Many have criticized the final season of Game of Thrones for its nonsensical plot developments, but that’s exactly what makes it true to life.
People complained a lot about the final season of Game of Thrones, not just millions of sometimes bitterly angry fans but also quite a few critics. In recent memory, only with Star Wars: The Last Jedi have so many long-loyal fans of a major global pop-culture phenomenon so passionately, collectively, and frequently expressed such high levels of disappointment (or worse) in the outcome of a beloved franchise (to be fair to the justly maligned films of The Hobbit Trilogy, I think people—including the director, Peter Jackson—knew that it was never going to equal the magisterial Lord of the Rings Trilogy, so I am not counting that).
We only recently found out from one reputable survey that just 52% of fans had positive feelings regarding this final season, and talk of the series being “ruined,” “falling apart,” “massacred,” “devoid of logic,” or being a “trainwreck” this final season was hardly uncommon, with one review even calling it the “worst series finale of all time.”
And yet, this final season did take home the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series…
Here, I’d like to tackle some of the criticisms of the show, and argue that some of the things people are accusing it of are what make it true to life.
Planning for the worst? Or the worst planning… Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
I. Common criticism of an uncommon show
Many of the criticisms of Game of Thrones‘s final season’s plot centered centered on pacing, writing, and tactical and strategic plot issues (notice I am not talking about a Starbucks cup).
I agree that pacing was a huge issue, particularly with the final episode, where the climax involved the death of Daenerys Targaryen, a major character we’ve followed from the show’s first episode. That should have happened at the end of an episode, not in the middle and swiftly put aside. This death at the hands of Jon Snow was already going to be hard for many fans to accept, but it was made so much harder by the rapid, almost casual way it and the aftermath were handled.
This was probably the most blatant example of a pacing issue from the season, but it is just one of many pacing issues—both big and small—that combined to make their collective destructive effect as devastating to the season (and possibly the series as a whole?) as a dragon on a Westeros battlefield.
The writing, too, became a huge issue (admittedly intertwined with pacing), with so much of the season being devoted the battles and spectacle and so little to dialogue or buildup. Dialogue had distinguished Game of Thrones as much as the slaughter, sex, and sudden plot twists. This eighth-season decline in writing was obvious to me at first viewing, but when you rewatch some of the earlier seasons’ episodes, the gap is far more obvious, so exemplary is the storytelling episode after episode in earlier seasons, so so-so and problematic in the last two, especially the final season. In particular, in the eyes on many, some key character moments and character development were not well-handled or flat-out mangled. Even season 7 has far more and far better exchanges; upon rewatch, the decline of season 8 relative to season 7 seems about as steep and dramatic as season 7 relative to the first six seasons (i.e., really steep and dramatic).
"(No Spoilers) [OC] The number of words per minute for each Game of Thrones episode from asoiaf"
As for plot issues, some of the most valid plot-driven criticism often centered on “plot armor”, i.e., too many situations where too many main characters survived too many situations they almost certainly should not have (or, at the very least, fewer main characters should have survived). Viewers are left to lament the deaths of lesser characters while virtually all the main ones survive horrific slaughter, resulting in a far-reduced emotional impact in the most epic episodes when there should have been far more emotional climaxes; the real mourning is for non-tropey storytelling that has been replaced with tropey storytelling. This peaked for fans and critics during the Battle of Winterfell against the Night King and the Army of the Dead (to quote an MTV article’s subtitle, “Jon Snow’s plot armor is made of Valyrian steel,” with Arya Stark’s miraculous survival of the massacre at King’s Landing in “The Bells” a solid runner-up.
In our feedback-driven media culture, criticism seems so often to revolve around audience member selfishness: we grew up with Arya, remembering Arya Stark as a little girl, so we don’t like the idea of Arya having sex, her normal age-appropriate-in-the-final-seasons’ hormones and her own agency be damned. Thus, for many, Arya and Gendry getting intimate was mishandled at best or deeply controversial and inappropriate at worst.
