Emilia Clarke: Fans were “really upset” by Game of Thrones ending
By Dan Selcke
Emilia Clarke nudges a little closer to talking about the shortcomings of the final season of Game of Thrones while out promoting her new comic book.
Two years out, the ending of Game of Thrones is still reverberates among fans, in large part because so many really, really didn’t like it. A big bone of contention involved Emilia Clarke’s character Daenerys Targaryen, who in the end crossed a line into tyranny when she flash-fried the citizens of King’s Landing before training her dragon on the Red Keep itself.
Clarke was asked about the reaction to the ending during a recent appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan, where she brought out some familiar talking points:
"Whatever ending we were ever gonna come up with — like, let’s say that made us all hairdressers — everyone still would’ve been really upset, because people joyfully didn’t want it to end at all. So I think any ending would have upset everybody. But our ending really, really did seem to really upset [people]."
A few cast members have come out and criticized the ending a little more openly: Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister) said he was “underwhelmed,” while both Kristian Nairn (Hodor) and Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) wished the show had taken more time in the final stretch building up to the big moments.
I more or less agree with Nairn and Yerolemou on that score, but I also get why Clarke, who was actually in the trenches during the making of the final season, would feel closer to it — those other actors had already exited the series by the time the cameras started rolling on season 8.
I’m also looking forward to a time some years in the future when some of the main players — Clarke, Kit Harington (Jon Snow), showrunner David Benioff and Dan Weiss, etc — look back on the end of the show with some more distance. Will their opinions stay the same? Will history treat the ending any differently? Bring on the reunion!
In the meantime, you can enjoy Clarke’s work on the new comic book M.O.M.: Mother of Madness, which is why she’s hitting the talk show circuit right now in the first place:
Next. Will Emilia Clarke’s new superhero comic book become a movie?. dark
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