Game of Thrones Again

Game of Thrones hasn’t been good in years, but I watch the new season anyway. The early run had teeth—actual stakes, real surprise, writing that mattered. By season five or six you could feel it shift, the show becoming less a story and more a spectacle machine. It still beats The Walking Dead, which is a low bar.

HBO put out a trailer. Daenerys in Westeros finally, Jon Snow braced for White Walkers, Arya doing her revenge thing. The same pieces on the same board, moved around for whatever endgame they’ve planned. I know how this ends. Not well. But I’ll watch anyway.

There’s something about returning to a show you’ve stopped believing in. The rhythms are predictable by now—I know when they’ll kill someone off for emotion, know which dialogue will get quoted to death, know exactly how disappointed I’ll be by the time the final credits roll. I watch anyway because I’ve already invested years, because there’s some stubborn part of me that wants to see them pull it off, because there’s still nothing else quite like this on television.