Image: Game of Thrones/HBO
In the past couple months, we’ve heard a bunch about scenes deleted from Game of Thrones season 8. Now, at least one of them is circulating online!
This particular scene takes place during the feast following the Battle of Winterfell in “The Last of the Starks.” Did you notice that, in the actual episode, Missandei and Grey Worm weren’t at that feast? That always seemed a little odd, since they were Daenerys’ closest advisors. As this scene reveals, they were at the feast, at least at first…
So Daenerys dismisses Grey Worm from the feast so he can get some well-earned rest, Missandei fakes a health problem so she can join him, and Daenerys teases her about it (“Oh no — Is it your stomach?”) before tell her girl to get it. All in all, a cute moment.
So why was it cut, do we think? If I put myself in the mind of the writers, I wonder if they worried that this exchange might undermine the point of the scene. This is a scene where Daenerys feels isolated from the people around her. That sense of isolation, the arguments goes, deepens over the next couple episodes until she’s lost herself to the point where she’s willing to torch King’s Landing. But it’s hard to see Dany as isolated at the feast if Missandei and Grey Worm, her two closest advisors, are with her, and it’s hard to sympathize with her loneliness if we see that Dany is the one to send them away in the first place. The solution? Just cut them out of the scene entirely.
Or at least that’s the theory I’ve cooked up. Maybe it just ran long, I dunno. Anyway, I like the moment.