Game Of Thrones' Conleth Hill Was 'Inconsolably' Frustrated Over The Series' Last Season
The night is dark and full of complaints about the final season of "Game of Thrones." Yes, we know it's been well over four years since the highly divisive finale to what many once considered to be one of the best shows while it was on the air. But it's one thing for fans to refuse to move on; it's another thing altogether for the actual cast to be the ones still expressing their disappointment over how creators and showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff brought the story to an end.
As much as Emilia Clarke's Daenerys Targaryen and her descent into outright villainy tends to represent everything that fans consider lackluster (to put it mildly) about the last stretch of episodes, let's not forget all the collateral damage along the way. One such victim was Varys, the "Master of Whisperers" who played such a crucial role throughout much of the series. Portrayed by actor Conleth Hill, fans of author George R.R. Martin's original novels couldn't have possibly asked for a more faithful translation of one of the source material's most compelling figures. Neither villain nor hero, Varys constantly straddled the line with his mysterious motivations that only ever boiled down to, in his words, serving "the realm."
So, naturally, viewers were mighty displeased when Varys went out in a thoroughly anticlimactic way. After he covertly threw his lot behind Jon Snow's claim to the Iron Throne, Dany inevitably found out and roasted him with dragon fire for his troubles in the penultimate episode of the series. But as much as fans cried foul, that's nothing compared to Hill himself, who said in a recent interview that he was "inconsolable" in the aftermath of his character's cruelly abrupt exit.
End of the road
In an interview with The Times UK (via Variety), actor Conleth Hill revisited his whirlwind of emotions upon finding out what exactly would happen to Varys:
"I thought I'd done something wrong. Right up until the last two [seasons], I had no complaints at all. I just felt frustrated with the last couple of [seasons] because Varys wasn't the all-knowing character he had been. I think the writers wanted to do one thing to end it and the studio HBO wanted to do another. I felt that last series was a bit rushed. I was inconsolable, but now I'm fine about it."
Fans expected that several major players would end up getting bumped off the board as the flagship HBO series drew to an end. After all, as Cersei put it so eloquently in season 1: You either win the game of thrones, or you die. But perhaps it was the fact that Varys had played the game so well, switching allegiances from King Robert Baratheon to Joffrey to Tyrion to Jon Snow and continuing to thrive while others didn't, that made his sudden and rather hastily-conceived downfall so much more aggravating than it otherwise might've been.
Considering that such an effective schemer was ultimately undone by something so mundane — Peter Dinklage's Tyrion blabbing about his intentions to the Queen — it's hard to fault Hill for harboring some bitter feelings over how it all came to an end. He's certainly not the first "Game of Thrones" actor to admit their misgivings over the noticeably rushed final season, and he probably won't be the last. Oh well, at least we'll always have George R.R. Martin's fully completed saga of books to console us ... right?