everybody]]." And, in a (pseudo) RobotWar where all life hangs in the balance, that's a really great theme to have! The problem is that, once again, it's not in the text. You ''can'' save everybody -- for instance, you can settle the aforementioned RobotWar -- except for in certain cases where characters have very clear {{Plotline Death}}s that cannot be avoided. While these moments do have an emotional impact, they are somewhat defanged by a SadisticChoice in the first game: While Shepard and team are attacking the planet Virmire, two of your squadmates get pinned down on opposite sides of the enemy base and Shepard can only rescue one of them. The game is very explicit about this fact: you ''must'' commit a FailureToSaveMurder. And the game does in fact make you choose; you have to select the name you want to save and click a button and make a conscious decision to condemn the other to death. When compared to moments like that, having no ability to save characters in the third game -- except for getting them killed in the ''second'' game instead -- simply do not have the same punch.[[note]]Yes, that's a gross oversimplification of Mordin's fate. Would adding those details improve how this article is making its point? No? That's why they aren't here.[[/note]]

How could this ending have been salvaged? Simple: '''You don't'''. As mentioned, if you are telling your story properly, people ''should'' be able to guess the ending. It's proof that Karpyshyn was telling the story correctly. (It's also proof he was telling it ''successfully''; if not, nobody would care enough to guess.) And one of the things you have to put up with, in today's age of storytelling, is fans outsmarting you; there are more of them, they have more internet time than you, and they pay a ''lot'' of attention -- "fan" is short for "fanatic," remember. So if you don't want people to guess your ending, what are your options? One is to pull a Creator/JDSalinger and not let anyone read your stories. Another is to do what [=BioWare=] did and go all Shocking Swerve. And the third is to just shrug your shoulders and soldier on. After all, if people are engaged enough that they're {{Wild Mass Guess}}ing your ending... Well, that's a good problem to have.

''Game of Thrones'' is a fantasy epic that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019. They are based on Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's as-yet-unfinished novel series, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', which he wrote as a deliberate reaction to his years as a television screenwriter, in which his imagination was constantly hamstrung by the realities (and budgets) of working on a TV show. Consequently, ''[=aSoIaF=]'' has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, eight different {{narrator}}s in the first novel ''alone'', spans two continents, includes a number of fantastical / non-human beings, and involves a massive SuccessionCrisis on the continent of Westeros, at the exact wrong time: a GreaterScopeVillain is rising in the Lands of Always-Winter to the north, and the Seven Kingdoms must band together to meet this icy threat. Fortunately, they may have help: far to the east, on that other continent, the exiled princess of a former dynasty has performed the impossible, and revived the extinct race of dragons. Her name is Daenerys Targaryen (Creator/EmiliaClarke). TheProtagonist, if it exists, is her.

This is perhaps best exemplified by the fate of Lord Eddard Stark (Creator/SeanBean), who dies during the first season. That fact in itself is not that unusual -- he's not even the first character from the ''opening credits'' to die -- and the fact that he's played by Sean Bean should have given the game away. But the truth is that the story goes out of its way to position Ned Stark as TheProtagonist, making the reveal that he's a DecoyProtagonist much more powerful: he's at the center of events, he is doing his best to be TheGoodChancellor, and he's played by (at the time) the biggest-name actor in the cast. Even the credits got in on it: the reason Peter Dinklage couldn't lead them is that Bean did! Consequently, the moment when Ned is killed is a WhamEpisode for the show -- not just because of its impeccable acting, cinematography and production, but because it represented a huge plot twist (to any viewer who hadn't already read ''Literature/AGameOfThrones'' when it came out 19 years ago). ''The show kills its own main character''. "AnyoneCanDie" has never had so much meaning.

With that in mind, let's talk {{foreshadowing}}, because even unsullied viewers could have seen this coming from a mile away.

First off: we know that people in positions of power can die. Ned's already seen that happen firsthand: he's in the dungeon because he refused to swear allegiance to RoyalBrat Joffrey Baratheon (Creator/JackGleeson) after his father, King Robert Baratheon (Creator/MarkAddy), was killed in a HuntingAccident. Beyond that, viewers (but not Ned) have also seen Daenerys' brother Viserys (Creator/HarryLloyd) meet a CruelAndUnusualDeath after he broke some taboos over on the eastern continent. Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen are the LastOfTheirKind, the only descendents of King Aerys II Targaryen whom Robert overthrew, and therefore are the rightful rulers of the Seven Kingdoms... a fact that didn't stop Viserys from getting offed when he overstepped his bounds. Being king, or king-to-be, does ''not'' give you PlotArmor, and Ned knows this for a fact.

Second: we know Ned's life is on the line. The very first scene of his final episode establishes this. While Ned is languishing in gaol, he's visited by Varys (Creator/ConlethHill), a member of the DeadlyDecadentCourt. Ned refused to bow to Joffrey due to Ned's belief that Joffrey is not actually Robert's child, but rather the illegitimate, inbred love child of Robert's queen, Cersei Lannister, and [[{{twincest}} her own twin]] Jaime Lannister (Creator/NikolajCosterWaldau). (As it happens, [[RefugeInAudacity Ned is factually correct]].) Varys counsels him to recant this belief, to swear fealty to Joffrey. Ned has the choice between [[BeingGoodSucks what is right]] and [[EvilIsEasy what is easy]], and Varys thinks he should go Easy, because going "ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight" would result in... a second CivilWar in a generation. The Seven Kingdoms needs peace, and Ned is the only person who can provide it. Additionally, being LawfulEvil would have the benefit of Ned remaining alive. The same would be true, Varys adds, for [[IHaveYourWife Ned's daughter Sansa]] (Creator/SophieTurner), who is very much in Cersei's clutches.

A lot can happen in 73 episodes, obviously, especially for a setting with as much BackStory as Westeros. The War of TheUsurper, where Robert Baratheon dethroned Daenerys' dad, was 17 years back. As of Episode 7, King Robert is dead; as of Episode 9, Ned Stark is dead, and with him the realm's only hope for peace. As of Episode 10, we're officially divided into ThreeLinesSomeWaiting:
* The "War of Five Kings," as it's called, is on in earnest. It's a bloodbath; only one king wins, and only one king survives, and they are ''not'' the same person. Cersei ends up as ''de facto'' ruler of the Seven Kingdoms by virtue of being the only person who is still alive enough to perch her behind on the Iron Throne. (Ironically, the majority of the show is dedicated to this portion of the novels, even though it is by far the least important part.)
* There's a guy named Jon Snow (Creator/KitHarington), the LiteralBastard of the late Ned Stark, who lives in a BleakBorderBase at TheGreatWall in the far north. Jon is a member of the "Night's Watch," a group formed to man the Wall and protect the Seven Kingdoms from the aforementioned GreaterScopeVillain, "the White Walkers" (as the show calls them, because the books call them "the Others" but ''Series/{{LOST}}'' already took that name). Only, the White Walkers haven't been seen in eight ''thousand'' years (for context: here in RealLife, the oldest piece of writing we have is only five thousand years old), and the Night's Watch has become an ArmyOfThievesAndWhores, with criminals rubbing elbows with political dissidents who were KickedUpstairs or ReassignedToAntarctica. Too bad the White Walkers are actually back, right? Jon's got a lot of work to do.
* Daenerys is in Essos, doing her thing where she hatches dragons and returns magic to the world. While Westeros is having a civil war and completely ignoring the Night's Watch, Daenerys becomes a WarriorPrincess, using her dragons to cut a swath through Essos. But Daenerys is TheCape. Essos is the heart of the world's slave trade, and Dany strikes exclusively at the oppressors -- she becomes known as "Breaker of Chains" for exactly this reason. She is always very scrupulous about using her powers against those who would hurt others, and sparing anyone else.

