Emilia Clarke on Season 6: Dany’s Learning Her Last Lesson

With Entertainment Weekly‘s double issue on Game of Thrones Season 6 out, the website is dribbling dribs and drabs of interviews with the leading ladies it profiles. Over the weekend, EW released a short sit-down with Emilia Clarke, whose character, Daenerys Targaryen was last seen going back to her roots, so to speak, as she was whisked away by a Dothraki khalasar in the Season 5 finale.

So what can we expect for the upcoming season? As Clarke reminds us, this is a different khalasar than the one run by Khal Drogo. They’re not impressed by her. “Mother of Dragons? Nothing. Breaker of Chains? Nothing. Khalessi of the Great Grass Sea? Nothing. Wife of Kahl Drogo? “Maybe we won’t kill you.” We’ve all met Jason Momoa, so that makes sense.” She may be out of the pyramid and no longer stymied by trying to run a city she has no experience with, but that doesn’t mean her life has gotten easier. It’s back to “square one …feeling like a slave – simply for being a woman!”

This naturally brings up the talking point that sprang up halfway through last season, and doesn’t seem to want to go away—that Game of Thrones is irrevocably and unrepentantly sexist, with no hope of redemption. Clarke finds this to be upsetting.

“…it’s depiction of women in so many different stages of development. There are women depicted as sexual tools, women who have zero rights, women who are queens but only to a man, and then there are women who are literally unstoppable and as powerful as you can possibly imagine. So it pains me to hear people taking Thrones out of context with anti-feminist spin – because you can’t do that about this show. It shows the range that happens to women, and ultimately shows women are not only equal, but have a lot of strength.”

So what stage is Dany at in this coming season? Clarke makes it sound like she’s in the final stages before becoming the all-out conqueror we’ve been waiting her to be. “This season it feels like she’s learning the last lesson she needs to learn. She’s not being swayed by anyone. She knows what’s-what. There’s just few remnants of being a human being that she’s shaking off.”

Perhaps what she needs to do is burn those last remnants away…