Game Of Thrones was once one of the most beloved shows on TV, but that didn't last throughout its run. The last season that every fan agrees was amazing was the fourth, which is about the place where the show started to diverge from its source material, George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire. From there, the show went downhill in the eyes of critics and fans. Its precipitous fall is a cautionary tale for all adaptations and TV shows in general.

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When it was good, it was one of the best shows ever made, hands down, with episodes like "Baelor", "Blackwater", and more blowing away viewers. When it was bad, well, it was really bad and there are a lot of mistakes the show made to get it to that point.

8 Arya Stark Killing The Night King Makes No Thematic Sense

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Arya Stark was always one of the show's most popular characters, her journey from a young noble girl to a vengeance-obsessed young woman was one that everyone loved. As the show went on, it did make her a little too OP, but fans still loved her. And then "The Long Night" happened. Arya got a lot of cool fight scenes in the episode, enough to make all of her fans happy, but then they had her kill the Night King, one of the show's big bads.

The whole thing was vaguely ridiculous at best, but what really hurt the show is it made no thematic sense. If anyone was to kill the Night King, it should have been Jon or Daenerys. Even Theon would have made more sense and, seeing how the show ended, having Bran somehow do it would have been clever foreshadowing. As it is, it was giving Arya yet another cool moment that she didn't need.

7 Daenerys Targaryean's Character Arc Was Too Rushed To Make Sense

Daenerys Targaryen in the ruins of King's Landing in Game of Thrones

The story of Daenerys Targaryean is one of the most important in GoT lore. Her journey from naive young girl to the Dragon Queen compelled audiences and her final form, that of a vengeful Targaryean and the true daughter of the Mad King, would have made sense if it was built up to correctly. Unfortunately, the show didn't even attempt to make it work, which isn't that strange looking at some of the other Daenerys missteps from throughout the show's run.

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She pretty went from conquering hero to insane despot overnight, with very little build-up. The whole thing was ridiculously rushed and depended upon viewers all agreeing that the reasoning presented was sound instead of meticulously laying out why, something the earlier seasons of the show would have done.

6 It Fell Back On Character Clichés More And More As The Show Went

Jon Snow is revealed to be Aegon Targaryen in Game of Thrones

Game Of Thrones always had a lot of clichéd characters, but they worked in the context of the show. Characters like Ned and Robb Stark were fantasy genre archetypes, but each one had a reason for being that way, and it made sense when it came to their story. As the show went on and things got farther away from the good writing of the source material, every character became a cliché.

Gone were the shades of grey from before or the nuances that made the clichéd characters more than just fantasy stereotypes. The show abandoned the good writing of the past and this hurt every character in the show, making them easily memeable but nowhere near as beloved as they once were.

5 It Became Too Defined By Its Shocking Violence And Sex

Jon Snow fighting in the Battle of the Bastards Game of Thrones

When it first aired, Games Of Thrones was fantasy unlike anything viewers had experienced. Fantasy books had long been embracing a more realistic approach, spurred on by the success of A Song Of Ice And Fire, but for casual fans who only watched movies or read the more sanitary classics, it was a revelation. It shocked viewers with its excesses and this helped make it a must-watch show.

However, this approach eventually got pretty old. What was once a much-watch got old and the show ended up chasing the high of earlier seasons' shocks. It got to the point where the later seasons' violence and sex lost any impact at all. It was one of the show's harshest realities: what made it popular led to it becoming formulaic.

4 All The Smart Characters Got Really Dumb By The End

Tyrion Lannister looking somber while in front of debris

One of the things about Game Of Thrones that set it apart from other fantasy shows is that it showcased how the intelligent were just as potent as the strong. Characters like Tyrion Lannister, Varys, and Petyr Baelish used their smarts to navigate a violent world. Others, like Tywin Lannister, proved that being strong was only great if one had the brains to back it up.

This is why it's so unfortunate that, in the later seasons of the show, all the smart characters started doing really dumb things. Tyrion and Varys are the most egregious examples, making foolish mistakes they never would have made earlier in the show, but there were definitely others. Many of the show's characters aged poorly, but none so bad as its once intelligent characters.

3 It Left Out A Lot Of Great Stuff From Books

Game of Thrones characters who didn't appear in the show list Lady Stoneheart Barbrey Dustin Aegon VI

Adaptations are a delicate science. Books have way more room than a show or movie, so the author can take the story on tangents that other media can't. It can be difficult to figure out what to cut. For Game Of Thrones it was much harder because the books weren't even completed yet. This caused a lot of the books' characters to be left out and entire storylines to be abandoned.

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Sometimes this made sense, but other times it took away interesting plots that could have made the show better in later years, like Lady Stoneheart. An adaptation doesn't need everything from its source material, but GoT's showrunners could have made better choices, especially considering what fans got in the end anyway.

2 The Dorne Plotline Was Terrible

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One thing every GoT fan can agree on, regardless of when they think the show got bad, is that the Dorne plot is one of the worst things about the show. In the book, the Dorne plotline was a big part of the fourth book, A Feast For Crows, and had its bearing on the fifth, A Dance With Dragons. Book fans were looking forward to it and show fans were excited to see the consequences of Oberyn Martell's death.

The show took what could have been an intriguing plot and botched it completely. It was a waste of talented actors like Alexander Siddig and often was laughably bad. It was a precursor of where the show was going in its latter seasons, unfortunately.

1 Rushing The Ending Made Everything Suffer

Game of Thrones finale

HBO was willing to write GoT showrunners David Benoiff and D.B. Weiss a black check for the show's ending and let them make it as long or short as they wanted. They picked short, trying to tie it all up in one season. Not only that, but instead of the usual ten-episode season, they opted for six. Even with several longer episodes, this was a huge mistake.

GoT was no stranger to controversy, but the showrunners' baffling decision to cut the show short did more damage than anything else. The network and George R.R. Martin wanted the show to go on longer to stick the landing. But instead of stepping in and getting new showrunners to ensure their wishes were met, they trusted Benioff and Weiss with a rushed final season, the biggest mistake in the show's history.