In an interview with The Times UK (via Variety), actor Conleth Hill revisited his whirlwind of emotions upon finding out what exactly would happen to Varys:
“I thought I’d done something wrong. Right up until the last two [seasons], I had no complaints at all. I just felt frustrated with the last couple of [seasons] because Varys wasn’t the all-knowing character he had been. I think the writers wanted to do one thing to end it and the studio HBO wanted to do another. I felt that last series was a bit rushed. I was inconsolable, but now I’m fine about it.”
Fans expected that several major players would end up getting bumped off the board as the flagship HBO series drew to an end. After all, as Cersei put it so eloquently in season 1: You either win the game of thrones, or you die. But perhaps it was the fact that Varys had played the game so well, switching allegiances from King Robert Baratheon to Joffrey to Tyrion to Jon Snow and continuing to thrive while others didn’t, that made his sudden and rather hastily-conceived downfall so much more aggravating than it otherwise might’ve been.
Considering that such an effective schemer was ultimately undone by something so mundane — Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion blabbing about his intentions to the Queen — it’s hard to fault Hill for harboring some bitter feelings over how it all came to an end. He’s certainly not the first “Game of Thrones” actor to admit their misgivings over the noticeably rushed final season, and he probably won’t be the last. Oh well, at least we’ll always have George R.R. Martin’s fully completed saga of books to console us … right?