Game of Thrones, Season 8 (spoilers allowed)

Let's pour one out for all the parents who named their kids Khaleesi ...

 

This is the kind of reverse racist crap that Greg Howard trafficked in for Deadspin. Fuck this guy and screw The Ringer for publishing it. This is in answer to
3. What was the most frustrating part of the episode?"

The ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8, Episode 5 Exit Survey



Imagine an exit survey of "Empire" where I said, "This is why they never should have let black men be charge of this show."

Total garbage.

 

JRoyal, I think it is more complex than that. I do believe there there is an idealistic side to Dany. She wants to free slaves. She wants to care for the people she rules. She wants love and connection. But above all, she wants to fulfill her destiny, which she believes is to rule.

That's why she breaks at the end. Jon has rejected her love. She has had Jorah, Rheagal and Missandei stripped away from her in a very short time. She has even discovered that she doesn't have the best claim to the throne. I think it's fair to say the potential for being a villain was always there, but I don't think she was a full-on villain the entire way through the story.

 

I thought that was the best episode of the season, and it was still pretty disappointing. I don't understand why the showrunners decided to compress things so much when HBO was supposedly good with two 10-episode seasons. As is, it should have ended with Tommen's suicide.

 

Yeah, why have these really long episodes of, say, 79 minutes? It had the effect of making the episode feel both too long and too short, if that makes sense. They had plenty of action, but some of the character actions felt unearned. If you ended this episode with Dany turning toward the Red Keep and starting to lay down the fire hose (whoah, unexpected, nice teaser for next episode), then you could have spent more time on Jamie's capture, Varys' situation, and Dany's descent into the Mad Queen. Then the next episode would pick up with her still laying waste, etc., maybe somebody getting killed by a falling coffee cup.

 

I guess the theme of this all could be how power changes people.

 

I think you’re right in a way but I think this turn has been going longer than we give it credit. I think one thing that kept her from turning earlier was her advisors -- people like Jorah, Missandei, Tyrion and Varys. But she began questioning them even before she got to Westeros, and when she got to Westeros, things just got worse. And as she tried to follow the good path, things didn't go her way. It was easy before. Now it wasn't. So she abandoned the path with questions and went with fear.

In D&D terms, she was Lawful Neutral (part hero, part villain) with a lot of advisors that ranged from Chaotic Good to Lawful Good (maybe with a true Neutral in Varys) keeping her mostly on a righteous path, and now she's dropped the Neutral and is full-on Lawful Evil.

 

That makes sense. Though I don't think she was always a villain, her default in many, many instances is to burn whatever is in her way and destroy whoever opposes her.

The question is where she goes from here. At the very least, she has to turn on Tyrion, right?

 

Im with all of this except for the time she spent in Mereen trying to do the opposite. Sitting on that big pyramid thing listening to people, taking advice about being benevolent and gentle 2 seasons before Tyrion showed up saying the same thing.

Is she more willing to burn Westeros because the people in Mereen had the whole MYSA chant when she arrives and these flea bottom folk didnt ?

Maybe its as simple as the way Jon pull away/can’t sleep with someone he knows is his aunt breaks her. I dont know.

 

I think that was a big part of it. She finally let herself love someone and he rejected her. But there is a cumulative effect. She has been through so much during the series, then there was the battle with the dead. She saw most of the Dothraki wiped out. Then she was attacked by the re-animated Viserion. Remember, she sees the dragons as her children. Then in short order, she loses Jorah, Rheagal and Missandei. That's a hell of a lot of loss all at once.

Consider all that and add the news about Jon. She clearly doesn't care that she is his aunt, but he has a claim to the throne. That claim on the throne has been her identity since her brother's death. Suddenly, that is gone, too.

 

And that's why she's gotta go. As Jack Nicholson said in weighing whether to being DeCaprio into the fold in "The Departed": "You just can't trust a guy who acts like he's got nothing to lose."

She's got nothing to lose, so they gotta whack her. She's gonna go down Caesar style. Et tu, Jon Snow? and all that jazz.

 

Her breaking bad isn't the problem. It's not that they didn't sprinkle the seeds of it along the way.

It's that the emotional beats right at the very end were dumb and bad.

I can totally believe Dany would snap. Snapping just cause she "saw the Red Keep" is LOL stupid.