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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau believes the backlash that the Game of Thrones finale received was “expected.”
The GoT alum, who now stars in the eight-part BBC historical drama King & Conqueror, revealed in an interview with The Independent that he believed the backlash to the conclusion of the fantasy series’ eighth and final season in 2019 was simply par for the course.
The finale, which premiered on HBO on May 19, 2019, featured several characters meeting their fates, including Coster-Walau’s Jaime Lannister, who died in the arms of his sister/lover Cersei as the Red Keep collapsed on them. In the six years since, a Change.org petition calling for the an altered final season “that makes sense” has been signed by over 1.8 million viewers after some fans weren’t too thrilled with the series’ outcome.
But as Coster-Waldau, now 55, shares, fans likely weren’t going to be entirely happy anyway. “How are you ever gonna make an end that’s gonna satisfy everyone? That’s a very difficult thing,” Coster-Waldau told The Independent in an interview published on Aug. 24.
“I absolutely think people are entitled to whatever opinion they have, but it’s a television show. Someone told you a story and you didn’t like the ending. It’s really annoying, but…”
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A few of Coster-Waldau’s former castmates have also shared their thoughts on fan disappointment following the HBO series’ conclusion.
Peter Dinklage, Tyrion Lannister himself, told The New York Times in 2021 that it was time to “move on” from the ending.
“Yeah, it was called Game of Thrones, but at the end, the whole dialogue when people would approach me on the street was, ‘Who’s going to be on the throne?’ I don’t know why that was their takeaway because the show really was more than that,” he said, later adding that he believed some fans were “angry at us for breaking up with them.”
“We were going off the air and they didn’t know what to do with their Sunday nights anymore. They wanted more, so they backlashed about that,” Dinklage said. “We had to end when we did, because what the show was really good at was breaking preconceived notions: Villains became heroes, and heroes became villains.”
Dinklage reiterated his thoughts on the series’ conclusion in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, sharing that he personally liked the finale.
“You don’t have to agree with me. How about if I said like, ‘Yeah, I agree. I hated the finale. The whole last season was horrible?’ I mean, that would sit much worse than if I said I loved it, which I did,” he said. “I can’t speak for anybody else’s opinion, and that’s what makes what we do fun, because everybody does have a difference of opinion and everybody gets to write about it and chat about it and drink over it and argue about it. It’s great.”
“I mean, I think it means you’re doing something right,” Dinklage said. “It’s like an old Irish way of looking at the world. There’s something wrong if everything’s OK. [Laughs.]”
Helen Sloan/HBO
Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss also opened up about the backlash to the finale in a 2024 interview.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Benioff said that while “it would’ve been great if 100 percent of people loved it,” that wasn’t the case.
“Even super positive feedback makes you feel weird and teeth-grindy and on edge,” Weiss added. “There’s a drug quality to the feedback, and as soon as we went cold turkey — the last time I googled myself was in 2013 — the ambient stress level in our lives dropped by about 50 percent overnight.”
Coster-Waldau’s latest series, in which he plays William the Conqueror, stars James Norton and follows “a clash which stretch back decades and extend out through a pair of interconnected family dynasties, struggling for power across two countries and a raging sea,” per a synopsis.
It premiered on BBC One in the U.K. on Aug. 26 and is now available to stream on Prime Video.
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Game of Thrones can be streamed on HBO Max.
