It might be because so many of us have rewatched the entire series during our long quarantine hours. It might be because HBO is trying to gin up interest in the eventual prequel show-The House of the Dragon-which arrives sometime in 2022. But whatever the reason, we just can’t seem to get Game of Thrones out of our heads.Â
Or maybe it’s the severe disappointment over the disastrous ending we can’t forget. Or forgive.
It’s been well over a year since we were all collectively let down by the end to Game of Thrones, and it isn’t hyperbole to say that the final season was perhaps the worst conclusion to a popular television show in history. GoT wasn’t merely a show, it was a phenomenon and instead of getting a gripping, equally epic ending we got a lazy, nonsensical mess of a conclusion.
With it increasingly looking like The Song of Fie and Ice book series that inspired the show will never be finished, fans may never see the ending both they and the story deserves. Perhaps another reason GoT still remains so fresh and vivid in pop culture’s imagination is because deep down we fear GoT’s failure will doom high fantasy shows for years to come (can Henry Cavil and The Witcher salvage it)?
Absolutely no one liked the ending. Even the actors hated it.
The fact remains, Game of Thrones still haunts us. Particularly its failures. And while the show had its fair share of warts entering its final, disastrous season, its biggest failure was its biggest character.Â
Daenerys Stormborn.
Yes, yes, we all know that the final chapter in Danny’s story (which saw her devolve from saviour to unrivalled monster) was already plotted out by George Martin before it became apparent that he had no interest in finishing the books. And we’ve all seen the videos and heard the showrunners’ arguments that the seeds for Danny’s transformation into a diabolical mass murderer were planted along the way for all to see. And yes, we’ve know that she was a victim as well, and was suffering the same fate as all the Targaryen’s before her, succumbing to homicidal madness inspired by generations of inbreeding and incest (madness amplified by significant personal trauma and suffering).
And that is kind of the point.
Danny’s story was as facsinating as it was compelling because she spent seven seasons rising above her often dire situations and her suffering to become a ray of hope. When we first met her she was a timid thing her abusive brother was bartering for an army. She was a piece of meat sold to the highest bidder. And you just know big brother had a lot of fingerprints all over Danny’s bruised and battered psyche (and possibly body).Â
She went from having nothing and being the victim of abuse by the only family she had in the entire world to bringing dragons back into the world, forging and commanding the greatest Dothraki horde the world had ever seen and liberating city states that had suffered the inhumane yoke of slavery for centuries. She went from being no one to making the entire world tremble with her mere words.
And she seemed genuinely intent of making the world the better place. Not in the way that tyrants and dictators do, forcing their corrupt will and perverted values upon the world through force and bloodshed. Rather she seemed a bloody and violent messiah; she melted the chains of bondage with dragon fire and crucified the flesh paddlers and child killers for all to see. She may have done monstrous things, but only to the monsters who walked with human feet. And all in the name of freeing and protecting the innocent.
Remember when she finally arrived in Westeros and was appalled by the way it was run? Remember how she was revolted by the feudal system that governed the Seven Kingdoms-where lords born to nobility were granted automatic rights and wealth unimagined by the lowborn and if you didn’t enjoy the fortune of being born into the privileged upper class, your entire life was already decided for you? The truth of Westerosi society was if you failed to win the genetic lottery and were born a peasant, your life would never be anything but a constant struggle for meagre returns. You would never learn how to read, never travel beyond the place of your birth and never have any opportunity to be anything more than a farmer or a blacksmith or a miller. You would be lucky if you died of old age in a broken down bed before your life ended at the hands of marauders, disease, starvation or the whim of a cruel and lord.
And if you were born a woman? Your life was going to suck a whole lot more.
But Danny resolved to change that. She would seize the Iron Throne and break the wheel that ran Westeros and ground the majority of its sons and daughters into the mud so the noble few could live lives of luxury and decadence. Remember, she could have easily taken King’s Landing and burned her enemies to the ground upon arriving on the Seven Kingdom’s shores. But she chose to spare the thousands of innocent lives such a swift and decisive (yet appalling brutal) victory would give her.
Queen Cersei even used Danny’s compassion against her, filling the capital city with refugees to act as a human shield. And it worked. Until it didn’t
Danny was apparently always doomed to become a victim of her family curse. After surviving rape, near starvation, countless beatings, assassination attempts and more betrayals than you could count, she could not overcome the genetic fragility of her family. And she became the biggest monster House Targaryen, a family full of renown monsters and murderers and butchers, ever produced. She became the Mad Queen who buried hope beneath ashes and screams.
And that was a mistake.
Both Martin and the show had the opportunity to craft a truly memorable tale, one where the heroine who raised herself up from the mud with nothing but pure willpower overcame even the curse that ran in her blood. A tale where she faced it and overcame it, just like all the other obstacles and barriers in her path. She could have stared the madness that always lingered in her soul straight in the eye forced it to blink. She could have completed her journey from a nobody forced to flee her home as a baby to the greatest hero the world had ever known.Â
A hero that changed the course of history forever.
This isn’t to say the show’s ending couldn’t have been filled heartbreak and tragedy (with a surprise or two thrown in). Perhaps during her showdown with the Night King, Danny may have been confronted with how fragile her mind was becoming, how she was now only a heartbeat away from unleashing the destructive power she had at her fingertips upon the world. Perhaps she could have kept the madness at bay-with the help of the advisors and allies she collected along the way-long enough to bring down the Lannisters and destroy the wheel she had come to despise. Perhaps she would ultimately sacrifice herself in the name of freeing the Seven Kingdoms, leaving Jon Snow or Sansa Stark on the Throne to make and protect a better world. There still would have been a lot of storytelling potential. And a hell of a better ending.
Daenerys wasn’t the only character Game of Thrones failed. Jon Snow was reduced to a shell of the leader he had become. Tyrion was pointless, messing up every decision he made. Varys was utterly wasted. And whatever happened to the story line of The Lord of Light and the prophecy of Azor Ahai, the Prince Who Was Promised? They were just ignored entirely. And after building him up for seven seasons, the Night King turned out to be little more than a glorified ghoul, tossed aside because the plot no longer called for him.
But Daenerys was by far the character who was wronged the most. And that failure is the show’s greatest crime. It is perhaps why so many of us will never be able to forgive it. It is why so many of us will be forever haunted by the wasted potential of one of the most popular television shows of our lifetime.
In the end, we got a Westeros that returned to the status quo, short a few Houses and one kingdom but run the same way it always was. The Iron Throne was occupied by everyone’s last choice and it’s system to choose new kings was an invitation for civil war. All in all, Westeros was just as bad (if not worse) than when Danny and her extensive (but failed) resume arrived.
Eight seasons of bloodshed and intrigue and victory only to come full circle. It was intellectually lazy storytelling and mediocrity at its worst.
And ultimately, it was unforgivable.
Image Youtube.com