When Dany finally gets to Westeros -- which doesn't happen until Episode 61 -- she's got a lot of room to make her mark. First off, Cersei is a person of great ambition but few qualifications; amongst other things, she solidified her hold on power by getting all her enemies to the Great Sept and then ''blowing it up'', decapitating her opposition but also showing her utter disdain for the country's most powerful organized religion. She serves as the BigBad of the show. Even worse, it's GrimUpNorth: Jon Snow has hit the YouAreInCommandNow trope and is leading the Night's Watch, but it turns out those White Walkers are ''{{necromancer}}s'' and can summon hordes of dead with a gesture, making it that much harder to fight them. Good thing both zombies and ice demons tend to be WeakToFire. It is, in short, the ''perfect'' place for a woman with ChronicHeroSyndrome -- and three flying flamethrowers -- to make her mark by resolving the song of ice and fire.

Of course, there's a flipside for Daenerys. She is, as her last name would indicate, a Targaryen... and that comes with its own BackStory. Targaryens are descended from an old superpower called Valyria: they have the silver-gold hair and purple eyes of that bloodline, and can tame dragons. (The DragonRider bit is why Valyria was a superpower, before it... [[NoodleIncident exploded. ...Somehow]].) About 300 years ago, Daenerys' ancestor, Aegon, took his two sisters and three dragons and conquered the entire Seven Kingdoms of Westeros -- a feat never before accomplished, cementing his place as one of the greatest {{Four Star Badass}}es in history. He became King Aegon I Targaryen, and he founded the Targaryen dynasty... by ''marrying his sisters''. BrotherSisterIncest has been a tradition in House Targaryen ever since, and Daenerys is the product of a RoyallyScrewedUp TangledFamilyTree rife with RoyalInbreeding. The whole point is this: "Madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin," to quote Ser Barristan Selmy (Creator/IanMcElhinney), himself quoting Daenerys' grandfather, King Jaehaerys II. "Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss that coin into the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land." And Daenerys is a Targaryen. Is she CrazyAwesome? Or only AxCrazy?

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight, they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "generically evil." (This in itself was a ''huge'' ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of ''her'' power -- the remaining might of House Lannister, and a formidable group of {{Private Military Contractor}}s from Essos. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed defending her in the fight against the White Walkers; Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power; and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest, Jon Snow, broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest the way she is.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Kanding to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

Could such a character arc exist? Absolutely.

Daenerys goes from ChronicHeroSyndrome to GeneralRipper over the course of one episode, with no stops in between for any of the other tropes discussed. Her character BecameTheirOwnAntithesis over the course of 30 seconds. We see her on the back of her dragon, getting angrier and angrier... And then she starts lighting the city on fire, and she is ''literally not seen again for the entire episode''. In fact, Daenerys ''the person'' is never seen again; in both of her scenes in the final episode, she's TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask, trying to make the best of the tenuous political position that she got after letting her anger loose at the wrong time. There is not a single moment where she sits back and reflects: "MyGodWhatHaveIDone Was it worth it?" Is she actually BeyondRedemption? If she decides it was, then, yeah, she's a mass murderer; if she decides it ''wasn't'', then she's had her TragicMistake. Either way, it validates the idea that she must die for her crimes -- either because she herself admits it, or because she [[SelectiveObliviousness refuses to]]. Like ''[=HIMYM=]'' above, this is another situation where an entire television entire series could have been salvaged with a mere ''30 seconds'' of additional footage.

And the worst part is that her CharacterDerailment pulls ''almost everyone else'' OffTheRails as well. The show -- once renowned for GreyAndGrayMorality -- then committed itself (for reasons not currently known) to a portrayal of BlackAndWhiteMorality, and Jon -- who at this point has all but stolen the title of TheProtagonist from Daenerys -- needs to be put in a situation where he can kill Daenerys and still have it look ethical. So Tyrion and Varys, two of the savviest political operators in Westeros, get hit with ThirdActStupidity. Cersei, who ''is also a mass murderer'', gets to KarmaHoudini her way out of the CycleOfRevenge (which is a little goofy considering that the show doesn't manage to get out from under the Cycle Of Revenge started by ''Ned Stark's'' death until ''literally the series finale''); not only that, she's recast as ''the victim'' of Daenerys' rampage. Sansa has the MoralLuck to distrust her despite having no {{Watsonian}} reason to do so: Dany is here to put an end to Cersei, who is Sansa's personal nemesis, and also to save Westeros from TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but Sansa doesn't like her, because... well, she [[MarySue just knows somehow]] that Dany was EvilAllAlong, even though that is impossible for Sansa ''to'' know because Dany hasn't done her "JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope In Thirty Seconds" thing yet. And yes, Daenerys abuses her power... making her ''merely identical'' to every other character mentioned in this paragraph, all of whom have killed and murdered in the name of war or self-defense or justice. It cannot be denied that slaughtering civilians is a bad thing... But, if the logic is that "Daenerys has power, therefore she must turn evil," then the same must be true of all the other characters -- most of whom are ''not'' characterized as evil but rather as the ''good guys''. Even though they have power, and therefore will [[BrokenAesop undoubtedly]] go on to slaughter civilians tomorrow, because -- according to the show -- that is merely what people in power do.

How much do you want to set down in anticipation? It's a tricky question. If you don't plan out enough... well, the rest of the article will examine what happens then. But if you plan out ''too'' much, you get a stale, paint-by-numbers ClicheStorm where the audience sees every move coming from a mile away. One of the reasons WritingBytheSeatOfYourPants is so popular is that, if ''you'' don't know what's about to happen, there's no way the audience will know, or even ''can'' know. You could make the argument that a ShockingSwerve is only possible if you aren't planning ahead, and you might not be incorrect. But on the flip side, you could also argue that a Shocking Swerve -- a PlotTwist for the sake of a Plot Twist, with no foreshadowing or [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Guns]] planted -- is inherently bad writing; and this wiki does in fact make that argument. There is such thing as too much setup, but there's also such thing as too little.

The thing to keep in mind here is your role as an author. Some people will tell you that it's your job to outsmart The Reader -- and that outsmarting them is so important that, if necessary, you should withhold important information from them. "The Reader ''should not'' be able to figure out what will happen next!," these people exclaim... and they are wrong. Your job as an author is to ''inform'' The Reader, to draw their attention to important elements of your story, and to give them a chance to feel smart by correctly predicting where the story is going and how your characters are going to resolve a situation. The EurekaMoment is not just for your characters; in fact, if your readers aren't beating them to the punch, you're not doing a good job. (This is why {{Technobabble}} is considered such bad writing: it utilizes rules that the audience never learned because the rules don't exist. The characters feel smart, and hopefully your viewers care about that, but sharing vicarious triumph is very different from being right there with them.) ''A good writer is predictable'', because they have signposted and foreshadowed their plot events. The events ''themselves'' can still be astonishing, but it should also be possible to see them coming. If readers guess your ending, that's not a bug -- it's a feature.