In cheap and vapid television, characters exist to fulfill our whims. In more challenging, adult drama, the characters are so richly fleshed out that they really are their own people and don’t exist to satisfy a marketable demographic; for the latter, think Tony Soprano and the overall arc of Star Wars’ Anakin Skywalker (Clone Wars being included) compared to any the banal major characters of Paulo Coelho’s fiction or Rey of the newest Star Wars trilogy.
But I’m not writing this to tread in-depth over well-trodden ground; rather, it is most of the other plot complaints I found to be off. Way off.
In this article, I’m here to talk about how this final season of Game of Thrones actually brilliantly executed a display of the chaos of war and why much of the criticism about the eighth season related to its chaotic nature and dumb character choices miss the mark.
II. Stupidity as instructive reality in Game of Thrones
People were really upset about the stupidity of major characters in the final seasons, especially Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister and Sansa Stark, among others. In short, people were really mad that people were stupid and doing stupid things.
#TyrionTried. Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
Tyrion Lannister digression: some fans include Tyrion Lannister among the stupid, though for me, Tyrion didn’t want anything as much as he wanted to be loved by his family, a love only Jaime ever showed. It doesn’t take Freud or Dr. Ruth or some other stable genius to know that he chased women as much as he did to fill that void and to compensate for the fact that he never had a mother growing up since she died giving birth to him; in hindsight, his efforts to humanize his sister Cersei failed, but if he had awakened some humanity in her, imagine all the lives that would have been saved… I don’t find as much fault with Tyrion as some others, though without a doubt, he wasn’t as sharp at the end and the wars fatigued him, but how hard should we come down on him for trying to believe that love of her unborn child might make Cersei see reason, or that Dany was a leader for whom it was worth fighting? Yes, these hopes have risks, but clearly the war had worn Tyrion down and rather than oversee more violence, he was doing what he could to stop the bloodshed. As the show’s most empathetic character, he consistently did not want to give up on peace in the later seasons, and his plans largely failed because of horrible decisions (Cersei not negotiating, Daenerys roasting a whole city) or brilliant stratagems (Jaime sacrificing Lannister-seat-of-power Casterly Rock to take Highgarden and knock out the Tyrells) made by others; his decisions were not necessarily the best, but were also hardly the worst. Maybe all this is, in part, why Peter Dinklage won an Emmy for his portrayal of Tyrion in this final season… End digression.
The Charge of the Light Brigade- Game of Thrones version. Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
Many, including subject-matter experts, complained that the plans for battle, tactics, and campaign strategies were perplexing and/or stupid. Most of the great statesmen and generals of Westeros—from beyond the Wall and the North to the Reach and Dorne—were, by this point, culled in the War of the Five Kings. This left suddenly elevated leaders with less diplomatic and/or military leadership experience, people like Jon Snow, Dany Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Euron Greyjoy, and Ramsay Bolton commanding armies. In such an environment, competence is not what one should expect. In fact, the last competent operation was the one led by Jaime Lannister to take Highgarden, but most of that campaign’s victorious army was incinerated by dragonfire or run down by Dothraki, and thus much of its success was undone.
As they unfold, long wars in history tend to get muddier and bloodier over time, and the longer they last, the harder it is to find manpower or experienced leaders, with the best either falling on the field of battle or falling into cautious self-preservation. If one side is gradually prevailing over time, sometimes you get a battle-hardened core of leaders so that by war’s end, an army can be fighting like a fine-tuned machine (e.g., the U.S. Union Army in the Civil War), but if there is a lot of indecisive back-and-forth, with victorious armies winning one battle one day only to be defeated and wiped out in another (see the Stark army’s demise at the Red Wedding or the Lannister army’s aforementioned post-Highgarden demise), this can lead to bloody chaos, especially when more and more random forces end up joining the fray (see the real-world Thirty Years War). Game of Thrones demonstrates all this reality exquisitely.
The mess and chaos and, yes, stupidity of war are on full display here, especially in season 8. These people simply don’t know what they are doing. As a result, many soldiers and civilians die, the war dragging on both because leaders are making poor decisions that fail to preserve their forces, win major victories, and decisively exploit those victories, or the poor decisions of other leaders, further.
