HBO tried to make the line go up by cutting two episodes off the second season in the midst of the writer's strike. Like no exaggeration, the season 2 finale ends in a way that makes it immediately obvious two more episodes were supposed to exist. They were simply truncated along with the all the payoff for many of this season's character arcs and plot lines.
One of the writers even made a statement that an eight episode season wasn't their decision. Unfortunately the news of that must have hit them too late in production to fully accommodate that in the writing.
Except on all the subreddits for this show, the prevailing opinion amongst dipshit redditors is that the writers are cutting book events to make time for LGBTQ asoiaf fanfiction.
While that'd be based if true, it's not. Like wtf? Do these people live in a different universe? Are they watching a different dragon show? Redditors ain't alright, man. These people watch the enshittification of media in real time, and their lack of media literacy results in them going on queerphobic witch hunts and throwing wild assignment of blame at anything but HBO and capitalism.
Why are people obsessed with Watching movies with people walking around farting and pretend fighting in rubber suits? (cape shit)
You know, now that you mention it, I may have somehow blacked out much of my second-hand exposure to capeshit. It was also everywhere, I was constantly asked if I watched Side Movie #7 and Side Show #3 so I understood the reference in Main Movie #9 or whatever, but I guess I just found it obnoxious and redundant instead of both that and grotesque and edgy for edginess' sake.
Joss Whedon being a creep didn't surprise me and was a bit of schadenfreude years after his rise to cultural dominance.