Game of Thrones’ Season 8 disaster was foreshadowed by David Benioff’s take on The Sopranos ending — an early warning fans didn’t see coming.
It turns out Game of Thrones fans should’ve seen the Season 8 disaster coming from miles away, because one of the showrunners basically foreshadowed it years ago. David Benioff once shared his very strong (and kinda controversial) take on The Sopranos ending, admitting he’d gotten into plenty of arguments about it.
Now, looking back, his thoughts on the HBO classic feel like an early red flag for what was about to happen in Westeros.
Game of Thrones showrunner’s take on The Sopranos finale warned us about season 8’s disaster
When Game of Thrones crashed and burned in its final season, many fans felt blindsided. But maybe the warning signs were always there? especially in showrunner David Benioff’s past take on The Sopranos finale.
Benioff once raved about David Chase’s infamous cut-to-black ending, calling it the best of all possible endings. He admitted he had endless debates over why it worked. But here’s the kicker: he also said fans who hated it were idiots. He admitted (via EW),
From the beginning, we’ve talked about how the show would end. A good story isn’t a good story if you have a bad ending. Of course we worry. It’s also part of the fun of any show that people love arguing about it.
I loved the way David Chase ended The Sopranos [with its surprising cut to black]. I was one of those people who thought my TV had gone out. I got up and was checking the wires, unable to believe my cable had gone out in the most important moment of my favorite TV series.
He continued,
I think that was the best of all possible endings for that show. But a lot of people hated it. I’ve gotten into a lot of arguments with people about why that was a great ending, but people felt legitimately cheated and that’s their right to feel that way, just as it’s my right to feel like they’re idiots.
I’ll always remember being on the subway headed to Yankees Stadium a couple days after the Sopranos ending aired. And there were like three different conversations in the subway and they were all about the exact same thing.
As GOT Season 8 unraveled, criticism poured in. Plot points felt rushed, character arcs got torched, and the finale? A divisive mess. Yet, Benioff and co-showrunner Dan Weiss stood firm, believing no ending could ever satisfy everyone. Weiss even admitted,
I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this” — that’s an impossible reality that doesn’t exist. You hope you’re doing the best job you can, that this version works better than any other version, but you know somebody is not going to like it. I’ve been that person with other things, where people are loving something and I’m going, “Yeah, that’s okay. I was hoping for more.
The problem? GOT fans weren’t just not liking it — they felt robbed. The years of meticulous storytelling unraveled in six breakneck episodes, turning one of TV’s greatest sagas into a cautionary tale.
Looking back, Benioff’s Sopranos take might have been an eerie foreshadowing. If he thought a shocking, open-ended finale was “the best,” was GOT doomed from the start? Maybe the subway debates he loved so much were exactly what Thrones fans had — just with a lot more rage.
House of the Dragon sets 2026 return with epic battle ahead
After an abbreviated eight-episode second season, House of the Dragon is coming back with a vengeance in 2026 — and HBO’s drama chief promises it’ll be worth it.
Francesca Orsi, HBO’s Head of Drama, confirmed that the long-awaited Battle of the Gullet, originally set for Season 2, had been pushed to Season 3 for a reason. She admitted, teasing a cinematic spectacle (via Deadline),
It’s just so massive, we needed the time to build it…One of the lead producers on it [Kevin de la Noy] worked on Titanic, so all that he brought in terms of acumen of what happened on the Titanic and how that entire experience is built, he brings that expertise to it.
The battle wasn’t just delayed — it’s been supercharged.
Veteran producer Kevin de la Noy brought his expertise to scale up the sequence. Showrunner Ryan Condal called it the biggest thing to date we have pulled off.
With House of the Dragon now aiming for an explosive return, fans can finally expect the war they were promised.
