11 questions for the new season of Game of Thrones

As the show departed from G.R.R. Martin's books, it solved its plot issues by getting increasingly coy. That has created all sorts of problems for season seven.

The new season
(Image credit: Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO)

Game of Thrones comes roaring back Sunday for its penultimate seven-episode season, and with it come hordes of questions, theories, and hopes.

I'm on the record as being overwhelmed and impressed by the exceptional music and direction last season. But when it came to the writing, I had questions. The biggest issue I've had with the series as it's departed from George R.R. Martin's books is that it has solved its plot problems by getting increasingly coy. In seasons past, we understood characters fairly well: how they thought, what they wanted, and how they were trying to get it. These days, rather than frankly admit what characters think and want, the show offers performance after performance that revels in ambiguity. This can be interesting and even effective in the short-term. In the long-term, though, the stakes collapse. If you never find out whether people were being straightforward or manipulative, their arcs fold into nothing as they die without resolution.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.