
- Last weekend, after eight seasons and almost a decade on the air, Game of Thrones (opens in new tab) aired its final episode. Not all fans were pleased with the way the show's long-running battle for the Iron Throne was resolved—or with the fates of their favorite characters.
- According to data from opensubtitles.org (opens in new tab), over the years, the number of words spoken in each episode of Game of Thrones declined sharply, especially in the final seasons of the show.
- Fans took to Twitter to react to the data, which served as proof that the changes in the show weren't just in their imagination after all.
Game of Thrones (opens in new tab) came to an end last week and many fans were, well, less than thrilled with the show's ending. Whatever you happened to think of the ending, the widely-held perception that the show had changed in some real way in the last few years isn't wrong.
According to data from opensubtitles.org (opens in new tab), the show's dialogue underwent some major changes over the years. Namely, the number of words spoken per episode plummeted.
Github user mrquart (opens in new tab) took the data and plotted it into a chart (the code for the chart is available here (opens in new tab)) and many fans shared the graphic on Twitter. Here's the graph:
The brooding silence in Season 8 wasn’t just in your head.
Some fans on Twitter had jokes:
There it is. pic.twitter.com/mTl6iJI9sUMay 24, 2019
Meanwhile, Cersei.... pic.twitter.com/ZrzPyrpLsnMay 25, 2019
Confirmed that neither Aaron Sorkin nor Amy Sherman Palladino ghostwrote an episode.May 25, 2019
There it is. pic.twitter.com/mTl6iJI9sUMay 24, 2019
pic.twitter.com/NyGcLOmwThMay 25, 2019
Does this include dragon roars?May 26, 2019
While others defended the declining dialogue stats:
I’m interested to hear your conclusions. To me, this makes a lot of sense - you have to explain the story and characters at the beginning and if you’ve done the job right, by the end all you need is Tyrions facial expressions lol.May 24, 2019
There it is. pic.twitter.com/mTl6iJI9sUMay 24, 2019
And then there were those who defended the lack of dialogue, but still planted themselves firmly on Team Game of Thrones Took a Nosedive:
I mean, on the one hand, I think the nice thing about film and television is that you can tell a whole lot without dialogue, but just by how you frame the shot, the actor, the music, etc.On the other hand, Season 8 sucked.May 26, 2019
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Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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