The critical and fan backlash toward Game of Thrones‘ final season has reached new levels of resentment, with the show’s finale garnering an all-time-low IMDb score of 4.4/10. This compared with an average 9.1/10 in previous seasons. After episode five of season eight, “The Bells,” disgruntled fans even went so far as to launch a petition to rewrite season eight in its entirety. The petition has since been signed by more than a million people.
But Kit Harington, who played Jon Snow in the show, has a message for some of the more vocal critics, telling Esquire, “I think no matter what anyone thinks about this season — and I don’t mean to sound mean about critics here — but whatever critic spends half an hour writing about this season and makes their judgment on it, in my head they can go fuck themselves. ’Cause I know how much work was put into this.”
As Jon’s first love Ygritte might have put it, “You know nothing, TV critics.” Harington isn’t the only Game of Thrones cast member fed up with the backlash. Sophie Turner, who played Sansa Stark, told The New York Times, “So many people worked so, so hard on it, and for people to just rubbish it because it’s not what they want to see is just disrespectful.”
