Still surviving... still thriving?

Another year, another season of Game of Thrones draws to a close.

This year marks a key milestone in the adaptation however, as with the end of season closer “Mother’s Mercy” the show has officially caught up with the books.

Despite adamant assurances from showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss that it wouldn’t be a case of ‘one season, one book’, it all seems to have turned out that way.

Some clever merging of characters combined with streamlined storylines means that, even with judicious blurring of the lines between books, season five’s ending matches up near perfectly with book five, A Dance with Dragons.

It’s hard for it not to feel like a conscious decision on the part of the showrunners – doing it this way buys George R. R. Martin enough time to finish and publish book six, The Winds of Winter before the show returns next spring.

Compared to the books, the series has managed to avoid feeling like it’s treading water too heavily at any point, although not without some difficulties.

Events in ‘Mother’s Mercy’ managed the interesting feat of using moments from earlier in the book to finish off storylines, chopping and changing as Benioff and Weiss felt necessary, not least in Arya’s plotline.

Out of everyone, Arya is perhaps the biggest victim of Martin’s tendency to tread water in the later novels, leading to her final scenes managing the entertaining feat of covering events that have already happened in the books at the same time as handling those that are still yet to come.

It sounds silly on paper – using something that should have happened several episodes ago to round up a storyline that’s now overtaken the books – but it’s typical of Benioff and Weiss’ intelligent, careful approach to how they handle the delicate situation they find themselves in.

Until now, their audience has sat in two camps – those who have read the books, and those who haven’t, resulting in two very different viewing experiences.

For those already in the know for events coming up, the joy was in the adaptation itself, in finally seeing the books come to life (and, increasingly, seeing how the showrunners chose to alter the original plot lines, often for the better).

There was also a perverse glee in watching the damage wrought by the show’s twists and turns on the unsuspecting fresh TV audience, with the likes of the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding (lots of capitalised weddings in this show) and the demise of the Red Viper all provoking a highly entertaining response from the non-book reading viewers.

"It’s been all about politics up to now. Mostly, anyway."

The show has been impossibly successful at straddling that tightrope between audiences, with this series marking the point where the team behind it all had to make some tough decisions about how much of the future (which is already known to the pair) to reveal before Martin has the chance.

The answer, as it turns out, was far more than most people were expecting, with the eighth episode ‘Hardhome’ marking a watershed for the show on that front.

Easily one of the best episodes of the entire run, “Hardhome” took some liberties with the books, turning a previously off-screen battle featuring no major characters into a full-blown on-screen one, but also showed the true stakes at play in this series.

It’s been all about politics up to now. Mostly, anyway.

All about the titular game of thrones where, as Aiden Gillen’s Littlefinger so memorably puts it: “You win or you die.”

Choosing the title of the first book in the series, rather than its actual name, as the title for the TV adaptation now feels very, very deliberate.

"The stakes are raised. The war is truly underway."

Calling it A Song of Ice and Fire might occasionally remind viewers of the larger game taking place in Westeros.

Full credit to Benioff and Weiss for burying that one.

As ‘Hardhome’ reminded everyone, there is a much, much bigger threat to everyone in Westeros than the antics of the ruling families, arriving in the shape of the White Walkers and their army of the undead.

We saw them in the very first scene of the entire series (also true of the books), and they’ve dipped in and out since then, but it’s been very easy to forget the massing threat on the north side of the Wall.

No longer. If season five is remembered for nothing else, let it be that: this was the season that blew the whole thing wide open. The stakes are raised. The war is truly underway.

It’s not the only thing that season five will be remembered for, though, for better and for worse. Mainly for worse.

The show got itself into hot water with yet another use of sexual violence as a plot-driving device, again against one of the major female characters.

Whereas the infamous scene in season four felt like a mistake – a scene that was intended one way, but filmed (and written) in such a way that it felt inescapably wrong – here was something that, to an audience at large, felt completely unjustifiable.

It’s undeniably troubling, that’s for sure, but the treatment in later episodes went some way to improving the situation (confirmation, if any were needed, that shows must be taken as a whole, at least as seasons, rather than just judged on individual episodes), as the writers just about managed to veer away from using the rape as part of a male character’s arc, instead tying it to the agency of the female in question and using it to drive her arc forwards.

Mishandled? A little. As wholly unjustified as the internet outcry would have you believe? Probably not.

Game of Thrones has always courted controversy, sometimes for legitimate reasons, other times simply because it accidentally sailed a little too close to the wind, and this season was no exception.

But the show has always been (and hopefully will always be) more than that, better than that.

Going by the strength of the closing few episodes of this season, it promises to maintain the impossibly high bar of standards it has set for itself, and promises to keep leading the charge for quality television programming everywhere.

If you want my main concern, it’s looking almost certain that the show will get to the end before the books do.

I don’t know how I’ll cope with not knowing what’s coming next.