Curtain Call: Viserion
“The cream and gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.” — Daenerys Targaryen
Oh, Viserion, how we miss thee. Well, not really. It’s not like the dragon had much screen time compared to his brother Drogon. But it still hurt.
Can we all agree to blame Jon Snow for Viserion’s death? I mean, going out to find a single wight among the hundreds of thousands of undead in he Night King’s army? Come on, dude — you were just inviting disaster. “I wish we’d never gone” doesn’t begin to cover it.
Viserion was born out of the funeral pyre of Daenerys Targaryen’s husband, Khal Drogo, in the season 1 finale. Over the seasons, Viserion and his siblings continued to grow both in size and in our hearts. Sadly, his mother locked him and Rhaegal away in the vaults beneath the pyramid in Meereen for eating too many goats…and because their big brother ate a kid. Can’t forget that part.
Viserion was rarely seen after that. Once, when Dany wanted to scare some lords, she brought them before her children — the same children she kept locked in a dark cellar like in an even more twisted version of Flowers in the Attic — and Viserion roasted one of them alive and shared him with his brother for dinner.
When Tyrion Lannister came to Meereen, he was shocked and appalled at Dany’s cruel behavior toward Viserion and Rhaegal, who had never been on the honor roll like Drogon, and went below to have a little chat with them.
Viserion didn’t eat Tyrion, even though from some angles he really looked like a delicious child. As a reward for sticking to his diet of rocks and racists, Tyrion took off the collar that had been chafing Viserion’s neck for a few years.
Finally, after a long talk with Drogon, Dany saw the error of her ways and said that if Viserion and Rhaegal could break their way out of the pyramid on their own, then they could rejoin the family as distant cousins or something.
The three dragons torched the slavers fleet, and Viserion finally felt what it was like to be loved by his mother, or at least that’s what he told himself — you’ve to be able to get out of the giant pile of bones in the morning.
In season 7, Viserion mostly kept to the cliffs of Dragonstone or fished with his brother Rhaegal, because mommy forgot he existed again.
One day, when Dany’s new boyfriend Jon Snow was in trouble, she sent for Drogon so she could go and save him, but quickly realized that if she were going to do it right, she would need all three dragons. For the briefest of moments, Viserion thought Dany would hop on his back and he’d carry her into battle, but it was not to be.
Sighing, Viserion decided to swallow his feelings and winged his way to the cold north beyond the Wall, where he gleefully began lighting zombies on fire. “Won’t mommy be proud!” he thought, just as an ice lance hurled by some ice monster hit him in the neck.
“Well f*ck,” Viserion thought as he slid beneath the hole in the ice his body made upon crashing. “At least all the dieting means I didn’t make a very big hole.” And the poor little dragon sank to the bottom of the lake. As darkness swallowed him, and the last vestiges of life left his body, Viserion wasn’t afraid, because he was used to being alone in the dark.
The next thing Viserion knew, he was waking up outside the lake, feeling weirdly cold. The Night King, using chains he purchased at the Ace Hardware in the Frostfangs, fished Viserion’s dead body from the icy depths. He laid his hand upon the dead dragon’s head, and Viserion opened his now blue eyes. “Great,” he thought to himself. “Now I get to play second fiddle to a bunch of rotting zombies. F*ck my undead life.”
Next: Small Council: What did we think of “Beyond the Wall?”
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