And finally, let's take a look at ''Franchise/HarryPotter''. As a massive multimedia franchise with huge cultural impact -- it set the stage for an explosion of young adult literature, leading directly to things like ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' and ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGray''; you could also argue that it opened the world's eyes to the power of fantasy, thus segueing directly into ''Game of Thrones'' -- it had a lot of people making guesses over what would happen in the seventh and final book. Some of them were obvious; author JK Rowling, when [[{{Jossed}} Jossing]] a FanPreferredCouple, [[http://www.mugglenet.com/2005/07/emerson-spartz-melissa-anelli-mugglenet-leaky-cauldron-interview-joanne-kathleen-rowling-part-two/ pointed out]] that she had seeded "[[{{Anvilicious}} anvil-sized]]" hints about whether she was planning to execute on that theory. Also, since Harry himself was TheChosenOne and Chosen Ones are always [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou The Only Ones Allowed To Defeat]] the BigBad, it was safe to assume that Harry would defeat the Big Bad. However, we knew almost nothing, going in, about ''how'' Harry would do it -- aside from the fact that Harry would employ ThePowerOfLove, because that's always been his greatest strength. And that was even before Rowling released the title of the final book, ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', revealing that a bunch of magical objects which had ''never been mentioned before'' over the course of the series would play such a pivotal role in the victory that the book would be named after them. While critics derided the existence of the Hallows as an AssPull -- and [[JerkassHasAPoint they had a point]] -- it also helped prove that ItsTheJourneyThatCounts. The ending of ''Harry Potter'' wasn't thrilling because we didn't know if Harry could handle You-Know-Who; it was thrilling because the Deathly Hallows and the [[SoulJar horcruxes]] -- not to mention the RuleMagic -- gave Rowling the tools she needed to turn a "CircleOfExtinction [[SingleStrokeBattle Single-Spell Battle]] WizardDuel" into something that was, well, actually interesting. Instead of a special-effects-laden FinalBattle, which would have been rather boring on-page, we have Harry as a MartialPacifist who withholds the fight until the very end, and instead uses his BreakingSpeech to try and pull Voldemort back over the MoralEventHorizon... partially because, due to his mastery ''of'' Hallows / Horcruxes / Rule Magic, Harry knows his victory is a ForegoneConclusion. And, because he knows he will win, he tries to talk Voldemort out of fighting ''at all''. Because that's ThePowerOfLove.

''Game of Thrones'' is a fantasy epic that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019. They are based on Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's as-yet-unfinished novel series, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', which he wrote as a deliberate reaction to his years as a television screenwriter, in which his imagination was constantly hamstrung by the realities (and budgets) of working on a TV show. Consequently, ''[=aSoIaF=]'' has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, eight different {{narrator}}s in the first novel ''alone'', spans two continents, includes a number of fantastical / non-human beings, and involves a massive SuccessionCrisis on the continent of Westeros, at the exact wrong time: a GreaterScopeVillain is rising in the Lands of Always-Winter to the north, and the Seven Kingdoms must band together to meet this icy threat. Fortunately, they may have help: far to the east, on that other continent, the exiled princess of a former dynasty has performed the impossible, and revived the extinct race of dragons. Her name is Daenerys Targaryen (Creator/EmiliaClarke). If the story has a MainCharacter, it is her.

This is perhaps best exemplified by the fate of Lord Eddard Stark (Creator/SeanBean), who dies during the first season. That fact in itself is not that unusual -- he's not even the first character from the ''opening credits'' to die -- and the fact that he's played by Sean Bean should have given the game away. But the truth is that the story goes out of its way to position Ned Stark as the MainCharacter, making the reveal that he's a DecoyProtagonist much more powerful: he's at the center of events, he is doing his best to be TheGoodChancellor, and he's played by (at the time) the biggest-name actor in the cast. Even the credits got in on it: the reason Peter Dinklage couldn't lead them is that Bean did! Consequently, the moment when Ned is killed is a WhamEpisode for the show -- not just because of its impeccable acting, cinematography and production, but because it represented a huge plot twist (to any viewer who hadn't already read ''Literature/AGameOfThrones'' when it came out 19 years ago). ''The show kills its own main character''. "AnyoneCanDie" has never had so much meaning.

And the worst part is that her CharacterDerailment pulls ''almost everyone else'' OffTheRails as well. The show -- once renowned for GreyAndGrayMorality -- then committed itself (for reasons not currently known) to a portrayal of BlackAndWhiteMorality, and Jon -- who at this point has all but stolen the title of MainCharacter from Daenerys -- needs to be put in a situation where he can kill Daenerys and still have it look ethical. So Tyrion and Varys, two of the savviest political operators in Westeros, get hit with ThirdActStupidity. Cersei, who ''is also a mass murderer'', gets to KarmaHoudini her way out of the CycleOfRevenge (which is a little goofy considering that the show doesn't manage to get out from under the Cycle Of Revenge started by ''Ned Stark's'' death until ''literally the series finale''); not only that, she's recast as ''the victim'' of Daenerys' rampage. Sansa has the MoralLuck to distrust her despite having no {{Watsonian}} reason to do so: Dany is here to put an end to Cersei, who is Sansa's personal nemesis, and also to save Westeros from TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but Sansa doesn't like her, because... well, she [[MarySue just knows somehow]] that Dany was EvilAllAlong, even though that is impossible for Sansa ''to'' know because Dany hasn't done her "JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope In Thirty Seconds" thing yet. And yes, Daenerys abuses her power... making her ''merely identical'' to every other character mentioned in this paragraph, all of whom have killed and murdered in the name of war or self-defense or justice. It cannot be denied that slaughtering civilians is a bad thing... But, if the logic is that "Daenerys has power, therefore she must turn evil," then the same must be true of all the other characters -- most of whom are ''not'' characterized as evil but rather as the ''good guys''. Even though they have power, and therefore will [[BrokenAesop undoubtedly]] go on to slaughter civilians tomorrow, because -- according to the show -- that is merely what people in power do.

* The "War of Five Kings," as it's called, is on in earnest. It's a bloodbath; only one king wins, and only one king survives, and they are ''not'' the same person. Cersei ends up as ''de facto'' ruler of the Seven Kingdoms by virtue of being the only person who is still alive enough to perch her behind on the Iron Throne. (Ironically, the majority of the show is dedicated to this portion of the song of ice and fire, even though it is by far the least important part.)

''Game of Thrones'' is a fantasy epic that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019. They are based on Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's as-yet-unfinished novel series, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', which he wrote as a deliberate reaction to his years as a television screenwriter, in which his imagination was constantly hamstrung by the realities (and budgets) of working on a TV show. Consequently, ''[=aSoIaF=]'' has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, eight different {{narrator}}s in the first novel ''alone'', spans two continents, includes a number of fantastical / non-human beings, and involves a massive SuccessionCrisis on the continent of Westeros, at the exact wrong time: a GreaterScopeVillain is rising in the Lands of Always-Winter to the north, and the Seven Kingdoms must band together to meet this icy threat. Fortunately, they may have help: far to the east, on that other continent, the exiled princess of a former dynasty has performed the impossible, and revived the extinct race of dragons. Her name is Daenerys Targaryen (Creator/EmiliaClarke). If the story has a MainCharacter, it is her. She is the prince[[labelnote:sic]]This prophecy was made in High Valyrian, whose pronouns are gender-neutral, just like dragons are hermaphroditic.[[/labelnote]] that was promised, and hers is the song of ice and fire.

A lot can happen in 73 episodes, obviously, especially for a setting with as much BackStory as Westeros. The War of TheUsurper, where Robert Baratheon dethroned Daenerys' dad, was 15 or 20 years back. As of Episode 7, King Robert is dead; as of Episode 9, Ned Stark is dead, and with him the realm's only hope for peace. As of Episode 10, we're officially divided into ThreeLinesSomeWaiting:

Do you have a MythArc? A lot of episodic television does not have this -- LongRunners like ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' are done with no continuity and sometimes even ''negative'' continuity in mind -- and you can things this way, if you really want, but at some point your story is going to end, and at that point it helps to have a thing that is being ended.

Consider everything that has come before in your story. If you're writing a GrandFinale, the objective is to pay off as much of the previous material as possible -- to make the maximum quantity of story feel like it was and is relevant to the ending. To do that, you'll want to have a clear memory of what you have already written.

