Valar Morgulis: All Culture Must Die.
There used to be two ways to end a long running TV show. Either there’s a big, emotional send-off in the style of the “M*A*S*H” finale, or else you imply to the audience that the story and characters will continue, unseen by us, in the same vein — think the “Seinfeld” gang continuing to pointlessly bicker in jail, or the cast of “Friends” moving out of their apartments for pastures new and leaving the audience behind.
In recent years, as scripted TV has begun to belatedly mature as a medium, there has been a trend towards killing everyone off in the finale. Most of the cast of “Lost” bought the farm in the last couple of episodes, Walter White dies on the floor of his meth lab in “Breaking Bad,” Jax Teller chooses to go out with a blaze of glory and a face full of truck at the climax of “Sons of Anarchy,” and so forth. It’s a ballsier strategy, and makes me think that “Friends” would have been improved immeasurably by a suicide bombing in the last ten minutes.
Recently, however, “Game of Thrones” is trying a new hybrid. The most recent episode, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” was a big, emotional, heart warming send-off for all the characters in the style of “M*A*S*H.” And then next week everyone is going to get killed.
It’s a weird feeling, knowing that a lot of the cast are sure to be wiped out in the coming battle. This isn’t knowing that characters are doomed in the abstract, like Tony Soprano, but rather the very concrete feeling that next episode, a good number of characters you’ve come to care about are going to die horribly. It’s a sick, torturous feeling that skillfully manages to evoke the dread of a coming battle in TV viewers. It’s also doubly sad if you’re a straight white man in his thirties, like me. Because the end of “Game of Thrones” is a sign of the end of culture that was designed with me in mind.
A few days after “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was released, “Avengers: Endgame” will hit cinemas. In case the title wasn’t clear, this movie is very probably the last audiences will see of the original Avengers lineup. Whilst deaths in comic book media are notoriously reversible, contracts are up, actors are aging and even if we do see more from Iron Man and Captain America, the odds are that the actors will be replaced and the magic will be in some way diminished.
Between the end of Game of Thrones and the last “proper” Avengers movie, two of the major supporting pillars of my nerdy youth are being torn down. They both started at around the same time, when I was in my mid-twenties, and they’re coming to an end just before I reach thirty four. I have no idea what will come next to replace them — something will — but I’m pretty sure it will be something I don’t fully understand. Something that’s aimed at people ten years younger than me.
I’m not bemoaning this overall, of course. The landscape has changed and it’s about time that people who are unlike me, which is to say women and people of colour and non-hetero types, are given a voice. Maybe given all the voices. Maybe we should do the next ten years and only have non-white or female or queer leads. It would certainly be a justified step. For years, culture has treated the average white 25 year old guy as the target demographic, and it’s time that changed. The most disappointing thing would be if TV and movies were still pitching to straight white men who were ten years younger than me, and nothing else was different.
What does sadden me a little, however, is the feeling that my time in the sun is over. Winter, to borrow from Thrones, is coming. Next week, some of the Avengers will probably leave the stage, and a lot of the cast of Game of Thrones will certainly be laid to rest.
I’m curious to see what follows. I’m curious to see what the new wave of culture brings. I hope I like some of it, and if I don’t, that’s fine too because it won’t be for me anymore. I guess above all else, as the defining TV series and movie franchise for my age bracket come to an end, I hope something equally brilliant comes along. Ideally with a little more inclusivity. And I hope people who are in their twenties now have as much fun with it as people my age did with Game of Thrones and Marvel movies.
Because god dammit, we loved them.