Jon Snow never got a chance to really be fully mentored by his father Ned Stark, who who had his head lopped off at the end of season 1. As a (supposed) bastard, Jon was not being groomed for leadership in House Stark, and Night’s Watch Lord Commander Jeor Mormont was killed before he got to really teach Jon what he had wanted to in order to groom him into a proper successor. Reality got in the way of a nice, orderly transition of wisdom and experience, and from that point on, Jon mainly had to feel his way as a leader without much real guidance, the one exception being the late-in-the-game coming of Ser Davos Seaworth to his side.
As Cersei got more powerful, her father Tywin was killed by her brother Tyrion, and when she had the Sept of Baelor destroyed, she also took out Tywin’s experienced brother Kevan; once she was Queen again, there were no senior Lannisters left, and throughout the series she pretty much ignored the advice of her brothers Jaime (experienced in military matters) and Tyrion (experienced in government). She only listens to the servile (if clever) Qyburn in the final seasons.
Dany never really had a true mentor, the closest being Ser Jorah Mormont, who began his time beside her as an agent working against her. Even when he was fully on her team, it was hardly the same as an elder family member who had been grooming her for years to be a ruler.
Sansa was in a similar position, with Littlefinger (Lord Petyr Baelish) or Cersei imparting wisdom to her, but hardly purposefully grooming her for leadership or giving that advice out of the kindness of their hearts.
Ramsay Bolton killed his own father. Euron Greyjoy killed his older brother. Those left to command major forces in the end were practically kids (hello, Lyanna Mormont) operating without much guidance and had sometimes even killed those who would have been their best mentors or advisors. They led too early and were, over the long run, relatively unprepared, often leading to mixed results or worse.
In other words, a good title for season 8 would be “Amateur Hour.” Yes, Jon, Dany, Cersei, Ramsay, Sansa, and Euron had all made shrewd moves to still be major players towards the end, yet they made serious mistakes typical of less disciplined or less experienced people not accustomed to leading over many years and long tutored by their elders, mistakes such elders—Tywin Lannister, Robert Baratheon, Roose Bolton, Ned Stark, Doran Martell—would have been far more likely to avoid.
Without older, wiser souls to guide them, the younger generation of Westeros—often impatient, entitled, and arrogant—made mistake after mistake.
Jon Snow kept making emotional, impractical decisions, from rushing Ramsay’s army to sticking with Dany until it was way too late.
One of many times Cersei overplayed her hand. Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
Cersei kept overplaying her hand, being far too hostile and cruel to her rivals, allies, and even her own family (who all made things much more difficult for her). With her own back against the wall, Cersei needlessly provoked Daenerys by having Daenerys’ close advisor and friend Missandei decapitated in front her, wasting her potential as a hostage and ignoring heartfelt, sensible appeals from both of her brothers to choose other courses of action that would have strengthened her position. Cersei’s being so isolated in the end was more a result of her own vindictive actions than anything else.
Ramsay often let his cruelty overtake his rationality, taking out his own father, seeming to kill or killing prisoners of war repeatedly when hostages could have been valuable or his own forces could have used the extra men, and shooting arrows into his own forces at the Battle of the Bastards.
Even while Winterfell was being overrun by wights, Sansa was being as petty as ever when it came to expressing her dislike of Daenerys. Instead of skillfully assessing and playing the situation, Sansa broadcast her distaste for Dany brazenly and in public situations, lacking subtlety where subtlety was warranted. As much fun as it was for her to disdainfully ask “What do dragons eat, anyway?” in the moment, there was a good chance the (later-Mad) Dragon Queen would have returned with her last dragon and roasted Sansa and all of Winterfell because of the barely restrained hostility Sansa had repeatedly expressed towards Daenerys, hostility that did not actually help advance Sansa’s or Winterfell’s interests but instead helped push Daenerys over the edge and made her even more dangerous to the North. Sansa and Winterfell, then, were fortunate that Jon (whom Sansa consistently doubted and challenged) risked it all to take Daenerys out when he did. Even back in season 7, Arya and Sansa fell for Littlefinger’s plan and turned against each other, each flirting with killing the other. Sansa only realized she was being played after a last-minute conversation with Bran, the mystical all-knowing Three-Eyed Raven. Without magical intervention, the Stark sisters were on a collision course that would have left one or both of them dead.
