Jon Snow may know nothing, but not Kit Harington, who was aware of the sheer amount of effort David Benioff and D.B. Weiss put in for Game of Thrones Season 8. Years after the conclusion of HBO's epic, the actor is still open and honest about the poor reception and mass outrage after the final season dropped. 

The final season of the show, which aired in 2019, got a record viewership, but at the same time, it faced severe criticism related to its treatment of its female protagonists, lighting, pacing, and storytelling. The discontent of the viewers reached its peak with fans demanding a remake. But Harrington would not budge.

In an interview with The New York Times, Kit Harington spoke about the petition led by fans to remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers, claiming that it pissed him off. Not because he was unaware of the criticism, but because he thought that it was a kind of dismissal of the great effort put into the production.

“That genuinely angered me. Like, how dare you? Sorry, that’s just how I feel. I think it was a level of idiocy that can only come about through social media,” he told the outlet, speaking up for the entire team of cast and crew, including creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

Harington further added that he was in rehab during Game of Thrones Season 8 and therefore only became aware of the overwhelming backlash after the storm had passed. Reflecting on the creative team’s hard work and commitment, he revealed to the outlet that a single battle scene took 55 consecutive nights of filming, of which Harrington himself was present for 40 nights. Harrington said he was shocked by the roaring negative reception of the show.

While he firmly supported the show’s production, Harington also admitted in other interviews, like his GQ magazine profile, that the last season sometimes felt rushed. He added that the entire cast was tired at the end of a decade-long engagement, which he thought could be one of the many factors contributing to the audience's frustration.

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How bad things exactly were for the final season of George R. R. Martin's magnum opus?

Game of Thrones will forever be one of HBO's most popular TV shows of all time, but every fan agrees that its final season fumbled a bit too much in comparison with the high standard set by its own preceding seasons. Thus, Season 8 turned out to be the least rated part on all the critic review sites and fan platforms.

The fan petition that angered Kit Harington demanded HBO remake Season 8 with competent writers, and the number of signatures exceeded 1.8 million from the disheartened fans. To put this in perspective, the petition's original goal was to obtain 15,000 signatures.

The season has a critical approval rating of about 55% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a far cry from the previous seasons’ scores of over 90%. Audience ratings were even more cruel, with some sites like the Popcornmeter putting them in the 30–37 % category and individual episodes like The Bells going as low as 47%.

Rushed storytelling, inconsistent character development, and disappointing endings were frequently cited as the main reasons for the uproar by critics and viewers, including the Starbucks cup controversy, and more. However, for Harington, what mattered the most was the production team's efforts, not fan outrage.

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