4K Ultra-HD & Blu-ray Review | Game of Thrones: The Complete Eighth Season

Game of Thrones’ final season was never going to please everyone – in large part because nobody really wanted to see it end. Despite the coming of efficiency and three seasons’ worth of intense narrative attrition, the show inspired by George R R Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire could have quite easily filled another season or two. Indeed, had it run to a hundred episodes or so instead of just seventy-three, it could have avoided much of the passionate criticism levelled at its long-awaited final run. Whether you’re outraged by a character’s “turn” or left incredulous about the identity of the winner of the eponymous game, the vast majority of the show’s problems seem to stem from a lack of connective tissue. 

Nobody seems to know exactly why the showrunners elected to complete Martin’s epic tale in such summary fashion. Whether it was the prospect of helming a new Star Wars saga, contractual issues with the show’s stars, or even the absence of any source material to help steer them, Season 8 saw David Benioff and D B Weiss compress several seasons’ worth of plot and character development into just six episodes. If Martin ever finishes his sprawling saga, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we find that the events of his final book, A Dream of Spring, had been squeezed into the series’ final three (admittedly near-feature-length) episodes. 

The general reaction to the season, coupled with this set’s hefty £61.27 RRP, might explain why this 4K Ultra-HD and Blu-ray steelbook didn’t sell out long before its release date came around – something quite shocking, really, given the series’ prior popularity. Yet beyond an inexcusable muddling of bastard surnames (it’s Waters, not Rivers!) and a distinct, though at least mirthfully acknowledged, dearth of elephants, there is very little wrong with what we see on screen in Season 8. Seasoned performers deliver career-defining performances in episodes as claustrophobic and character-driven as “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” - a clear contender for latter-day Thrones’ best episode – while acclaimed action director Miguel Sapochnik delivers not one but two all-out battles that would shame most blockbusters, and could not be more different from one another – quite literally night and day. Better still, these spectacular set pieces serve the characters’ arcs beautifully, guiding the series towards its promised “bittersweet” conclusion that’s as much a meditation on power and consequence as it is a satisfying epilogue to a story almost a decade in the telling. 

 

Yet the season left many vocal viewers bitterly disappointed, with most citing a lack of character development as their primary gripe. I don’t think that the real issue is a lack of character development, though – it’s more a lack of viewer insight into it. Much is made of the finale’s time-jump, but this is only the last of many such jumps spread throughout the season – it’s just that the others were not so obvious. Take the much-maligned fourth episode of the season, “The Last of the Starks”, for instance, which featured several. Few episodes have ever started as well as this one does, and in it the writers do an exceptional job of progressing the Jaime / Brienne relationship to its obvious conclusion – they even manage to appease Tormund / Brienne ’shippers into the bargain with some of the series’ funniest-ever scenes. Yet, by the end of this episode, Jaime and Brienne have moved from consummating their relationship, through innumerable weeks of co-habiting, all the way to Jaime leaving her to return to Cersei. Had this storyline been played out in the fourth season or earlier, they would have got together in episode two or three and not separated until the season finale. Here, though, we miss everything but the bookends. If Martin ever publishes A Dream of Spring, no doubt he’ll treat us to many immersive Jaime and Brienne chapters focusing on the minutiae of their life together in Winterfell and, in Jaime’s case, the constant pull of Cersei - a pull made irresistible once he learns of Dany’s impending attack on King’s Landing. The story is perfect, and the execution is sublime - but all the show offers us are snapshots of it. Consequently, Jaime’s departure at the end of the episode feels abrupt, perhaps even against the grain, when really it’s anything but if you take a larger view. 

Jaime and Brienne’s relationship is perhaps the most extreme instance of the season’s narrative density, but it is by no means the most keenly felt. Even the central story of Dany’s increasingly tyrannical behaviour the closer she gets to the corrupting influence of the Iron Throne is addressed only in disjointed fragments, placing the onus on the viewer to join the dots in much the same way that Emilia Clarke reportedly had to keep a Daenerys diary to be able to understand the character’s trajectory so that she might portray it as astoundingly as she does. Even in the explainer culture of 2019, this is asking a lot of an audience, particularly when many watching don’t want to make sense of “The Bells” because they are so opposed to their beloved Khaleesi’s actions. Had Game of Thrones done what I hope A Dream of Spring will, and allowed us intimate insight into Dany’s thoughts and feelings as she felt the pull of the throne with her friends and dragons’ bodies mounting around her, I think that their reaction would have been very different indeed. 

