If you can believe it, today is officially the one year anniversary of the 'Game of Thrones' series eight finale airing, with fans all across Westeros exclaiming in disgust at how the fantasy series was wrapped up. Bran Stark (?!?) - really?
Anyway, our discomfort at how the final series was treated has been a spark of debate for the past year, with countless fans of George R. R. Martin's fantasy epic voicing their opinions on how the series really should have ended. However mistreated we still feel nevertheless, we can't gripe at what an incredible action series D. B. Weiss and David Benioff created on our TV screens. And actress Carice van Houten feels exactly the same.
The actress played the mysterious Melisandre, AKA The Red Priestess AKA The Red Woman, in 'Game of Thrones' from season two onwards, when we are first introduced to Stannis Baratheon. An inspirational character in some sense, Melisandre was always one for abiding by the numerous foretold prophecies, and she was the one who inspired Arya Stark to rid the world of the Nightwalkers once and for all.
In a recent interview with Insider, Carice spoke of how the divisive final season of the show receiving backlash from fans "feels a bit ungrateful."
She said: "The fact that some people were so disappointed is because everything before that was so good. You’ve had such great times and then yeah, you’re going to be disappointed because it’s not going to go exactly how you anticipated. Of course, you’re going to have all sorts of criticisms and I just thought it was a sign of how good the show was."
Touching on the subject of writers Benioff and Weiss being replaced, she said: "Beyond fandom. That's extremism. That's scary. Knowing the writers and knowing how f***ing great they are, they don’t deserve that."
Too right. But still, did it really have to be Bran? BRAN? We'll have to sit tight and see what ending George R. R. Martin has in mind for his upcoming final two books in 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series.
