The 10-year anniversary of Game of Thrones has resurrected a lot of discussions about the controversial ending. Let’s take a trip to an alternate universe and see if we can’t “fix” it.
I’d like to start this article by contradicting myself: Game of Thrones season 8 is not “broken.” It is a season of television, it is a piece of art, and it is open to interpretation. If you loved each and every minute of it, that is valid and I am happy for you.
That said, a lot of fans had problems with the final stretch of episodes, myself included. With HBO celebrating the show’s tenth anniversary this month, many of those problems are getting talked about again, so I thought it could be a good time to revisit a favorite question: how should the show have ended?
Before we go on, a ground rule: I don’t intend to invent a whole new ending here, although if you want that plenty of fans have come up with scenarios. Rather, I want to stick to the ending that HBO gave us, but tweak and add things to make it more coherent. So Daenerys Targaryen is still going to burn King’s Landing, Jon Snow is still going to kill her, and Bran Stark is still going to be made the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, all choices I took issue with for one reason or another. But the point of this particular game is to make these choices work, rather than make alternate ones.
Ready? Let’s play.
What’s wrong with Game of Thrones season 8?
Again, I start with a contradiction: if you loved the final season of Game of Thrones, nothing was wrong with it, and that’s fine; actually, I envy you, because it sounds like you haven’t spent sleepless nights tossing and turning while your brain tweaks this and that plot point in an attempt to make season 8 go down easier even though you just want to sleep.
…ANYWAY, I had several issues with the final three episodes of the series in particular, although they can more or less be boiled down to one thing: I didn’t believe that Daenerys Targaryen would do what she did.
And what did she do? Let’s recap: Daenerys came to Westeros in season 7 and found the country harder to take over than she thought. She lost her Tyrell, Martell and Greyjoy allies in short order, and the people in King’s Landing didn’t rise up against their leaders like the slaves rose up against the masters in Meereen. In season 8, she went north to help the Northerners defeat the undead, but found them chilly and remote. She lost her longtime advisor Jorah Mormont to the White Walkers, her dragon Rhaegal to Euron Greyjoy, and her closest confidante Missandei to Cersei Lannister. On top of that, she learned that her lover Jon Snow may have at least as good a claim to the Iron Throne as her, and that one of her advisors, Varys, was plotting behind her back to install him on it.
This all led to the moment her army invaded King’s Landing. The Lannister forces were beaten, but instead of accepting their inevitable surrender, she took wing and set the city and its people ablaze.
In the broad strokes, I don’t think this is a bad story. Actually, I think it’s admirably bold. Daenerys is a good-hearted character who starts with the best of intentions but who gives into her worst impulses in a moment of weakness and ends up crossing a line she can never uncross. In the abstract, this is high tragedy. It should have been every bit as powerful as Ned Stark’s execution or the Red Wedding, but with millions more spent on special effects.
Instead, my biggest thought watching it was, “But why?” Yes, Daenerys had always been given to extremes. She crucified over 100 slavers after she took the city of Meereen. She talked more than once about reducing the cities of Slaver’s Bay to dirt, and didn’t sound like she was going to make a distinction between the different kinds of people who lived there. But indiscriminately immolating the men, women and children of King’s Landing? That seemed and seems like a big stretch. Even when she sacked the city of Astapor in season 3, she specified that her Unsullied only “[s]lay the masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who holds a whip, but harm no child.” Granted, she was painting with a broad brush, but at least she made allowances; in King’s Landing, she judged everyone guilty and acted accordingly.
And maybe the show could have sold a character arc where she got to that point — absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that — but I don’t think it did. As the common refrain goes, it wasn’t the story I had a problem with, it was the execution.
So how could it have been executed better?
The game continues:
Establish a relationship between Daenerys Targaryen and the people of King’s Landing
I think the final couple of seasons of Game of Thrones were underwritten. There seemed to be a lot of context missing, a lot of in-between scenes establishing how characters were feeling and why they made the choices they made. I think the showrunners leaned a lot on the performers to sell the story, but as talented as Emilia Clarke is, she can’t work miracles. She needed more script to work with.
