Season 8 of Game of Thrones remains contentious. The long-awaited final season of HBO’s epic fantasy series divided fans into multiple camps. Many found it a satisfying conclusion to a multi-layered story, while others found it rushed and were dissatisfied with some of its character resolutions. Regardless of where you fell on the quality spectrum, it seems like everyone had strong feelings about the way the show wrapped up. Even, according to this “deepfake” fan edit, Jon Snow himself.
Is this edit too harsh, or did Jon Snow finally learn something. We’ll let you decide in this episode of Nerdist News Edition.
As you can see, the night is dark and full of terrifyingly real looking video edits. If you’re unfamiliar, deepfakes are when artificial intelligence is used to edit existing video and audio so the subjects look and sound like they’re saying something other than what they really did. It’s pretty creepy and the implications are even more suspect, but we can’t deny the power of deepfake humor when applied correctly, like it was in this video from the YouTube account Eating Things. This video wracked up more than 1.8 million views in a week, and depicts Jon Snow complaining about many of the things that rubbed fans the wrong way in season 8, like the Starbucks cup incident and Snow’s lack of dialogue.While deepfakes walk a fine line between humor and dangerous implications, this particular one is more of a salvo from disappointed fans who felt betrayed by their favorite show. From Cersei’s lackluster death to Daenerys’ heel-spin descent in madness, the final season of Game of Thrones riled feathers no matter how you cut it. That’s why videos like this are just part of a pile of online reactions. If you’ll recall, some angered fans even made a petition asking HBO to remake the final season.
A month out from the finale of Game of Thrones and it’s even more clear that we won’t be done talking about season 8 for a very long time.
Images: HBO