Like father, like son.
Days after Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who played Jaime Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones, considered donating to a petition to remake the polarizing final season, his on-screen dad also weighed in. Charles Dance told Pop Culture that he continued watching Thrones after his character, patriarch Tywin, was “killed off in the lavatory, because I thought, it’s a fantastic television show, you know I was very lucky to be part of it… There were storylines [where] I wanted to know what was going to happen to these people!” He wasn’t aware of the fan petition to “remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers (1.9 million signatures!), but now he is, and agrees with the sentiment:
“I know that the finale satisfied a lot of people. It also disappointed a lot of people, and I’m afraid I am in the latter camp… If there was a petition, I would sign it.”
Now, before you say “shots fired at showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss,” Dance added, “I think David and Dan raised the bar when it came to television screenplay writing. They are phenomenal. And for the whole thing to end up as a committee, I just thought, ‘Hmm, no.’ I would say I was somewhat underwhelmed.” I’m not sure what Dance is getting at there — Benioff and Weiss were credited as the sole writers for four of the six episodes in season eight, and the other two writers, Dave Hill and Bryan Cogman, had been working on the show for years — but “underwhelmed” is an apt word to use. Game of Thrones season eight wasn’t objectively terrible, especially compared to other final seasons of prestige shows, but it was disappointing. That being said, please don’t support the season eight remake. I beg of you. That’s what the prequel is for.