So here's a secret: Plot out ''juuuust'' enough to know where you're going. Is there an important emotional beat here? A significant plot development? Cool. Have those set in stone. ''Leave the rest up in the air''. You want to know where you're going, but you want to leave yourself as much freedom to improvise ''how'' you get there. We are talking about endings, but ItsTheJourneyThatCounts, and so plan out the ''journey'' as little as possible -- at least, assuming you stay within the bounds of your overall MythArc. This gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to individual characters, individual scenes, even entire chapters: you know you have certain specific goals to achieve, but how your characters achieve them is completely up in the air, giving you great spontaneity within a pre-determined framework.

The thing to keep in mind here is your role as an author. Some people will tell you that it's your job to outsmart The Reader -- and that outsmarting them is so important that, if necessary, you should withhold important information. "The Reader ''should not'' be able to figure out what will happen next!," these people exclaim... and they are wrong. Your job as an author is to ''inform'' The Reader, to draw their attention to important elements of your story, and to give them a chance to feel smart by correctly predicting where the story is going and how your characters are going to resolve a situation. The EurekaMoment is not just for your characters; in fact, if your readers aren't beating them to the punch, you're not doing a good job. (This is why {{Technobabble}} is considered such bad writing: it utilizes rules that the audience never learned because the rules don't exist. The characters feel smart, and hopefully your viewers care about that, but sharing vicarious triumph is very different from being right there with them.)

The show was critically acclaimed throughout its run... and if it had stopped with that meeting, it probably would have gone down in history as a truly great sitcom. But then they had 150 seconds more show, one last scene, which resulted in ''USA Today'' voting the finale [[https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2018/05/31/series-finales-10-best-and-five-worst-all-time-americans-breaking-bad-mash-lost-himym-newhart-cheers/636504002/ the worst of all time]].

First off: despite being essentially a romance, the show does not begin where most romances do -- with the BoyMeetsGirl. As a matter of fact, it ''ends'' with that trope, giving the impression that it has told the story backwards. "Why would you do this?" audiences might ask. "What's so interesting about Ted's love life prior to his meeting The Mother?" The answer is, Nothing, but the answer is also, Everything. Instead of showing Ted and Tracy falling in love, the show spends nine years setting up ChekhovsArmory as concerns Ted's love life: this is what he wants, this is what he could live with if he had to, here are his absolute deal-breakers. The show is not about how Ted fell in love with Tracy, but rather ''why''. As such, when they finally meet in the last episode, we don't need to see them fall in love: we've spent so much time studying his personality that it's a ForegoneConclusion. (Especially because it's also the TitleDrop.) The Central Theme of the show, in other words, is not BoyMeetsGirl -- it's ''CharacterDevelopment''. The Aesop of the show is spelled out in the third season: "Kids, there's more than one story of how I met your mother. You know the short version, the thing with your mom's yellow umbrella. But there's a bigger story, the story of how I became who I had to become before I could meet her." And, for Ted, one of the most important steps in that bigger story is giving up his hopeless infatuation with Robin, whom he said "I love you" to in the pilot episode, ''on the very first date''.

Completely aside from the show having the wrong name, its finale gave the impression that, in the course of those 150 seconds, Ted has undone nine years of Character Development, reverting to that hopeless infatuation. StatusQuoIsGod, to its most obvious conclusion: the entire series, literally from start to finish, was a ShaggyDogStory. And while this is arguably consonant with the themes of the show -- just as Robin was the person who provided Ted enough Character Development that he could find a SecondLove with Tracy, so does Tracy prepare him for his Third Love with Robin -- the simple fact is that the first journey is dramatized over the course of nine years, while the second, well, doesn't actually occur onscreen. The LastMinuteHookup also acts as a refutation of the ''idea'' of OneTrueLove, which is another thing the show has been playing with -- Tracy is definitely Ted's SecondLove, and additional episodes have established that Tracy lives in the specter of TheLostLenore -- and that is a great Aesop too... but the show doesn't actually spell it out that way. Both interpretations hinge on FridgeLogic, which is ''not'' a good thing to pin your finale on. At best, the ending feels like a cop-out, a lazy way for the writers to have their cake and eat it too. At worst, it feels like RunningTheAsylum, the writers proving that they had no clue what story they were even ''telling''.

Now, here we need to address something that doesn't always happen to novels, but will definitely happen anywhere else: Logistics. The show's Framing Device involves shots of two kids sitting on a couch. Consequently, their lines at the end -- "Go date Aunt Robin" -- were filmed in ''Season 2'' and just kept in a box somewhere, because waiting any longer to film them would have resulted in the child actors (David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca) aging out of the roles. If you wanted to add to the scene, you'd ''immediately'' have to [[TheOtherDarrin recast]] the roles, or do some ''really'' tricky CGI de-aging that your budget might not accomodate. (And how much had David Henrie's voice changed in the interim?) The point is, the creators of the show were locked into their ending as of Season 2; they ''could not'' change it, at least not very easily. You tend to have this problem more with episodic media... but the simple fact is, ''everything'' is episodic these days, because 1) it's easier to write in smaller pieces, 2) it's easier to ''consume'' in smaller pieces, 3) you can make ''[[MoneyDearBoy way more money]]'' from smaller pieces. So you should assume you'll have this problem.

In this case, we can get back to the entire theme of the game: "Stop the Reapers." In the end, Shepard is given several choices: to do so, by blowing them away entirely; to ''control'' them, using them to better ends; or, if you've jumped through enough gameplay hoops, to do an ''AssimilationPlot'' on them, making them stop hating organics because now they ''are'' organics (gross oversimplification, but good enough for this article's purposes). It's a GainaxEnding, with very little foreshadowing; additionally, the "Blow up the Reapers" ending was saddled with additional baggage by requiring you to sacrifice at least one robot teammate in the process. This decision was characterized as being the culmination of a RobotWar which... Was {{retcon}}ned into the story during that very scene, as the Reapers' hatred of organic life had never been placed in the context of their artificiality until that moment.

Now, the {{Doylist}} explanation for ''this'' part is simple: Per WordOfGod, the CentralTheme of the game ''is not'' "Stop the Reapers." It's, "[[TheChainsOfCommanding You can't save everybody]]." And, in a (pseudo) RobotWar where all life hangs in the balance, that's a really great theme to have! The problem is that, once again, it's not in the text. You ''can'' save everybody -- for instance, you can settle the aforementioned RobotWar -- except for in certain cases where characters have very clear {{Plotline Death}}s that cannot be avoided. While these moments do have an emotional impact, they are somewhat defanged by a SadisticChoice in the first game: While Shepard and team are attacking the planet Virmire, two of your squadmates get pinned down on opposite sides of the enemy base and Shepard can only rescue one of them. The game is very explicit about this fact: you ''must'' commit a FailureToSaveMurder. And the game does in fact make you choose; you have to select the name you want to save and click a button and make a conscious decision to condemn the other to death. When compared to moments like that, having characters be written out of the third game -- which can only be avoided by letting those characters be written out of the ''second'' game instead -- simply do not have the same punch.[[note]]Yes, that's a gross oversimplification of Mordin's fate. Would adding those details improve how this article is making its point? No? That's why they aren't here.[[/note]]

So. Why did ''Mass Effect 3'' have such a negatively received ending? Because it didn't know its own Aesop.

How could this ending have been salvaged? Simple: '''You don't'''. The problem with {{foreshadowing}}, the problem with proper storytelling, is that if you are doing it right, ''people '''should''' be able to guess the ending.'' The fact that someone deduced Karpyshyn's ending is not a bug, it's a feature -- in fact, it's proof that he was telling the story correctly. (It's also proof he was telling it ''successfully''; if not, nobody would care enough to guess.) And one of the things you have to put up with, in today's age of storytelling, is fans outsmarting you; there are more of them, they have more internet time than you, and they pay a ''lot'' of attention -- "fan" is short for "fanatic," remember. So if you don't want people to guess your ending, what are your options? One is to pull a Creator/JDSalinger and not let anyone read your stories. Another is to do what [=BioWare=] did and go all Shocking Swerve. And the third is to just shrug your shoulders and soldier on. After all, if people are engaged enough that they're {{Wild Mass Guess}}ing your ending... Well, that's a good problem to have.

