Jon’s decision to kill Daenerys was a last-minute thing, and other season 8 insights

The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones comes out on Blu-ray tomorrow, along with Game of Thrones: The Complete Collection. Plenty of folk have already listened to the audio commentaries and viewed the special features, and they’re glad to share.

Specifically, James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly has unveiled a bunch of tidbits from the commentary track for “The Iron Throne,” the series finale, and a behind-the-scenes feature called “Duty is the Death of Love.” Check them out:

• So about that scene where Jon Snow kills Daenerys, Kit Harington says that Jon didn’t go in intended to do that. “He doesn’t know he’s going to betray her until right at the end. In Jon’s head, it’s a number of [reasons: Dany] doesn’t factor in anyone else’s decisions and it also means [Dany] is going to kill my sisters, so it becomes [my] family vs. her.” Also, Benioff reassures Clarke that Drogon does not eat Daenerys as some fans apparently told her. “He’s not a cat. Did you see how gently he was nudging you?” Science more or less agrees with him.
• There’s been a lot of back and forth about why exactly Drogon burned the Iron Throne. Was it purposeful? Was it coincidence? The debate goes on, but Benioff seems to suggest that Drogon knows what he’s doing. “If [Dany is] not going to sit on it, no one’s going to sit on it.”

• In the scene where Jaime leaves Brienne, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau says a line that wasn’t in the script or the show itself: “I don’t love you. No one loves you.” I’m not sure who’s idea that was, but it is mean. And that’s the idea, of course; the line was designed to get Brienne to a point where she’d be aggrieved.
• Happily, Brienne bounces back to become Lord Commander of Bran Stark’s Kingsguard. Gwendoline Christie apparently learned calligraphy for the scene where she’s writing in the White Book, which the team took three days to get just right.

• Speaking of Bran, the showrunners confirm that his being named king is George R.R. Martin’s intended ending. “Around Season 3 we went to visit George R.R. Martin,” Benioff remembers. “And he writes, and he kind of figures things out as he’s writing. When we went to visit him back then, and this is while he was still writing book six, he didn’t know yet where the story was going, and he knew a few key things, and one of those key things was that the final king at the end of the story would be Bran.”
• Relatedly, Weiss talks about the origins of Daenerys’ death scene. “I think the final scene between Jon and Daenerys is something we came up with sometime in the midst of the third season of the show. The broad-strokes of it, anyway. But there was a tremendous amount of pressure to get it right ’cause we know that this is not a scene that’s giving people what they want.” It’s unclear whether that scene comes directly from Martin or if Benioff and Weiss came up with it.
• Clarke asks the showrunners which season was their favorite. Benioff names seasons 4, 6, and 8, while Weiss is all about 4. “[E]verybody was in a groove but we were so far from the end we didn’t have to worry about the ending…four was peak fun.”
• Arya, as expected, has left Westeros to become an explorer.

Would that not for a fun spinoff? Maisie Williams remains open to playing Arya again somewhere down the line, just saying…

We’ll see what else the new sets reveal as they come out! If you’re interested, you can order both the season 8 set and the Complete Collection now.

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