If you think stupidity is not one of the more ever-present, all-powerful forces in war, politics, and life, I’m not sure you’re paying attention to the news…
In the very last episode of the final season of Game of Thrones, when the leaders of Westeros decided to go with Bran “the Broken” as an elected king, Robin Arryn—yes, the whiny brat who was still sucking on his crazy mother’s teat well into what we would now call grade-school years and who smashed Sansa’s snow castle of Winterfell in a tantrum—had a seat at the table with the “great” leaders who were left. There was no Tywin Lannister, no Olenna Tyrell, no Doran Martell, no Eddard Stark, no Stannis Baratheon; they were all dead by the end of the show, as were most of their top advisors. Barely-not-still-children like Robin, Bran, Sansa, and Gendry and people who never thought they’d be leading realms or never thought they would be leading at this time were generally the ones left standing in their wake, along with lacklusters like Edmure Tully, who, sadly, could accurately claim to be “one of the senior lords in the country” at the council that elected Bran king.
The very makeup of the council, then, was a testament to the messy chaos that characterized the closing phases of the conflicts in Westeros. Quite often in the real world, wars devolve into Pyrrhic stalemates, with sides whittled down to shadows of their former selves as the war grinds on, with the bold and creative and even competent leaders dwindling ever more in quantity as the conflict grinds on. The final seasons, especially season 8, demonstrate this reality usefully and impart to viewers how messy war can really be in a way few shows have.
III. A song of ice and fire, then consensus-building and incrementalism
The ending for Westeros is also instructive in that it is often after such cataclysmic disasters as the destruction of King’s Landing, presumably the most populated city in Westeros, that substantive change actually happens. It was after the cataclysmic Thirty Years War and other Protestant-Catholic religious bloodletting from Ireland to Scandinavia that led to the emergence in 1648 of the Westphalian interstate system, the root of the current international order. It was from the ashes and graveyards of two world wars that today’s United Nations and Geneva Conventions became driving forces in international law, contributing to the longest relative peace in recorded history since the Pax Romana of ancient Rome (my paper and book chapter delve into the latter), a peace building on the Westphalian system to include human rights and conflict prevention/mitigation alongside Westphalian state sovereignty. Today, we are among the luckiest humans who have ever lived to be living under such a “neoliberal” system (even as that imperfect system is under stress and assault like no time since its WWII-era birthing).
Global battle deaths, from WWII to c. 2015, Neil Halloran/YouTube, The Fallen of WWII
Why, then, should we be surprised that an oligarchic federal elected monarchy, even if a feudal one, formed over most of Westeros after the War of the Five Kings, the Great War against the Night King and final conflict between Team Dany and Team Cersei? While the entertaining Seinfeld-ish Small Council meeting at the end of the series was odd (“’Star Wars Christmas Special’-style fan fiction,” in the words of one critic) and the way Tyrion’s speech led to a resolution of an elected federal monarchy seemed kind of random (isn’t so much of life, politics, and history, though?), this final result for the series as to how to reshape the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros was one of the few natural options left and one of the most realistic, as everyone seemed wary and wearied, having lost so much, and it was obvious to these less bold, more cautious, less accomplished-than-their-forbears survivors that some change had to be made going forward.