I do have some of my own issues with season, though these are relatively minor in comparison to those generally seized upon. Most of these were things that I thought ought to have played a part in the endgame; things that I can’t conceive Martin intends to leave out of his books. Arya doesn’t wear a single face all season, for instance, meaning that the only payoff for her becoming a fully-fledged Faceless Man was her murder of the Freys at the start of last season – something that will surely fall to Lady Stoneheart in print. Worse, the direwolves, introduced in the series’ first episode and clearly set up to play a major part in the resolution of the series, are represented only by Ghost who ultimately contributes nothing more than an ear to the defence of the realm. My biggest gripe, though, has to be with Bronn and that damned crossbow. You don’t give a mercenary a weapon like that at the start of the season and not have him fire it by the season’s end. Don’t get me wrong, I would have hated it had he actually killed one of the Lannisters – even Cersei – which only goes to show how ill-conceived the whole angle was. It was clearly crowbarred in simply to give a popular character something to do ahead of his appointment as master of coin and lord of High Garden - two unlikely things that I want to hate, logically, but love all the same. Damn you, Jerome Flynn. 

Other instinctive gripes I’ve worked through. I was equally thrilled and vindicated when Arya slew the Night King as Ramijn Djawadi’s score reached its eight-season zenith, but part of me still wanted some context to the war that we’d just witnessed; an explanation for the return of the dead and the coming of winter. I wanted to know more about the apparently victorious R’hllor, the Lord of Light; I wanted a window into the magic of Westeros, a demystification of the lore. But then a single word popped into my head, and my grievance promptly evaporated: midichlorians. 

My main complaint with “The Iron Throne”, the series finale, is with its prosaic title. Martin’s own “A Dream of Spring”, or, better still, his abandoned original title, “A Time for Wolves”, would have been infinitely preferable. “The Iron Throne” is, at least, an accurate billing though as the tale boils right down to the pointy chair at centre of the saga and the damage wrought by its corrupting power. Jon and Dany’s final scene together couldn’t be more perfect. The falling ash might be a retcon of the snow Dany saw fall in her second-season foreshadowing of this very moment, but it doesn’t matter – you can still feel the circle closing like a noose around her tragic neck. Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke almost have me in tears with their performances every time I watch this; Drogon actually does as he nuzzles the dead body of his mother. Almost as moving is his surprisingly discriminate torching of the throne room and melting of the Iron Throne itself. It’s a thing of physical and literal beauty which proves beyond doubt that dragons really are as intelligent as men.

The latter half of the finale had the more challenging job of putting the “sweet” into “bittersweet” while also resolving every lingering plot thread – which is to say, most of them. Unfortunately the scene in the Dragon Pit stands up to no scrutiny whatsoever – whilst I have no doubt Martin has always planned to give Bran the crown (go back and rewatch “Winter is Coming” – Game of Thrones begins and ends with him), and for much the same reasons as those posited by Tyrion, I can’t believe that he’d end up with it as the result of a prisoner’s suggestion. On TV, Bran’s ascension also grates as it’s ostensibly because he has “the best story”, when in fact his story has been so relentlessly dull throughout the entire show that his character was even written out for an entire season when the writers ran into a brick wall with him. This isn’t a fault of the character, or even actor Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who truly comes into his own in these last six episodes, but rather a lacklustre attempt to render a character whose real domain is not the world of men but an ethereal world of visions and omens. 

“I thought I was wise, but I wasn’t.”

 

Similarly, the succession of the North under Queen Sansa is a fitting end to both her personal story and that of the larger kingdom, but it’s dealt with as an afterthought and met with no resistance from anyone. None. Surely the new prince of Dorne would request the same liberty for his own kingdom? Or the fiercely independent Iron Islanders? And what about Northern remainers? Are we expected to believe that the Northerners are like those of us in Britain where “every man, woman and child voted to leave” (check with Little Brexit if you don’t believe me). If it wasn’t for the comic relief of Edmure’s pomposity and Sam’s naivety (his nervous proposal to have a people’s vote is the scene’s highlight), not to mention Peter Dinklage making a rousing speech in the most improbable of situations, the scene might not have worked at all. As it is, though, it gets the job done quickly and efficiently – sentiments that apply to well over half the season. 

The concluding scene in the council chamber is fun, whilst still managing to convey Martin’s obsession with the practicalities of ruling. This is the guy who read The Lord of the Rings and loved it, but then found himself questioning Aragorn’s post-war plans for taxation and his policy towards the surviving orcs. “The Iron Throne” might not delve heavily into the minutiae of public office, but it does at least hint at the municipal challenges awaiting our council of fan favourites and their good king, and does so with its tongue heavily planted it its cheek. Closing the last discussion in the series with an argument over public spending – and an anecdote about a goat in a brothel – is something that Martin will have to work hard to top. 

