There are probably thousands of websites where you can get all the hot takes, spoliers, and analysis of eight seasons of Game of Thrones, especially now that it has come to an end. I had to let the series finale sit with me for a couple of days before offering up my own opinion.

I was a latecomer to the series and didn’t start watching until someone recommended it to me in 2012. After a bit of binging through seasons one, though, I had the fervor of a convert. Episode-for-episode, I think it stands up as some of the best drama ever put on television – with even its weaker episodes and seasons standing tall against most competition.

That brings us to the ending. Was it everything I had hoped for? No, it wasn’t. The compressed final two seasons made scenes out of what in early days would have been entire episodes. I would have gladly watched as many more hours as HBO would have aired. The ending wasn’t how I’d have wrapped things up – but unlike another storied HBO series, at least there was an ending that felt like a reasonable place to let the story stop.

It’s easy to raise hell and cast the producers and writers as villains. The thing is, though, I didn’t have $100 million to throw at making a television program. The decisions on what to put in and what to keep out rested with others. Although I was invested in the fandom, I’m a rational enough fan to realize those decisions belonged to someone else. They made the artistic and financial decisions and then brought the curtain down.

As Ramsay Bolton famously said, “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” Maybe that one line is the thread that really binds the entirety of the series together. No one has ever been all happy about the way the game played out.