But let's say -- for the sake of politeness -- that the "CTRL-ALT-DEL" ending (FanNickname, after the fact that you either [[YouAreInCommandNow control]], [[TheSingularity alter]] or [[KillEmAll delete]] the Reapers) was intentional from the start. How do we salvage ''that''? Well, we work its Central Theme into the story more thoroughly. From a programming standpoint, ''[=ME3=]'' an unenviable job: the franchise uses OldSaveBonus to import ''over 1000 player-chosen variables'' from game to game. The third game has to pay off all these variables in some way. The writers wanted to slim all of that down as much as possible, because writing one thousand different branches... Well, that's a recipe for AuthorExistenceFailure. The writers were not willing to literally die for the story, and they were not wrong to feel that way. But we can safely say that they went too far. There are literally no situations in which you, the player, must consciously choose who will live and who will die, because writing them would have been too complicated. Even though the conscious choice to let people die was the thematic heart of the game, it was not included ''in'' the game. Obviously, one should not hit people over the head with one's Aesop, but failing to include it at all is a problem too.

So, instead, we need to include it. Remember that SadisticChoice from the first game? We need ''more'' of them. Apparently, one such choice ''was'' originally in the game -- if DummiedOut for some reason ([[spoiler:It was to be on Thessia. Your mandatory squadmates were to be Liara and the Virmire Survivor, and you'd only have time to save one before the floor collapsed]]) -- suggesting that the writers had ''some'' clue what they were doing; but if anything, they should have doubled down. How about Thessia? It's the end of the second act and the story's DarkestHour: Shepard is sent to the asari homeworld to retrieve critical intelligence for stopping the Reapers. The way the game plays out, you automatically lose the intel, but rescue your squadmates from a LiteralCliffhanger. What if, instead, the game ''made you choose''? "On the one hand, I have my friends -- including RequiredPartyMember Liara T'soni, the {{deuteragonist}} of the franchise, a possible LoveInterest to Shepard, and the ''only'' character who was introduced before the third game but is guaranteed to still be alive right now." (Well, and Shepard. ...But then, Shepard came BackFromTheDead at the beginning of the second game, so maybe they ''don't'' qualify.) "On the other hand, I have... ''Every living being in the galaxy.''" WhatYouAreInTheDark is another big theme of the story -- whether you want to play Shepard as TheCape or TheCowl -- and both philosophies could make arguments for both choices. But either way... What if you had to choose? What if "You can't save everybody" was not something the writers forced on you, but rather something you were ''actively required to participate in''? What if this happened repeatedly? If you shoot the Virmire Survivor, {{turncoat}} Councilor Udina will surrender and you can learn important things about the Bad Guy's plan; or you can save your friend but sacrifice the war effort. On Utukku, where you encounter the Rachni Queen and have to choose between her and Grunt, you ''actually have to choose'', and Grunt doesn't miraculously survive because you jumped through enough gameplay hoops in the second game.

''Game of Thrones'' is a fantasy epic that aired on HBO from 2011 to 2019. They are based on Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's as-yet-unfinished novel series, ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', which he wrote as a deliberate reaction to his years as a television screenwriter, in which his imagination was constantly hamstrung by the realities (and budgets) of working on a TV show. Consequently, ''[=aSoIaF=]'' has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, eight different {{narrator}}s in the first novel ''alone'', spans two continents, includes a number of fantastical / non-human beings, and involves a massive SuccessionCrisis on the continent of Westeros, at the exact wrong time: a GreaterScopeVillain is rising in the Lands of Always-Winter to the north, and the Seven Kingdoms must band together to meet this icy threat. Fortunately, they may have help: far to the east, on that other continent, the exiled princess of a former dynasty has performed the impossible, and revived the extinct race of dragons. Her name is Daenerys Targaryen (Creator/EmiliaClarke). If the story has a MainCharacter, it is her. She is the prince that was promised, and hers is the song of ice and fire.

This is perhaps best exemplified by the fate of Lord Eddard Stark, who dies during the first season. That fact in itself is not that unusual -- he's not even the first character from the ''opening credits'' to die -- and the fact that he's played by Creator/SeanBean should have given the game away. But the truth is that the story goes out of its way to position Ned Stark as the MainCharacter, making the reveal that he's a DecoyProtagonist much more powerful: he's at the center of events, he is doing his best to be TheGoodChancellor, and he's played by (at the time) the biggest-name actor in the cast. Even the credits got in on it: the reason Peter Dinklage couldn't lead them is that Bean did! Consequently, the moment when Ned is killed is a WhamEpisode for the show -- not just because of its impeccable acting, cinematography and production, but because it represented a huge plot twist (to any viewer who hadn't already read ''Literature/AGameOfThrones'' when it came out 19 years ago). ''It kills its own main character''. "AnyoneCanDie" has never had so much meaning.

Second: we know Ned's life is on the line. The very first scene of his final episode establishes this. While Ned is languishing in gaol, he's visited by Varys (Creator/ConlethHill), a member of the DeadlyDecadentCourt. Ned refused to bow to Joffrey due to Ned's belief that Joffrey is not actually Robert's child, but rather the illegitimate, inbred love child of Robert's queen, Cersei Lannister, and [[{{twincest}} her own twin]] Jaime Lannister (Creator/NikolajCosterWaldau). (As it happens, [[RefugeInAudacity Ned is factually correct]].) Varys counsels him to recant this belief, to swear fealty to Joffrey. Ned has the choice ToBeLawfulOrGood, and Varys thinks he should be Lawful, because going "ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight" would result in... a second CivilWar in a generation. The Seven Kingdoms needs peace, and Ned is the only person who can provide it. Additionally, being Lawful would have be beneficial for Ned, in that his head would remain on his shoulders. The same would be true, Varys adds, for [[IHaveYourWife Ned's daughter Sansa]] (Creator/SophieTurner), who is very much in Cersei's clutches.

So when Ned is hauled out onto the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor (Westeros' equivalent of the Vatican) to profess his crimes, we know what's on the line. We know that if he chooses to be Good, he will condemn himself to death, he will condemn his daughter to death, and he will start a war with the rest of his family on the rebelling side. Doing the expedient thing -- lying -- would lead to peace. But we also know that Ned is the poster child for HonorBeforeReason. He has ''always'' done the Good thing instead of the Lawful thing; throughout the season, people have both praised ''and'' derided him for it. The stakes are very, very high. Additionally, there has not only been Foreshadowing -- the planting of the ChekhovsGun that Ned could become [[OffWithHisHead shorter by a head]] at the end of this scene -- but also things going FromBadToWorse. Ned's death has been both foreshadowed ''and'' escalated.

So, when he goes against all character and decides to be Lawful -- swearing fealty to his new king in the name of peace and prosperity -- but RoyalBrat King Joffrey orders him executed anyway, we are not surprised.

* The "War of Five Kings," as it's called, is on in earnest. It's a bloodbath; none of those five kings survive past Season 6, leaving Cersei as ''de facto'' ruler of the Seven Kingdoms by virtue of being the only person who is still alive enough to perch her behind on the Iron Throne. (Ironically, the majority of the show is dedicated to this portion of the song of ice and fire, even though it is by far the least important part.)
* There's a guy named Jon Snow (Creator/KitHarington), the LiteralBastard of the late Ned Stark, who lives in a BleakBorderBase at TheGreatWall in the far north. Jon is a member of the "Night's Watch," a group formed to man the Wall and protect the Seven Kingdoms from the aforementioned GreaterScopeVillain, "the White Walkers" (as the show calls them, because the books call them "the Others" but ''Series/{{LOST}}'' already took that name). Only, the White Walkers haven't been seen in eight ''thousand'' years (for context: here in RealLife, the oldest piece of writing we have is only ''five'' thousand years old), and the Night's Watch has become an ArmyOfThievesAndWhores, not to mention a political refuge where people are KickedUpstairs or ReassignedToAntarctica. Too bad the White Walkers are actually back, right? Jon's got a lot of work to do.

