The Hodor Reveal

I have a bad feeling about this.

During season 6 of Lost, my doubts started growing that the writers could bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. And they didn't.

The show was nonetheless fantastic, but that's part of the reason that the mediocre conclusion in season 7 was all the more disappointing.

We're now in season 6 of Game of Thrones and this weekend's revelation of the origin of Hodor's name has given me that same bad feeling—I seriously doubt the series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.

The problem I've concluded is the series' split personality. On the one hand it's a character driven story in a medieval setting with political intrigue, subterfuge, alliances, and betrayals. On the other hand, it's epic fantasy with magic, dragons, ice zombies, and prophecies. In previous seasons the former has worked much better than the latter, but as season 6 has progressed we're getting more of the latter much to the detriment of the former.

The Hodor reveal is clever and poignant, but I suspect in the end will be completely irrelevant to the overall story.

And it involves time travel.

Seriously. Time travel.

And unless your story is actually about time travel, it's usually a bad idea to casually toss it in.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope at the end of the series I'm writing a blog post about the brilliance of the Hodor reveal and how it laid the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion.

But I have a bad feeling about this.