The inevitable montage that closes the show is rousing, beautiful and serves our surviving wolves well. Jon had to go into the North, just as Sansa had to become a queen – their stories couldn’t really have ended any other way. A nice and unexpected touch with Jon’s farewell, though, is its open-endedness – will he take the black again, or does he plan to just head North with the Free Folk? Or can he reconcile the two? Either way, it feels right. Arya’s triumphant departure is probably more satisfying still as she sails boldly west of Westeros, for the first time in a long time her eyes full of adventure instead of vengeance. My favourite moment, though, is Brienne quietly sitting down to write up the exploits of Jaime Lannister in the White Book – it’s the most moving end to an arc in the whole damned show. 

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The steelbook itself is presented in a style largely in keeping with its seven predecessors’, despite the addition of the three 4K UHD discs here on top of the three Blu-rays. Its artwork is gorgeous, evoking the iconic map traversed by the series’ much celebrated title sequence, only rendered in a neutered near-monochrome palette that’s tastefully accented with browns and golds. The set even includes a magnetic sigil that nestles perfectly over its corresponding image on the front, which will no doubt please those who’ve collected all eight across the series. Once my steelbook has been shelved, though, my magnet will probably end up on the fridge alongside Heisenberg and the other “collectable” Blu-ray magnets that I’ve accumulated over the years. 

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The steelbook’s outer packaging is surprisingly well-built, vac-formed from plastic rather than printed on cheap card, and thus offering both the steelbook and its (as packaged, separated) sigil adequate protection in transit while also making mint-condition resale simple for the more mercenary of purchasers. The steelbook’s interior is somewhat less inspiring, as the welcome choice to retain the standard Blu-ray-steelbook dimensions has resulted in a layout in which we have two spindles to stack six discs. It’s the least worst option, admittedly, given that the alternatives would involve either enlarging the steelbook or, worse, inserting a couple of fragile Amaray trays, but it’s still almost certain to attract a flood of complaints. However, as packaged the three Blu-rays fill up one spindle and the three 4K UHD discs the other; it’s worth considering that it makes managing the discs much easier if you put discs one and two of your preferred format (which together house five of the season’s six episodes) on top of each spindle, with the corresponding disc three underneath one of them. 

“Get a better TV.”

- Miguel Sapochnik, “The Long Night” commentary

Of course, stunningly presented as it is, the main reason that I was looking forward to this release wasn’t for its packaging. I’ve been desperate to revisit “The Long Night”, an episode slammed by many for its cinematography, only this time with the benefit of Dolby Vision HDR. In the culmination of the series’ war against the dead, Sapochnik tries to take realism to the nth degree; certain scenes appear to only be lit by their natural elements, typically fire. This was not conveyed well by streaming services, to say the least – on Apple TV’s NOW TV app in the UK, it was incredibly difficult to see what was going on. Even accounting for the occasional drop in image quality when my Internet connection waned (something that, interestingly, never seems to happen with the Netflix or BBC iPlayer apps on the same device), the image was either too dark to make sense of, or, if I turned up my TV’s backlight to full, washed out and grey. Fortunately, this UHD disc conveys something much closer to what I imagine Sapochnik intended. Whilst the upscaled image on the 4K UHD disc does appear sharper than on its Blu-ray counterpart (which I have used for the 1080p screengrabs featured in this review), probably more attributable to its higher bit rate than its artificially greater resolution, what leaps out about the presentation is its dynamic colour range. Now, fire burns bright. Black is much closer to black. The director’s bold artistic choice is finally done justice, and whilst “The Long Night” is still abounding with the show-typical mêlée madness that made even broad-daylight battles like “The Battle of the Bastards” hard to follow, the technical quality is on a par with other darkly graded 4K UHD releases such as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Watchmen. At last, “The Long Night” is truly the thrilling, nail-biting triumph that it was always intended to be - its darkness speaks to its tone, and its writing and direction are clever enough to create a battle-authentic sense of mayhem while still making sure than any moments that matter are clearly telegraphed. 

 

However, though it enhances enjoyment of 95% of the season’s sound and visuals, the 4K UHD presentation also shines a light on the season’s shortcomings – most notably its overuse of green screen. It’s infuriating to have such a jaw-dropping finish marred by cost-cutting, spoiler-protecting nonsense like using CSO to show Pilou Asbæk on the deck of the Silence. Season 8 contains some of the most beautiful effects shot that I’ve ever seen – Drogon and Rhaegal hovering above the clouds in winter moonlight, for instance – and to see these juxtaposed with shots barely worthy of 1970s Doctor Who is a crime. Fortunately the same cannot be said of the immersive 7.1 Dolby Atmos soundtrack, which seems to have been precision engineered to get as much out of the format as is possible on a TV budget. “The Long Night” and “The Bells” are as immersive as any action movie that you’d hear at the cinema, and though the season’s quieter episodes don’t often make use of the additional Atmos channels, they still deliver a vast and vibrant soundscape. Better still, audiophiles yet to make the leap to 4K needn’t miss out on the aural excellence as the Blu-ray discs also contain the Atmos soundtracks (though, as on the 4K UHD discs, they aren’t the default audio track). 

