If you haven’t been counting down the days for the final season of Game of Thrones, you may actually be the only one.  With a record-breaking 17.4 million viewers on the Season 8 premier, it’s safe to say that Game of Thrones is the most highly anticipated show of the year, perhaps even the decade. But what is it that makes us so drawn to this show?

When the show first aired back in 2011, it was hard to imagine that it would become the Game of Thrones we have all come to know and love. Most of the cast members were still shy of their B-list celebrity statuses. In fact, Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) came into her role straight out of acting school. Watching these cast members grow up is perhaps the real reason that GoT has become what it is today. Avid Season 1 to Season 8 watchers have had the opportunity to watch everyone progress through a good portion of their lives and anguish over how they handle the never-ending challenges and hardships they face in a way that we don’t get to see in other shows. It’s no wonder we are intrigued by the way GoT writers are so quick to kill off central characters. Once you learn all about a character and their nuances and start to like them, BANG. They get killed off. I have watched all the way to Season 8 and can still never see it coming.

Game of Thrones’ strong female characters also add something magical to the show’s uniqueness and appeal. Yes, we have the beloved Jon Snow, but better yet, we have Arya, our favorite tomboy-turned-badass, and Sansa who has grown from a naïve young girl waiting for her prince charming into a force of a woman, shrewd enough to fend for herself. Then there are our two main female characters: Cersei, a controversial but iron-willed woman who wants the best for her family but eventually loses everyone, and Daenerys, a young woman hoping to bring peace to the world who came from nothing and built everything she has. What makes this story especially intriguing is that all of these women are jockeying for real power in their different ways, something Hollywood too often leaves to the men.

As much as I have enjoyed watching these characters over the course of almost 10 years, I am excited to see how the show will end and who will finally reign from the Iron Throne (Team Dany!). And if you haven’t watched GoT and you have no idea what I am talking about, get to it!

By Parinaz Kassemi

Hamline Grad Student, model, teacher, & ice cream’s biggest fan.

Images courtesy of @gotsource.