Benioff and Weiss Reveal Biggest Game of Thrones Regret

Television

When Game of Thrones ended, fans were, to say the least, not thrilled. The show that had once been some of the most engaging, exciting, and entertaining television out there had devolved into a rushed mess with wildly inconsistent characters doing ridiculous things to get them to where the show wanted them to be (and no one else did), anticlimactic ends to major storylines, torpedoed character arcs, and an ending that felt like it was pulled out of a hat. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have kept a low profile since then, although that’s partly because everything they’ve tried to do has fallen apart, including a planned Star Wars trilogy. But now, they’ve got a Netflix series based on a Chinese sci-fi novel called 3 Body Problem, which debuts on March 21, 2024, and in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Game of Thrones inevitably came up. When asked if there were anything about the series they would change, the pair had perhaps the oddest answer you could imagine:

“One thing I know I wish we could have done is there’s the character Mord the Jailer,” Benioff says.

“It was a mistake not bringing Mord the Jailer back into it,” Weiss says. “We always talked about doing it.”

“And we had the scene for it,” Benioff says. “There’s a scene set in a tavern …”

“Was it Brienne or The Hound?” Weiss says. “But we realized too late that Mord could have owned the tavern. We could have had that actor in the background acting exactly the way he did as a jailer, except now as a small-business owner. It was just such an obvious, no-brainer, day-after idea.”

It’s like they want people to hate them even more. Can this be anything but a troll? Benioff and Weiss appear to be fine with turning Daenerys into a genocidal psychopath because she was sad about stuff, Jon Snow’s resurrection and prophecy coming to nothing, Jamie’s arc reversing on a dime to no effect, Tyrion losing every bit of his intelligence, the White Walkers being dispatched like they were nothing, the Iron Throne going to one of the most boring characters on the show (whose own arc never went anywhere), or a host of other problems. They don’t even wish they’d taken HBO’s offer for more seasons to at least properly develop some of these plot points so they could possibly make sense and feel earned. No, they regret not thinking of a sight gag involving an extremely minor character.

Or, at least, that’s what they say. I really think this is a dig at fans. In the main interview, they talk about their failed Star Wars movie (they conveniently neglect to mention it was to be a whole trilogy), and they say it wasn’t because of the backlash to Game of Thrones’ final season but because Lucasfilm wasn’t interested in their pitch. But right after that, THR correctly points out that their idea – to show the beginnings of the Jedi – is the basis for the announced Star Wars movie Dawn of the Jedi, to be directed by James Mangold. That may have been Lucasfilm’s excuse for shuffling them off, but it seems pretty clear the real reason was that they’d turned themselves into pariahs by destroying Game of Thrones. I think they know this, just like they know a lot more than “some fans” didn’t like the finale, and this is their way of thumbing their nose at them – as if season 8 wasn’t enough.