I think the first step to “fixing” the final season is to put some of this interstitial stuff back in. Most immediately, we need scenes that explain why Daenerys made her fateful choice. Let’s start by filling out a storyline that has nothing to do with her directly: let’s focus on the people of King’s Landing.
The night before the attack on the city, Daenerys meets with Jon Snow. “I don’t have love here,” she tells him. “I only have fear.” Daenerys is feeling isolated in part because the people of Westeros have rejected her, and we do see a bit of that in action: Randyll Tarly refuses to bend the knee to her after the Loot Train Attack, and the Northerners act cautious and shifty around her.
But Daenerys doesn’t torch Winterfell; she torches King’s Landing and everyone who lives there, and I think the show would benefit from focusing on how the people of that city in particular feel about her.
My idea is this: starting in season 7, I think Cersei Lannister should mount a propaganda campaign against Daenerys, hiring singers and mummers to spread tales of her misdeeds among the people. One song could tell the horrific tale of the time she crucified 163 Meereenese leaders (leaving out that they themselves had crucified an equal number of children beforehand, obviously), another about the time her dragon ate a young child (leaving out that this horrified her so much she locked up her other dragons, of course). Maybe we could hear one of these songs when Davos fetches Gendry from King’s Landing, or perhaps they’ve spread out around the country.
By the time “The Last of the Starks” rolls around, Cersei will have gotten the people of King’s Landing completely on her side. Whatever problems they have with Cersei, they’re now officially more afraid of Daenerys than they are of her, and when people are afraid, they get angry and stupid. I think we should see Missandei’s execution from the other side of the city wall; on one end we have Dany and company watching with hearts in their throats, and on the other we have a throng of people eager to see the Dragon Queen get what’s coming to her. When Missandei is beheaded, the people cheer, a great rumbling roar audible over the wall.
I think that would be a pretty powerful way to sell us on the idea that Daenerys is angry with the people of this city. It wouldn’t be fair, of course — by Cersei’s design, they don’t have all the information — but that wouldn’t make it any less of a stab in the heart for Daenerys, who’s just lost her best friend.
I also like that this gives Cersei a bit more to do in the final couple seasons. I also have an idea for her and Missandei to have a one-on-one scene after Missandei’s capture, but that’s getting off track, so let’s move on.
Highlight the political motives behind Daenerys’ turn
Daenerys’ genocidal run is depicted as being borne purely of her fury and despair, and that’s definitely a big part of it. But I think there are other dimensions we could explore.
For instance, before the attack on the city, Varys decides that it’s Jon Snow who should be on the Iron Throne rather than Daenerys. He drafts a bunch of letters, presumably intending to send them to the Great Lords of Westeros, but Daenerys finds him out and executes him before he can act on his plans.
…I think. Frankly, the show isn’t terribly clear on what exactly Varys is planning or whether he succeeds. Does he send those letters off, or does Tyrion rat him out before he can follow through? I genuinely don’t know, and that’s a problem.
We need to clean this up. My idea is that, before Varys is executed, we establish that he does manage to get ravens off to every corner of the continent, meaning that everyone will soon know that there’s another possible candidate for the Iron Throne. Famously, Jon Snow does not want the job, but that won’t stop Daenerys from taking this as a threat to the legitimacy of her rule.
And now we come to the moment of truth. With these events in place, Dany’s attack on the people of King’s Landing is an expression of her rage and pain, but there’s also a political dimension to it. She’s sending a signal to every great lord in Westeros: “This is what will happen to you if you back Jon Snow’s claim to the Iron Throne over mine, so think twice.”
I think this reading is possible to make even without these changes, but you have to dig really deep. Tidying up the timeline with Varys would bring it to the surface.
Explore Daenerys’ state of mind
And here’s a much simpler idea: have Daenerys talk about how she’s feeling. Like I said, the final season relied heavily on Emilia Clarke’s performance to convey what Dany was going through, and while Clarke gave it her all (I think she should have won an Emmy for season 8), it still wasn’t enough to sell Dany’s big turn. I get that the writers wanted to show rather than tell, but in this case, I think a bit more telling was in order.
I have an idea for a scene set after Missandei is captured by Cersei but before she is executed. We’re on Dragonstone. Grey Worm is sitting alone in his room, worried, and Daenerys comes in to comfort him. They both love Missandei and reassure each other that they will get her back, neither of them quite believing it.