When Dany finally gets to Westeros -- which doesn't happen until Episode 61 -- she's got a lot of room to make her mark. First off, Cersei is a person of great ambition but few qualifications; amongst other things, she solidified her hold on power by getting all her enemies to the Great Sept and then ''blowing it up'', decapitating her opposition but also showing her utter disdain for the country's most powerful organized religion. She serves as the BigBad of the show. Even worse, it's GrimUpNorth: Jon Snow has hit the YouAreInCommandNow trope and is leading the Night's Watch, but it turns out those White Walkers are ''{{necromancer}}s'' and can summon hordes of dead with a gesture, making it that much harder to fight them. Good thing both zombies and ice demons tend to be WeakToFire. It is, in short, the ''perfect'' place for a woman with ChronicHeroSyndrome -- and the only three dragons alive -- to make her mark by resolving the song of ice and fire.

And ''this'' is where we get to the part where each episode of the six-episode final season set new records for low' scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

The brief outline of the final season is this: Daenerys arrives in the North with her army and her dragons, having allied with Jon Snow to [[SavingTheWorld Save the World]] from the White Walkers. With an unlikely MultinationalTeam cobbled together of Daenerys' army, the Night's Watch, the northern armies, "wildling" humans who lived beyond the Wall because they dislike Westerosi feudalism, and whoever else had showed up to fight, they succeed. The Night King, leader of the White Walkers, turns out to be an AnticlimaxBoss who is slain, along with his KeystoneArmy, in the third episode and without any characterization beyond "generically evil." (This in itself was a huge ShaggyDogStory, but we're going to gloss over that because it's not what we're here to discuss.) They then turn their attention to the capitol, King's Landing, where Cersei has ensconced herself with what remains of her power. The Targaryen force succeeds at TheSiege, and Cersei surrenders. However, Daenerys has suffered some personal setbacks of late: her devoted PraetorianGuard Ser Jorah Mormont (Creator/IainGlen) was killed defending her in the fight against the White Walkers, Cersei had another of her advisors, Missandei (Creator/NathalieEmmanuel), killed as a show of power, and she is now a WomanScorned because her LoveInterest -- Jon Snow, as it happens -- broke up with her, citing irreconcilable differences.[[note]]Such as the fact that, as it turns out, he is also a Targaryen -- her nephew, in fact -- and he's just not down for incest the way she is.[[/note]] So, on the back of her dragon, she TurnsRed and decides to ''burn King's Kanding to the ground'', killing Cersei, Jaime, and a whole bunch of unnamed civilians.

The final episode goes about as you'd expect: Daenerys makes a public speech that's in line with her BlackAndWhiteInsanity (including a lot of EvilIsCool visual imagery), and Jon is forced to conclude that she's BeyondRedemption and ShootTheDog (followed by CradlingTheirKill and ManlyTears). Those are both of Daenerys's scenes in that episode. Instead of being executed, Jon is exiled to the Night's Watch, which is a nice full-circle moment. One of the other 43 names in the credits is chosen to be king, Peter Dinklage's character gets a position in that king's cabinet, AndTheAdventureContinues.

Daenerys goes from ChronicHeroSyndrome to GeneralRipper over the course of one episode, with no stops in between for any of the other tropes discussed. Her character does a complete 180, going from "LoveYouAndEverybody" to "KillEmAll" over the course of, essentially, 30 seconds. We see her on the back of her dragon, getting angrier and angrier... And then she starts lighting the city on fire, and she is ''literally not seen again for the entire episode''. In fact, Daenerys ''the person'' is never seen again; in both of her scenes in the final episode, she's TheWomanWearingTheQueenlyMask, trying to make the best of the tenuous political position that she got after letting her anger loose at the wrong time. There is not a single moment where she sits back and reflects: "MyGodWhatHaveIDone Was it worth it?" Is she actually BeyondRedemption? If she decides it was, then, yeah, she's a mass murderer; if she decides it ''wasn't'', then she's had her TragicMistake. Either way, it validates the idea that she must die for her crimes -- either because she herself admits it, or because she [[SelectiveObliviousness refuses to]]. Like ''[=HIMYM=]'' above, this is another situation where an entire television entire series could have been salvaged with a mere ''30 seconds'' of additional footage.

But we don't get that footage. The show ''doesn't care'' whether she's BeyondRedemption; the writers have decreed she must die, and so she does. She is a victim not of injustice or genetics but of lazy writing, losing all characterization to instead become some sort of object lesson about... [[ShrugOfGod something the show is unclear about]]. Tyrion Lannister (Dinklage) levels what is undoubtedly meant to be the main criticism of her character by proclaiming, "Everywhere she goes, [[PayEvilUntoEvil evil men die]], and we cheer her for it," and he's not wrong... But his assumption -- that he, and by the extension the audience, were wrong to cheer for someone who rights wrongs and punishes the wicked -- is not proven by the text in any way (not to mention being a BrokenAesop). Are we instead meant to believe that WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity? Are we meant to believe that she was merely DrunkWithPower? Are we meant to believe that ''there can be no heroes'', that anyone who does good things will inevitably be revealed to be a bad person? ''There is no textual support for any of these interpretations''. There is a {{Watsonian}} explanation for why Daenerys might decide to commit war crimes, but none as to why she ''did'', especially when she BecameTheirOwnAntithesis over the course of ''half an episode''. There is no explanation; there is only {{Railroading}}.

And the worst part is that her CharacterDerailment pulls ''almost everyone else'' OffTheRails as well. The show -- once renowned for GreyAndGrayMorality -- then committed itself (for reasons not currently known) to a portrayal of BlackAndWhiteMorality, and Jon -- who at this point has all but stolen the title of MainCharacter from Daenerys -- needs to be put in a situation where he can kill Daenerys and still have it look ethical. So Tyrion and Varys, two of the savviest political operators in Westeros, get hit with ThirdActStupidity. Cersei, who ''is also a mass murderer'', gets to KarmaHoudini her way out of the CycleOfRevenge (which is a little goofy considering that the show doesn't manage to get out from under the Cycle Of Revenge started by Ned Stark's death until ''literally the series finale''); not only that, she's recast as ''the victim'' of Daenerys' rampage. Sansa starts distrusting her despite having no in-universe reason to do so: Dany is here to put an end to Cersei, who is Sansa's personal nemesis, and also to save Westeros from TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but Sansa doesn't like her, because... well, she [[MarySue just knows somehow]] that Dany was EvilAllAlong, even though literally nobody else does (and even though she has, to date, displayed ''no'' evil behavior; in fact, she has her fate sealed by that one single war crime). And yes, Daenerys abuses her power... making her ''merely identical'' to every other character mentioned in this paragraph, all of whom have killed and murdered in the name of war or self-defense or justice. It cannot be denied that slaughtering civilians is a bad thing... But, if the logic is that "Daenerys has power, therefore she must turn evil," then the same must be true of all the other characters -- most of whom are ''not'' characterized as evil but rather as the ''good guys''. Even though they have power, and therefore will [[BrokenAesop undoubtedly]] go on to slaughter civilians tomorrow, because that is what people in power do.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your theme and Aesop determines your ending. This is part of what enables the NoEnding trope to exist: you arrive at the conclusion of an arc, even if it's not The End. To contrast ''How I Met Your Mother'', let's look at another narrator-including character drama that masquerades as a romance: ''Film/FiveHundredDaysOfSummer''. The film is about a man named Tom (Creator/JosephGordonLevitt) who meets a ManicPixieDreamGirl named Summer (Creator/ZooeyDeschanel), falls in love with her and can't get over her. The film uses AnachronicOrder -- its first scene takes place on Day 488 -- to explore Tom's mentality and reactions as he tries to get over TheOneThatGotAway, not to mention his own deeper issues with being InLoveWithLove, LovingAShadow of Summer instead of the real her. In the final scene of the film, he's at a job interview and he runs into a girl named Autumn... And, on screen, the day indicator flips back to 1. Is this an ending? Is Tom about to be a victim of HistoryRepeats? Or has he learned enough to maybe make a new start? The answer is, [[AmbiguousEnding the film doesn't tell us]] -- because it doesn't actually matter. The story is fundamentally a ComingOfAgeStory, and its Aesop is, "LovingAShadow is bad." Tom stops doing this; he has learned what he can from his 500 days of Summer and is ready to move on. Therefore, it doesn't actually matter if Autumn is his SecondLove or another stepping stone on the path of his evolution; he has come of age, and the story is over, even if [[AndTheAdventureContinues The Adventure Continues]]. It is an ending... To the story director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber are actually telling, not the one audiences thought they were. And it works, ''because'' Webb and Neustadter and Weber knew what story they were telling -- something the writers of all the previous works were not sure about.

Another example is ''Film/{{Inception}}'', which has one of the most famous No Endings in history. The movie is about a group of cons who are hired to perform a heist in someone's dreams using AppliedPhlebotinum. One of the themes constantly underlined in the film is the difficulty between telling dream from reality, and main character Dom Cobb (Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio) has a top that he spins to figure out whether he's awake or not: if he's asleep, it will defy physics and never stop spinning. Another is the question of whether IgnoranceIsBliss; Dom knows he can just LotusEaterMachine himself to a happy ending, but he also knows it will be a dream. This question is underlined by the heist itself, which involves invading someone's dream and planting an idea in his head in such a way that he believes the idea was his own -- the [[TitleDrop eponymous]] inception -- because if he realizes it was planted, he won't believe it. At the end of the film, Dom finally gets his heart's desire. He starts spinning the top, but looks away before he can see the results; likewise, the film cuts to credits before we see whether the top stops spinning or not. Filmmaker Creator/ChristopherNolan had to explain that the reason Dom looks away from the top is that he doesn't care anymore; he has decided that ignorance ''is'' bliss. The fact that WordOfGod was necessary to settle this ending shows that it did not deliver its message very well. However, the message itself makes perfect sense within the context of its story -- its Aesop is that happiness only works if you're willing to accept it at face value, and that's what Dom finally does. It's just that audiences thought the story was about Dom making his dreams come true, when in fact it was about him learning to leave them behind.

There's also that WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: 19 years later, Harry has grown up and married and is seeing two of his three kids off to Hogwarts. Does it [[TastesLikeDiabetes Taste Like Diabetes]]? Arguably. Is it mundane that a man who saved the world places so much emphasis on sending his kids to school? Unarguably. Is it ''in character?''--for a man whose lack of loving family is essentially his FreudianExcuse? ''Absolutely.'' It might not be the fate that fans would have chosen for Harry, but it's the fate he would have chosen for ''himself''. It does erode his credibility as an EscapistCharacter, but Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad.

There's also that WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: 19 years later, Harry has grown up and married and is seeing two of his three kids off to Hogwarts. Does it [[TastesLikeDiabetes Taste Like Diabetes]]? Arguably. Is it mundane that a man who saved the world places so much emphasis on sending his kids to school? Unarguably. Is it ''in character?''--for a man whose lack of loving family is essentially his FreudianExcuse? ''Absolutely.'' It might not be the fate that fans would have chosen for Harry, but it's the fate he would have chosen for ''himself''. It does erode his credibility as an EscapistCharacter, but TropesAreNotBad.

And the worst part is that her CharacterDerailment pulls ''almost everyone else'' OffTheRails as well. The show -- once renowned for GreyAndGrayMorality -- then committed itself (for reasons not currently known) to a portrayal of BlackAndWhiteMorality, and Jon -- who at this point has all but stolen the title of MainCharacter from Daenerys -- needs to be put in a situation where he can kill Daenerys and still have it look ethical. So Tyrion and Varys (Creator/ConlethHill), two of the savviest political operators in Westeros, start giving her bad advice. Cersei, who ''is also a mass murderer'', gets to KarmaHoudini her way out of the CycleOfRevenge (which is a little goofy considering that the show doesn't manage to get out from under the Cycle Of Revenge started by Ned Stark's death until ''literally the series finale''); not only that, she's recast as ''the victim'' of Daenerys' rampage. Sansa starts distrusting her despite having no in-universe reason to do so: Dany is here to put an end to Cersei, who is Sansa's personal nemesis, and also to save Westeros from TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but Sansa doesn't like her, because... well, she [[MarySue just knows somehow]] that Dany was EvilAllAlong, even though literally nobody else does (and even though she has, to date, displayed ''no'' evil behavior; in fact, she has her fate sealed by that one single war crime.) And yes, Daenerys abuses her power... making her ''merely identical'' to every other character mentioned in this paragraph, all of whom have killed and murdered in the name of war or self-defense or justice. It cannot be denied that slaughtering civilians is a bad thing... But, if the logic is that "Daenerys has power, therefore she must turn evil," then the same must be true of all the other characters -- most of whom are ''not'' characterized as evil but rather as the ''good guys''. Even though they have power, and therefore will [[BrokenAesop undoubtedly]] go on to slaughter civilians tomorrow, because that is what people in power do.

As we began, so shall we end: the themes and Aesops you employed at the end of your story should be the same ones you have been using through the beginning and middle of your story. If you arrive at the ending, and you still do not know what these things are, then your story is not done. Do not publish it, do not submit it to fanfiction.net, do not pass go or collect $200: instead, step back and look at the things you have been subconsciously weaving into the story. Creator/StephenKing gives a good example. When writing ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'', he tells us in his memoir ''On Writing'', he had no conscious intent of using blood to link the story together. But when he stepped back and read the first draft, he discovered that it was showing up three important moments: when Carrie has her first menstruation and awakens her PsychicPowers; during the prom prank; and during the final confrontation with her abusive mother. So, on the second draft, he consciously looked for places he could sneak the symbol of blood into the story. King did not set out to write a theme; he did it nonconsciously, without intent. You, dear author reading this article, have done the same. The theme is there, and the Aesop is there too; you just have to find it in all the stuff you wrote.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your theme and Aesop determines your ending. This is part of what enables the NoEnding trope to exist: you arrive at the conclusion of an arc, even if it's not The End. To contrast ''How I Met Your Mother'', let's look at another narrator-including character drama that masquerades as a romance: ''Film/FiveHundredDaysOfSummer''. The film is about a man named Tom (Creator/JosephGordonLevitt) who meets a ManicPixieDreamGirl named Summer (Creator/ZooeyDeschanel), falls in love with her and can't get over her. The film uses AnachronicOrder -- its first scene takes place on Day 488 -- to explore Tom's mentality and reactions as he tries to get over TheOneThatGotAway, not to mention his own deeper issues with being InLoveWithLove, LovingAShadow of Summer instead of the real her. In the final scene of the film, he's at a job interview and he runs into a girl named Autumn... And, on screen, the day indicator flips back to 1. Is this an ending? Is Tom about to be a victim of HistoryRepeats? Or has he learned enough to maybe make a new start? The answer is, [[AmbiguousEnding the film doesn't tell us]] -- because it doesn't actually matter. The story is fundamentally a ComingOfAgeStory, and it's Aesop is, "LovingAShadow is bad." Tom stops doing this; he has learned what he can from his 500 days of Summer and is ready to move on. Therefore, it doesn't actually matter if Autumn is his SecondLove or another stepping stone on the path of his evolution; he has come of age, and the story is over, even if [[AndTheAdventureContinues The Adventure Continues]]. It is an ending... To the story director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber are actually telling, not the one audiences thought they were. And it works, ''because'' Webb and Neustadter and Weber knew what story they were telling -- something the writers of all the previous works were not sure about.

