Now that we know Danny has turned to the dark side and won't live long enough to rule who can? Now that too many people know that Jon is half Targaryon I don't see him being allowed to rule simply because of what Danny just did. He's tainted just by having Targaryon blood now. He could still be King in the North as they are still loyal to him, but I don't see the southern kingdoms bending the knee to anyone with Targaryan lineage. Not now.
Same goes for Tyrion. Who in their right mind would let another Lannister rule given their track record.
Time to let another Baratheon rule?
After last night, I'm thinking it's time for a republic, personally...
I've been watching #GoT since it premiered, and I can honestly say that I am only watching at this point because it's the last season and I might as well close it out.
I don't know if Martin/Rothfuss (his chosen successor) will finish the book series, but I hope they give these characters more satisfying finishes to their character arcs than the show has so far.
I think the books will end up in largely the same place, but I think the journey to that point will be handled much better. I certainly hope it will, anyway.
Is Bran's story done? I was hoping that there was something more to it.
I am a little disappointed but really how are they going to shock us anymore? I expected a lot of deaths and none have really shook me and I don't think any will.
Sorry! There isn't time for that. Bran's done, Bronn's done, Tormund's done, Brienne's done. We're movin' on!
Anyway...
I thought it was a terrible episode that fell victim to most of the worst flaws of this season and the last season.
To be clear, the individual plot points that were hit were fine. They're workable. Could even be really good. But the way the showrunners have handled these things is...deeply, deeply flawed and it results in a pretty terrible execution that's big on spectacle, but short on characterization.
I'm not bothered that Dany had her heel turn. Not in and of itself. I can think back to the books and see how Dany is a tragic figure, and can also see how she's a terrible, terrible ruler and a much better conqueror. I can see how -- assuming it happens in the books -- the stuff with Jon along with many of the other misfortunes that befall her this season would finally push her over the edge.
A lot of the stuff we see in the books leads up to this, especially her time in Mereen. Dany tries to learn to rule, and ultimately learns that she can't. She doesn't have the patience for it, she doesn't have the head for it, and she's not politically adept enough to pull it off. She can lead people, build up a following, but she's much, much better at slaughtering her enemies. Her story in Book 5 is basically her struggling with her internal instinct to conquer vs. her instinct to rule justly. Jon's struggle is between his duty to do the right thing and his aversion to leading (which has the paradoxical effect of actually inspiring people to follow him). All this gets at the fundamental drama of their character arcs, namely that they struggle against their own natural instincts (indeed, their very natures) and the desires they have to be different as well as external pressures.
Time and again, Dany has been rejected and abused when she tried to make the world a better place. She also has a vicious, vengeful streak to those who've wronged her. Her story is a terrific villain story because she's the villain who wanted to be good. The other thing to bear in mind is that the books have an interesting quirk of telling everything from the characters' perspectives, meaning we are dealing with "unreliable narrators." Even when they write in 3rd person, the 3rd person view is colored by the character's perspective. So, it's not just people who have wronged Dany in an objective sense, it's people that Dany perceives as having wronged her. That's a key difference.
I suspect that, if and when this moment happens in the book, it will therefore be handled much, much better. We'll have seen the gradual descent into madness. We'll see the connections and understand why she ultimately makes the choice to engulf King's Landing in flame without pity or mercy, and rule through terror instead, which she will use to -- in her mind -- force the world to be a better place. Her version of "breaking the wheel" would be something like destroying the great houses that oppose her utterly and thereby set herself up as the only center of power (although "breaking the wheel" may just be a concept that the showrunners created, rather than Martin).
In that sense, I can see her story as being bittersweet, even tragic, as Martin describes, even if the actual end of the story overall is somewhat happier.
The problem is that the show hasn't done any of the heavy lifting to get to this point. Dany has had moments of ruthlessness, but the show has played them as moments of awesomeness, as cool badass scenes that inspire people to buy "Mother of Dragons" tee shirts, or as bad people getting their just desserts (e.g., Viserys and his "crown of gold"). The show has built up dragons themselves as these super cool creatures that win wars and stuff.
What the show hasn't done, though, is demonstrate that Dany has the potential to do THIS in any way. It's set her up as a heroine, without lacing that setup with enough of the subtle (or less than subtle) hints needed to make her heel-turn believable. Instead, it just feels like railroading, and Dany becomes insane because...uh...Jon wouldn't sleep with her and she's lonely, and oh yeah don't forget about the Targaeryan coin flip thing. Part of that is because we don't have Dany's internal monologue to lay some of this out for us, but a big part of it is that the show overall has simply rushed through the last two seasons, and a lot of the post-book plot.
It's felt more often like ticking bullet points off of an outline, and little else. Or it's felt like the showrunners had neither the desire nor the wherewithal to handle the complexity of the source material and run with it. So, Dorne is pointless and feels like a detour that nobody cares about, and is then done away with just as quickly. The Iron Islands are likewise sidelined because, meh, who cares about 'em. Euron dies as he lived on the show: pointless and extra. Mugging for the camera, but serving little purpose beyond that of a pantomime villain.
Cersei's death lacks any of the subtlety we'd expect (and since the show cut the bit about the valonqar, we don't get an answer there), and her purpose seems basically to just be a trigger for Dany's lunacy.
Jaime's arc -- which seems like that of redemption -- is just as quickly abandoned because >shrug< he loves Cersei and...uh....sorry, Brienne. Whatevs. He's off to King's Landing.
All of this stuff just...happens. The groundwork isn't laid for it to be anything other than visually spectacular, but ultimately hollow. It actually feels like a betrayal of the characters, and one done for pure shock value. Either the showrunners were purposely hiding the ball just so they could have the big reveal of "Surprise! She's nutso!" or they didn't understand their own show and realize that they'd taken Dany too far into hero territory, and couldn't simply "force" her to be insane.
I saw some of this last season with the "conflict" between Arya and Sansa, which was never, ever believable and always felt forced and stupid, and as if it was done more just to allow for a big audience reveal when they killed Littlefinger. It was less about the internal, organic development of characters and them behaving in ways that made sense, and more about "Hmm. We need the story to go here, so...uh...the characters do X. There. That solves it." You can have plot-driven stories. You can serve the needs of your plot narrative in storytelling. But you have to do it in a way that is internally consistent with the world and characters and story you've built up to that point.
These guys....didn't do that.
So, Dany is crazy by DM fiat, and
"no one" will probably kill her next episode.
