Game of Thrones fans' watch has ended, and the final bow proved to be predictably divisive.
Social media was immediately engulfed with negative reactions as the show's series finale, "The Iron Throne," wrapped up, with one particular heel turn from the previous week continuing to draw complaints. The ultimate victor also left many unsatisfied, with some fans feeling the series rushed into this conclusion at the end of an unnecessarily truncated final season and others complaining that certain plot points did not satisfyingly pay off.
On IMDb, the last episode currently holds a brutal score of 4.8 out of 10 with more than 70,000 ratings. Before this final season, no episode of Game of Thrones had even earned an IMDb score lower than 8 out of 10. For comparison, the famously hated series finale of Dexter has an IMDb score of 4.7.
Television critics have been a bit kinder, but not much. On Rotten Tomatoes, the episode holds a score of 57 percent, meaning 57 percent of critics gave it a positive review and 43 percent gave it a negative review. This is quite a drop from the season premiere, which scored a 92 percent approval rating among critics. The audience score for the show's last season is currently 37 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 2.5 out of 5.
These online reviews from fans should certainly be taken with a grain of salt considering those who hated something are always far more likely to rate it online than those who liked it. The reaction certainly wasn't all negative, with even some who were critical of previous episodes coming away from the finale pleasantly surprised.
Still, Game of Thrones is now almost certain to go down in history along with all of the other shows with famously divisive endings. Will this ending tarnish the iconic series' legacy like How I Met Your Mother, or will it actually gain more appreciation over time like The Sopranos? Only time will tell.