Another example is ''Film/{{Inception}}'', which has one of the most famous No Endings in history. The movie is about a group of cons who are hired to perform a heist in someone's dreams using AppliedPhlebotinum. One of the themes constantly underlined in the film is the difficulty between telling dream from reality, and main character Dom Cobb (Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio) has a top that he spins to figure out whether he's awake or not: if he's asleep, it will never stop spinning. Another is the question of whether IgnoranceIsBliss; Dom knows he can just LotusEaterMachine himself to a happy ending, but he also knows it will be a dream. This question is underlined by the heist itself, which involves invading someone's dream and planting an idea in his head in such a way that he believes the idea was his own -- the eponymous inception -- because if he realizes it was planted, he'll ignore it. At the end of the film, Dom finally gets his heart's desire. He starts spinning the top, but looks away before he can see the results; likewise, the film cuts to credits before we see whether the top stops spinning or not. Filmmaker Creator/ChristopherNolan had to come out and explain that the reason Dom looks away from the top is that he doesn't care anymore; he has decided that ignorance ''is'' bliss. The fact that WordOfGod was necessary to settle this ending shows that it did not deliver its message very well. However, the message itself makes perfect sense within the context of its story. It's just that audiences thought the story was about Dom making his dreams come true, when in fact it was about him learning to leave them behind.

And finally, let's take a look at ''Franchise/HarryPotter''. As a massive multimedia franchise with huge cultural impact -- it set the stage for an explosion of young adult literature, leading directly to things like ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' and ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGray''; you could also argue that it opened the world's eyes to the power of fantasy, thus segueing directly into ''Game of Thrones'' -- it had a lot of people making guesses over what would happen in the seventh and final book. Some of them were obvious; author JK Rowling, when [[{{Jossed}} Jossing]] a FanPreferredCouple, [[http://www.mugglenet.com/2005/07/emerson-spartz-melissa-anelli-mugglenet-leaky-cauldron-interview-joanne-kathleen-rowling-part-two/ pointed out]] that she had seeded "[[{{Anvilicious}} anvil-sized]]" hints about whether she was planning to execute on that theory. Also, since Harry himself was TheChosenOne and Chosen Ones are always [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou The Only Ones Allowed To Defeat]] the BigBad, it was safe to assume that Harry would defeat the Big Bad. However, we knew almost nothing, going in, about ''how'' Harry would do it -- aside from the fact that Harry would employ ThePowerOfLove, because that's always been his greatest strength. And that was even before Rowling released the title of the final book, ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', revealing that these magical objects which had ''never been mentioned before'' over the course of the series would play such a pivotal role in the victory that the book would be named after them. While critics derided their existence as an AssPull -- and [[JerkassHasAPoint they had a point]] -- it also helped prove that ItsTheJourneyThatCounts. The ending of ''Harry Potter'' wasn't thrilling because we didn't know if Harry could handle You-Know-Who; it was thrilling because the Deathly Hallows and the [[SoulJar horcruxes]] -- not to mention the RuleMagic -- gave Rowling the tools she needed to turn a "CircleOfExtinction [[SingleStrokeBattle Single-Spell Battle]] WizardDuel" into something that was, well, actually interesting. Instead of a special-effects-laden FinalBattle (like the one in the film adaptation -- in fairness, Rowling's execution would have been pretty boring on screen), we have Harry as a MartialPacifist who withholds the fight until the very end, and instead uses his BreakingSpeech to try and pull Voldemort back over the MoralEventHorizon... partially because, due to his mastery ''of'' Hallows / Horcruxes / Rule Magic, Harry knows his victory is a ForegoneConclusion. And, because he knows he will win, he tries to talk Voldemort out of fighting ''at all''. Because that's ThePowerOfLove.

But let's say -- for the sake of politeness -- that the "CTRL-ALT-DEL" ending (FanNickname, after the fact that you either [[YouAreInCommandNow control]], [[TheSingularity alter]] or [[KillEmAll delete]] the Reapers) was intentional from the start. How do we salvage ''that''? Well, we work its Central Theme into the story more thoroughly. From a programming standpoint, ''[=ME3=]'' an unenviable job: the franchise uses the OldSaveBonus feature to import ''over 1000 player-chosen variables'' from game to game. The third game has to pay off all these variables in some way. The writers wanted to slim all of that down as much as possible, because writing one thousand different branches... Well, you'd die. The writers were not wrong in wanting to do this. But we can safely say that they went too far. There are literally no situations in which you, the player, must consciously choose who will live and who will die, because writing them would have been too complicated. Even though the conscious choice to let people die was the thematic heart of the game, it was not included ''in'' the game. Obviously, one should not hit people over the head with one's Aesop, but failing to include it at all is a problem too.

How much do you want to set down in anticipation? It's a tricky question. If you don't plan out enough... well, the rest of the article will examine what happens then. But if you plan out ''too'' much, you get a stale, paint-by-numbers ClicheStorm where the audience sees every move coming from a mile away. One of the reasons WritingBytheSeatOfYourPants is so popular is that, if ''you'' don't know what's about to happen, there's no way the audience will know, or even ''can'' know. You could make the argument that a ShockingSwerve is only possible if you aren't planning ahead, and... that might not be incorrect. But on the flip side, you could also argue that a Shocking Swerve -- a PlotTwist for the sake of a Plot Twist, with no foreshadowing or [[ChekhovsGun Chekhov's Guns]] planted -- is inherently bad writing; and this wiki does in fact make that argument. There is such thing as too much setup, but there's also such thing as too little.

The thing to keep in mind here is your role as an author. Some people will tell you that it's your job to outsmart the reader -- to the point of, if necessary, withholding important information so that the reader can't figure out what's going to happen next. The people who tell you this are wrong. Your job as an author is to inform the reader, to draw their attention to important elements of your story, and to give them a chance to feel smart by correctly predicting where the story is going and how your characters are going to resolve a situation. The eureka moment is not just for your characters; in fact, if your readers aren't beating them to the punch, you're not doing a good job. (This is why technobabble is considered such bad writing: it utilizes rules that the audience never learned because the rules don't exist. the characters feel smart, and hopefully your viewers care about that, but sharing vicarious triumph is very different from being right there with them.)

In adapting this story for television, showrunners David Weiss and Dan Benioff faced a number of challenges. First, the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: over the course of eight seasons, there were ''43 names'' in the opening credits -- plus Creator/JasonMomoa, who took an "AndStarring" credit at the end of the guest-star titles because, in the days before ''Film/{{Aquaman}}'', he didn't have the clout to share it with Creator/PeterDinklage. ...Who, it should be pointed out, only took "AndStarring" for the first season, after which he ''led'' the credits as the show's biggest star. They needed a big budget for that many actors -- not to mention the multiple filming locations, the giant crew, and a lot of CGI. They also needed to accurately capture the ''tone'' of the series, which is a low-magic CrapsackWorld and focuses much more on realpolitik, interpersonal drama and GrayAndGreyMorality -- "''Series/TheSopranos'' in [[Literature/TheLordOftheRings Middle-Earth]]," as [[FanNickname D&D]] put it. Good people do bad things, and bad people do good things; no one is immune from mistakes; and when characters screw up, there is never an AuthorsSavingThrow. The stakes are high: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die," Queen Cersei (Creator/LenaHeadey) says, giving the entire franchise its ''precis''. "There is no middle ground."