While leaders like Tywin Lannister, Olenna Tyrell, Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, and Doran Martell all seemed to have been leading their regions stably and ably for years, amassing sizable armies, power, and influence over time, those left standing at the end of the series were all left weak, depleted, and exhausted, all too aware of their limits (that’s why Edmure sits down when Sansa tells him to). Just as most of Germany was devastated after the Thirty Years War and most of Europe was devastated after World War II, it took similar apocalyptic conflict in Westeros to humble competing leaders enough to remake the system in a way that allowed for more restraint and that made them recognize their weaknesses and inability to keep fighting as they had centuries. While hardly the crowning glory many expected to cap off the series (more like a crowning shrug), after so much bloodshed and buildup, it is refreshing that the series ended on a realistic and realistically hopeful-within-its-context note (Sam Tarly’s suggestion of democracy was laughed off, lest you think the episode got carried away).
I have noted here the stupidity of man and war, but so too must we credit the ability of at least some humans to learn from the past and their own and others’ mistakes. It might debatably and sadly take something like the leveling of the Holy Roman Empire or the hellish battle for Berlin in 1945 or the firebombing of Tokyo or atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also in 1945, in the real world for societies to collectively learn the necessary lessons, but better late than never. In fictional Westeros, it took the apocalyptic Battle of Winterfell and genocidal massacre at King’s Landing. And that is not to say that all these uses of force were necessary or necessarily justified, but far better aftermaths were the results of those extreme denouements, even if similar aftermaths were possible with less extreme final acts.
Would medieval Europe have been better off without the bloodshed of the seventeenth century, which led to the Westphalian system? Today, Germany and Japan are among the most peaceful and prosperous nations in the world; would later generations of Japanese or Germans have been better with some less apocalyptic past that left in place in one form or another the Nazi and State Shinto regimes that had initiated war? Would Westeros and other realms have been better off with a new Targaryen dynasty, however long that would or would not have lasted, and with whatever would have come after? Conversely, the lenient peace in the American South after the Civil War and during Reconstruction allowed its people to hold fast onto an ugly, racist white nationalist ideology to the degree that the rebel “Confederates” are said to have lost the war but won the peace. And today, that white nationalist ideology is very much making a comeback (not just in the U.S.), terrifying many. Is the U.S. better off with the lenient terms the South got after the Civil War and having never really defeated the South’s “Confederate” ideology? These questions are tough to answer but certainly worth considering.
In the end, Game of Thrones flirted with talk of a revolution and tearing the system down, but settled for an incremental change to the existing system. In that sense, it seems to be saying, “Don’t expect a Bernie Sanders/High Sparrow/Daenerys Targaryen or even a Jon Snow-type savior, but put faith in institutions and processes and go more with a Hillary Clinton/Bran Stark-style, more modest, but more workable and palatable, solution.”
Fans might have wanted something more “exciting,” but for a history and policy guy like me, this outcome for Westeros was both unexpected and exciting, a lesson in reality for an era increasingly plagued by a lack of acceptance of reality. Again, that wasn’t exactly what many fans wanted, but we don’t really get what we want in life all the time, do we? Especially when we are talking about a (fictional) geopolitical outcome, sometimes appreciating a choice that is not the option that makes you personally the most excited is the very definition of maturity and wisdom. Just like the council that picked Bran as king picked a result that wasn’t anyone’s first choice (except maybe Bran’s, and even that’s doubtful), it’s hard to imagine some objectively good real-world historical outcomes that were anyone’s most desired outcome. Even so, they were the outcomes that worked best (or at least quite well) overall for the lands and peoples in conflict in a world confined by harsh limitations. For all its flaws, then, even for a show involving dragons and White Walkers, the final season and final episode of Game of Thrones stayed true to the show’s overall genre-defying realism.
Much like today’s Bernie Sanders fans—whose expectations far exceed reality and whose vitriol far exceeds what is warranted, especially those who did not eventually support Clinton in 2016—many Game of Thrones fans and professional critics might have “shrugged” or been less than enthused (or worse) about this particular final geopolitical outcome in the finale, but, like a kid who doesn’t want to eat his vegetables, perhaps over time their views will mature into appreciation, in this case, of the unique realism that helped Game of Thrones transcend the fantasy genre.
