Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame show us just how powerful event TV is.
Now, I know what you’re saying — Avengers: Endgame isn’t event TV.
And technically, you’d be right. After all, its a series of films, each of them with their own storyline and cast of characters.
On the other hand, one of the most ambitious facets and biggest draws of the MCU has been in its serialization. While it can be watched — especially during the phase one set of movies — as individual films, each one of those films has contributed to an overall arc that spans 11 years and 22 years.
And the individual storylines that existed in the earlier films have become increasingly smoothed out in preparation for Avengers: Endgame, so that while you could easily watch, enjoy and understand Thor or Captain America: First Avenger without watching any of the other MCU films, such a thing is near impossible to do with either Avengers: Infinity War or Avengers: Endgame.
The enjoyment and experience of these later films are not only made fuller by watching previous entries into the MCU, they have become necessary viewing in order to understand them at all.
Avengers: Endgame, then, functions more as a season finale than it does an individual movie.
Indeed, the last two Avengers outings — Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame — are singular in nature when it comes to film. There have always been a lot of superlatives heaped upon the MCU — some more deserving than others — but it’s absolutely true to say that there are really no other movies like these final two Avengers films. These are films which rely on the viewer to have watched — or, at least, have a general understanding of — 20 previous films in order to truly understand the characters, the storylines and the stakes.
But while Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame are singular in nature when it comes to filmmaking, they do have a quite a bit in common with another popular medium: television.
In fact, if we put them side by side, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame function quite similarly to the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones — and the closer you look at the two, the more obvious it is that the two are the biggest — and perhaps last — real examples of event TV.
(Spoilers for Game of Thrones 8×03 “The Long Night” and Avengers: Endgame)
You watch it — even if you don’t watch it
If you don’t watch Game of Thrones — and I know there are some of you out there, because you are awfully fond of posting about it on Twitter every week or so — the truth of the matter is it doesn’t matter because you still watch Game of Thrones.
Hell, I actually didn’t watch Game of Thrones from seasons 2 through 7 and I still knew what was going on because of social media — enough where I jumped back into season 8 and wasn’t confused in any way. In fact, I kind of felt pleased that I missed out on all the more boring parts of the previous seasons and got to jump into the story at the point we were all waiting for anyway.
Game of Thrones and the Avengers films are at such a point of pop culture saturation that you almost can’t help but watch them.
Even if you don’t know what the Red Wedding is, you know what it means; you may not know who Dany and Jon are really, but you probably know that they’re related — and that they boned; and you may not completely understand the words “Winter is Coming” but you’ve heard them — or some derivation of them — for many years now.
Similarly, 12 years ago, you might’ve been made fun of for knowing who Captain America is or what Ant-Man. Now, you’d definitely be made fun of for not knowing who they are.
There’s an entire generation of kids who know nothing about Greek mythology, but have at least a baseline level of knowledge about Viking mythology because of the Thor films. And there are plenty of people who don’t even know their own birthstones, but can recite each of the Infinity Stones and what they do.
And because everyone watches it or wants to watch it or is kind of watching it, one thing becomes immediately clear —
The actual quality doesn’t really matter
Just as no one really cares if you don’t watch Game of Thrones or the Avengers movies (because even if you don’t watch it, you still watch it), no one really cares — or is all that interested in having a good faith discussion — about quality of Game of Thrones or Avengers: Endgame.
Or, perhaps, a more accurate way to phrase it is that while some might be interested in such a discussion, their impact is hardly felt and barely heard.
Yes, The Battle of Winterfell was dark as hell, some incredibly weird decisions were made regarding the actual battle plan, and what the hell was Bran even doing that entire time?
But does it really matter when we got to see Arya absolutely wreck The Night King? Is anyone really going to fuss too much (at least, out loud) about the ultimately low death count and easy stakes when we have that Arya scene to watch and rewatch and gif that scene again and again?
Similarly, while the convoluted rules of time travel in Avengers: Endgame bring up more questions than they do answers and the film made some questionable choices regarding the fates of the original Avengers, at the end of the day — does it really matter?
How can it, really, when we got a future Captain America versus past Captain America fight scene (where he checks out his own ass), the Avengers making cameos in their own past films and a badass fight scene where every single hero in the MCU comes together to wreck shit?
Call it what you want (sunken cost fallacy, a loyal fandom, or some combination of the two) but the truth is that reviews, quality, ratings — none of those really matter. No matter what mediocre reviews or valid criticisms or questionable storylines either of these franchises may receive, their success is guaranteed. They are review proof.
You know why?
The real Endgame and true Azor Ahai are the friends we made along the way
At this point, the MCU has been running for 11 years and released 22 films. On pure viewing alone, that adds up to 48.1 hours of storytelling.
Game of Thrones has given us 8 seasons in 8 years and 70 episodes, which comes to a grand total of about 68.1 hours of storytelling.
And that’s just the hours spent actually watching the these stories unfold the first time around. That doesn’t count the rewatches, the time spent talking with your friends or arguing on the internet, the hours put into coming up with fan theories or writing fanfic or crying about your favorite characters and ships.
Which means that (as with all event TV) the actual storytelling becomes secondary to the experience of the storytelling.
If you’ve been on this multi-year journey with this story and with these characters, the real draw becomes the relationships — the ones within the story, yes, but also the one you have with the story itself and the ones which you develop with the people around you as result of this story.
This is the true power of event TV — that it doesn’t actually have to be all that good to be important. With a pop culture phenomenon like Game of Thrones or Avengers: Endgame, the value of the story is greater than the quality of the story.
At the end of the day, it’s the experience we’re all invested in — the experience of being part of something greater than ourselves, the experience of creating a community centered around a single story, the experience of sharing our joy and our rage with so many people around us.
And what a fantastic experience it’s been.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.