They changed half the cast almost arbitrarily and I spent the first 20 minutes being like :jesse-wtf: trying to figure out what happened.
Apparently there was like a 15 year time jump or something but most of the characters that didn't change actors look pretty much the same.
Anyway, the show remains very mid, but this bugged he hell out of me. I kinda feel like they went through all the trouble just so they could have a young looking actress get mostly nude in the first arc. Either that or some galaxy brain scheme to save on labor costs.
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I bet the HBO execs spend a lot of time staring longingly out windows thinking about how they should have forced D&D to go to ten seasons instead of being talked into ending it at eight.
That said they need to bring back Rome, dammit! There are so many sagas from Roman history that would look so good with the GoT polish!
They were sinking 10+ million into every episode for the final two seasons, and they were so fucking bad that everyone immediately forgot about it. I can guarantee that there were a fuckload of board exec meetings talking about how the IP was worth too much to sit on for long enough to find a way to do it correctly. They settled for "close enough"