Having addressed season 8’s stupidity and geopolitical settlement, there still remains one final elephant—or, more appropriately, dragon—in the room…
IV. On that massacre, and massacres in general
In particular, Daenerys Targaryen’s massacre of pretty much the entire civilian population of King’s Landing—at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps more if we add refugees who had crowded into the city and surrendered soldiers—did not sit well with many fans. There are several major reasons for this, but here we shall focus on the critiques that this shocking act made no sense and that this was therefore a “bad” outcome for the show.
Hiroshima after the U.S dropped an atomic bomb (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)
I was in shock when watching it for the first time and had quite an emotional reaction: it is painful, horrific, and even traumatic to a degree when you watch it, representing mass killing in a television show in a graphic way that I am not sure has yet been replicated by any other show.
But I also loved it because this event gave us one the most awesome statements made by Game of Thrones over the course of its run.
To set up why, note how showrunner D.B. Weiss said that Daenerys’s (near-?)genocidal war-crime was not premeditated, but a decision made in the moment. That is not to say that there was not plenty of foreshadowing that this might be how Dany would end up: there was, though some argue that the foreshadowing was inadequate. I would argue that both are right in that there was foreshadowing but that the final leaps of her character go far beyond what foreshadowing suggested was likely at that stage.
Yet, what I think many people are missing is that this dramatic leap is precisely what is so brilliant: we humans often like to think there’s always a plan, that we make sense and are rational, but history is full of people suddenly and horrifically snapping with little or no explanation. When some people happen to be commanders in war with immense power at their disposal and the ability to decide life or death for hundreds or thousands of people, all too often mercy and restraint have not been the outcome. Such slaughter is both ancient and modern. For Christians and Jews (just to name two religious groups), such killing can even be endorsed or commanded by God Himself in the Nevi’im/Bible, as was the case with the Amalekites.
Mass killing, whether premeditated or not, whether rational or not, is hardly a rarity in history and can sink to the level of genocide; such horrors span the ancient world all through the ensuing centuries and up to even our present era. Not all massacres or particularly-murderous city-sacks are preplanned neatly with Germanic Nazi precision; while some decisions are a matter of policy or are a clear choice (surrender and be spared, fight and have your city be massacred if you lose) or have a clear (if sick) logic to them, other times such decisions are made on a whim or a snap or are just collective spontaneity, and still other times even solid commanders lose control of their troops.
We like to say that slaughtering most or all of those people is “unthinkable,” “indescribable,” even “inhuman.” But the sad truth is that such slaughter is uniquely human. To quote a passage from Iain Pears’s brilliant Dream of Scipio:
"When I was at Verdun [the WWI battle]… I saw things which were more appalling than you can imagine. I saw civilization coming apart at the seams. As it weakened, people felt free to act as they pleased, and did so, which weakened it still more. And I decided then it was the most important thing, that it had to survive and be protected. Without that tissue of beliefs and habits we are worse than beasts. Animals are constrained by their limitations and their lack of imagination. We are not."
In other words, no individual animal can wipe out so many other creatures during a single event… no animal, that is, except a human. Dragons are completely fictional, but even Drogon did not do what he did of his own will; he was controlled by Daenerys.
As I have noted before, the veneer of civilization is quite thin.
CNN broadcasts the Osama bin Laden tape December 13, 2001. The Bush administration called the tape the “smoking gun” that proves bin Laden’s direct responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Perhaps most disturbingly and most frustratingly, we really don’t have any specific insight into exactly why Daenerys Targaryen did what she did when she roasted most of King’s Landing. We know she had been through a lot up to that moment, especially recently. Still, the show kept her thought process from us and left us only able to speculate, but that is also part of the brilliance I am getting at: we naturally want answers when something horrible like this happens, some sort of clear manifesto like that of Osama bin Laden, but all too often, mass murderers don’t give us a reason, there is no trial or neat debriefing like at Nuremberg, and the horrors of atrocity can also include never having an answer to “Why?”