The exclusive bonus material on offer is expectedly disappointing, offering only narrow insight into two key episodes. There is no series (or even season) retrospective, precious little is said about how much future book knowledge the showrunners had been privy to when they penned this final season (surely it can’t have been limited to just Bran’s fate...?), and none of the questions raised in this review (such as why the showrunners were in such a hurry to finish the show) are even broached. Instead, we are offered just two half-hour features that add little to the conversation. First up is When Winter Falls - an unabashed puff piece, albeit a well-deserved one, that celebrates the incredible work that went into filming the Battle of Winterfell depicted in “The Long Night” over fifty-five freezing Northern Irish nights.

Despite being similarly restricted in its scope, “Duty is the Death of Love” is slightly more enjoyable. Benefitting from its treading of new ground (for some reason, “The Iron Throne” was not given the same Inside the Episode and Game Revealed treatment as the rest of the season’s episodes), the cast and showrunners finally lift the veil of the making of the series’ long-awaited and insanely divisive finale. The cast discuss the culmination of their characters’ respective arcs while the production team share the secrets behind such matters as the melting of the throne, or the groundbreaking use of virtual reality to aid practical set design. The commentaries on offer are more of a mixed bag, ranging from the raw and raucous (musings on marsupials and their sexual health, complaints from the director of “The Long Night” about the picture being too dark and not being able to see who’s just died, Pilou Asbæk confessing to not reading scripts and not paying attention to other actors’ lines, Fabian Wagner asking his co-commentators if they’ve signed the petition to have the season remade yet...) clean and clinical, but overall they offer a more rounded, less sanitised look at the making of the final run. 

“A palace without people is a tomb. A realm without people is scenery.”

 

The set also includes five deleted scenes, the longest of which barely clocks in at two minutes (including the lengthy, contextual padding to either side), and none of which would have made much of a difference to anybody had they made the air. Even Grey Worm’s exit and Missandei’s subsequent “headache” at the feast would have added precious little to their coming tragedy given the attention already afforded to their characters. The six Histories & Lore segments are much more welcome, though. Whilst they revisit certain topics broached in earlier seasons’ editions, it’s from very different vantage points this time around, and with a level of vivid colour that sets them apart from most previous entries in the series - the deep purples and turquoises of the Greyjoy Rebellion are particularly striking. Having thoroughly enjoyed Fire & Blood earlier this year, I particularly relished the five-minute instalment on Maegor the Cruel, but “The Defiance of Duskendale” is more interesting still as it concerns a period much closer to the start of the series that Martin’s epic Targaryen history has yet to reach - one that draws a fascinating parallel between the “mad” Aerys II and his daughter.

The set’s flagship bonus feature is not exclusive to it – I watched it on NOW TV back in late May - but it’s no less valuable as result. Directed by Jeanie Finlay, the 113-minute Last Watch is really a film in its own right. Unlike many documentaries of the same type, it takes a fascinating look at production from the ground up – the showrunners are dim and distant figures here; the stars of this one are the people on the ground. Production managers. Extras. Security guards. I’d challenge anyone to watch this and then in good conscience lobby for a Season 8 remake. These exceptional people practically killed themselves to make this phenomenal show. 

Game of Thrones has always been a series that requires its viewers to do more than just watch, and this is never more true than in its final six episodes. It makes you do your homework. You have to be prepared to join the dots. If you do, though, the rewards are immense. As I thoroughly enjoyed it each week on NOW TV, I felt the same rage burn that I did when Star Wars fans relentlessly trolled Rian Johnson following the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. There we were, being gifted with this enchanting and spectacular thing, and all people wanted to do was take to the Internet to spew their bile all over it. Forty-odd quid might seem a lot to pay for lone season of a TV series, but when you consider than you’re getting six movies – seven, if you count The Last Watch – in a level of quality that most consumers couldn’t have even conceived of a decade ago, it starts to look at lot like a bargain. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game of Thrones: The Complete Eighth Season 4K Ultra-HD / Blu-ray steelbook is available now, with today’s cheapest retailer being Zavvi, who have it listed for £40.49 plus £1.99 delivery when using the discount code STEELBOOK.