You or I can have any opinion we want about netflix shows and how we see their quality. But they are just opinions that hold no merit over a streaming services success. The metric that does hold merit is viewership, and netflix week after week after week runs circles around all the other streaming services with viewership. You may not like it vs things like HBO Max but its pretty clear that the actual audiences out there in the US are more engaged in the style of shows netflix develops and outs out than the orestige shows you like the most.

I know a lot of people dont understand why a company like Apple would be interested in disney. I'll give a few reasons why now below.

1. Right now Hollywood is going through a bit of a crisis mode. People arent flocking back to theaters like pre covid, most streaming services are net losers atm and a major recession is on the horizon. This means studios or media type companies might become the cheapest they've ever been and CEOs will be looking for an easy way to get investors money.

2. Right now there are two major industries connecting people throughout the world. Tech and media. Movies/shows are a huge part of media that people connect to and the tech revolution of the past 100 years allows anyone in the world to connect with each other. Apple a tech company would naturally want to control both pathways, connection by tech and media.

3. IP is hugely valuable long term. IP itself doesnt make much profit but it can enhance something else to drive that profit extremely high, AKA disney and themeparks.

4. Holding that IP might be something that makes a plan easier and more profitable down the road in 25-50 years. Buy it cheap now and use it to sell some type of experience later in time that will be a tech revolution paired with IP content people love and remember

It had good acting, beautiful scenery/setting but the character building/world building fell flat to me. Whether it was the huge amount of time jumps, trying to kill off characters that we really havent gotten to know or just the basic writing of each episode I dont have any connection to most of the major characters. When I watched S1 of game of thrones last month I saw the amount of characters that had been written well enough we all knew who they were and if what we should feel about them. Its like 20+ meaningful characters in the first season of GOTs while in HOTD its about 6? The only kid who was really given any chance to grow/connect with is Aemond in my opinion.

Was this show better than anything on TV this fall? Yeah it was, but thats because everything else was pretty bad. Was this show anywhere as good as Game of Thrones S1? No its more like the final seasons of game of thrones than the beginning in my opinion.

Final grade: 7.25/10