Did George R.R. Martin’s Winds of Winter Delay Doom Game of Thrones Season 8?

Game of Thrones fans are back at it, dusting off the blame wheel and spinning it toward George R.R. Martin. The latest skirmish started on Reddit, where one post argued the show's divisive final season wasn’t on the showrunners at all — it was on Martin for not finishing the books. That take split the room, again.

"D&D didn't ruin the end of the Game of Thrones TV show, George R.R. Martin did by not finishing the story he started."

Plenty of people nodded along. Plenty pushed back, pointing out the series had navigated beyond the books before without face-planting and that other creative choices (many of them avoidable) did the real damage. Which raises the bigger question everyone keeps circling: what is actually going on with The Winds of Winter?

So why isn't The Winds of Winter out yet?

Short version: Martin has been incredibly busy not writing that book. Longer version:

• His profile exploded thanks to HBO's Game of Thrones, and the expected 2011–2012 release window for The Winds of Winter slipped as he dove deeper into the TV juggernaut for all eight seasons.
• He's also deeply involved with House of the Dragon. With Season 3 coming up, that means a lot of executive and creative meetings eating calendar space.
• Another live-action prequel, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, has Martin in an executive creative role too. It hasn't even premiered yet, but Season 2 is already ordered, which tightens the schedule even more.
• On top of that, HBO has three animated Westeros projects in development that Martin revealed last year.
• Outside Westeros, he helped build out the lore for FromSoftware's Elden Ring, which is not exactly a weekend hobby.

Stack all of that together and, yeah, The Winds of Winter still doesn't feel close.

The slide started before Season 8

Even fans who love big chunks of the later seasons will tell you the cracks showed up earlier than the finale. Season 6 was well liked, but the vibe shifted: the grounded sense of distance and danger gave way to what felt like fast travel, the kind that skips the journey and undercuts tension.

Once the show moved past Martin's published material, the machine started simplifying. Intricate storylines got streamlined, sharp conversations turned into longer monologues, and the little connective bits that made Westeros feel real went missing. Then, while Season 7 was airing, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss landed a Star Wars deal at Disney. That coincided with the final season getting trimmed and sped up, which only turned the existing wobble into an outright skid. Season 8 took the heat, but the warning signs were already there.

Who you blame probably depends on what you value

If you think the books are the blueprint and a show without them is flying blind, you probably side with the Reddit take. If you think the showrunners had options and time and still chose to compress and rush, you probably don't. The truth is messy and full of behind-the-scenes realities that rarely make it into the press release version of events.

For the record

Game of Thrones ran 8 seasons on HBO, created for TV by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, with a cast led by Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, Peter Dinklage, and Pedro Pascal. It still carries an IMDb 9.2/10 and an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. You can stream it on HBO Max in the US.

Would The Winds of Winter have fixed the ending? Or are we giving a would-be book too much credit for problems that started seasons earlier? Sound off.