1946: Members of the Tribunal (left), preside over the Nuremberg war crimes Trials. From left to right are : Colonel A F Volchlov (Russia), General J T Nikitchenko (Russia), Lord Justice Norman Birkett (Britain), The President Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence (Britain), Hon. Francis A Biddle (USA), Hon. John Parker (USA), and M. Henri Donnedieu De Vabres (France). (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
She might have just been angry or snapped, which seems be what’s suggested by Emilia Clarke’s performance and Weiss’ commentary. But after she has gone through with the massacre of pretty much the whole city, in the next episode it seems she had given deliberate orders to execute Lannister military prisoners; she may or may not have snapped, but after her burning of King’s Landing she seems to have embraced a more calculated policy of killing the defenseless beyond any temporary fury.
The innocent victims of Daenerys. Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
To television viewers, Jon, Tyrion, Davos, and quite a few others, Daenerys’ genocidal-level killing feels like madness. But massacres of entire civilian populations in history are not uncommon, with far too many senseless acts of unjustified violence. Many a would-be conqueror presented themselves as liberators, only to be a murderous tyrant in the end, from select Roman emperors through Stalin. Many felt they had a destiny to rule. We often cannot get into the heads of soldiers or kings or generals the moment they decide to massacre thousands of non-combatants, but plenty would involve sudden, unexpected twists and not necessarily a slow, anticipatory, well-advertised buildup. Conquerors are not saints, even if they found religions. And conquerors change often when and as they conquer. We may like our characters like Jon Snow: steady, stable, principled, and predictable, but Jon Snow and Ned Stark are often the exceptions, not the rule, in reality and on Game of Thrones.
But maybe Daenerys was not “mad” at all and did have a cold, heartless rationality to her massacre-by-dragonfire. Maybe she realized how hard it would be governing over an unruly population as a foreign queen; maybe, already sensing Sansa Stark’s defiance (no Six Kingdoms for Dany!), she wanted to make an example to avoid further such battles in the future. That’s perhaps the most common reason in history for such acts, from the Romans to the Mongols to Hiroshima.
That we don’t know and that this moment will forever be up for debate only adds to the singularity of the Game of Thrones mystique. Call it madness, call it rational, call it out-of-left-field, call it terrorism, call it genocide, no matter which, it is a brilliant reflection both of the horrors and, often, ambiguities of mass violence in the real world, ones we would do better as societies to consider and confront. That Game of Thrones makes us uncomfortable thinking about such violence, then, is, if anything, a service.
Not the ending people expected, and yet… Image: HBO/Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones season 8: a worthwhile hot mess of realism
Perhaps the finest real-world companion for the sudden, shocking, remarkable, and illogical decline of Daenerys Targaryen is the sudden, shocking, remarkable, and illogical decline of Game of Thrones season 8 relative to the rest of the series. Yet while the pacing, writing, and sometimes execution were severely lacking, the major plot decisions themselves were far less problematic. In fact, both in the surprising geopolitical settlement of electing a king and in the beautiful chaos of the final seasons, Game of Thrones stayed true both to upending fantasy and television tropes and to the real world and history in showing how suddenly leaders can snap, how dramatically unforeseen mass killing can often be, and how stupidity and chaos are real forces in history and life. The irony of people complaining that leaders in one of our fictional worlds do not behave predictably or rationally in the age of Trump is powerful, and perhaps illustrates our own lack of self-awareness and blindness in deeply unflattering ways more than it illustrates anything else.
All in all, our journey with Game of Thrones was like none other in television history: the degree to which a global fanbase of, at times, over a billion people followed and debated this series as it unfolded was unprecedented, and with such a large and devoted fanbase, perhaps it was inevitable that a great many people would not be satisfied with the outcome. We are all fortunate to have at our viewing pleasure a show that taught us surprising lessons about empathy and that is so deeply thought-provoking when so few pieces of modern culture are. That does not excuse this Game of Thrones final season’s very real flaws, but the beautiful, instructive, chaotic mess that embodies it is not one of them.
All images from HBO/Game of Thrones unless otherwise noted/credited
Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who holds an MS in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and US policy and politics, security, conflict, terrorism and counterterrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. He just returned to the United States after over five years in the Middle East. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981 and at his own news website: Real Context News.
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