Game of Thrones Fans Have a Lot of Feelings About Daenerys Targaryen's Ending
If we're being completely honest, the fate of Daenerys Targaryen in tonight's Game of Thrones finale did not come as a huge surprise. Dany has been predicted to die for some time, and absolutely guaranteed to die since the divisive moment in which she declared war on the innocent citizens of King's Landing last week – after the city had already surrendered. Her death at the hand of her lover and nephew, Jon Snow, was also pretty predictable.
But what wasn't predictable was the incredibly anticlimactic, perfunctory way that Dany went out, being stabbed through the heart by Jon in the middle of a tender embrace with almost no meaningful final dialogue whatsoever. After the lack of character development leading up to her genocidal switch in last week's episode, this felt like one last gut-punch to every fan who's ever felt invested in Dany's journey from subjugated princess to empowered Queen of Dragons.
As for the devastating moment in which Dany's last dragon, Drogon, tries to rouse her... yeah, that was rough. Rough enough to draw comparisons to The Lion King.
Emilia Clarke has been low-key warning us about this ending since last summer. “It fucked me up,” she told Vanity Fair. “Knowing that is going to be a lasting flavor in someone’s mouth of what Daenerys is…” Well. Quite. And after last week's divisive episode, fans unearthed a video interview with Clarke from HBO's Emmys party last September, in which she seems distinctly un-thrilled with Dany's ending. After being asked by an Entertainment Tonight reporter if she's happy with the way things shook out, Clarke laughs awkwardly before yelling "Best season ever!" in a way that suggests she may mean the opposite.
In a post-finale interview with EW, Clarke admitted that when she first read the finale, she was reduced to tears. "“I cried, and I went for a walk," she told the magazine. "I walked out of the house and took my keys and phone and walked back with blisters on my feet. I didn’t come back for five hours. I’m like, ‘How am I going to do this?’" Though Clarke seems to have found ways to process the mind-boggling turns Dany takes this season, she also says her feelings about the storyline remain deeply personal. "I have my own feelings [about the storyline] and it’s peppered with my feelings about myself,” she said. “It’s gotten to that point now where you read [comments about] the character you [have to remind yourself], ‘They’re not talking about you, Emilia, they’re talking about the character.”
And truly whatever your feelings about Dany's character arc over the past six episodes, Clarke has done her absolute best to find the emotional truth in this wild and frequently nonsensical ride.
In another extensive post-finale interview with The New Yorker, Clarke was asked what she would change about the final season if she could, given the much-publicized fan petition for a do-over. "I would’ve loved some more scenes with me and Missandei. I would’ve loved some more scenes with me and Cersei," she admitted. "The genocide was there. That was always going to happen. And I just think more dissection and those beautifully written scenes that the boys have between characters-that we are more than happy to contently sit there and watch ten minutes of two people talking, because it’s beautiful. I just wanted to see a bit more of that." She went on to diplomatically add that she is "in no position to critique the geniuses that have written eight seasons’ worth of wonderful stuff." Hmm.
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