'Game of Thrones' Director Neil Marshall Agrees With Criticism That Final Season Was 'Really Rushed'

The divisive final season of Game of Thrones earned a plethora of criticism, with everything from the lighting to the character development coming under fire from diehard fans. Though the showrunners have intermittently defended Season 8 in the past months, director Neil Marshall, who was responsible for key episodes like “Blackwater” and “The Watchers on the Wall” (R.I.P. Ygritte), says he agrees with at least one of the criticisms.

Metro UK reports that the 49-year-old director, who first gained a cult following with his 2002 film Dog Soldiers, recently sat down with the publication and admitted that the last season fell short with character development. He stated, “I kind of agree with a lot of the criticism that it was really rushed. Everyone ended up where they were meant to end up but they got there in a little bit of a rush in the end.”

Although GoT creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff went from zero to 100 when it came to the storylines of some of our favorite characters, most notably Daenerys Targaryen (played by Emilia Clarke), Marshall said it would have been hard to disagree with them while directing, even though he would have done things differently.

The Hellboy director explained:

“It’s very difficult to second guess those guys because they are geniuses and they have done such an amazing job…Inevitably, I would’ve taken a different approach to directing. One of the greatest experiences I had with working on both those episodes was that they were so open to bringing my ideas, particularly about battle scenes and how battles worked.”

Geniuses or not, I think most fans would agree that they wish someone like Marshall would have been there to pump the brakes for Weiss and Benioff.