ELI5 why Game of Thrones' last season was so controversial

[Hindsight was 2020]

At the time, the showrunners blatantly wanted to get the show over with and rushed it to move onto other things. Benioff and Weiss put noticeably less effort from 2019 and even cut the number of episodes so they didn't have to do much.

All of this was over a Star Wars deal that eventually fell through. They have a show on Netflix that's doing well but even then it doesn't overshadow. This wasn't some avant-garde ending that fell flat like the Sopranos. The last season failed because Benioff and Weiss were too lazy to finish it properly.

The Sopranos finale is fantastic

[Hindsight was 2020]

Destroying the character arcs of Jaime and Daenerys is probably the worst offense.

What happened to Sansa might be arguably worse because you can’t hide behind Martin on that one. Dany going mad or Jaime going back to Cersei is stuff that could be theoretically happening in the books but they put Sansa into the Jenye Poole raped by Ramsay and rescued by Theon plot in S5