Grey Worm, the last of Dany’s close advisors who met her on Essos, points something out to her in his own moment of doubt: Westeros kind of sucks. Nothing’s gone right, the people don’t want or appreciate them, and things were a lot clearer and more productive on Essos. They were making more of a difference. Whatever happens with Missandei, why don’t they go back there?
This is more or less what Tyrion suggested to Daenerys when they first met back in season 5. She acknowledged that she’d done good work on Essos, “[b]ut this isn’t my home.”
But is Westeros her home? I think she grew up up thinking it would be, but now that she’s here, she’s not so sure. Daenerys is at a low ebb, perhaps thinking that she doesn’t have a home anywhere…except…
There’s a thread throughout the A Song of Ice and Fire books where Daenerys remembers when she, Viserys, and their protectors were living at a house with a red door in Braavos. It’s a vague memory, but she recalls it as one of the only places she was happy, one of the only places that felt like home. I think this scene would be the perfect place for her to bring it up. The house with the red door would serve as a symbol of the home Dany will never find again.
This scene would underline Dany’s deepening sense of isolation and despair, which directly influence her choice to torch King’s Landing. Also, I think it’d be a good idea to give us a vulnerable moment where we sympathize with Daenerys, since so much of the season keeps her at a distance.
Daenerys should just target the Red Keep, not King’s Landing in general
My hope is that all of these changes would lay some groundwork so that when Daenerys chooses violence, we understand her better, regardless of whether we approve. That said, even with all of these additions, I’m still not sure I would buy her indiscriminately burning random people.
So what if her spree was a bit more targeted? I think I could buy Dany’s turn easier if, rather than spraying fire among the populace at random, she made straight for the Red Keep, where Cersei is watching from her balcony, and started to burn that.
However, that raises new problems: Jon Snow kills Dany in the series finale not because she fried a castle but because she burned a city and sounds like she plans to burn more. I’ll admit that this is the suggestion I’m least sure about. In order for the story to work, Dany has to cross a line she cannot uncross. The city still has to burn, and Dany has to be behind it.
My idea (and it’s not an original one, plenty of fans have come to the same conclusion) is to add in a new subplot where Cersei, inspired by the destruction of the Sept of Baelor, pulls an accidental Mad King and lines the tunnels beneath King’s Landing with casks of wildfire, intending to light the match if it looks like the city will fall. But when she sees Dany and Drogon coming for her, she loses her nerve and tries to make a run for it, knowing that setting off the wildfire will kill her and her unborn baby as well as everybody else. At the last moment, Cersei finds that she actually wants to live; that’s consistent with how she dies with Jaime during her attempted escape.
And here’s the key bit: Dany has to know that Cersei has taken this explosive precaution, or at least that it’s a possibility. My idea is for Jaime to suspect Cersei of planning something like this in season 7, but not look too deeply into it for fear of confirming his worst fears. When he heads to Winterfell in season 8, he shares his suspicions with Tyrion, who shares them with Daenerys the night before the attack.
And yet Daenerys attacks anyway, knowing what might happen. While she’s burning the area near the Red Keep, part of the ground collapses, exposing some casks of wildfire. Drogon’s flames set off a chain reaction that rips through the city even as her armies sack the place.
When the smoke clears, Daenerys is victorious, but at a horrible cost, both to the country she hopes to rule and to herself.
Aftermath
There are other things in season 8 I take issue with. I think Dany’s death scene could use a once-over. I think Dany should come back to herself a bit more before Jon kills her, and that Jon should execute her rather than assassinate her; I think he should formally declare himself Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm before he does it, coming into his kingly authority for this one grim task and this one grim task alone.
I think there should be more horse-trading before Bran is made king; everyone signs on awfully quickly. I imagine Arya leaning on Gendry, and Sansa dangling a Northern-Ironborn alliance in front of Yara Greyjoy and a potential political marriage in front of Robin Arryn in order to secure their votes. But really, my main problem with the final season is Daenerys’ heel turn: do that right and I suspect that most of the rest will fall into place.
So what do you think? Would any of these suggestions improve the final season, or is it beyond saving? Or maybe it doesn’t need saving at all? And if you want to go another round, lots of other fans have already played this game:
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels